Shouts From Down Under

Counterweights of conflicting paradoxes.

I'm not sure what the title means but recently I repaired a couple of the double hung sash windows in our 1950's home.

All of them have snapped counterweight cords so, for the past 10 years, we had to regulate the draught by propping the timber framed glass up with short scrap bits of 4" x 2" studs, and even the odd brick.

This lack of basic maintenance sounds like extreme laziness but should be put down to my state of mental health.

This sort of honesty doesn't feel healthy in itself, but too bad.

Because I'm here to say that only lately have I begun to feel once again like doing basic stuff. I reallyy do feel motivated, without the massive amount of lethargy that has to be fought to even plan and start a project.

Sometimes that's just how we can be with writing.

Counterweights take the work out of lifting heavy items. That's what their purpose is, but to do this, mate, it might seem obvious but, ya gotta have 'em hooked up...

It's been a well known technique, as the climax of your story ramps up to screaming heebie jeebie proportions, to use a good old storm to lift the game, to help create that drama that isn't really there, to bring about an illusion of huge importance to this event your whole plot pivots around.

But folks, with all the rising wind, falling barometer, flashing lightening, detonations of Big Bang thunder, you have to actually remember to put this in your story, alongside the events that happen near the end.

Unlike me, who forgot to have a storm at all. Not even a bit of a spring shower.

There are other ideas I'm sure that you could come up with to lift aspects of the main crux of your novel to Olympic standards of dramatic excellence.

I'm not going to tell you what the are, but leave that to you. I'm just acting to poke at your cerebral cortex, and facilitate function of fibrous fiction.

Thought provocation is the counterweight here, your plot incriments are the weighty matters, and your writing skills are...the sash cord tying it all together.



Sash cord can be purchased by the metre (yard?) at your local hardware merchant.

Writing skills cannot be purchased. They are free; just require you to use that marvelous head material we all have; the brain.


Sparky