It's All a Question of Perspective

If you have a brilliant idea for a story, but want to put a bit of spin on it so that it is a bit more unusual, or has added depth, then here's a suggestion.

Plot out your story in some detail, making notes of all the main events in it so that you have a clear idea of where it is going and what it involves.  This will help you take stock of the characters you're going to need as well.  When you have done this, rather than launch yourself into converting your draft ideas into a straightforward narrative, why not consider telling the story from the point of view of the most minor character involved. To give you a simple, if cliched, example, it would be like telling the story of the Nativity from the point of view of the innkeeper or the donkey, rather than Mary or Joseph. Applied to your own work, it can help provide a different kind of insight to a situation and offer a new route in to something that might otherwise seem overly familiar or a little ordinary.  It's certainly worth a try...

Pacing It Out

As I am full of January sloth and seem to have ground to a halt with my re-writes this afternoon, now seems like a very good moment to talk about pace -  if I think about it, maybe I'll acquire some!

Pace has elements of structure and elements of style about it.  When you are writing, if every scene, every paragraph and every sentence are same length and move at the same tempo, your reader will very quickly start to drift off.  You can't depend on plot alone to drive your narrative forwards - as with so many things, it is not just the story you are telling, but how you are telling it which will make it stand out from the crowd.
To keep your novel pacy, you need plenty of variety: you need to alter the mood, the tension and even the language of different episodes so that you create and maintain a kind of internal dynamism. 

My hunch is that it is slightly more subliminal than simply contrasting scenes with each other - you would do this by moving from interior to exterior, from subplot to main plot, or perhaps by concentrating on a different character.  With pace it's a question of changing the atmosphere and the intensity of a scene,or even a portion of a scene.  At its simplest level, just altering the length of sentences from expansive and complex to short and snappy can help to add pace.

If you want to put this to the test, why not try writing a piece that uses a change of pace (rather than, say, a plot twist) as the forward impetus to a story, and see where that takes you?

Don't I Recognise You?

And another thing (while I'm in identification mode!)

I've been warbling on about how important it is the your reader to identify with your story and a key way of helping them to do this -- of opening a window for them, if you like -- is to make sure that they can relate to your central character.  Your hero should have a mix of universal and unique attributes that are easily recognisable to your reader.  To help you achieve this, why don't you make a list of three of each and then see if you can flesh them out?

When you are focusing on these characteristics it might be worth bearing in mind that if there is a certain amount of conflict between them, this will make your character more interesting and more plausible.  It could be that he / she is physically brave, but crippled with shyness, or that he is intellectually brilliant, but emotionally unintelligent. You're beginning to catch my drift....

As well as making sure they have conflicting qualities, it will also be a little more true to life if they have weaknesses as well as strengths.  This will help them seem more real, but also give them (but more importantly, you) material to work with, as most narratives hinge around a hero learning to deal with a central flaw in his nature.

Back to my own work in progress now...

Affirmative Action

I've been thinking little bit more about the need for a reader to identify with the characters and the situation in which they find themselves, trying to  mull it over from the point of view of a writer as well as a fanatical devourer of books.

I think that as a reader I want the story that I am reading, investing considerable time in, to reflect the world I know back at me, but with a kind of value added  element (vile phrase) as well, and that can come in the form of insight, entertainment, diversion, or escape. I don't want a simple and direct reflection - that would be the literary equivalent of reality TV - I want to feel I've had some kind of return on my time: perhaps a greater understanding of the people that I've come to know. If the fictional world the author is laying out before me seems alien and the characters are ones I cannot bond with, then I'm not going to make that investment.  There's something quite satisfying when you're reading a novel to think I've done that or I know how that feels. It doesn't just affirm your own feelings, it makes the story seem more real, more plausible.

As a writer, setting up this particular relationship between you and the reader, personalising the story for them, is something you need to do fairly early on, to hook them in, so they take ownership of what they're reading. It's part of the writer's job to make the universal seem particular and helping your reader to identify with your characters and their story is a way of making that happen

As we're talking reflections today - and heck it's January, the nights are dark and we all need cheering up - here is a lovely Venetian one...

Why the Magic isn't Working

I'm in the throes of reading A Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy, which I won't manage to finish in time for my reading group tomorrow -- sorry, girls. I set out enthusiastically and found myself absolutely gripped by the description of the lives and living conditions of Hispanic women in 1960s America, where the chief currency was sex and violence.  Connie's shocking journey from a life which is bearable, but only just, to life in a lunatic asylum that is completely intolerable, was a difficult but rewarding read.

