We all know that turning point, the key moment, maybe it’s the climax, maybe we call it the crucial moment, or maybe we just leave it unnamed, but we all know it should be there. That pivot in your story whene a character faces a hinge in his life and nothing will ever be the same. We implement these moments in our stories, but how often do we truly examine the ingredients for this climatic recipe?
In Rust Hills’ Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular, the former Esquire literary editor deconstructs this moment into minute detail. “There are great many words and terms that are used to refer to this incident or moment in the story. Four that seem especially useful are ‘crisis,’ ‘critical moment,’ ‘climax,’ and ‘crucial moment.’”
Hills explains that although these terms may seem similar, their origins reveal different meanings. These differences are instructive.
- Crisis is from the Greek krisis, which means “to separate”
- Critical is from the Greek kritikos, which means “able to judge”
- Climax is from the Greek klimax, which means “ladder”
- Crucial is from the Latin crux, meaning “cross”
In the book, Hills searches for a word or term that encompasses all those words, their subtle differences, and more.
It would reflect both a general crucial (trying, severe) period and a critical (decisive, of doubtful issue) situation on the one hand, and a particular crucial (final and supreme) and climatic (culminating, ultimate) moment on the other. It would partake of the ladder image, for there is often a series of crises before a final climax which is crucial–the idea of an “ascending action.” The ideal term would reflect the idea of separating: separating the past from the future by this incident, and indicating that the moment comprises a sort of watershed from which the river of the character’s life runs one way or the other. The ideal word would reflect the idea of judgment, too; for somewhere in the story, in the author’s tone, in the character’s motivation, in the ironies implicit in the situation–somewhere there would be a sense of the validity or appropriateness of the judgment rendered the character by the action. And the cross image is relevant too–not just in the sense of a life at a crossroads–but in the sense of a supreme trial.
Phew. That’s a bunch of stuff there and the differences are tough to absorb. It’s way too damned early in the morning and I’ll admit that I had to read that a few times to see the fine distinctions Hills makes. But those distinctions are there and worth considering in our own stories.
Hills’ philosophies definitely make me rethink all those crucial moments I wrote back in grad school where a couple sits at the kitchen table, building up to a whole lotta emotion over a bounced check, and then they put out their cigarettes and go back to bed. In hindsight, those were piss-poor examples of crucial moments and Hills’ microscopic examination provides some valuable insight into how these pivot points should operate.
Oh, and just to leave you with a bit of a teaser, I’ll give you Hills answer to the term he’s trying to discover later this week.
Ah, such academic distinctions–don’t you love it when they wheel out the Greek and Latin sarcophagi? Anyway: happy birthday Chuck Palahniuk: you managed to survive your crises, critical moments, climaxes, and maybe even your own crucifixion. Huzzah!
What made the kitchen couple a bad example? I ask because the reference was much more interesting than the dense abstraction of the excerpt. I’d like to know — in fifty words or less, of course — your own opinion as what makes a crux acceptable.
In fifty words or less, of course.
What I thought was a climatic moment, really hadn’t been built up enough. And then, nothing happened. They looked at the precipice of their relationship, backed away, and continued with their normal lives. Although they made a choice, it didn’t carry enough consequences to make it a truly crucial moment.
Gotcha. It seems, though, that many of the short stories I read have that same sort of arc: a building up of character, location, tension, etc. that achieves a critical mass but never merges into any really significant event, as if the author is content to let things vibrate strenuously but not explode.
Perhaps this sort of arrangement (and the getting away with it) is unique to the short story form. Most of the stories I read in the New Yorker, for example, come across as edgy mood pieces, like the recent “Sundowners”. A lot happened in that story, but it happened so casually and was told, I felt, with such minimum depth that by end there wasn’t even a precipice to back away from. I thought the language rich and superb, the plotting terrible.
In my own writing the crucial moments tend to appear in the smaller venues, like around kitchen tables, or the cramped stalls of public restrooms, inside cars desperate for the light to change. I like fiery explosions and knife fights just like the next guy, but I am no good at writing about them. Yet.
Proulx astounds me: she’s able to throw in an airplane crash or highway gun battle seemingly at will. And it will work, by God.