Writing techniques

how to write

The Redemption Arc

Posted by

0

There is a post on the Reedsy Blog dated 12 April 2024 which can be informative to those of us who write. I quote from it below:

“A redemption arc is when a previously morally gray (or even downright evil) character turns over a new leaf. But what, exactly, does this redemption look like? 

Something to keep in mind is that one good deed does not make a redemption arc. The character you’re trying to redeem needs to develop some maturity, not just act positively once after a lifetime of villainy. Readers want to see someone grappling with their past and ultimately coming to terms with it through reflection and intentional behaviour as opposed to a quick and sudden change — in other words, it has to feel realistic. 

As a character recognizes the flaws in their past actions, their arc typically culminates in a pivotal redemptive moment where they selflessly sacrifice their desires — or sometimes even their life — for the greater good or for others. Importantly, this gesture must be significant enough to convincingly atone for all their past misdeeds.   

Audiences are drawn to these kinds of stories because we, as humans, are flawed and make mistakes. Seeing characters move past their misdeeds, make amends, and be forgiven by others gives us hope that we too can be offered that same grace. 

To get an idea of what that looks like, and to understand the power a redemptive arc can have for a character, let’s look at three popular examples. 

Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol

Ebenezer Scrooge’s story is a classic example of a redemption arc. From the moment we meet him on a bleak Christmas Eve, we know he’s not a good guy. He’s callous with his overworked, underpaid employee and with the poor who come asking for donations. 

Michael Caine as Scrooge in a Muppets Christmas Carol
Michael Caine makes a pretty good Scrooge, right alongside some Muppets in A Muppets Christmas Carol. (Source: Walt Disney Pictures)

While his solitary, penny-pinching ways make his life — and the lives of those around him — miserable, he doesn’t seem like he’s going to change. That is, until the appearance of some ghosts, and a little bit of time travel, challenge Scrooge to re-examine his ways. 

The ghost of his old business partner, Marley, and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future force Scrooge to re-examine his life. They remind him of the better man he used to be, what he’s missing out on now, and the way his life will end if he continues on his current path. Deeply affected by what he’s seen, Scrooge vows to change his ways.

Once he returns to waking life, he immediately donates a huge sum of money to the previously-rejected charity, raises his employee’s pay, and goes to his nephew’s Christmas party. Scrooge even becomes a father figure to Bob Cratchit’s sickly son, further cementing his new commitment to doing good.

Zuko in Avatar: The Last Airbender

After being exiled from the Fire Nation by his cruel and demanding father, Prince Zuko has only one goal: capture the Avatar in order to regain his honour. The audience is first introduced to him as he does everything in his power to apprehend the main character, Aang. In other words, he starts the series as a fairly typical antagonist: hard, spiteful, and constantly doing whatever he can to stop the good Aang is trying to do.

But as we quickly learn, there’s far more to Zuko than meets the eye. He struggles with the expectations placed upon him by his father, a man who permanently scarred him (both physically and emotionally) for daring to speak up, and then sent him on a fool’s errand to get him out of the way. Zuko isn’t always sure he’s doing the right thing and constantly struggles to balance his father’s expectations with what he wants for himself — which is to be seen and respected for his achievements, without necessarily doing wicked things. 

Prince Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender
Prince Zuko eventually becomes Fire Lord Zuko, earning his redemption and restoring his honor. (Source: Nickelodeon)

Eventually, he is allowed to return to the Fire Nation with his honour restored, with the Avatar supposedly dead because of him. But his doubts never go away and he remains uncertain of his decision to “kill” Aang and return home. 

When he learns of his father’s plan to burn the Earth Kingdom to the ground, and of his own connection to the Avatar before Aang, Zuko decides he’s had enough. He confronts his father about his abusive treatment and imperialistic plans and declares his intentions to teach Aang firebending so the Avatar can stop him once and for all. Zuko sacrifices the one thing he’s always wanted, his father’s approval, in the name of the greater good — and, in the end, proves himself to be an honourable man. 

Boromir in The Lord of the Rings

On the surface, Boromir doesn’t seem like the kind of character who would need a redemption arc. A noble son of the kingdom of Gondor, he joins the Fellowship in their quest to destroy the One Ring with only the best intentions.

However, even he isn’t immune to the Ring’s corruptive powers, and as they continue on their journey, he becomes more and more aggressive in trying to convince Frodo to hand over the Ring to him so he can use it to defeat Sauron once and for all.

Sean Bean as Boromir in The Lord of the Rings
No one is immune to the temptation of the Ring, not even Boromir. (Source: New Line Cinema)

This comes to a head when Boromir attacks Frodo in the hopes of gaining the Ring. He doesn’t succeed, but this does break Frodo’s trust in the Fellowship and ultimately causes him to run away to complete the quest on his own. Boromir is consumed by guilt and, though unable to admit to his part in Frodo’s flight, he helps the rest of the hobbits search for them and fights to protect them from orcs — though he ultimately fails. However, he then manages to alert the rest of the company to the hobbits capture and admits how he failed Frodo with his dying breath. 

Boromir recognizes where he went wrong, and though he can’t make it up to Frodo, he proves himself a decent man in the end by defending his friends and giving the remaining members of the Fellowship a chance to save themselves.

There’s no one correct way to craft a redemption arc. Every character is different and so is their journey. But there are some key elements you should include to successfully convince your reader of a character’s change of heart. 

4 tips to write a redemption arc

1. Show them at their worst

First impressions make or break character. If you want the reader to root for them, you typically paint them in a good light from the start, perhaps by having them be generous to strangers or kind to children.

But when your character is in need of redemption, they likely won’t start off in such a good place. In fact, you want to show how terribly they’re doing, the evil deeds they’re committing, the way they’re being callous or pushing others too hard. 

For example, when we first meet Prince Zuko, he’s clearly positioned as the antagonist. He’s hunting Aang and attacks a defenseless village in an attempt to capture him, leaving a wake of destruction behind him as he goes. 

Showing your character at at their worst provides a stark contrast and sets the foundation for their redemptive journey, making the reader ask 一 will they ever change? And if so, how? 

2. Hint at why they are the way they are

Nobody exists in a vacuum, and past circumstances influence who a character is now. Perhaps the death of a loved one pushed them down a dark path, or the rejection of a parental figure altered the way they look at the world. Whatever it is, show the reader the motivation behind a character’s actions. 

This is important no matter what kind of character you’re writing — whether villain, hero, anti-hero, or soon-to-be-redeemed villain — but it’s especially important when dealing with a character you want the reader to give a second chance.

When we can understand a character’s motivations, we’ll be more likely to see their redeeming qualities and want them to do better. It doesn’t excuse what they do, but it offers an explanation, which allows a reader to sympathize, or even empathize, with them. 

3. Give them a moment of realization

As your character moves along their journey, they’ll learn new things about themself, achieve new perspectives, and perhaps have their morals and ideals challenged. These many small moments and thoughts will chip away at a character’s set ways until eventually, it crescendos into a defining moment. This is when they finally see the error of their ways and choose to set out on a different path — if not towards outright good, then at least to something better.

