Contrapuntal writing

Contrapuntal writing…..has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? To the high brow readers, none of what I am about to say will come as a surprise. However, it is still nice to refresh one’s mind about the subject.

A lot of novels use multiple threads to a story line these days, which in most cases converge to a finale. However, it is the individual threads and the way the interested reader maintains each thread in their mind, that heightens enjoyment. One is anxious to know what happened about one character introduced earlier, whilst the story has moved on to character 2 and so on.

Of course when we apply counterpoint to music, the effect is relayed much quicker than reading a novel. The faster the piece, the harder it is to extract the contrapuntal writing. At the end of the day, its all about maximising enjoyment of the reader/listener.