Chalky skies in the Pacific Northwest this morning and I want to pass along a few ideas about writing fiction, using characters crossing thresholds to thrust stories forward and create resonance. And I’d like to recommend that most stories contain more than one threshold or portal.

I finished working on a client’s manuscript last week and it’s continued to haunt me. The central concept is intriguing and fresh. It’s the first book in a 4-part suspense series and so there’s a lot at stake to get the inaugural story just right. Her series features two protagonists so it’s necessary to establish their personality traits, the key aspects of their backstories, and a general sense of the story world. And just a note, she’s a talented, best-selling author who has written two series and a stand-alone novel.

Since she had a tight deadline from her publisher  I began exchanging emails with her so she could start reimaging her next draft as I worked through the first round of her manuscript–I go through manuscripts twice using the Track Changes program.  I also create detailed memos. But time was short so our correspondence continued over the next three weeks and she’ll be sending me a new final chapter. Besides recommending a different climatic scene, I  suggested adding one or two  viewpoints, though they’s be much shorter than her  main viewpoints. As I often do, I recommended ways to make it more cinematic.

If that seems drastic, I’ve recommended that other clients revise their endings. One story comes to mind. Another best-selling suspense writer had created an ending in a benign setting mostly associated with fun. But, her story already featured a setting as central to the plot–a chilling, nighmarish, Franken-laboratory. I cannot disclose what it housed {or maybe jailed is a better term}  but they had more than two legs.

Back to my latest project. Some scenes were extraordinary–potent, revealing,  and intimate. I listed which scenes were the strongest and she replied that they were the ones she most enjoyed writing. You might want to take note of her observation because how you’re feeling while writing can clue you in on your scene’s strength.

I sent her a final missive andsuggesting  her best scenes happened readers envisioned her characters leaving the ordinary world and venturing into a dangerous unknown. In other words, turning point moments when her characters crossed a portal or threshold. A physcial boundary is potent. When characters pass through a portal, there is a defined before and after;  they’re making a choice;  and their venturing forth reveals what they’re made of.

Portals create metaphorical and emotional resonance. In suspense fiction the stakes can be life or death. And portals reveal who the character wants to be, though sometimes assuming their better, braver self can be a struggle. Thus they’re part of the revealing the character arc.

Archtypal stories often employ these visual portals, these lines of demarcation. Alice in Wonderland. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The Sorcerer’s Stone. The Wizard of Oz. The Shawshank Redemption. 

Neil Gaiman’s Corline’s venturing from her real home into the alternate reality through a secret door is a powerful example of crossing a portal. I wrote about it here before. Because portal crossings define characters and send stories along new paths. Often literally.

Quests always feature portals. This is illustrated in J.R.R. Tolien’s The Hobbit  homebody Bilbo Baggins leaving his comfy hobbit-hole in Bags Ends  and venturing out into the vast, scary, uncharted world with the dwarves and Gandalf.  Show characters setting forth, hearts thundering in their chests. Or excitement burbling in their veins–whatever emotions the scene calls for.

Keep writing, keep dreaming, have heart