4] The Lead sacrifices his objective for a greater good.
5] The ending is ambiguous or bittersweet (mostly for literary fiction).
A good discipline is to write as much detail about the ending as you can before you get there. How exhaustively you do this will depend on what kind of writer you are, but one of the benefits of this practice is that you can "marble in" action in your story that pays off later. This will give readers the feeling that there's more going on beneath the surface—always a good thing.
Of course, you're free to change the details once you get there, maybe have a whole new ending. Then again, you may find that the ending works wonderfully, and all you have to do is fine-tune it.
And put in resonance.
The best endings of any type of novel have this. Resonance is "prolongation of sound." It's like the perfect last note in a symphony. It leaves the reader with something beyond the ending.
Resonance can come from dialogue, description, narration, virtually anything that feels just right for the story.
How do you get that?
You just keep trying stuff.
You keep writing.
Additionally:
1] Make sure the objective is strong and clear. Our old friend from the LOCK System, objective, is essential for a solid ending. Your Lead has had an overall objective throughout the novel. Now he has come to the point where he must make a final choice, or fight a final battle, to regain the equilibrium he lost when he moved through that first doorway of no return.
2] Dream about it. Before trying to construct an ending, let your imagination suggest several possibilities. Play around. You have all this story material in your head now. Your writer s mind, the "boys in the basement," will help you if you let it.
KEY POINTS
• Your opening line, paragraph, and page must grab the reader.
• Gives us an early disturbance to the Lead's ordinary world.
• A little backstory is good in the opening, but start the action first and don't overdo it.
• When writing the middle, keep referring to the LOCK elements to keep you focused.
• Take time with your endings. Dream and brood about them. Seek resonance on the last page.
Compare those openings to the opening of one of your own manuscripts. What's the difference?
Go to the library or bookstore and pick several novels at random. Read the opening pages. If there's a prologue, does it work for you? Why or why not? Are you hooked by the openings? Do you want to read on? Analyze your reactions.
Next time you watch a movie, think about the middle section (Act II). If things drag, ask yourself why. How would you do it better? Simply by asking this question and thinking it through, you're working your writing muscles.
Have you ever been dissatisfied with the ending to a novel or movie? I think you have. Choose one and analyze the ending. What did it fail to do?
[ SHOW VS. TELL ]
If there is any bit of ironclad advice for fiction writers, it's "Show, don't tell." Yet confusion about this aspect of the craft is one of the most common failings in beginning writers. If you want your fiction to take off in the reader's mind, you must grasp the difference between showing and telling.
The distinction is simply this: Showing is like watching a scene in a movie. All you have is what's on the screen before you. What the characters do or say reveals who they are and what they're feeling.
Telling, on the other hand, is just like you're recounting the movie to a friend.
Which renders the more memorable experience?
Remember the scene in Jurassic Park the movie, where the newcomers catch their first glimpse of a dinosaur? With mouths open and eyes wide, they stand and look at this impossible creature before them before we, the audience, see it.
All we need to know about their emotions is written on their faces. We're not given a voice in their heads. We know just by watching what they're feeling.
In a story, you would describe it in just that fashion: "Mark's eyes widened and his jaw dropped. He tried to take a breath, but breath did not come. ..." The reader feels the emotions right along with the character.
That is so much better than telling it, like this, "Mark was stunned and frightened."
In the nineteenth century, telling was common. Authors like George Eliot would write passages like this one from Middlemarch:
When Fred stated the circumstances of his debt, his wish to meet it without troubling his father, and the certainty that the money would be forthcoming so as to cause no one any inconvenience, Caleb pushed his spectacles upward, listened, looked into his favorite's clear young eyes, and believed him, not distinguishing confidence
about the future from veracity about the past; but he felt that it was an occasion for a friendly hint as to conduct, and that before giving his signature he must give a rather strong admonition. Accordingly, he took the paper and lowered his spectacles, measured the space at his command, reached his pen and examined it, dipped it in the ink and examined it again, then pushed the paper a little way from him, lifted up his spectacles again, showed a deepened depression in the outer angle of his bushy eyebrows, which gave his face a peculiar mildness (pardon these details for once—you would have learned to love them if you had known Caleb Garth), and said in a comfortable tone,
"It was a misfortune, eh, that breaking the horse's knees? And then, these exchanges, they don't answer when you have cute jockeys to deal with. You'll be wiser another time, my boy."
If George Eliot had written in the 1940s, it might have gone like this:
"I kind of got into debt with this guy," Fred said. "He advanced me some dough and I can't pay it back. I don't want my father to find out, and if you could find your way to give me a loan I'm sure I can pay it back quick."
Caleb pushed his spectacles upward. He picked up a pen, tapped it a couple of times on the desk. Then he furrowed his bushy eyebrows and said, "So it was bad luck, huh?"