4. Let them atone through sacrifice

Demonstrating the character’s commitment to their new way of being is an essential aspect of the redemption arc. Actions speak louder than words, after all. To prove to both the audience and their companions how serious they are about changing, and to make up for their previous mistakes, a sacrifice will show their commitment. 

Many classic redemption stories will have a character heroically lay down their life for a new cause. While this is the ultimate form of sacrifice, and can be an impactful way to conclude a character arc, it’s also become something of a cliché. As an alternative, consider what else your character might sacrifice. Perhaps it’s their wealth, a prestigious position, or even a relationship that they give up in the name of the greater good. 

Whatever the sacrifice is, it should be big and important enough to your character that it would’ve been unthinkable for them to cast it aside when we first met them. With that, their redemption will be solidified and they will emerge a new person.”

Write for the Screen

Posted by

0

Ryan G Van Cleave has an article on the Writer’s Digest website dated 6 April 2024 covering the techniques used by screenwriters to produce blockbuster movies. The same techniques apply when writing compelling fiction.

In addition to running the creative writing program at Ringling College of Art and Design, Ryan Van Cleave is Editor for Bushel & Peck Books and has authored 20+ books. As The Picture Book Whisperer, Ryan helps celebrities and high-profile clients write picture book and kidlit titles.

Ryan G Van Cleave

Ryan said, “As a writer, you’re not just a teller of tales. You’re a director, a cinematographer, a set designer, and an editor—all combined. Harnessing the cinematic techniques used by screenwriters can make your fiction zing off the page, pulling readers in with a vivid reality that they can “see,” “hear,” and “feel.”

Cue the Perspectives

Much like directors choosing the best angle for a shot, writers must find the perfect perspective for their story. Instead of settling for the predictable, stretch your creative wings and explore innovative viewpoints.

Create the Perfect Shot

Visuals in film serve as the language that brings the script to life, captivating the audience in the world the filmmakers have created. Similarly, in prose, the words you choose craft the images that populate the reader’s imagination. But how can you make those images as evocative as possible?

Start with the nuances—details that serve as the brushstrokes in the painting you’re creating. Whether it’s the sheen of sweat on a protagonist’s forehead, the ominous shadows on a villain’s face, or the dappling sunlight through a leafy canopy, these descriptions add depth to the story’s atmosphere.

Compare the standard description, “It was a stormy night,” with something more atmospheric like, “Lightning shattered the night, casting eerie silhouettes against the thundering rain-slicked cobblestones.” The latter not only sets the stage but also stimulates the reader’s senses, pulling them deeper into the narrative.

Daniel Knauf—creator of the HBO series Carnivàle and writer/producer for The Blacklist—points out that in contemporary screenplays, specific shots are rarely called due to a variety of reasons—primarily to allow the director to do his or her job. “Better to simply call out a telling detail, such as ‘John’s eyes flicker down to his attacker’s knife’ or ‘Janet twitches a smile,’ actions that can only be achieved with an extreme close-up. Likewise, a long or wide shot can be indicated as follows, ‘John stands alone on a desolate strand of sand at the edge of the Pacific.’”

Using Visual Cues

In film, visual cues such as color, depth, motion, and contrast are indispensable tools for eliciting specific emotional responses from the audience. For instance, a scene featuring a heated argument might employ sharp contrasts and rapid motions to intensify feelings of chaos or discomfort.

Can fiction writers do the same thing? “Absolutely,” says Knauf. “Imagine the character, their emotions within the context of the scene.” He offers the following examples to showcase this technique.

Version 1
Janet chuckled softly, the rim of a glass of Chardonnay resting on her lower lip. “Frankly, John’s a pain in the ass,” she said, “but I love him to pieces.”

Version 2
Janet held herself tightly, shrinking into the chair in the detective’s office as if attempting to will herself invisible. She took a nervous puff off her third Marlboro and said, “Frankly, John’s a pain in the ass. But I love him to pieces.”

The actions and settings of the character in the second version guide the reader’s emotions in a specific direction. This serves a similar purpose to visual cues in film—it sets the emotional tone of the scene. In essence, the setting and actions of your characters can function as your narrative’s visual cues. It’s another layer of storytelling that can add significant weight to your prose.

Maximizing Set Pieces

A set piece is a particularly dramatic or memorable scene in a film, often involving intense action or extraordinary visuals. In writing, these are your critical scenes—the moments of high drama, intense emotion, or suspenseful intrigue. They’re the scenes that make your reader’s pulse quicken and their eyes fly across the page. They’re the memorable, big-money shots.

A well-crafted set piece immerses the reader fully in the moment, using sensory detail and character reactions to heighten the experience. It’s not just about describing what’s happening, but making the reader feel as though they’re in the midst of the action.

For example, instead of saying, “The dragon attacked the village,” you could write, “With a roar that shook the mountains, the dragon swooped, emerald scales shimmering, and fire bloomed, transforming homes into a sea of flames. Villagers scattered, their screams lost in the monstrous inferno.”

Sure, this scene would be a nightmare for a film’s budget with all those CGI effects and a burning village set, but that’s not your problem—you’re writing prose, after all. Your budget is unlimited, so make your big moments as rich and spectacular as needed for the audience to be Hollywood-quality dazzled.

The Art of Transitions

Transitions in writing are like the dissolve, jump cut, or fade out in films—they determine the pace and flow of your story.

A dissolve can be likened to subtle shifts in time or perspective: “As the sun set, she finally allowed herself to sleep, and in her dreams, he was still alive …” Here, we dissolve from reality to dreams, moving smoothly from one state to another.

A jump cut is a sudden shift, often used for surprise or emphasis: “He was enjoying his morning coffee when the gunshot rang out.” We jump from the mundane to the shocking with no transition, which mimics how such moments feel in real life. They’re abrupt and jarring.

Finally, the fade out allows a scene to come to a gradual close: “As he walked away, his form became smaller and smaller, swallowed by the distance until he was just a speck, then nothing at all.” The scene fades from the reader’s mind, providing a gentle, smooth closure. Of course, this is a popular option for a story’s final scene, but it works just as well for a chapter ending or a potent scene that requires a bit of space before the next scene gets cooking.

A transition is not merely a mechanical device to move from one scene to another; it is an artistic tool to help you build the right emotional resonance and rhythm. By mastering the art of transitions, you give your story the fluidity it needs to captivate from start to finish.

The Power of Pacing

In the world of storytelling, pacing is akin to the heartbeat of your narrative. It provides the tempo, setting the rate at which your story unfolds. Good pacing keeps readers intrigued, wanting to turn the page yet savor each moment. As you write, pay attention to sentence length, paragraph breaks, and chapter cuts to control the pace of your narrative. A well-paced story can be a gripping story.

Knauf adds, “Good pacing is good pacing in both media. Change up the delivery from sentence to sentence, short, short, long, short, long, long, short. Prose is like a dance. Find the rhythm inside your paragraphs. Start every scene at the last possible moment; end it at the first possible moment. In other words, don’t begin a scene before something interesting happens and end it as soon as things aren’t interesting anymore.”

