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Christina Baker Kline

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Language Geek, #1: Wendepunkt

Wendepunkt is a German word that means turning point.  In Modernism, Ray Bradbury defines wendepunkt as the moment in a novel “in which there is an unexpected yet in retrospect not unmotivated turn of events, a reorientation which one can see now is not only wholly consistent but logical and possibly even inevitable.”  This moment often involves a reversal of the protagonist’s fortunes.  Aristotle called it peripeteia, the crisis action of a tragedy.

wendepunkt In her masterful guide to narrative craft, Writing Fiction, Janet Burroway says, “A reversal of some sort is necessary to all story structure, comic as well as tragic. Although the protagonist need not lose power, land, or life, he or she must in some significant way be changed or moved by the action.”  This internal and external change, when it comes, may surprise the reader, but should be organic to the plot. Whether shocking or confusing or exhilarating, it should feel intrinsic to the story.

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Novel on the Brain

When I am working – really working – on a novel, I only pretend to be human. Though I may act relatively normal, in actuality I have transformed into an enormous, squishy head attached to a floaty, immaterial body, useful only because it transports my head around.  Everything I come into contact with gets absorbed in the spongy matter and either ferments or turns into something else.

squishy headToday, for example, I am at a Verizon store unraveling the mysteries of my new Blackberry.  A hip young sales associate named Dawn has been dispatched to teach me how to download ring tones and other “apps.”  Part of my brain is paying attention (as much attention as is possible for me ever in these situations, which is to say not much), but mostly I am focused on other things.  What brought this girl to this particular Verizon store in a strip mall on Route 3 in Clifton, New Jersey?  Is she really passionate about electronics?  Was it a bond she shared with, say, her gay older brother or alcoholic ex-boyfriend?  What does her tattoo of a purple rose signify?  How does she manage to keep her fingernails so long and yet manipulate the tiny keypad so well?

(There’s a character in my novel, a 17-year-old juvenile delinquent named Michelle ….)

Dawn’s fruity breath mint clicks against her teeth, and as she leans closer to show me how to click and drag, I smell her jasmine-scented shampoo.  All of this sensory and physical detail seeps into the sponge in my head, where it quickly becomes absorbed.  And meanwhile I try to act normal – though it’s pretty clear that by the way Dawn is treating me that I’m not fooling her at all.

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Deny the Accident

Jackson Pollock once said,pollock.untitled#3 in answer to an interviewer’s question about how he composed his paintings out of “accidental” splatterings, “I don’t use the accident.  I deny the accident.”

The sheer bravado of this is thrilling, and as a writer I find it a useful way to think about my work-in-progress.  When I’m putting words on the page it’s easy to second guess, to question the often unconscious choices I make as I go: the trajectories of characters’ lives, shifts in direction and focus, minor characters who gain traction as the story moves forward.  The editor in my head starts whispering: You’re going in the wrong direction.  Why are you spending so much time on that character?  You need to focus, get back to the story you originally envisioned, stick to the plan.

Over time I’ve learned to trust my impulses.  Whatever else they may be, these unanticipated detours are fresh and surprising; they keep me interested, and often end up adding depth to the work.  Not always, of course – sometimes an accident is just an accident.  But believing that these splatterings on my own canvas are there for a reason, as part of a larger process of creation, gives me the audacity to experiment.

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Settling In

Our dog, Lucy, does it every morning.  She roams around trying to get a feel for whether anyone will be at home, and in which rooms.  She tries out one spot – splayed on the hall landing, a watchful eye toward the front door – lucy photo 2009 (3)but soon abandons it for another.  She jumps on an unmade bed and turns around three times, sinks down, curls into a ball.  After a while she stretches out long, her belly as rounded and freckled as a cow’s.

I have my own version of this routine:  a mug of hot coffee, a comfortable wingback chair – no, perhaps the old chaise in the sunroom window – a college-ruled notepad (faint blue lines on white paper, a firm pink margin), an old-fashioned micro-point Uniball pen.  Circle three times, curl in a ball, settle in deep.

COMING MAY 2026: THE FOURSOME

A literary historical novel set in Civil War-era North Carolina, based on a true family story and told from the perspective of Sarah Bunker, one of two sisters who married Chang and Eng, the famous conjoined twins…learn more

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