[Clarion West 2k1: a very special episode.]

Thursday. After going to bed at 6:15am for an hour and a half nap, I found myself waking up at 7am -- that's a mere 45 minutes later, in case you don't want to do the math.

Not that an hour and a half is much by way of a good night's rest. But, I woke up and decided not to risk the possibility of oversleeping and missing the day's class. So, I showered, performed a sanity check on my story, rearranged the ending ever-so-slightly, and generally walked around in a daze before heading to class.

Connie spoke to us about two other plot devices: coincidence and flashbacks. She suggested that coincidence is generally a no-no in the *resolution* of the story or of a plot thread. This is the dreaded deus ex machina. There are exceptions, however, where coincidence *can* be used to tidy up the resolution of a story or plot thread, such as when coincidence is already established as an integral part of the setting.

While, in general, the reader will tend not to enjoy coincidence as a mechanism for getting the characters out of a story jam, there are a number of places where coincidence can be used to great effect:

* at the beginning of the story.
* when the coincidence makes the characters' lives worse
* when it is a part of the kind of story you're telling (perhaps you have a character you are trying to establish as being very lucky)
* things appear to be coincidence, but you later discover it's actually a conspiracy

It seems to me (here's where we see if I'm understanding Connie's point) that in the example of Six Days and Seven Nights which we saw earlier in the week, it might be a bit of an unsatisfying coincidence if the yacht that Harrison and Anne saw from the hilltop was still in the lagoon by the time they got down and then the owner of the yacht ferried them to safety. That's a yawner. But, since the yacht was ambushed by armed pirates, the coincidence of the yacht in the lagoon ends up dramatically raising the stakes and making life worse for Harrison and Anne. This is a thrill. :-)

Connie also spoke about flashbacks. These are a plot device best used only sparingly, and should generally be incorporated in little chunks, if at all. She also gave us some linguistic tips for how to ease into and out of flashbacks.

Given my staggering shortage of sleep, I found it a bit of a struggle to stay as attentive and alert as I would prefer to be during critiques. I hope that my own contributions to the discussions were helpful. Somehow, I managed to make it through class without having to slip into a coma.

We picked up our four stories for the next day... and my story was the shortest of them all. Usually, my stories (an average of about 5,000 words) come in as the longest or second longest piece on any given day. On this day, my 4,700 word story was dwarfed by 7,900 and 6,900 stories, plus another at 5,500 words. This represented the biggest single-day reading load we've faced so far. It also represented a challenge for me: how do I manage to take a nice long nap, attend lunch with Connie (when Connie asks if one would like to join her for lunch, I'd be hard pressed to respond "Gee, I'd rather take a nap"), attend Connie's movie night (wherein we'd be studying plot by example), crit these longer-than-usual stories, and get a full night's sleep for the next day?

The answer seemed to be that I wouldn't be able to do all of these things. So, I decided to just play it by ear. I joined the group that had lunch with Connie. We ate at the Thai restaurant again (this is the second time we went with Connie, and the third time we'd been there in a week... and, I still enjoyed the food). When I got back to the dorm, I seemed to still have some energy, so I read the longest of the stories I had to read. Took a two-hour nap. Read some more. Attended movie night. I'm still not sure how I managed it, but I then finished my reading in time to get to bed by 1am... which in turn enabled me to enjoy seven refreshing hours of sleep before Friday's class.

Movie night: we were going to watch The African Queen, but there was a last minute change. Connie still encourages us all to see it, and I plan to rent it soon after Clarion. In the meantime, she chose as a replacement The Sure Thing, and we had fun watching the coincidences, reversals, obstacles and stake-raising that carried the story forward.

By the time my face hit the pillow at one in the morning, the big push for the week was over. My story was in. My obligations for Friday were out of the way. My life outside of Clarion stablized. I'd managed to attend to my full roster of activities for the week....

It's hard to describe the relief I felt now that the pressure I'd been under all week was finally abating. I realize that I haven't been doing a good job of describing the feeling of that pressure in the first place. Nonetheless, it was an exhausting week, and I went to sleep feeling good, knowing that the worst was over.