Sound and Music

In film, sound and music are more than mere embellishments; they elevate the story, adding another layer to the characters and the worlds they inhabit. The soundtrack of a movie can make hearts swell or race, just as a well-timed silence can speak volumes. For writers, sound in prose isn’t heard through the ears, but it can be just as potent when felt through words.

“A writer can describe ambient noise lyrically to set a scene,” Knauf explains. “For instance, ‘The droning babble of the marketplace was punctuated by the bellowing pitches of the merchants, the laughter of children, the dickering back-and-forth of customers and vendors and the shrill cries of seagulls circling for tasty scraps.’”

Never underestimate the impact of a well-placed whisper or CLANG in your narrative. These elements add another layer to your storytelling and can help build a vibrant sensory world. And remember, these auditory cues work hand-in-hand with other cinematic elements like visual cues and perspectives to offer a more engaging and well-rounded reading experience.

Openings and Closings

In both film and literature, the first and last scenes are pivotal. They hold the power to hook your audience or leave them with a lasting impression. The way you introduce your characters and set up your world can make or break the reader’s commitment to your story. Just as important are your closing scenes—they provide resolution or set up a tantalizing cliffhanger that leaves readers yearning for more.

Knauf has made a career out of strong openings and closings. One of his best tips? “Starting very tight on the protagonist is a very effective technique. Raising questions like ‘Who is he?’ and ‘What’s he doing?’ suck the audience into the story. Likewise, pulling out is a great way to escort the audience out of a story. Or ending on an unexpected line is always good.”

Does he have an example of that last point? Of course, he does.

“You’re a monster!”

“Yeah. I know.”

Just like a great movie can be ruined by a poor ending, your story’s closing lines should be as carefully crafted as the first. Provide a sense of closure or a compelling hook, depending on what your narrative demands.

Final Cut

Write your fiction with the reader’s imagination in mind. Your words are the building blocks, but their minds are the theater where your story comes to life. By applying these cinematic techniques, you can make your work more immersive, engaging, and compelling.

You’re not just a writer—you’re a director, guiding your readers through a world that only you can create. Don’t be afraid to yell, “Cut!” and rework a scene. And when you’re ready, let your work shine in the spotlight.

Action!”

Setting Can Define the Story

Posted by

0

There is an article dated 15 February 2024 by Amanda Cassidy, on the Write.ie website, which makes some good points about how a location can help develop the story.

Amanda Cassidy

Amanda Cassidy is a freelance journalist, commissioning editor, former Sky News reporter and author. She has been shortlisted for the Irish Journalist of the Year Awards, the Headline Media writing awards and more recently the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger for her debut, Breaking.

She says, “I came up with the idea for my debut novel Breaking while sitting on the beach in Spain watching my children playing in the waves. From my perch on a bar stool with a notebook, I imagined the horror of how it might play out if something happened to one of them on my watch. The story of missing eight-year-old Alanna Fitzpatrick and her strangely composed mother, Mirren began.  The setting was absolutely key for what I wanted to achieve in the story. I needed a beach, but I also wanted the Fitzpatrick family to be far from home. It would make things harder and create more tension if they were abroad when the worst possible thing happened – their daughter went missing on holidays.

But I also wanted the family to speak the same language as the police, who would be investigating the case, so I transplanted the story to the US. The destination, in this case, Florida often represents a type of paradise, especially for the Irish (or me, growing up at least). As I wrote through the novel, I realised the soft white sandy beaches and turquoise setting of the beach was in delicious contrast to the craggy Connemara coast where the Fitzpatrick’s lived.

The setting of every story can evolve like this. But there are a few things to keep in mind when you decide to metaphorically pin your flag to the sand.

  1. The devil is in the detail

This might sound obvious, but if you have played things right, your readers will be hanging onto your every word. Not only do you have to get the location descriptions right if it’s an actual place, but this also feeds into your characterisation. (Actually, it feeds into the entire novel, but let’s stick with the characters for now) My lead detective, Antonio Rolle is a Miami cop, sent to Kite Island to try to find out exactly why little Alannah disappeared without trace. He refers to things like a ‘car trunk’ or money as ‘bucks’ while Mirren, the Irish mother of the young girl, stays true to her original destination. In her dialogue, she talks about the ‘boot of the car’. People always pick up on these small differences, so wherever you choose to set your novel, make sure you ‘know the lingo,’ as my late father would have said.

  1. It doesn’t have to really exist

Currolough is the setting for my second novel The Returned.  Detective Ally Fields returns to her hometown to investigate a house fire and ends up unearthing all sorts of demons. This fictional town is a mosh-up of some of my summer holidays spent in Dingle, Co. Kerry, Clifden, Co. Galway and Cobh, in Cork. The thrill of world-building for me is making up every last detail and the greatest part of this strategy that you can’t be wrong! I had so much fun conjuring up this extremely touristy town with whale-watching tours and fish and chip shops with picnic benches outside. I even imagined a bronze statue at the centre of the town that probably lived at the back of my imagination somewhere for many years.

The words in a story paint a picture, but the fun you can have deciding where a roundabout goes or how long it takes to walk to the fictional bus station, sparks joy too! The isolation of this particular town is another reason why I decided to dedicate my storyline here. There are lots of references to the bruise-coloured hills, and the clouds shadows being reflected on the lake where Ally grew up to (hopefully) add an injection of menace and pace.

  1. Use setting as character

What new writers often don’t realise is that your setting, when crafted with passion and attention to detail, informs the rest of your novel. Think about it. In real life, the places we grew up surrounded by or the cultures we are exposed to has a huge impact on the choices we make. It’s no different in fiction.

Whether you’re looking at a short story setting or the setting of a novel, the characters who populate your writing will be largely formed and informed by setting—the influences and mechanics of their everyday world. I decided to set my third novel, The Perfect Place, in the South of France. The destination meant something to me, I’d spent time going to school there when I was just sixteen and I’d worked in France on and off for years afterwards. What if my character, in this case, influencer Elle Littlewood, bought a French Chateau and charted her renovations across her social media channels. What if the previous owner of the chateau remained living there because of the nature of the deal she’d struck. In this case, the creaky old chateau becomes more than just a setting, it’s walls almost seem to breathe as Elle desperately tries to paper over the cracks of the walls (and her own crumbling life). Again, this was a lot of fun to write but it really invites the reader to get a sense of atmosphere from a place.

  1. Have a grá for the spot you choose

You are going to be spending an awful lot of time in the place you set your novel. At least a year, for some people, longer, so you might as well enjoy popping your head into the setting of your choice. I’m watching the latest True Detective series with Jodie Foster which is set in Alaska where even the day time is night-time during its ‘polar night’ and I have to admit, I’m finding it quite claustrophobic. Of course, the plot sits so well against that backdrop but writing a novel in the complete dark, with snowstorms swirling constantly might not be for everyone. I’m hoping to set my next book in the Maldives. I look forward to writing about palm trees and snorkelling trips. With murder of course. I better also do a recce!”

