Find a Border and Cross It

I work as a web editor for the great literary magazine Washington Square Review, NYU’s magazine. If you check out the site, you can read a lot of the archives and there are some wonderful pieces from very famous authors. The first issue back in the sixties even had a film script submission from a young Martin Scorcese!

The most recent issue had a theme of “Borderlands.” This theme could be interpreted in any number of ways by our authors, but it created a great focus for the magazine because of the movement, choice, and risk associated with a border and crossing it. Many great stories are made up of a borderland in one way or another; characters live straddling two worlds, whether it is the worlds of home and work, what is going on in their lives versus what is going on in their heads, the past and the present, an old culture versus a new one…the potential for borderlands as an idea goes on and on. When a character is caught between two worlds, the result is almost inherently dramatic.

Try thinking about what borderland your character is in the midst of crossing right now, or what border he or she is too afraid to cross. Sometimes a border is simply the line between what a character is thinking and what he is willing to say. Particularly in a short story, which often only needs one dramatic outburst or one thoughtless comment to change the tide of the action, borders are important. What is keeping your character from saying what he wants to? And what will make him cross that border into a dangerous, no-man’s land of consequences?

Think about your story in terms of borders and which ones must be crossed, and you’ll find a more natural flow of climax and drama. Bear inexorably toward that one line that must be crossed. Force worlds to collide.