Why can't I write middles?!?!?

Post Reply New Topic

And when I ask why, I actually have a theory... I get to liking my characters so much that I don't want anything bad to happen to them so I'm afraid to give them conflict. Or maybe it's because there's such a vast number of things that could happen in life to cause conflict that I just can't choose. Maybe I'm afraid that whatever I pick will lead them in the wrong direction. Or it may be because I feel so uncomfortable with the uncertainty of that part of a story... I often find that when I'm watching a movie, if it's written in such a way that I can see the problem coming, I get so uneasy that I sometimes just wander off and miss the rest of the movie. A poorly written middle can ruin the story, too... if it lags, you leave. The pressure is terrible!! !

I have so many stories summed up, SO MANY story ideas, at least five perfectly sound novels, some with well-formed beginnings and endings, likable characters that I have labored to make believable and human, loves found, loves lost, time travel, aliens, magic, human transformation, fun stuff! And in the middle... bloody fog. No, not even that, bloody fog would suggest action. Just fog. I have less developed ideas that are doomed because I can't go forward until the others have had their stories told! I've been reading book after book about plot, and it's all there, spelled out, nice little formulas to help the newbie assemble a story by time tested methods without being a cheat or copycat. Just the skeleton, just the framework... And I've got holes in the middle.

So I tried analysis of other books and just got muddled. I tried a scene-by-scene dissection of books as suggested by one plot book and couldn't figure out when the stinking scenes ended. It's this whole idea of making sure that all the action moves the story forward. Y'see, I suck at telling stories. Yeah, what a great qualification for a fantasy/scifi writer. But I do. I appreciate a well crafted plot like nothing else, it's a beautiful thing when it all ties up right in the end... But I can't ever seem to get my chronology right when relaying an anecdote. I pass along trivia and feel like I have nowhere to go with it if it doesn't have a plot built in... but then, I wouldn't know how to wrap up an anecdote that was well-rounded...

Oh, nuts. I guess I'll just find my latest half plot summary and write whatever I happen to think of. The mafia showed up. The king's henchmen kidnapped the boy instead of the princess. Harold Lloyd turned up with a bottle of bathtub gin. The tide went out. The princess crashed the ball and caught the prince with another princess because he had amnesia. The prince's best friend thinks he's an elk. Mischa Auer did a gorilla impression. There was a fireworks display and the prince got his memory back but the princess had run away. A dragon named Rain gave him a lift.

The price of food skyrocketed!! !

So, anyone else have this problem?

Yes, everyone has problems.

My method, the middle is where the action is, the high point, and the rest is a lead in, then a conclusion.

To get a dynamic middle write it, then figure out how all this started.

That way if a dozen get sat on by a dragon, you know they had it coming from the start.

Lead in, action, effect of action, end.

Action or the effect caused can be the whole story, the rest is stage set, and everything has to end sometime.

They were ordinary people, something not so ordinary happened, and Bethy the pet shop girl, became the Warlord of the East! She slaughtered millions, but was still good with animals, The End.

except for some dystopian novels, most middles aren't about how you 'get into trouble', but how you get out of it. I think the trick isn't how you care about your characters, it's getting your readers to care...

The characters were ordinary readers, they read a lot, for anything was better than the life they lived.

From the first chapter they identified with the characters in the book, their shallow and meaningless lives. They had the same problems and faults, were readers, and they secretly hoped the characters in the book would be killed, for they were a bit depressed, which is why they read to escape.

In the second chapter the characters who interacted thought the others dorks, the readers thought they were all worse than themselves.

Harry was an ordinary orphan who was kept in the space under the stairs, and abused by a housefull of the lowest people imaginable. Yet he did nothing, accepted his lot, a real wimp, till a letter came.

Even a bookish recluse was better than this lot. Now for the letter, does it say, "Your Birth Certificate was cancelled due to non payment of fees, you hearby no longer exist." Well no, something about a boarding school, which could be worse than death.

Suddenly nothing made sense, not that Harry had ever shown any, Some strange man had basically kidnapped him, and Harry went along to see what would happen. No one would ransom him, so he thought he would be sold on the orphan boy market, and later his bones would be used to make a broth. It was still better than where he had been.

It is something like going to look in the dark windy celler with a candle, at Camp Crystal Lake.