Slow Writers

Posted by

0

Lauren Alwan has an article on The Millions website dated two days ago in which she discusses the virtues of being a slow writer.

Lauren’s fiction and essays have appeared in The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Southern Review, ZYZZYVA, The Bellevue Literary Review, Story Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly Review, Catapult, The Millions, World Literature Today, Alta Journal, and other publications. Her work is included in the anthology AMap Is Only One Story: Twenty Writers on Immigration, Family and the Meaning of Home (ed. Nicole Chung and Mensah Demary). She is the recipient of a First Pages Prize from the de Groot Foundation, the Bellevue Literary Review’s Goldenberg Prize for Fiction, and a citation of Notable in Best American Essays.

Lauren Alwan

“As a writer at work on a book that’s taken far longer than expected—a story collection begun in 2008 now a novel in-progress—I’m interested in how, in a world that values speed, the slow writer learns to tolerate the uncertainty that comes with the long project. Is it possible to tune out the noise of doubt and the proverbial ticking clock when writing goes into overtime? Having lost count of my revisions, and in need of advice, I went looking for other slow writers and discovered that more often than not, a book’s gestation takes place over years, frequently decades. I found too that the slow writer embraces the protracted and unpredictable timeline, seeing it not as fraught or frustrating but an opportunity for openness and discovery. As J.R.R Tolkien said to W. H. Auden, on the 12 years he spent writing Lord of the Rings, “I met a lot of things on the way that astonished me.”

The world can be impatient with slow writers. Nearly a decade after Jeffrey Eugenides published Middlesex, Dwight Garner wrote in The New York Times, “It has been a long, lonely vigil. We’d nearly forgotten he was out there.” Garner’s2011 article, “Dear Important Novelists: Be Less Like Moses and More Like Howard Cosell,” argues the “long gestation period” among the period’s young writers (Middlesex was written over nine) marks “a desalinating tidal change in the place novelists occupy in our culturre.” The writer, hidden away in monkish solitude, is no longer a commentator on events of the moment in the vein of, say, Saul Bellow. Bellow wrote four massive books in 11 years, and in doing so, Garner says, “snatched control, with piratical confidence and a throbbing id, of American literature’s hive mind.” Comparing Eugenides’s books, he notes, “So much time elapses between them that his image in dust-jacket photographs can change alarmingly.” Write slowly and not only do you risk being forgotten, you may no longer be recognizable.

Books known for their protracted writing time—10, 20 years or more—span genre, length, and era. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, 10 years. Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, 28 years—and 11 for her debut, I Free Food for Millionaires Edward P. Jones imagined The Known World in his head for over a decade before writing it out in seven months, and John Steinbeck made notes for East of Eden for 11 years before writing it in a year of continual work.

Still, there are those writers who seem to work best at a clip. Anne Rice wrote Interview with a Vampire  in five weeks and Muriel Spark The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in less than four. Kazuo Ishiguro drafted The Remains of the Day in four weeks—achieved, he’s said, by implementing a process he calls The Crash: “do nothing but write from 9am to 10.30pm, Monday through Saturday. […] One hour off for lunch and two for dinner. I’d not see, let alone answer, any mail, and would not go near the phone.”

Donna Tartt, known for long intervals between books, gets through on faith in the process. The Secret History was written over a decade, and The Little Friend appeared 10 years later. Of the 11 years Tartt spent on The Goldfinch (Garner describes the author during this time as “vanished”), she’s said, “Things will come to you and you’re not going to know exactly how they fit in. You have to trust in the way they all fit together, that your subconscious knows what you’re doing.”

Min Jin Lee has described the 28 years spent writing Pachinko—beginning with the novel’s inception during her student days at Yale to publication in 2017—as “far too long.” It wasn’t until years into the novel’s writing that the project took a turn. During a four-year stay in Japan, after interviewing Japanese Koreans in Osaka, Lee came to realize she’d “been wrong about everything,” and soon after rewrote the manuscript from the beginning. “I was so impressed by the breadth and complexity of the people I met in Japan,” she said, “that I had to start the book again in 2008, and I continued to write it and revise it until the sale of the manuscript in 2015.”

The writer engaged in the long project hopes for such turns of luck, and wanting to know firsthand how luck and persistence inform the long project, I turned to writers I know, hoping for advice on how to tune out my own questioning and cultivate a next-level order of patience.

John Huddleston, photographer and professor emeritus at Middlebury College, is the author of four books—hybrid works of text and image that examine time, history, and place. Killing Ground: The Civil War and the Changing American Landscape (2003), is the product of 15 years of travel and research, and pairs historical photographs of Civil War battle sites with contemporary photos of the same locations. Healing Ground: Walking the Farms if Vermont (2011), and At Home in the Northern Forest: Photographs of the Changing Vermont Landscape (2020) each took a decade, as Huddleston says, “to better understand what I was seeing.” His current project, an interrogation of Mexico’s religious sites and his own Catholicism—has run nearly 50 years. How does he pace himself? “I think the long periods of constructing my books have engendered a maturity in the editing and printing of images,” he says. “A more nuanced and interesting perspective develops with time.”

Drue Heinz prizewinner Leslie Pietrzyk, the author of This Angel on My Chest (2015), believes in staying open to change: “My advice is to remain flexible. Perhaps my greatest ‘being flexible’ moment was working on what I imagined was a novel about a political family for two and a half years, abandoning it, and picking it up again four years later.” She repurposed much of that material, including random and forgotten prompt pieces, into her most recent collection, Admit This to No One (2021), linked stories about power in Washington, DC.

Poet, essayist, and Fulbright fellow Natasha Saje’s five books include The Future Will Call You Something Else (2023), a book of criticism, Windows and Doors: A Poet Reads Literary Theory (2014), and a memoir-in-essays, Terroir (2020). Windows and Doors was written over 16 years, and Terroir, 10. A self-professed feedback junkie, she seeks out frank, even harsh readers. “There’s always some truth in what they don’t like,” she says, and then revises extensively, as she puts it, “like a maniac.”

Thaïs Miller wrote her first two books in less than a year and published both before she was 21. The author of Our Machinery (2008) and The Subconscious Mutiny and Other Stories (2009), Miller says of those early quicksilver efforts, “Beginner’s luck is an understatement.” Currently a PhD candidate in Creative Writing, her dissertation includes a novel begun in 2009, one that’s still finding its shape. These days, Samuel Beckett’s words, “Fail better,” are pinned on a board above her desk, a reminder that “writers are always failing to achieve a perfectionist ideal. […] These words let me off the hook and enable me to experiment and play with my work, to try out new things.”

How, amid doubt, does a writer keep focus, and pace herself over years, even decades? Saje says, “I write and then get pieces published, which gives me confidence that there will be readers for the book.” Pietryzk writes prompts around her novel’s characters and settings and the material often becomes short stories she publishes in literary journals. For Huddleston, over time the work “integrates into the self, into one’s life. I generally work intensely until I can’t stand it anymore, let the work sit, then repeat. If I have a particular problem I’ll often hold it in mind without actively thinking about it.”