This shows us the dialogue, whereas the original tells us what was said. Obviously, if we need more information in the dialogue, we just have the characters say more.
One of the best "show" novels ever written is the classic detective tale The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. Hammett ushered in a whole new style, called "hard-boiled," with this book. The mark of that style is that everything occurs just as if it were happening before us on a movie screen (which is one reason why this book translated so well into a movie).
In one scene, the hero, Sam Spade, has to comfort the widow of his partner, Miles Archer, who was recently shot to death. She comes rushing into his office, and into his arms. Spade is put off by her crying because he knows it's mostly phony.
Now, Hammett could have written something like, "The woman threw herself, crying, into Spade's arms. He detested her crying. He detested her. He wanted to get out of there."
That's telling. But look at what the masterful Hammett does:
"Did you send for Miles's brother?" he asked.
"Yes, he came over this morning." The words were blurred by her sobbing and his coat against her mouth.
He grimaced again and bent his head for a surreptitious look at the watch on his wrist. His left arm was around her, the hand on her left shoulder. His cuff was pulled back far enough to leave the watch uncovered. It showed ten-ten.
How much more effective this is! We see Spade glancing at his watch, which tells us just how unsympathetic he is to this display of emotion. It reaches us much more powerfully.
Just after this little episode, the widow asks, "Oh, Sam, did you kill him?"
Instead of telling us how Spade feels, Hammett writes:
Spade stared at her with bulging eyes. His bony jaw fell down. He took his arms from her and stepped back out of her arms. He scowled at her and cleared his throat.... Spade laughed a harsh syllable, "Ha!" and went to the buff-curtained window. He stood there with his back to her looking through the curtain into the court until she started towa
rd him. Then he turned quickly and went to his desk. He sat down, put his elbows on the desk, his chin between his fists, and looked at her. His yellowish eyes glittered between narrowed lids.
TOO MUCH TELLING IS LAZY ...
Here's an example of lazy telling from a best-selling writer. It comes in the second paragraph of the book:
She cared, she loved, she worked hard at whatever she did, she was there for the people who meant something to her, she was artistic in ways that always amazed her friends, she was unconsciously beautiful, and fun to be with.
There are two major problems with this paragraph.
First, it is pure telling and therefore doesn't advance the character or story at all. Why not? Because we, as readers, are being asked to take the author's word for it, rather than having the author do the harder work of showing us the character in action.
Second, it's an exposition dump. There's no marbling of the essential information. It's poured out all at once and has no effect but dullness.
BUT YOU CAN'T SHOW EVERYTHING
A novel that tried to show every single thing would end up one thousand pages, most of it boring. The rule is, the more intense the moment, the more showing you do. Take this excerpt:
Don felt the pressure of each step on the bottoms of his feet, heard the clickety-clack of his shoes on the tile floor, as he walked toward the bathroom. The doorknob was ice on his fingers. His guts stampeded like scared wildebeests as he turned the knob and pulled the door open. One step, then another and another, and he was in.
If this is a moment when Don walks into the bathroom, washes his face, and thinks about things, then gets a phone call, you probably don't need this much detail. The scene doesn't need it. Just write:
Don walked into the bathroom.
On the other hand, if Don has just been beaten up by the bad guys, the excerpt may provide the intensity required.
Telling, or narrative summary, is best used for transitions. For example, getting from one setting to another. We don't need to see all the steps necessary to get there.
Don walked out of the bathroom, picked up his car keys, went out the door of his apartment and to the stairs. He went down the two flights of stairs and opened the door to the parking garage. He entered the parking garage and walked to his car. He unlocked the door with his key fob and got in the car. He put the key in the ignition, started the car, backed out, then put the car in Drive and headed for the street. He turned right out of the driveway and got in the flow of traffic. The first traffic light was red, so he stopped. When it turned green, he continued on, finally reaching the front of the bar. He slowed the car, then came to a stop at the curb outside the front door.
We don't need this, unless something important happens at one of these stages. Instead, this would do:
Don grabbed his car keys. Ten minutes later he pulled to a stop at the bar.
When using narrative summary for transition, make it fast. Just get there. And get into the next scene.
LET YOUR EMOTION SHOW
Don't be afraid to pour out the emotion the first time out. Press your story and characters to their limits. You can always tone things down on rewrite.
CHARACTER EMOTIONS & FEELINGS
Showing character emotion and feeling when the heat is on helps readers enter the experience.
What I mean by the heat being on is that emotion and feeling is important to the moment. It's perfectly fine to write something like the following if you're just getting Mary to the store:
Mary was tired from the party and decided a double latte was just the ticket.
But suppose, after a long argument, Mary is just drained, and that's going to cause her to fall asleep at the wheel of her car? Then you're going to want to show more than tell.
Mary caught her lids drooping. She slapped herself. Come on, only ten miles to go.