It does turn out better, he is taught the dirty tricks of the black arts, like Oliver being taught to pick pockets, and then finds that he is being set up, a small boy chosen to fight the Ultimate Dark Lord, and his school has worldwide video rights. It is worse than being matched against Tyson, after the ear thing.

A girl with a bet he will never show uses emotion and lures him to a place where he will be weak, the girl's bathroom, and expecting her in a weakend state, she introduces him to her pet Mountain Troll, and splits. When he comes out alive, she asks about the troll, is it dead? And is glad that it is, for they will tell all under questioning.

The match is on, if the Dark Lord wins he gets to rule the universe forever, if Harry wins, he gets bragging rights.

The action drives the story, the side stories, for every girl who bares her bottom in that bathroom will be thinking of Harry. Being he has become a property, the troll girl wants him, she has lost her troll, she deserves something, and other girls want it.

Harry gets toys, but not the fleshy ones, which infer after the earth splitting battle to come, there might be some opening of the gates.

Harry is lured to battle, and surprises everyone by living. The video take was huge, but try finding another Ultimate Dark lord. Slitherine has some Ultimate Dark Dorks, but the whole meaning of good vs evil has been lost. No evil, we are just playing dressup.

The book had to end because, the most Harry would get is being put on some girl's maybe list, which is just where he started.

There has to be enough action in the middle, to confuse common sense, and the end has to come suddenly. Here the action builds from a life worse than a cronic reader, to being shanghied by a group of people with questionable everything, who teach children about a world where common morality does not apply, and how to win, using dark arts, poison, what ever it takes. Of course it is all justifiable, there is evil, and you kids have to become more evil to defeat it. Something like the plot of Afganistan.

So I say write the middle first, for everytime it does involve that, which in general would have a person locked up for a long time, like two forevers, and then back track the characters to being ordinary readers without a life opening another book because anything is better than the voices in their head.

In the real world if you tracked and killed Jack The Ripper, you would be tried for murder, for only you and him know, and he is dead.

Your only defense will be he will never strike again, and as long as you are in jail he won't.

So it needs a resolved ending, Witnesses must be dead or self incriminating,

Endings start two thirds the way through, closing off unresolved issues.

You cannot keep characters, they start as ordinary people, and get changed into better people through the story. When at the end they walk into the same store where it started, they are no longer the same person.

Readers fit into, growth through the suffering of others. They like to think they too could suffer and grow, but they will buy a pizza and your next book.

Maybe I'm alone in this but I have always found Inventor's posts to be brilliant and concise. Lot going on in a small space.

To the OP: perhaps we should collaborate. I have a novel idea working which is all middle. I think I can figure out how to begin: I'll just start with some middle, on Kurt Vonnegut's advice to novice novelists that they throw away the first six pages.
I have no idea how to end though.

Well, the problem with writers, recently told to me by a fourteen year old girl, is they are all a bit strange, and she is an avid reader. Worse, the good ones are stranger.

Where most people try and fail at producing a single character of which they know the age and sex,and have lived with them for life, writers produce many characters of all ages and sexes, and the world they live in, and the action that leads to an interesting story.

To most, adding that they also chew up trees and make paper would not seem any stranger.

She has been reviewing my book, which has girls her age, and the range of personalities and types is as broad as her class in gifted writing. I am an old guy, and created a half dozen young girls that ring true to young girls. I also work motive and method of operation into the behavior of animals till they are full characters in the story.

I also produce convincing adults who can only be understood if seen as doing what they think is for the long term best, playing god with the lives of the younger, who it turns out are just like her parents.

My parents are from an earlier time, and they would throw a deformed baby over a cliff, abandond a sick or injured child, kill one and cook it up if all were starving, and those that live are kept busy at chores and learning, for that is the single road to species survival. They will do anything for the survival of the blood line, and her parents are just like that.

My parents are hers, under the most adverse conditions.

There is conflict with other groups, and will be as long as there are other groups. In this case it involves spears, clubs, and being a very close group they depend on each other, right up to the point when your best friend has a spear in the guts, they are not going to live, cannot be carried out of battle, should not be left for the enemy, Well, somebody should do something, what are friends for?

In my story the only choice is survive. It shows all relationships in thier basic form.

It explores mutual relationships between parent and child, children, and the animals who have as many problems as anyone.

So in this, normal at the time background, not only do strong friendships develop, but all of life is seen as it is, about to die. It is a, get food or be food, deal.