I'm losing momentum at the moment and what is slowing me down is this: the book takes a sudden leap into the parallel universe of a strange Utopian society set 150 years in the future. I'm sure that this will provide Piercey with a fantastic vehicle for exploring the shortcomings of our own world, but for me it has lost resonance.  It seems hypothetical. I'm uncomfortable with fantasy writing because it is a fictional format that is often governed by expedience : the writer needs something to happen to resolve an issue in the story and hey presto - it does. There is less creative tension between form and plot and the adversities facing the characters seem artificial.

What I'm trying to say in a rather convoluted way is that I find it difficult to identify with fantasy writing and the fantasy element in A Woman At the Edge of Time.  Perhaps I find it hard to suspend my disbelief, but I am conscious of a growing barrier between me and the story. I may plough onto the end, but on the other hand, I may not.

This is something you should bear in mind when you are writing - it is really important that your readers are able to identify with your characters and the situation in which they find themselves, so pick on people and plots they will recognise and respond to, otherwise you will lose them, and all your hard work will result in a shrug of the shoulders and a feeling of - whatever!

Blending into the Background?

The importance given to the setting of a novel varies from writer to writer and from book to book. At its most limited it acts merely as a decorative frame to the action and has the same function as an exotic location in a film -- it gets the reader's aspirational juices flowing. It can also provide an informative backdrop to your characters and can help to shed light on their moods and behaviour -- think Heathcliffe on Wuthering Heights, Eustacia Vye on Egdon Heath or Mark Renton in Trainspotting.

Given that the hallmark of good writing is to be doing several things at the same time (advancing the story, commenting on character, establishing mood and tone are much more gripping if done simultaneously rather than one after another) I thought it might be interesting to give some thought to how setting can influence the plot.  In Michael Dibdin's Zen novels, currently being given a lush makeover as a BBC TV series, the fact that the action takes place in Rome provides endless scope for Mafia-style corruption and casual brutality.

It might be interesting to have a go at this yourself.  Try writing a story in which the setting defines and influences what happens to the characters-- it might help to synthesise the various elements of your narrative into something organic, with added depth!

Knowing Your Place

A day for a door, I think. This rather splendid one is a side entrance to Notre Dame in Paris and seems to me to forbid rather than invite, but it makes me curious, all the same.  It's not the kind of door that I'd go barging through without having been asked, and that's because instinctively all of us know our place.

Just as we know it in the real world, we have a sense of it in our writing too. As a result of painstaking self-editing, self-examination, together with precious feedback from editors, agents, teachers or friends, gradually we get a feel for the type of writers that we are -- great at character, good at landscape, crap at structure -- that kind of thing. This can be a comfort and a constriction at the same time, so it can be useful to put any assumptions that you have to the test.

This sort of work is best done at a nuts and bolts level, as it is here that you can put yourself stylistically through your paces.  Try writing a piece of description is vividly as you can, chucking in every kind of metaphor, simile, onomatopoeia, assonance etc in an extravagant and reckless fashion.  Then rewrite it, draining all the colour away, so that you are left with something pared-down and restrained.  This will help to orientate  you between the two poles of your natural writing style: by locating the extremes, it is easier to find a middle way, to establish your comfort zone, to know your place.  It can help to show you whereabouts on the chromatic scale you belong.

Backing Up

In my previous post I was talking about making cuts: that deliberate decision to junk great swathes of your work.  Challenging stuff, but exhilarating to do if it is necessary and your work is better for it.

To lose huge sections of your novel unintentionally is quite a different thing.  It hardly needs saying, but the number of people who don't backup on a daily basis is scary.  It's not just a question of saving the document itself, it's a good idea to back up to some kind of external drive as well and even to e-mail it to a trusted friend. I always keep a hard copy of each completed draft as belt and braces too. One of the benefits  is you get an overview of how your work has changed during months (and years) of writing.

It's housekeeping for writers - a bit of a chore and easy to forget, but essential to do.

Slash and Burn

Yesterday, I cut 4200 words from my book -- just like that -- to use Tommy Cooper's immortal phrase.  I've been doing rewrites of my novel, painstakingly working my way through the notes my agent has given me, some of which concerned the ending of the story.  I've been mulling it over during the Christmas break, trying to see how the narrative might work from several different angles, psyching myself up, and then yesterday I picked up the knife / the scissors / the pen / whatever and started slicing.  It's a bit like going to the hairdressers and watching with alarm and curiosity as your head is shorn and your hair collects in drifts on the floor around your chair.  My book looks rather shorn at the moment, and I'm feeling a bit light-headed.

