The Narrative Hinge

I took this photo of a hinge in France during the summer.

I think it's very beautiful: it is functional but the decoration of leaves and fruit (acorns? vines?) prevents it from being merely utilitarian. I like the contrast between the dark metal, the gilding and the pale wood.

I took this one in Chipping Sodbury. It is on the door to the old police station and is altogether more florid and – well – blue. Both hinges assist in the transition from one location or state to another, opening the door admitting you to the interior or ejecting you to the exterior depending on your direction of travel.

In literature, plots need hinges too. In order to propel your hero on his journey through your narrative, to make him leave his ordinary life and enter the world of your story, you might need some kind of hinge – a device such as a message, a setback or a challenge – to open the door and send him on his way. As he progresses, different portals might need to open for him, some of them leading up blind alleys, others closer to the heart of the adventure. These moments of transition, like my decorative hinges, need to be more than purely functional. If you bolt them on because you discover that you need them, the mechanism will grate and grind. If they exist as events in their own right and are neatly integrated into your story, they will operate smoothly. It's the difference between being expedient and going for an off-the-shelf option, or crafting something specific and individual.

If you are planning a story or a novel, spend some time thinking about the transitional moments in it and how you can best engineer them. Change  - in location, in outlook, in expectation, in fortune - is an essential ingredient in any narrative. If the hero doesn't change, his experience will have been in vain. A narrative hinge is the device which makes this possible.

Plot Structure: It All Hinges on Change

Every story needs to have a turning point, some kind of fulcrum or pivot that radically transforms your narrative.  You could (if you were me and had a door fetish) think of it as some kind of hinge enabling the heroine, and your reader with her, to pass from one state to another.  Here's one I prepared earlier...



...from the west doors of Sens cathedral.

For many, the turning point comes as some sort of recognition, what Aristotle called anagnorisis: a change from ignorance to knowledge, producing love or hate between the persons destined by the writer for good or bad fortune. The key word here is change.  The whole purpose of telling a story is to show the effect that experience and events can have upon your characters.  As readers, we need to be inspired to see that change is not just possible, but something we are capable of initiating ourselves, and fiction shows us how to set about it.

The moral of all of this?  When you are constructing your story, think hard about all the nuances of transformation that are available to you. The pivotal moment which you engineer should not just affect your hero and heroine, as the way in which they are transformed will have an effect on those around them.  In your narrative, nobody should be completely static. You could also explore the opportunities for a change in location, mood and certainly in tempo.  Structure and plot are interdependent, so even if you don't know exactly what the moment of revelation will be when you set out, make sure all the elements that you need are in place well in advance.