All of it is for the purpose of producing another generation who can do it again. This has been going on for millions of years.

So in my adverse world it is the relation between characters that lead to better means of getting food, and better means of avoiding being food.

I am writing about a period where we know that happened, rare in human history, someone did something right.

My question is, what triggers human advances?

She was an ordinary girl, like all the girls before her. Her childhood was alright for the time, she had not been thrown over a cliff, killed, or eaten. The last two were still options. She was angry about the neighbors, they killed and ate people, her people, and being too small to do anything about it she just pouted, fumed, and rejected everything.

She did not like the way things were, so she tried different ways. Unlike most children who think they know everything, she did, she could start a fire from sparks from rocks, chip rocks to a sharp edge, and scrape wood into a spear. She had killed a rabbit, knew where babies came from, and she was looking for more. She was not a little kid, she was ten, and big for her age.

She was also naked, had never bathed, her hair was one big knot, with lice. She was just an ordinary girl.

Within ten years she changed the world forever.

"All of human culture is a fad started by pre teen girls." Inventor

So these writers, and the people they can become to tell a story. This is what is strange. Most people know little of themselves and see others in relation to a fuzzy self. Writers become other people. Writers can become any others, and shift between how a range of characters see themselves and each other.

My little girl character is not like me at all. But I can see the world through her eyes, personality, mind, drives, and the character is her, fully and purely.

She is not the smartest, that is the wolf that lives nearby. He sees her from a wolf point of view, she is a hunter, and dangerous to wolves, and she does things with a stick that work, and he would like to learn more. There is another girl who does not hunt, so he meets her. She is not as dangerous, smaller than himself, and he wants to show he would not eat her. They are a neighboring pack, all packs keep hunting grounds, some share with other species, he is being a diplomat.

She of course had thought of being eaten, it was the most common form of death, few lived to die of old age, very few. There is a relationship between predator and prey, called the stare of death, it seems some chose to be eaten, some just stare back, and the predator leaves. Some come to terms, where the border between wolf packs lies, or in the mix of animals that have overlapping hunting grounds.

They were both hunters, he was making peace between them. She was an ordinary girl, expected to be eaten, but when that did not happen, she did what girls often do, which lead to a second date and getting closer. He was different, but he was the only guy who had shown interest in her. She was different, but soon affectionate, and both species touched tongues.

This is the start of an inter species friendship that has lasted 40,000 years. She was the cave girl of the other girl, he did find a mate with fur, but this "thing" continued. On both sides everyone had thoughts about these two. All came to accept her living on both sides.

So the writer becomes a wolf, and his wife, and the first girl that finds out her cave girl has been playing around on the side, and resolves the group relationship.

Younger girls come, pups are born, shared babysitting develops into a middle culture. The kids who grow up together live in another world, never thinking that wolves would eat humans, or humans would hunt wolves, they are, our family.

Now the writer can see the world change through the eyes of the younger, they grew up with wolves, so they take on some traits of the pack. The older people, now twelve, were friends with wolves, the younger grew up as wolves. They are pack.

Ape social order was the oldest lead, wolf social order was doing what you are best at. The fast and strong did the catching and killing, the slower and weaker blocked exits, directed the prey, they used everything they had as one. To the younger humans, it worked, so they did it too.

"Human culture is the result of apes being domesticated by wolves." Inventor

Before this apes lived in small family groups, ruled by the oldest, after this they lived in packs.

The wolf/ape pack quickly domesticated sheep, goats, and cattle. Once the wolves did apes, the rest was easy.

This all happened 40,000 years ago, and as a writer I get to go there and watch. I can watch through any eyes, and think about it from any mind.

My fourteen year old reviewer has commented, she never thought she would see the world through the eyes and mind of a wolf, everything seems so different, yet common, to her. Some tell stories, some take the reader on a guided tour to places they never thought they could go.

Some stories have a hero, an enemy, and a sex interest, told from one point of view. Jane Austin started it in English. Her's was a guide to life for girls, yet her male characters, except her father, are cardboard cutouts. We never learn how they see things, and what makes them tick.

Of course those great houses were built on knocking sailors in the head who awoke if at all on a slave ship that hauled black ivory to the Indies for a short life of labor. For most it was a one way trip, To die of fever and be thrown over the side. But there was 50,000 a year to be made, and girls like Jane did not ask improper questions.