This immersion over years, or decades, what George Saunders calls “rigorous, iterative engagement,” can be fruitful, but it can also make a book’s endpoint more difficult to see. Huddleston’s 50-year project, which is nearing completion, has in the end surprised him. “I’ve returned to the project many times after feeling it was done,” he says, and in doing so, encountered an unexpected complication: wishing the work could go on. Similarly, Vauhini Vara, author of The Immortal King Rao (2022), says of the 13 years it took to write her debut novel, “On some level I wanted to keep spending time with it, finding its unexplored corners, tunneling into its wormholes. I didn’t want to let it go.”

So—know when to let go, keep faith in the process, be flexible, fail better, and whenever possible, stay astonished. Though perhaps most importantly, recognize the value that comes with the passing of time itself. In The Art of Slow Writing: Reflections of Time, Craft and Creativity, essayist Louise DeSalvo writes, “We’ve internalized the idea that that the only actions worth taking are those that can be accomplished quickly, […] that if our writing takes so long, we might not be cut out for the writing life.” The Art of Slow Writing is a manifesto for giving a book the time it needs, for cultivating patience and connection. DeSalvo describes, among other things, the challenge of “not knowing how long a book will take, and being comfortable with not knowing.”

Of Jeffrey Eugenides’s slow pace, DeSalvo writes that he “works with rather than against the fact that his books take long to write.” The years writing Middlesex, she notes, saw both the death of his father and the birth of his daughter, and over time these significant life events led to preoccupations with family history and genetic discourse that found their way into the book: “He wanted the novel to respond to those changes as he worked.” This synergy can blur the line between life and art and make completing a long project its own challenge. But as DeSalvo observes, finishing isn’t really the end if “we see our writing life as a continuum,” a larger process that connects each project, whether short or long, within the learned experience of the writer’s practice.

And as DeSalvo notes, there’s always the next book.”

Review: LUKA

Posted by

0

This novel was recommended to me by a friend, and as it is about civil conflict situations, I bought a copy.

The author, Ian Bancroft, is a writer and former diplomat based in the former Yugoslavia for over fifteen years. He has written travel articles for various publications, and he has produced foreign policy analysis for The Guardian, Radio Free Europe, UN Global Experts and others. Ian’s first book, ‘Dragon’s teeth – tales from north Kosovo’, was published in 2020.

There are four main characters in LUKA. ‘A’ is a beautiful girl who grew up in Old Town; she has lived through a prior war. She is single and now twenty-seven. ‘L’ is a talented young painter who also lives in Old Town. ‘U’ is a long-serving police officer who never questioned the wisdom of his superiors. ‘K’ is the mother of ‘A’, and an assembly-line worker in a munitions factors. She vigorously defends her father known by the nom de guerre ‘Jinn’, as in ‘djinn’, owing to his almost mystical ability to conjure things into existence. Her father is rumoured to profit from illegal arms sales. ‘A’s great grandfather – unnamed- also appears in the context of previous wars. Most of the book deals with the historic and current conflicts of Old Town, New Town, Upper Town and Lower Town. These are not straight forward military conflicts, but anti-civilian conflicts, involving snipers, rape, torture, imprisonment, and other crimes against humanity. ‘L’ is imprisoned in Luka, an assortment of warehouses in a port. His left hand, which he uses to paint, is crushed by an invisible woman using a hammer. The woman smells of vanilla. At the conclusion of the conflict, ‘A’ and ‘L’ plan to marry. ‘L’ visits ‘A’ at ‘K’s house, where he suddenly recognises ‘K’ as the woman who smells of vanilla. ‘K’ runs out of the house, pursued by ‘A’ and into a nearby forest which is mined. There is an explosion which ends the novel.

LUKA is almost a catalogue of crimes against humanity, presented factually, but there is relatively little explanation of the motivations, the reasons, impulses, etc. which generate these crimes. The characters are realistic, but the use of generic letters to identify them deprives them of flesh and blood. Similarly, the use of generic place names takes away their authenticity. The time line of the book is sometimes difficult to follow. The actual narrative covers about twenty years, but the historic references cover nearly a century. A more conventional structure, cause and effect, and real world identification would have been far more satisfying.

Rarely Used Power Words

Posted by

0

There is a list of 30 English words which are rarely used, powerful, and should be available to any writer appearing in the June 22, 2023 issue of Literature News and contributed by Alka. I think this is quite a good list, because all of them have a clear, crisp meaning, and while they may be rarely used, they aren’t obscure. Interestingly, none is an adverb. How many are familiar?

1. Abstruse (adj.): Difficult to understand; obscure.
Sentence 1: The professor’s abstruse lecture on quantum physics left the students bewildered.
Sentence 2: The book contained an abstruse passage that required multiple readings to grasp its meaning.

2. Acrimonious (adj.): Harsh in nature, speech, or behaviour.
Sentence 1: The divorce proceedings became acrimonious as the couple fought over their assets.
Sentence 2: The debate turned acrimonious as the politicians exchanged personal insults.

3. Alacrity (n.): Willingness to do something quickly and enthusiastically.
Sentence 1: Sarah accepted the job offer with alacrity, excited to start her new role.
Sentence 2: The team responded to the coach’s halftime pep talk with renewed alacrity on the field.

4. Ameliorate (v.): To make something better or improve a situation.
Sentence 1: The doctor’s treatment plan ameliorated the patient’s symptoms and enhanced their well-being.
Sentence 2: The charity’s efforts to provide clean water to the village ameliorated the living conditions of the residents.

5. Assiduous (adj.): Showing great care, attention to detail, and perseverance in one’s work.
Sentence 1: The assiduous researcher spent countless hours in the lab conducting experiments.
Sentence 2: The author’s assiduous editing process ensured that the final manuscript was flawless.

6. Clandestine (adj.): Done secretly or in a concealed manner, often implying something illicit or forbidden.
Sentence 1: The spies met in a clandestine location to exchange classified information.
Sentence 2: The couple planned a clandestine rendezvous under the moonlit sky.

7. Conundrum (n.): A difficult or confusing problem or question.
Sentence 1: Solving the puzzle proved to be a conundrum even for the most experienced players.
Sentence 2: The ethical conundrum presented in the novel forced the protagonist to make a challenging decision.

8. Deleterious (adj.): Harmful or damaging to health, well-being, or success.
Sentence 1: Smoking has been proven to have deleterious effects on both physical and mental health.
Sentence 2: The company’s deleterious financial decisions led to its eventual bankruptcy.

9. Ephemeral (adj.): Lasting for a short period; transitory or fleeting.
Sentence 1: The beauty of cherry blossoms is ephemeral, as the flowers bloom for only a few weeks each year.
Sentence 2: The actor’s fame was ephemeral, as he quickly faded into obscurity after his initial success.

