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Managing Fictional Narrative Flow - Epiphany
Unit Completion Date: End of Week 9
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You recall that when we addressed dramatic questions as tools for revising plot, I said that they can be thought of as spanning sections of the story, providing the reader with an enticement to read on. I did not include a great many specifics on how or when to raise and answer dramatic questions at that time, but they are related in very important ways to scenic climaxes.
The very name "dramatic questions" indicates they are questions that are charged with drama or tension. As discussed the Scene/Narrative Summary section of this discussion unit, traditionally formulated stories tend to alternate between scene and narrative summary. This alternation represents the author's manipulation of pacing versus narrative tension--increased pace during moments of low tension and decreased pace during moments of high tension. Moments of low tension, we observed, are generally written as narrative summary, whereas moments of high tension are most often written as scenes.
Using this observation, we can expect that dramatic questions--given that they involve questions of high drama--would then be most often raised and answered in sections of stories rendered in prose that meets Genette's definition scenic pacing.
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