Jane Eyre was a reform school girl who was bought to care for a French "Opera Dancer" love child taken back to England, Try as they might the girl was turning out French, and they needed someone who could deal with the baby slut in the making. Jane has no problem with cleaning up blood and disposing of bodies, and said, "what you do not tell me I can not testify about." Rochester never did understand women. Jane is put in sole charge of this loving child, who loves herself, objects, and anyone she can get to play with her. She is never let out of the house, and cannot be sent to school, for she would invirte everyone to her bed, tonight.

They had to kill one off to show it, but Jane has spent most of her childhood sharing a bed with another girl, and after bed check it was dark, and there was not much to do, and life was just so boring, and the two of us are alone in this room till morning. Once the guards lock the door they never come back, and you are so cute.

So each time tells stories, and that is always a writer who may not have much of a personal identity, but can become others through words. We can even see the world through other writers eyes, and what they could get away with at the time.

The answer is write a lot, of the 500 pages I am using in two books, I wrote 3,000, maybe five. Your best 10% is likely a fair measure, for we do produce a lot of filler. It was brain filler before it was spit out, and better in a file cabnet than filling your head. Rewriting older stories is good, it gives something to work from, Romeo and Juliet has been redone many times, West Side Story made it big, but Shakespeare stole it from the Italian, so "Alls fair in love and war."

The pattern never seems to change, the reader is the story, they are slightly smarter than the characters, get insight from more sources, and still get to go for the ride, and think of themselves living in that world.

There are main themes, Jane Eyre was a typical morality play, yet the young women who read it could imagine a teenage reform school girl and the love child of an Opera Dancer sharing a bed. Governess did not come from a charity reform school, that is where you shopped for something else.

Rochester did claim the child was not his, and empowered Jane to control her any way she had to. This came before she even met him, to a girl of eighteen, several days out of reform school. English women knew what kind of situation that was.

Jane was twice the man Rochester would ever be.

Readers do have imagination, also called dirty minds, so give them a chance to guess about what you infer but leave out.

Like the out takes from a film, save what you develop but do not use, the plot can change, names, but there is an outline of action that can be reused.

I not only overwrite stories then edit, I will write three chapters, very different, and use one, with bits from the others, and still edit. In several steps a hundred pages become fifteen, and what can be cut seems never to change the story line. Writers use filler to connect, to catch up with their thoughts, but readers take a more direct path, and that should be meaty and flow.

A good write has notes to yourself, fragments of thought to be picked up later, the whole of idea generation from the mind, but the story, the arrangment of it, the compactness, is what works for readers.

I do a cut to the main storyline, there I see to it that all the characters age at the same rate, and a year after going metric, I still find pounds and miles. Just getting the names right, as I am known to change them, and chapter at a time the age relationship change between characters. Not only do they have to act their age, it changes the relationship between them. The seven year old develops idol worship for the leader who is so cool, and twelve, she works to become a lap girl and groomed. At ten she still loves the leader, now fifteen, but now is one of the troops, and does other group support for approval.

Some themes like singing, music, were not in the original, so that gets added through the story. It adds up to several performances of everything they do. Chapters get rewritten. Discription of the land takes away from the main storyline, but leaves it blind, so I come back and describe through the book, and this way paragraph here and there, it adds up to a whole, without slowing the story.

To express change, it does not come at once, the parts are mentioned, then they come together later. Everything has a beginning. Strings running through stories, a Lego block, and later two strings cross and several blocks go together, and stay together.

The flow out of a writers mind, and the one into a readers mind are different. We know how it ends. They are given a string of parts that later join. Write for the writer, edit for the reader.

My fourteen year old is both, and tells me that description needs work, some things I say, her mother and teacher would not approve of, so leave the story in but cut back on the description, Jane Eyre style, she and all the other girls will get it. In other places I could do more with landscape description, for readers want a background to view the story, a few paragraphs early showing the location, the view.

I am at 123,000 words, after a heavy edit. Building it back, a few descriptive words added here and there, 150,000 words. I have told the story, but now it can be filled out for the reader.

Stories come from one mind, readers are hundreds of thousands, my book is for eight to adult, and so description must cover a wide range of minds, but I only get to do it once. Finishing a story is prepping it for readers. It is another art. I have built the road, the wagon, and now for a comfortable seat.

Like becoming all characters, now I must become many, all viewers.