Although the lost material represent weeks of thinking and working, the cuts I have made are good, they are right, and I'm feeling reckless and bold for having made them - an excellent frame of mind to be in as I contemplate writing a different ending. I've saved the  pages in a file and no doubt I shall sift through them before I'm done, so that I can salvage a phrase here and possibly even a paragraph there, but in my heart I've let them go, and it was easier to to than I had imagined.

In my experience of having taught creative writing for a long, long time, people can be a little precious, a little overprotective of their work.  It's understandable.  You cheat the time to write (at weekends, in the evenings, when others are out having a life) so to jettison anything seems like such a waste, it can feel like sacrilege.

Try and think of editorial notes as a brand new opportunity to be seized and embraced.  The cuts I've just made have been purging and invigorating, they've created some space in which I can write new and better stuff, - which I'm about to do, right now.

Keep Fit for Writers

The newspapers at the moment are absolutely stuffed with ideas for losing weight/getting into shape, all of which makes January far more depressing than it needs to be, but never one to be off-trend, here is a quick thought about how you can limber up as a writer.

Why not tone your creative muscles before you set to work by writing down a list of ten similes - these are comparisons which use like or as, for example, "Her skin was wrinkled up like paper which is wet" or "His words, as sharp as iodine, stung." It's a good way to get your juices flowing and, who knows, it might lead you somewhere productive.

On another note, it is quite important to keep physically active as a writer, so that you don't succumb to occupational hazards like RSI or even arthritis. I use software from a company called Wellnomics, which reminds you at set intervals to take a short pause, as well as suggesting exercises you can do at your desk during longer breaks.  Without it, I know that I'll get so immersed in what I'm writing that I will sit at my desk for hours at a time, barely moving, silting up.

This One's Mine

Your originality is what marks you out as a writer from everybody else.  When you read articles saying that there are only four basic narratives, or seven, (or even twenty-five), it can be tempting to think that the chances of coming up with something fresh are less than zero, but take heart...

Even Shakespeare snaffled other people's plots, making them so utterly his own that his sources have been completely eclipsed. When I'm teaching creative writing and set my group a subject to write about, I'm always astonished at how completely different all their stories are. This is largely because each of us bring our own particular talents and experiences to bear. It seems to me that (as with happiness) the answer lies in the little things, right down at the nuts and bolts level.  One student will describe something as hot, another as febrile, and already we're in different territories, doing different things.


If you want to put this to the test, try describing something that is incredibly familiar to you - the walk from home to school, or answering the phone and hearing the voice of someone you love - with a fresh eye.  Infuse what you are describing with your own uniqueness, so that it is coloured with how you are feeling as you write, whether you slept well the night before, even whether you are cold but don't want to stop writing in order to put the heating on. Bring to bear on your work all the different reference points which mean something to you, and you will truly own what you are writing about, it will be unmistakably yours, an original...

It Is Better to Give Than to Receive

Actually, I like doing both, on a well-balanced and reciprocal basis and I'm not just talking Christmas presents here (although thanks for the handbag Steve) I'm talking editorial criticism.

For years and years I've written in the literary equivalent of solitary confinement, firing off the occasional draft to my agent or editor and waiting anxiously for their response.  Until, one day, a novelist friend of mine suggested that we should act as mentors to each other. 
 
Why didn't we do this years earlier?

I suspect some kind of diffidence, or a professional circumspection, held us back, but now that we have overcome our reticence, the difference to my writing life is incalculable.  My friend's insightful, unsparing (but always tactful) comments have helped me to pinpoint weaknesses in my work that I was simply unaware of and her criticisms spring from her own considerable talent as a writer as well as her knowledge of me as a person.  She knows my taste in reading, my emotional history and is able to bridge the gap between the rough draft of a work in progress and my literary aspirations. Her help has been incalculable, and generously given.

In return, I have been reading chunks of a book that she has been working on for a couple of years now and sharing various thoughts with her, enjoying the process of seeing her novel rise like a cake, light and golden.  It is cooking nicely now and I can't wait to read the final chapters.

We've challenged and supported each other through all the well-documented highs and lows of a writer's life and it's been an immeasurable benefit to both of us - tea and talk on a Sunday afternoon, what could be nicer?