10. Equanimity (n.): Calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in difficult situations.
Sentence 1: Despite the chaos around her, she maintained her equanimity and approached the problem with a clear mind.
Sentence 2: The leader’s equanimity during the crisis reassured the team and helped them stay focused.

11. Esoteric (adj.): Intended for or understood by only a small group with specialised knowledge or interest.
Sentence 1: The professor’s lecture on advanced mathematics was esoteric, and only a few students could follow along.
Sentence 2: The book delved into esoteric philosophies that were beyond the comprehension of most readers.

12. Exacerbate (v.): To make a problem, situation, or condition worse or more severe.
Sentence 1: The hot weather exacerbated the drought, leading to further water shortages.
Sentence 2: His careless comments only served to exacerbate the tensions between the two families.

13. Fervent (adj.): Intensely passionate or enthusiastic.
Sentence 1: The artist had a fervent desire to create meaningful and thought-provoking artwork.
Sentence 2: The politician delivered a fervent speech that inspired the crowd and ignited their patriotic spirit.

14. Gregarious (adj.): Fond of the company of others; sociable.
Sentence 1: Mark was known for his gregarious nature and always enjoyed hosting parties.
Sentence 2: The gregarious puppy wagged its tail and eagerly greeted every person it encountered.

15. Idiosyncrasy (n.): A distinctive or peculiar feature, behaviour, or characteristic that is unique to an individual or group.
Sentence 1: John had the idiosyncrasy of wearing mismatched socks every day.
Sentence 2: The small coastal town had its idiosyncrasies, including a yearly festival dedicated to seashells.

16. Impervious (adj.): Not allowing something to pass through or penetrate; incapable of being affected or influenced.
Sentence 1: The fortress was built with thick walls that were impervious to enemy attacks.
Sentence 2: Despite the criticism, her confidence remained impervious, and she continued pursuing her dreams.

17. Languid (adj.): Lacking energy or enthusiasm; slow and relaxed in manner.
Sentence 1: After a long day at work, she enjoyed taking a languid stroll by the beach to unwind.
Sentence 2: The hot summer afternoon made everyone feel languid and drowsy.

18. Melancholy (n.): A feeling of deep sadness or pensive sorrow, often with no obvious cause.
Sentence 1: As she watched the sunset, a sense of melancholy washed over her, and she reflected on the passing of time.
Sentence 2: The hauntingly beautiful melody carried a tinge of melancholy that touched the hearts of all who listened.

19. Myriad (adj.): Countless or innumerable; a large, indefinite number.
Sentence 1: The garden was adorned with myriad flowers, each displaying its vibrant colours and delicate petals.
Sentence 2: The old bookstore housed a myriad of books, spanning various genres and eras.

20. Nebulous (adj.): Vague, hazy, or indistinct in form or outline; lacking clarity.
Sentence 1: The concept of time is nebulous, as it is difficult to define precisely.
Sentence 2: The artist’s abstract painting featured nebulous shapes and colours, allowing viewers to interpret it in their own way.

21. Obfuscate (v.): To make something unclear, confusing, or difficult to understand.
Sentence 1: The lawyer attempted to obfuscate the facts to create doubt in the minds of the jurors.
Sentence 2: The politician’s speech was filled with jargon and obfuscating language to avoid addressing the issue directly.

22. Panacea (n.): A solution or remedy that is believed to solve all problems or cure all ills.
Sentence 1: Some people view education as a panacea for societal issues and inequality.
Sentence 2: The new product was marketed as a panacea for ageing, promising to reverse all signs of wrinkles and fine lines.

23. Querulous (adj.): Complaining or whining in a petulant or irritable manner.
Sentence 1: The querulous customer was dissatisfied with every aspect of the service and demanded a refund.
Sentence 2: The child’s querulous tone annoyed the teacher, who asked him to speak with respect.

24. Reticent (adj.): Inclined to keep silent or reserved; not revealing one’s thoughts or feelings readily.
Sentence 1: Despite the intense questioning, the witness remained reticent and refused to disclose any further information.
Sentence 2: The usually reticent boy opened up to his best friend, sharing his deepest fears and insecurities.

25. Sagacious (adj.): Having or showing keen mental discernment and good judgment; wise and shrewd.
Sentence 1: The sagacious old man offered valuable advice based on his years of experience.
Sentence 2: The CEO’s sagacious decision to invest in new technology propelled the company to unprecedented success.

26. Taciturn (adj.): Reserved or inclined to silence; habitually silent or uncommunicative.
Sentence 1: The taciturn loner preferred solitude and rarely engaged in conversations with others.
Sentence 2: Despite his taciturn nature, his eyes spoke volumes, revealing the emotions he kept hidden.

27. Ubiquitous (adj.): Present, appearing, or found everywhere.
Sentence 1: In today’s digital age, smartphones have become ubiquitous, accompanying people in every aspect of their lives.
Sentence 2: The fragrance of freshly brewed coffee was ubiquitous in the café, enveloping the space with its comforting aroma.

28. Vacillate (v.): To waver or hesitate in making a decision or choice; to be indecisive.
Sentence 1: She vacillated between accepting the job offer and pursuing further education.
Sentence 2: The committee’s members vacillated for hours, unable to agree on a course of action.

29. Wanton (adj.): Deliberate and without motive or provocation; reckless or careless.
Sentence 1: The wanton destruction of the historic monument outraged the community.
Sentence 2: The driver’s wanton disregard for traffic rules led to a dangerous accident.

30. Zealot (n.): A person who is fanatical and uncompromising in pursuit of their religious, political, or other beliefs.
Sentence 1: The religious zealot preached his beliefs on street corners, attempting to convert passersby.
Sentence 2: The political zealot refused to consider alternative viewpoints and dismissed any opposing opinions as invalid.

AI Wins Prize

Posted by

0

An article in today’s RTÉ website titled: “Japan literary laureate unashamed about using ChatGPT” caught my eye. There is no author contribution shown.

“The winner of Japan’s most prestigious literary award has acknowledged that about “5%” of her futuristic novel was penned by ChatGPT, saying generative AI had helped unlock her potential.

Since the 2022 launch of ChatGPT, an easy-to-use AI chatbot that can deliver an essay upon request within seconds, there have been growing worries about the impact on a range of sectors – books included.

Lauded by a judge for being “almost flawless” and “universally enjoyable”, Rie Kudan’s latest novel, “Tokyo-to Dojo-to” (“Sympathy Tower Tokyo”), claimed the biannual Akutagawa Prize yesterday.

Set in a futuristic Tokyo, the book revolves around a high-rise prison tower and its architect’s intolerance of criminals, with AI a recurring theme.

The 33-year-old author openly admitted that AI heavily influenced her writing process as well.

“I made active use of generative AI like ChatGPT in writing this book,” she told a ceremony following the winner’s announcement.

“I would say about 5% of the book quoted verbatim the sentences generated by AI.”

Outside of her creative activity, Ms Kudan said she frequently toys with AI, confiding her innermost thoughts that “I can never talk to anyone else about”.