The greatness of Fairy Tales is that they do entertain children, and then as an adult reading them to your children, another level of message is discovered, and again as a grandparent, still more is discovered for those with life experience.

The outward surface must be for all, and pure entertainment, but with hidden layers like an onion. The story within the story, within the story, like Russian nesting dolls. Each character has surface description, but their inner workings, their character of heart, are also there.

Sociopaths and Psychopaths are great people on the surface, can manipulate with ease, but it ends with bodies buried in the crawlspace. He was a respected Doctor, a Church Elder, but DNA says he left the bodies of thirty young women dumped on rural roads over the last fifteen years.

Every character has something like that, the surface view, like Strider in LOR, who later becomes a defender, then a King. The Ring Wraiths were once great Kings, good men. Orcs are lower class Elves. It was a tale of power, and how that alone changes people.

"What fools these mortals be."

No... No, wait...

I got some of that. It wasn't easy. Did anyone ever tell you that you write like my brother? Don't get me wrong, I do think that's unlikely...

Mm'kay. Yes, I do indeed know that there are no new stories, which is a surprisingly soothing revelation, and I love building up a character because that helps me enormously when I'm wanting for ideas... once I know the character, I can give them situations and see what they do with them. Once I have written something, I can go back after a cooling off period and find that with the usual clarity of hindsight I can now see what I did not in the smitten hours of creation. I have always found it much easier to embellish than to invent, but I can invent, so I separate the processes. But sometimes I balk at writing just to keep myself going because it seems I will never get a plot completed. That said, I have been writing just to get enough material to be able to refine or embellish rather than have to invent and hope it jibes with the rest of the story. My mind is not always my own, and it's that much harder to process ideas when you're repeatedly interrupted... But my characters please me and deserve to have their tales told and so I'll just have to work out how they get from one place to another.

It's also very hard to show the progression of a character through events... Layers add a lot of pressure, especially when I have all I can do to come up with one sequence of events. So I have the promise of staggeringly large rewrites ahead even when I think I have it all figured out.

The book I'm working on now has at its core some reasonably original ideas of mine heavily embroidered with centuries of fairy tales and a Summer's worth of jalapeno pizza. It has a lot of The Little Mermaid about it. Possibly this explains why I have been interested in this story recently... my kids have been watching Ponyo a lot.

well Irishwhistle, Sometimes you have to get inspiration/influence from somewhere, as long as it isn't a blatant rip-off. My story for example draws upon the following.

1)Mobile Suit Gundam Series (mainly the ones that take place during the Universal Century Timeline)
2)Code Geass
3)Surrogates
4)Blade Runner (Classic Dystopian influence, but mine is more like a dystopia from one Point of View, and a Utopia from another.)
5)A song of Ice and Fire (simply because I love how George R R Martin made his characters.)

There are others, but those are just the main ones. There are no copyright issues as far as I am aware, I just hope it stays that way.

The Buddha said it well, "Desire is the root of all suffering."

Humans yearn for what they think they are not, yet never explore what they are.

I like the Grimm Brothers, not enough nailing red hot iron shoes onto stepmothers and making them dance till they die, in recent work.

Cinderella is a tale everyone loves.

The plot is an orphan girl is offered help by a Fairy Godmother, she is taught to dance, and then scrubbed pink, perfumed, her hair done, dressed in the finest clothes, sent in a rental coach to a ball, where she dances with a Prince. To avoid being busted for sneaking out late at night she runs, loses a glass slipper, and the Prince declares he will marry the girl that fits it.

She is a little girl, the Fairy Godmother would be called Madam, Procurer, who teaches little girls to dance, makes them all beautiful and older looking, then presents them to men who can afford such things. The tiny glass slipper will only fit a child.

When a long term contract is offered, Private Property, after Prince fish has a wiff of the bait, the deal is closed when she fits the shoe. Being as he is a Prince, there is no mention of the character of a rich man who buys little girls. They live happly ever after is all she is told. She will have nice things, from Victoria's Secret.

So it is a story of how to market orphan girls without a dowery. It's the best deal they are going to get, and it helps if they are willing, not knowing what, but willing. They would do anything to get out of the life they are living, anything. Her current life is made to seem extra dull, hopeless, for some depression is a great motivator.

The Little Mermaid is also willing to trade her fishy tail for a place on land.

Dear Beatrix Potter calls her little girl rabbits, Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton Tail.