It's filled me with a kind of zealot's enthusiasm and the reason I'm writing this post is to encourage you not to be bashful: if you know someone who is interested in writing too, don't let valuable years slip by like we did, but be bold and suggest that you mentor each other.  You'll never look back

Homage to Hitchcock

In my last post I was talking about how important it is to match the style of your writing to what you are describing and usually this is a basic requirement of good prose.  If your narrative is told appropriately, your readers will feel confident in your authority as a writer and will trust you to take them anywhere.

There are occasions when this rule does not apply.  Sometimes it can add a bit of tension to your work if style and content seemed to be pulling in opposite directions. This is especially true in poetry, when it can be particularly effective to write about a sad, heartbreaking subject, but using a light rhythm and a bright and breezy rhyme scheme - WH Auden was a master of this (Miss Gee, Stop the Clocks etc)

I think it can be helpful to borrow a thought from Alfred Hitchcock (although he was talking about filmmaking, it can work just as well for creative writing).  Hitchcock said that he used to shoot every love scene as if it were a murder and every murder as if it were a love scene, perhaps tapping into the sexual tension that can be present in both. If you think about it, writing a love scene as though you were dealing with a murder gives you plenty of scope for exploring the power dynamics between two people, their wariness, the intensity of their non-verbal communication, not to mention the physicality of what they are doing.

In a similar vein, if you're describing a murder as though it were a love scene, it can be an excellent way of creatively disconcerting your reader and making them a little more susceptible to what you were doing.  It's a way of replacing brutality with something little more oblique, so that the murder is portrayed in sensual, rather than violent terms. In my head, I picture Hitchcock's camera moving languorously, stealing into close-up, so  perhaps it's as much to do with pace, as with style...

I'm getting into deep water here, but I thought it might be helpful  to think about approaching major scenes in a way that is less immediately obvious. It's not just what you write, but how you write it, which will make you stand out from the crowd

A Cautionary Tale

I've got a bit of a thing for industrial decay and I love this picture: I love the paint-peeling, flaky redundancy of the petrol pump, I like the fact that it is rusting and overgrown.  I'm drawn to the forlorn.

In fact, I felt pretty forlorn a few months back when I filled up my car at a  pump slightly more up-to-date than the one above, only to realise as soon as I had done it that I had put petrol in it instead of diesel.

OMG!

Which leads me, perhaps a little too neatly, to thoughts about appropriateness in writing.  It's very important when you're starting out on a scene that you think carefully about matching your style to the subject you are writing about, unless you are trying to create a specific effect (perhaps I'll cover that in another post.) If you are writing an action-packed scene, it's a good idea to keep your sentences short and snappy as this will help to drive events along - if you attempt to describe high octane drama with sentences containing a million subclauses, in the style of Henry James, you will quickly come unstuck..  However, if you are writing something that is reflective or descriptive, trying to conjure up the interior landscape of someone's thinking, then short, snappy sentences would be completely out of place; something more meandering and complex would do the job far better. 

A simple point, but something that you can easily overlook, just like I did.  My car had to be towed to a disused airfield in the middle of Gloucestershire so that the tank could be pumped out.  Using the wrong style in a scene or a story would destroy your work just as effectively as putting petrol in a diesel engine.

Joined Up - Writing

There are some societies and associations which are only open to published writers - the inestimable Society of Authors is one, but there are others who welcome anybody with an interest in writing.  It is such a solitary occupation  that I sometimes have to restrain myself from joining any group which shares my particular, lonely passion. I have recently signed up for the Royal Society of Literature.  They have an excellent website and produce an annual journal, but most of all, every month they have literary events, usually held at their base in Somerset House in London. I'm really looking forward to hearing Colin Thubron talk about his work in March and am waiting  with bated breath to find out about the rest of this year's programme.

If you are too far from London to sample the delights of the RSL, it's worth searching out something locally.  There are bound to be creative writing courses in your area, or perhaps you could put the word out and set up a writing group yourself. There are also all the wonderful resources of the blogosphere, where you can engage with other writers and swap notes and learn about this tantalising and confounding craft.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that as a writer you need to make a conscious effort to look outwards and engage, even if your comfort zone exists somewhere in the privacy of your own imagination.

And I'm a fine one to talk!