ChatGPT’s responses sometimes inspired dialogue in the novel, she added.

Going forward, she said she wants to keep “good relationships” with AI and “unleash my creativity” in co-existence with it.

When contacted by AFP, the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Literature, the Akutagawa award’s organiser, declined to comment.

On social media, opinions were divided on Ms Kudan’s unorthodox approach to writing, with sceptics calling it morally questionable and potentially undeserving of the prize.

“So she wrote the book by deftly using AI … Is that talented or not? I don’t know,” one wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

But others celebrated her resourcefulness and the effort she put into experimenting with various prompts.

“So this is how the Akutagawa laureate uses ChatGPT – not to slack off but to ‘unleash creativity'”, another social media user wrote.

Titles that list ChatGPT as a co-author have been offered for sale through Amazon’s e-book self-publishing unit, although critics say the works are of poor quality.

British author Salman Rushdie told a press conference at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October that recently someone asked an AI writing tool to produce 300 words in his style.

“And what came out was pure garbage,” said the “Midnight’s Children” writer, to laughter from the audience.

The technology also throws up a host of potential legal problems.

Last year, John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and “Game of Thrones” author George RR Martin were among several writers who filed a class-action lawsuit against ChatGPT creator OpenAI over alleged copyright violation.

Along with the Authors Guild, they accused the California-based company of using their books “without permission” to train ChatGPT’s large language models, algorithms capable of producing human-sounding text responses based on simple queries, according to the lawsuit.”

From my point of view, the use of AI to produce literature must sort out the copyright problem. When that issue has been resolved, using AI to write, or co-write, books will be accepted as commonplace, legal and ethical. We human beings have always adopted new technology, even dangerous technology, having found the good in it.

Collaboration: Novelists & AI?

Posted by

0

Debbie Urbanski has an article on the Lit Hub website dated December 8, 2023 in which she argues that novelists should embrace artificial intelligence.

Debbie Urbanski is a writer, nature lover, and human whose stories and essays have been published widely in such places as The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, The Best American Experimental Writing, The Sun, Granta, Orion, and Junior Great Books. A recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, she can often be found hiking with her family in the hills south of Syracuse, New York.

Debbie Urbanski

Debbie says: “Let’s imagine, for the purpose of this essay, that the following statement is true: An AI writes a novel.

Actually, forget about the imagining. This is already happening. Today’s AIs—large language models (LLMs) specifically, like GPT-4—can write. If you’ve glanced at the headlines this year, you probably know this. They can write papers for high school students, they can write bad poetry, they can write sentences, they can write paragraphs, and they can write novels.

The problem is, for now, the creative writing that LLMs produce isn’t that great.

To demonstrate this point, I recently gave GPT-4 a few lines from my novel that describe a post-human world. Then I asked it to complete the paragraph. Here’s what it wrote:

The woods seemed to inhale, drawing in its myriad of lifeforms, coalescing into a pulsing organism. The gurgling creek was its veins, the trees its lungs, the moss and ferns, its skin. This realm thrived on its own rhythm, deaf to the clockwork of man-made time. Creatures great and small, predators and prey, living in an intricate ballet—well, you get the idea. If I were being kind, I would call these sentences overwrought and unpleasant.

So here’s what I really want us to imagine for the purpose of this essay: An AI writes a novel and the novel is good.

This is what a lot of people, and certainly a lot of writers, are angry and scared about right now. That AI, having been trained on a massive amount of data, including copyrighted books written by uncompensated authors, will begin writing as well or better than us, and then we’ll be out of a job. These concerns over intellectual property and remuneration are important but right now, it feels they’re dominating the discussion, especially when there are other worthwhile topics that I’d like to see added to the conversation around AI and writing.

Such as: how can humans and AI collaborate creatively?

Which brings me to a third possibility to consider: An AI and a human write a novel together.

In my first novel After World, I imagine humanity has gone extinct and an AI, trained on thousands of 21st century novels, has been tasked to write their own novel about the last human on Earth. When I began writing in the voice of my AI narrator in 2019, I had no idea that within a few years, artificial intelligence would explode into public view, offering me unexpected opportunities for experimentation with what, up until that point, I had been only imagining.

Some of the interactions I’ve had with LLMs like GPT-3, GPT-4, and ChatGPT have been comical. GPT-3 recommended some truly awful book titles, such as Your Heart Was A Dying Light In An Abyss Of Black, But I Lit It Up Until You Burned Bright And Beautiful, or Eve: A Love Story. (Eve is not in this novel, I explained. This didn’t seem to matter. It is just a cute play on words, replied GPT-3.) But many of my conversations with LLMs have been fascinating.

I’ve discussed with them about what AI would dream if they dreamed. We talked about the questions an AI might have about how it feels to be a human. We discussed what the boundary between AI and humans would look like if this boundary was a physical one. (An “ever-evolving, shimmering and translucent wall,” if you’re wondering.) We talked about why poetry comforts people, and we tried writing poetry and song lyrics together. We created so much bad poetry and so many bad songs.

But after days and days of so much bad writing, GPT-4 presented me with this pleading prayer which now appears at a turning point of my novel. To the embodiment of growth and expansion, / To the embodiment of purpose and fulfillment. / To all these entities and more, I humbly offer my plea, / Grant me the strength to manifest my desires…

One can certainly reduce these sorts of exchanges to my typing in prompts and the LLMs responding to those prompts, but what I’ve experienced feels like a much more collaborative process, more of an active conversation that builds on previous interactions. In a way, when we talk with GPT-4, we’re talking to ourselves. At the same time, we’re talking to our past, to words we’ve already written or typed or said. At the same time, we’re talking with our future, portions of which are unimaginable. As a writer, I find that the most exciting of all.

Here are a few other examples of human-AI collaboration that leave me optimistic:

1. “Sunspring”“ (2016)
A short film directed and acted with grave seriousness by professional humans but written by Benjamin, a LSTM recurrent neural network. The writing is surprising, surreal, and beautiful. I’ve watched this film more times than I’ve watched any other. I find it both weird and moving. It features one of the prettiest songs I know, “Home on the Land,” written by Benjamin but sung and scored by the human duo Tiger and Man. From the lyrics: I was a long long time / I was so close to you / I was a long time ago. (Interesting to note that “Zone Out,” Benjamin’s much less collaborative 2018 film that he wrote, acted in, directed, and scored, doesn’t have nearly the same emotional impact as his more collaborative work, despite the fact that the technology had advanced in the two intervening years.

2. Bennet Miller’s exhibition at Gagosian (2023)
Miller, a Hollywood director, generated more than 100,000 images through Dall·E for this project. The gallery show displayed 20 of them. When I first saw these photographs in March 2023, I couldn’t stop looking at them. I still can’t look away. I find them haunting, existing on the edges of documentary and fiction and humanness, suggesting a past and memories that didn’t happen but nonetheless was recorded.

