Writing Tools (25 page)

We use archetypes but should not let them use us. Consider as a cautionary tale, argues Tom French, the reporting on the dangers to women of silicone breast implants. Study after study confirms the medical safety of this procedure. Yet the culture refuses to accept it. Why? Perhaps it arises from the archetype that vanity should be punished, or that evil corporations are willing to profit from poisoning women's bodies.

Use archetypes. Don't let them use you.

WORKSHOP

1. Read Joseph Campbell's
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
as an introduction to archetypal story forms.

2. As you read and hear coverage of military actions around the globe, look and listen for examples of the story forms described above.

3. Reexamine your writing from the last year. Can you identify pieces that fit or violate archetypal story patterns? Would you have written them differently?

4. Discuss Father Horst's advice: a symbol need not be a cymbal. Can you find a symbol in your work? Is it a cymbal?

From our earliest years, we learn that stories have endings, however predictable. The prince and princess live happily ever after. The cowboy rides into the sunset. The witch is dead. The End. Or in the case of sci-fi movies: The End? Too often, in real life, the prince and princess get a divorce. The cowboy falls off his horse. The witch eats the baby. That's the dilemma for writers: reality is messy, but readers seek closure.

In 1999, the
New York Times
company commissioned me to write a newspaper serial novel I titled
Ain't Done Yet.
The story takes place
in
the months leading up to the millennium and involves an old investigative reporter tracking down the leader of a doomsday cult. I did not write from an outline, or even from much of a plan, but I knew that in the final chapter the good guy, who is afraid of heights and lightning, would be fighting the bad guy at midnight, atop a giant bridge, in a hurricane. In other words, I didn't know the stopping points along the way, but I wrote with an ending in mind. So I was not surprised to learn that J. K. Rowling began writing the Harry Potter series by crafting the final chapter of the last book and has even revealed the last word: "scar."

To write good endings you must read them, and few works of literature end with the poignant majesty of
The Great Gatsby.

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning-

So
we
beat
on,
boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

F. Scott Fitzgerald plants the seeds for this ending early in the novel, at the end of chapter one, when narrator Nick Carraway sees Gatsby for the first time:

I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn't call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone — he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward — and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.

Powerful lessons are embedded in this passage. Look at the phrase "unquiet darkness." The author shows us that sentences and paragraphs have endings too, even as those endings foreshadow the book's final scene, some 160 pages later, when the green light, the dock, the outstretched arms will return, freighted with thematic significance.

These techniques are not for novelists alone. My colleague Chip Scanlan wrote an op-ed piece for the
New York Times
in which he argued that journalists should take lessons from citizens when it comes to asking good questions of politicians:

As Bob Schieffer of CBS News polishes his questions for the final presidential debate tomorrow, he might want to take a page from Daniel Farley. And Randee Jacobs. And Norma-Jean Laurent, Mathew O'Brien, James Varner, Sarah Degenhart and Linda Grabel.

In that lead paragraph, Chip lists the names of citizens who had asked effective questions in the previous presidential debate. In his final paragraph, Chip closes the circle, replaying the chords he struck in the beginning:

So tomorrow Mr. Schieffer can serve the public interest and teach his fellow reporters an important lesson about truth-gathering. He can model his questions on those asked by a handful of Mis-sourians who understand the toughest questions are those that show the country what a candidate won't — or can't — answer.

There are endless ways to begin and end a piece of writing, but authors rely on a small toolbox of strategies, just as musicians do. In musical compositions, songs can build to a crescendo, or fade out, or stop short, or echo the opening. In written compositions, the author can choose from among these, and more:

• Closing the circle.
The ending reminds us of the beginning by returning to an important place or by reintroducing us to a key character.

• The tieback.
Humorist Dave Barry likes to tie his ending to some odd or offbeat element in the body of the story.

• The time frame.
The writer creates a tick-tock structure, with time advancing relentlessly. To end the story, the writer decides what should happen last.

• The space frame.
The writer is more concerned with place and geography than with time. The hurricane reporter moves us from location to location, revealing the terrible damage from the storm. To end, the writer selects our final destination.

• The payoff.
The longer the story, the more important the payoff. This does not require a happy ending, but a satisfying one, a reward for a journey concluded, a secret revealed, a mystery solved.

• The epilogue.
The story ends, but life goes on. How many times have you wondered, after the house lights come back on, what happened next to the characters in a movie? Readers come to care about characters in stories. An epilogue helps satisfy their curiosity.

• Problem and solution.
This common structure suggests its own ending. The writer frames the problem at the top and then offers readers possible solutions and resolutions.

• The apt quote.
Some characters speak in endings, capturing in their own words a neat summary or distillation of what has come before. In most cases, the writer can write it better than a character can say it. But not always.

• Look to the future.
Most writing relates things that have happened in the past. But what do people say will happen next? What is the likely consequence of this decision or those events?

• Mobilize the reader.
A good ending can point the reader in another direction. Attend this meeting. Read that book. Send an e-mail message to the senator. Donate blood for victims of a disaster.

You will write better endings if you remember that other parts of your story need endings too. Sentences have endings. Paragraphs have endings. As in
The Great Gatsby,
each of these mini-endings anticipates your finale.

I end with a warning. Avoid endings that go on and on like a Rachmaninoff concerto or a heavy metal ballad. Don't bury your ending. Put your hand over the last paragraph. Ask yourself, "What would happen if this ended here?" Move it up another paragraph and ask the same question until you find the natural stopping place.

WORKSHOP

1. Review your most recent work. Place your hand over the last paragraph and ask yourself, "What would happen if my story ended here?" Is the natural ending hiding?

2. Read stories, listen to music, and watch movies with endings in mind. Pay close attention to details and themes planted early to bear fruit at the end.

3. Some journalists report for leads. Fewer report for endings. The next time you do research, watch and listen for a strong ending. What happens when you begin with an ending in mind?

4. Just for fun, take some of your recent work and switch the beginnings and the endings. Have you learned anything in the process?

In 1996 the
St. Petersburg Times
published my series "Three Little Words," the story of a woman whose husband died of AIDS. The series ran for twenty-nine consecutive days and received unprecedented attention from local readers and journalists everywhere. A month of chapters was a lot to ask of readers. But here was the catch: no chapter contained more than 850 words, so you could keep up with the narrative by reading five minutes a day. Long series, short chapters.

Good writers turn stories into workshops, intense moments of learning in which they advance their craft. I learned more about reporting and telling stories from "Three Little Words" than from any other writing experience of my life. I'm still learning from it. But I did not learn how much I learned until I stumbled on a strategy I've turned into a tool: I write a mission statement for each story.

Whether we want them to or not, readers and critics examine the work of writers to grasp a sense of our mission and purpose, Too often, writers resist, as Mark Twain did when he posted this notice atop his most famous novel:

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

But where the writer is silent, the critic, in this case Bernard De Voto, fills the void:

Huckleberry Finn
also has become a universal possession. It is a much deeper book than
Tom Sawyer
— deeper as of Mark Twain, of America, and of humanity. When after some stumbling it finds its purpose, it becomes an exploration of an entire society, the middle South along the river. In accomplishing this purpose it maintains at the level of genius Mark's judgment in full on the human race. It is well to remember that no one had spoken so witheringly to Americans about themselves before Huck raised his voice.