P. S. Other organisations you might want to join/support include The Poetry Society and PEN

Word Association

Here's a nice old, seedy old, despondent old French door, which seems to me to be extraordinarily evocative, with its closed blinds and peeling shutters and faded paint. I think you could probably construct a whole narrative just from looking at it for long enough -- one thought leads to another and then to another.

It's the same with words: one conjures another and you can start adding links to a magical chain.

Because it's the start of 2011 and I'm still childishly, rather obviously obsessed with beginnings, I think that using word association can be a great way to kick start a story, or more particularly, a poem. Why don't you try it for yourself?  Choose a word that can have a number of different meanings, a word like soil, perhaps, and write down everything that comes into your head in response to it.  Allow yourself a couple of minutes to really scour round for all the possibilities, then spend a few more minutes contemplating the words you have come up with and see what ideas they suggest to you and before you know it you are starting to shape these ideas into something a little less random, a little more coherent, and then you're putting on a bit of length and before you know it, you have written something.

Graham Swift Puts Himself under Pressure

I seem to be in quotation mode at the moment, moving seamlessly from Scott Fitzgerald yesterday to Graham Swift today, but with good reason, because where can you learn to write except through the work of other writers?

Swift says, "I favour the first person.  The reason I do so is that I do not simply want to tell, out of the blue, a story.  I want to show the pressure and the need for the telling.  I am as interested in the narrator as the narrative.  I want to explore the urgency of the relationship between the two."

I think that the third person (a story told from the point of view of he or she) can work brilliantly if you are doing a pacy, plot-driven book where the idea is to get from A to Z as dramatically as possible and so quickly that you hardly touch the sides. Fast food, if you like.

Graham Swift is opening up the possibility of something more complex and more subtle, which could add another dimension, almost a commentary, to your narrative. If you are writing in the first person (I), you automatically create a relationship between the teller and the tale.  You can, of course, ignore this opportunity and write a pacy, plot driven book even in the first person, but why not max out your potential?

Ask yourself why your central character is telling the story....

• Is it to right a wrong? 
• Is it to set the record straight?  
• Is it because they are in fear of their life?  
• Is it to try and come to terms with what has happened?  
• Is it to shaft an enemy?
• Is it to claim a reward?

Already you are starting to add some depth to what would otherwise be a straightforward plot.  This can lead on to other interesting questions...

• Is your narrator reliable, or are his motives suspect and if so why?
• Is he telling the whole story, or just edited highlights?
• Is it even his story to tell?

By considering all these possibilities, you can create amazing texture in your work. It's the difference between bowling a straight ball, or putting some spin on the delivery (it is the Ashes at the moment, after all), so that your book becomes unpredictable, harder to handle and more exciting.

F. Scott Fitzgerald (Did Somebody Say Something?)

As well as writing The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night, Scott Fitzgerald demonstrated his all-round brilliance with the following quotation:

"One of the privileges of dialogue is silence."

This is deliciously counter-intuitive, because when you think about dialogue you think about people talking, you think about what they are saying, how they are saying it and why. But stop for a moment, and consider....

What about the things that people aren't saying?  If you start to pursue this as an idea it can take you into interesting areas of secrecy, duplicity, hypocrisy, manipulativeness, slyness, and so on.  It leads you to oblique and murky waters.  It can also help you further your plot: why are they not saying these things?  Are they frightened? Passive-aggressive? Already you're doing character work as well!

Silence can take you to the spaces in between, where unexpected things happen.  It is where storytelling stops being literal and becomes something else more enigmatic and interesting.  It can be unusual, tender, dangerous or mundane. Because it isn't defined by words but by context, it can be anything you want -- that is its privilege: use it.

Moving from Darkness into LIght

I wish!

It's pretty dark here and  lots of that sleety stuff  is drizzling down outside in a can't be bothered kind of way, as if the very idea of getting any momentum going so early in January is out of the question, and I'm feeling so enervated I can hardly stay vertical, just looking at it.

But I am vertical, sitting at my desk, trying to add some momentum to my thoughts, thinking about what gets you going and keeps you going. In that vein, it seems to me that it isn't just the story itself which sustains a book, but the way that it is told, and that a crucial way of adding a sense of internal drama (and momentum) to your work is through contrast.

Think of all the different ways that you can achieve contrast in what you are writing : you can change the depth of focus from close-up to longshot, you can move from interior to exterior, or from action to contemplation.  You can change from narrative to dialogue. You can move from the subplot to the main plot and back again, or mix something serious with some light relief. Anything, rather then get stuck in a linear this happened and then this happened rut.

