Wendepunkt is a German word that means turning point. In Modernism, Ray Bradbury defines wendepunkt as the moment in a novel “in which there is an unexpected yet in retrospect not unmotivated turn of events, a reorientation which one can see now is not only wholly consistent but logical and possibly even inevitable.” This moment often involves a reversal of the protagonist’s fortunes. Aristotle called it peripeteia, the crisis action of a tragedy.
In her masterful guide to narrative craft, Writing Fiction, Janet Burroway says, “A reversal of some sort is necessary to all story structure, comic as well as tragic. Although the protagonist need not lose power, land, or life, he or she must in some significant way be changed or moved by the action.” This internal and external change, when it comes, may surprise the reader, but should be organic to the plot. Whether shocking or confusing or exhilarating, it should feel intrinsic to the story.
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This word (and concept) came at just the right time for me. Thank you for this blog!
i am just re-reading the first part of mitra studies which we have just completed (term one in a four year course) and i am just now reading about how insight can come from ‘talking the dharma’ just as easily as from meditation. i have been considering what connection there is or may be between my life IRL as an emerging buddhist, and my virtual life.
a few days ago someone answered one of my friend’s requests on facebook for a good all in one medium to read blogs in and they suggested google reader. since then i have been watching my reading list grow and mutate with the addition of various blogs. through a link about animals i looked into the interviewer who namechecked your ‘conversations’ about self publishing and then i subscribed to your blog and found this post, which is entirely relevant to what i am thinking about right now in terms of moments of insight.
time was, when i could stand in a library in a kind of fugue state and just kind of reach towards a book and open it and find something relevant to the essay i was writing. being open to what is in the ether really is an everyday event which humans recognise in fiction because it really happens, but to carry it off in a fictional context it has to carry an undercurrent of conectedness which has to be made conscious in a way which need not happen in real life.
thank you for your succinct and interesting post, and sorry to be such a rambler in response!