Snow White, the pure one, is hated by the aging who do not get that spark from men. They would cut out her heart and eat it, poison her, and her only hope is finding a Prince. Another how to manipulate little girls to market. Their only other choice is a series of little men who do menial labor.

Beauty and The Beast, she is sold to pay debts, to a beast, yet there is the hope of changing him. Or, you will get used to it.

None of the stories have to do with the fine character of the man, how well he treats her, only that he is rich, and after one dance, one kiss, she is his forever.

The Little Match Girl, has three matches, and using them herself, starves, and freezes to death in an alley.

Little Red Riding Hood, was originally Silver Hair, and she goes and gets naked in bed with grandpa, she discovers what a wolf he is, and after several years has a woodsman kill him, burn him in the fire place, and she gets the house. Her word against ashes, and she paid for it. Common Law Wife of her grandfather pays. It was her mother that packed a basket for her to take to grandpa, and he was always in bed when she got there. The mother wanted the house, but Red got smart and hired a man with an axe, and mom could say nothing, or she was next.

Hansel And Gretal have parents that keep abandoning them in the woods, are very disapointed when they return, and finally they come to the Gingerbread House, where they are kept, fattened, so they kill the old woman that took them in, and fed them. They dispose of the body, burn it. Now they have the house and all the incest they want.

All of these stories have to do with being property, or how to get property. They are about the real world the children will soon face, and all that goes on there, They cover being sold, abandoned, or used as a family sex toy. Sure it is rough, but look at The Little Match Girl, she did not play the game and starved and froze to death alone.

The theme of how to dispose of a body keeps coming up. Burning the evidence seems best. Picking an old woman without family is suggested.

Before this we have stories of girls going off alone, leaving home, with all of it's joys, to tell about it, and being ripped apart by dragons. They seem to be common, and like girls. It was always blamed on dragons. Feeding dragons virgin girls was the only way to keep the peace.

In Greece it was Satyrs, and boys. It explained all those bodies of children found in the wild.

Children should know what the other choice might be.

Romeo and Juliette shows the dangers of love, and the good sense of arranged marriage. Niether family will accept them, and it leads to lots of needless death. Infatuation Kills! Yea,he is cute, but is he worth dying over?

At the core of every story is suffering, caused by desire.

So listen up litle match girl, he is not cute, he is old, but he has a bed, is warm, and you will eat.

So we dress up cold realities and feed them to children, so they look forward to the fate that awaits them. We also tell stories of what happens to those who do not play the game.

All of Jane Austin's girls married above their station, even her littlest sister who would put out on the first date. The only question was does he want me? Jane was a hold out who was bought when Darcy paid off a family scandel. He was owed, she was the price. She did her duty.

Her Pride and Prejudice met reality. She was property, and went to the highest bidder.

She did not like him, there was no affection between them, but she agreed to spend the rest of her life naked in his bed letting him do as he would. She was not romanced, she was bought as breeding stock. She was just like her friend that married the Reverand for the house, he was a dork, it was a nice house. She did not expect love, just property. He was only safe because the property was entailed to the next male heir, so she could not poison him till she had a son. She could wait a few years.

So I find a grim reality in all works, and how they are dressed up to be sold. This core is why great stories are great, because the underlieing reality is there.

Nothing much has changed, really beautiful eighteen year old girls marry men of fifty or sixty for love. Darcy seems at least twice Jane's age, as girls married at sixteen, perhaps three times. He has lived the life of a rich man in London where he had anything he wanted for twice her years, and now he has her.

My story is, so you will do anything to survive, and so are the rest. My story has girls who are sent out to pick berries where the bears pick berries, like Hansel and Gretel. They dont have the option of being sold, they have to scavenge a life from nothing, and nothing is trying to eat them.

They would not have survived without changing, they adapt, and find new food supplies, and through survival stress, produce surplus food. It is the only power in their world, so they take over. They have problems, and all morality aside, they solve them.

There is the surface world, my characters are resourceful survivors, their answers last for thousands of years, change the future, but their family did try to feed them to bears. Some were starved almost to death on purpose, and it was a normal homelife. They had no security or emotional support.

Under survival stress, they still had inner reserves, and in a world against them, they survived.

Adversity, a life worse than the reader, that goes on to great works, even if involves burning the bodies, or accepting that girlish dreams and the world do not quite match, and deals have to be made with reality.

It is the human condition told over and over, and good stories touch deeply.