First with the Whimsy, then with the Dark...

[khiemtran]

Note to Self: Whimsical then dark seems to work. Dark then whimsical doesn't seem to work, or at least doesn't work as well. This has implications not just for The Silver Bowl, but also for the Bear Story, which currently starts grim and then gets lighter.

Along the same lines, when depicting a crisis, it seems to work better if you start off showing how things were before the crisis, rather than starting with things at their worst. Even if you have a story that starts with your characters under fire in the trenches, it seems to be best if the current crisis is only temporary and the *real* crisis is still yet to begin.

Comments

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I guess it depends on the length of the thing - 'this is a guy in an impossible situation, how will he get out of it?' can work perfectly well for a short. For books, I prefer a more leisurely approach, not in the least because showing how the ideal state looks like will give a goal to work towards (get out of crisis, *and* get back to what it should be) and round the story off nicely if at the end of the book he reaches what he had before, only somehow better. (because he's now got a girlfriend, or because he appreciates it more etc)