Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Symmetry

One aspect of building RC flying models is making sure the center line of the wing is perfectly aligned with the tail fin. If the wing and fuselage are not perfectly aligned the airplane will never fly right. For that matter the fuselage must be perfectly straight and aligned with the centerline of the "keel" and so too the wing must have the same length and curvature on either side of where the two halves join together.

If this isn't enough, when a wing is joined to a fuselage it has something called "Dissonance." This is the angle the wing sits, while resting in the cradle of the fuselage. Usually 0 to 1 degree of upward tilt.

A novelist is a craftsmen (women) in every sense of the word. There's a symmetry to the craft that follows time tested design criteria. A novel begins at the "Good Part." This happens on the cusp of a Life Changing Event (LCE). The first chapter introduces the Story World and paints a Before Snapshot of the Central Character and right off the bat, in the first... or at the latest second chapter, the LCE rears its head.

This part is like aligning the fuselage with the wing.

By the end of the third chapter, the LCE should be clear to the reader. The Operative Word here is "Changing." The event must be of a sort that it changes the direction of the CC's life. From this point the initial snapshot begins to change as the CC takes a new direction in life and change manifests their character.

The remainder of the novel deals with "The Three Crisis" that become obstacles to thwart the CC's resolve to follow a new path and return them to who they were where the story began. One of the hardest things to grasp in writing a novel is this idea of "Symmetry." In building an RC model airplane, failure to carefully follow the blueprint is like making a garment without regard to the patterns. These patters do not just wish themselves into existence as an author pounds a keypad. They must be consciously drawn to begin with and not expected to emerge heater-skelter as those "golden" words come to mind.

In playwriting the "Wright" uses the Dramatic Premise to gauge symmetry. This is the keel of the novel and goes to what the story is about. Any story worth reading is about something. What the novelist needs to keep in mind is what that something is. A writer need to keep asking themselves, again and again... "Are these words contributing to the Dramatic Premise?" Using the template _____ leads to _____ is one way to start figuring out what the DP is. For some writers the DP is evident from the beginning but for most "Pantzers" it will bubble up as they go along.

On this note it is important is that early in the development process a Pantzer must turn to an outline or risk a manuscript that leads nowhere.