See if it helps you move from darkness to light in what you are writing at the moment, from snow to thaw, from winter to spring....

When I wak'd I cried to dream again....

I can't help feeling the pressure to start something, to embark, now that the new year is here, even though it is a Bank Holiday (still) and part of me is in a dreamlike not-quite-ready-to-get-back-to-work state.

Hmmm. Dreams.  Now there's a thought...

Dreams can be the perfect gateway to a story. I wish I were the kind of person who efficiently went to sleep with a pen and writing pad beside her bed, ready to jot down fragments of them the moment I woke up (rather than squinting at the alarm clock before putting my head back under the duvet).  I know that dreams can play a significant part in psychoanalysis and therapy, but they shouldn't be overlooked as a source of writing material. I remember dreaming that my mother was baking daffodils in the oven.  It's a picture which has stayed with me for years and I haven't yet found a place to use it, but I know that one day I shall. It's the kind of weird, fragile, eloquent, unravelable image that could easily lead on to a poem, or a short story, or the opening of a novel.

On the day the Chilean miners were released from their underground captivity, I woke from a dream that left me without any sense of narrative or story, but full of feelings of pressure, compression, suffocation, proximity, bodies - a whole string of associations that quickly gave rise to some ideas for a plot, even though there wasn't one there to begin with.  And I did get up, and pad around and find a pen and paper, and I've written all those thoughts down, and there they are, waiting until I'm ready for them.

A Place of Greater Safety

I've had a tummy bug over the last few days and have been feeling under the weather - boo hoo - but it has meant that I can go hurtling through A Place of Greater Safety, Hilary Mantel's epic novel about the French Revolution.  It's an extraordinary kaleidoscope of a story, made up of vivid shards of narrative, shaped by meticulous research and brought to rip-roaring life by as fallible, likeable, and dangerous a crew of characters as ever stood a regime upon its head (and then cut that head off!)

Quite apart from helping me to while away the hours of feeling poorly, reading APOGS has been an extremely efficacious experience. I've been having a bout of the re-writing blues during this funny no man's land between Christmas and New Year.  I've done about a quarter of the work I need to do in order to burnish my narrative so that it is as good as it possibly can be.  There is still quite a mountain to climb and deconstructing a book can be a confounding experience: you are nose to nose with the story's shortcomings just at the point when you need most verve and grit to put them right. It's a  fiddly, time-consuming, intricate task. Working away at the seams, snipping and hemming and stitching can all feel rather thankless until that final moment when you turn your novel right side out again and see how it looks.

I'm taking heart from the fact that Ms Mantel apparently filed APOGS away  for several years, until a call from a journalist researching an article about books in bottom drawers prompted her to fish it out again. She spent a significant amount of time tweaking it until Ta Da! - a nine hundred page masterpiece was delivered.

Which makes me think that something worth having doesn't necessarily come easily, or, for that matter quickly.  That you have to shape and reshape it; that you have to be patient, and open hearted, and full of faith and undeflectable.  It's a tall order, but that old adage that writing is ten percent inspiration and ninety percent perspiration feels particularly true, just now.  I also know that writing is elating and absorbing and challenging and takes you to the limits of yourself - a place of greater safety it is not.

How Does Your Garden (Or Novel) Grow?

I was talking to a friend of mine, a writer, and she said that when she is working she sometimes skips the boring bits of her story and jumps ahead to write the big exciting scenes. Which got me thinking...

Firstly, it strikes me that in a good book there shouldn't be any boring bits.  Even if you vary the tension and the intensity of the drama (which of course you should) and leave yourself with a few quieter passages, these should always pay their way in terms of keeping your reader's attention.

Secondly, I think it can be a good idea to make the same journey that your reader will make, to walk in their shoes as far as you can, so that you experience the ebbs and flows of your story just as they will. If you cut to the chase, this won't happen.

Thirdly (I'm discovering that I have strong feelings about this!) if you go for the peaks first, you run the risk that your linking scenes will come across as being mere filler, because that is how you have treated them.

Lastly, I'm inclined to think you need a good run at a profoundly emotional scene. You need to have covered all the ground your character has covered, to have suffered as they have suffered, and to have earned your release in the same way that they have.

Basically, I don't think there are many shortcuts with writing and that, just as you do in life, you get back what you put in.  You need to cover the ground.  You need to make the journey. That's a bracing note on which to start 2011 - Happy New Year.