A helpful tool for deciding when to show character emotions and feeling is the intensity scale. You analyze your scenes on a shifting scale from 0 to 10, with 0 meaning there is no intensity at all and 10 over the top.
A scene is going to vary in intensity as it proceeds. It might start low and build, or start high and drop back, or anything in between.
Don't ever have a scene that has 0 in it. Also, very rarely, maybe only once or twice per book, should you even think about going up to 10. But cover all the ranges in between.
Rule of thumb is this: When the intensity level is above 5, that's when you're going to want to err toward showing. That's the show zone. Below that is the tell zone.
As you gain more experience, you'll be able to judge the intensity of your scenes naturally.
To show character emotion in such instances, look to actions, metaphors, and dialogue.
A few examples: Actions
• Her chin began to quiver.
• He drove his fist through the wall.
• She threw the phone across the room.
• He put his hand on his stomach and doubled over.
Metaphors
• He was trembling like the ground in an earthquake.
• Pins pricked her from the inside.
• A hot stitch ran up his body.
• A worm of fear turned in her stomach. o
• Terror ballooned in her heart. <
• White light exploded in her brain. s
• Shock stole her breath.
• His spine felt like a column of ice. 145
You find these by trying things out, trying other things, and eventually settling on what works best. Don't expect to get something just right the first time out.
Character emotion can also be shown through dialogue. Consider the following excerpt from Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants":
"I'll go with you and I'll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in and then it's all perfectly natural." "Then what will we do afterwards?" "We'll be fine afterwards. Just like we were before." "What makes you think so?"
"That's the only thing that bothers us. It's the only thing that's made us unhappy."
The girl looked at the bead curtain, put her hand out and took hold of two of the strings of beads.
"And you think then we'll be all right and be happy." "I know we will. You don't have to be afraid. I've known lots of people that have done it."
"So have I," said the girl. "And afterwards they were all so happy."
We know from the dialogue itself how the girl is feeling. We know she is anything but sanguine about their prospects for happiness.
KEY POINTS
• You must fully understand the difference between summary and scene.
• Telling is best for fast transitions and less intense beats.
• Showing is best for intense beats.
• Actions metaphors are best for showing strong character emotion.
In the following segment, identify the parts that are tell and attempt to change them into show. Don't worry about a "correct" answer. There isn't one, as every approach is going to be slightly different (for one possible approach, see the appendix). The purpose of the exercise is to help you identify summary and start you thinking about how to make it "showier."
Don walked into the bar. The smell in the place was terrible, and reminded him how depressed he was. A small dog barked at him, startling him. So he kicked it.
*
"How dare you!" a woman shouted. She was an imposing-looking woman,
seated at a table holding the dog's leash.
*
Don told her what she could do with her dog, and she called for the bartender. The bartender came over and asked Don to leave.
Convert the following into action beats that show:
John was angry.
*
John was sad.
*
Mary walked into the room, dog tired.
*
Mary read the riot act to John.
[ VOICE & STYLE ]
Of all aspects of the craft of fiction, voice and
style are the two things it's virtually impossible to teach. That's because they are (or should be) unique to each writer. What comes out of you and your keyboard is a fictive alchemy, weaving a story where voice and style are largely hidden.
If they jump off the page, shouting look at me, you're removing the reader from the narrative experience.
That's why it's best to allow voice and style to emerge naturally in the telling of your tale. Attend to the fundamentals of the craft and voice and style seem organic, and that's your goal.
So, while we can't give any hard-and-fast rules about voice and style, there are things you can do to expand your prose boundaries. That's what this chapter is about—to help you get a feel for voice and style, and give you some techniques for developing these in your writing.
What is the difference between voice and style? I'd put it this way:
Voice is your basic approach, the sound of the words, the tone of the sentences, paragraphs, and pages.
Style is the application of voice on the whole. It's the overall feel the reader gets as the novel progresses.
The following tips and exercises will begin to pay off as you write your drafts. You won't have to think so hard about the words as you write them, which is always advisable, especially when putting them down for the first time.
FINDING YOUR VOICE AND STYLE
Mark Twain had a distinctive voice. It came with a twinkle in the eye and a satirical bent toward the human condition. Also, the ability to string words together that make us laugh, sometimes uncomfortably, at ourselves.
William Faulkner had a unique voice. So does Dean Koontz. In fact, Koontz's voice has consciously changed over the years as he has tried new
things in his writing. There's hope here for everyone. You don't have to sing the same tune over and over again.
Their styles differ, too, of course. You're never going to mistake a Faulkner for a Koontz, or a Hemingway for a Danielle Steel.
So what's unique about you?
Let's start finding out.
Read
It seems obvious, but writers are readers. And not just of one type of fiction. All types.
Everything you read adds to your reservoir, gives you more options.
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