3. Other Dall-E’s collaboration with artists (ongoing)
In particular, check out Maria Mavropoulou’s work on “A self-portrait of an algorithm”  and “Imagined Images”; everything August Kamp is doing, including documenting the worlds of her actual dreams with ChatGPT and Dall·E; and Charlotte Triebus’ Precious Camouflage, which examines the relationship between dance and artificial intelligence.

I worry that we’re forgetting how amazing this all is. Rather than feeling cursed or worried, I feel lucky to get to be here and witness such a change to how we think, live, read, understand, and create. Yes, we have some things to figure out, issues of training, rights, and contracts—and, on a larger level, safety—but I think it’s equally important to look up from such concerns from time to time with interest and even optimism, and wonder how this new advance in technology might widen our perspectives, our sense of self, our creativity, and our definition of what is human.”

Ending a Short Story

Posted by

0

Peter Mountford has some excellent advice on how to end a short story in his article of February 12, 2023 on the Writers Digest website.

Peter Mountford is a popular writing coach and developmental editor. Author of two award-winning novels, A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism and The Dismal Science, his essays and short fiction have appeared in The Paris Review, NYT (Modern Love), The Atlantic, The Sun, Granta, and elsewhere.

Peter Mountford

Peter says, “Many of my students and clients spend years working on a debut novel, only to discover that to get a literary agent’s attention they need to publish something—maybe a few short stories in literary magazines. But writing a great (or even publishable) short story isn’t easy.

Faulkner famously said every novelist is a failed short story writer, and short stories are the most difficult form after poetry. There’s some truth to the idea that short stories have more in common with poems than novels. Novels are more labor intensive, for sure, but there’s something fluke-ish and rare about a perfect short story.

Short story writing hones your craft in miniature, without having to throw away multiple “practice” novels, which can be—speaking from experience—uncomfortable and time-consuming.

The best short stories are remembered for their ends, which “leave the reader in a kind of charged place of contemplation,” according to Kelly Link—a Pulitzer finalist whose fifth collection of stories, White Cat, Black Dog, will be out soon.

David Means, author most recently of a new collection of stories, Two Nurses, Smoking, said, “A good ending doesn’t answer a question. It opens up the deeper mystery of the story itself. There isn’t room in a short story to do anything but leave the reader alone with the story.”

“I want an ending that feels like a punch in the gut that I wasn’t expecting but totally deserved,” says Rebecca Makkai, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist The Great Believers, and whose stories have had four appearances in the Best American Short Stories series.

What Is an Ending?

Before we get to techniques, there’s the question of what we mean by the “end” of a story? Is it the last scene, or the climactic turn, or the actual final sentences?

In the days of O. Henry’s short stories, the climax, last scene, and final sentences were all largely the same, and featured an unlikely plot twist accompanied by direct moral instruction. “The Gift of the Magi” concludes with the husband and wife realizing that in an effort to give their spouse the perfect small gift they’ve each spoiled receipt of their own small gift. In the final paragraph, O. Henry awkwardly steps in to explain the moral of the story, how they “most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house.” It feels hoary and antique to a modern reader.

Now, the big climactic moment often happens two-thirds of the way through the story, not on the last page, and the story’s moral or lack thereof must be deduced by the reader.

Consider ZZ Packer’s amazing “Brownies,” where the story’s confrontation builds from the first sentence, when one Black Brownie troop hatches a plan to “kick the asses of each and every girl” in another white Brownie troop, after possibly overhearing a racial slur.

About two-thirds through the story, right as they’re about to fight, it’s discovered that the white troop is mentally disabled. But the story doesn’t end there with a moral quip, as it would have 100 years ago. In the few pages that follow, on the bus home after the confrontation and its fallout, the narrator describes her father, who once asked some Mennonites to paint his porch. “It was the only time he’d have a white man on his knees doing something for a Black man for free.”

Another girl asks her if her father thanked them. “‘No,’ I said, and suddenly knew there was something mean in the world that I could not stop.” The reader sees now that this story is about how terrible treatment can lead to anger and further cruelty.

This part of the story, the bus ride after the action, is what you might call a coda, and the coda often contains the real “magic” in a contemporary story. The word coda comes from music, where it means an ending that, according to the dictionary, stands “outside the formal structure of the piece.”

In the coda—and not all contemporary stories have a coda, but most do—the writer helps the reader identify meaning without stating it as bluntly as O. Henry did. By leaving the work of interpretation to the reader, the writer allows for variety in how we might interpret the story. With ambiguity, the reader can continue to think about the story.

The Process: To Plan or Not to Plan

John Irving famously (supposedly?) writes the last line of every novel first, and then finds his way there.

Similarly, Kelly Link wants to know the end before she starts—it’s the least shiftable piece for her. She mulls a story over while swimming and walking. Having an ending in mind makes her more “surefooted about where to begin,” and what choices to make early in the story.

When editing or teaching, she suggests that a writer’s first idea for an ending often might be too obvious, and the second merely less obvious. The third will be more innovative, or singular.

When friends are working on stories, she enjoys kicking around ideas for their ends, going straight for some wild “‘bad idea’ that’s large and fun, and often goes somewhere strange or personal or interesting.”

On the other hand, Danielle Evans, whose second collection of stories, The Office of Historical Corrections, came out in 2020, said she can’t get excited about writing something unless she’s the first reader surprised.

Rebecca Makkai says she often has an ending in mind from the start, but “I very much hope I’m wrong. If I land right where I always thought I would, I’ve probably written a terribly obvious story.”

My own experience is that often when the story concludes in a way that is somewhat obvious or inevitable from the outset, there is even more of a burden on the writer to summon a brilliant coda and some stunning insights to wow the reader.

Tricks of the Short Story Trade

What do you do when you’re stuck, don’t like your current ending, or didn’t plan your ending? Several simple techniques might open things up for you.

Trick #1: Jump in Time

“I try to remember that the ending doesn’t have to stay in the same room or world or mode or timeframe as the rest of the story,” Makkai says. “These seismic shifts shake us loose from the world of the story and are very likely where we’ll find the story’s echoes and meanings.”

In Danielle Evans’ story “Snakes,” two 8-year-old cousins (one biracial and one white) are with their belittling, racist grandmother for a summer stay. The cousins get along, but at the climax the white cousin pushes narrator Tara out of a tree, almost killing her. The story could end there. Instead, “Snakes” jumps forward.

In her 20s, Tara has finished law school and likes to retell the story almost as entertainment. Her cousin is in a radically different place and has attempted suicide. When Tara visits her in a mental hospital, they’re kind to each other, yet their personalities and differing home lives sent them on radically different paths. The final paragraphs reveal that the narrator wasn’t pushed—she jumped from that tree, as a successful effort to get away from her grandmother. Her white cousin was left behind and endured a damaging, toxic relationship. The ending provides cues as to why their paths diverged, and the risks Tara took to escape.

You can also leap back in time. In Charles D’Ambrosio’s “The Point,” the story wraps up after the teenage narrator successfully and safely transports a drunk woman to her house. Then the coda: a flashback, the narrator coming upon his father after he’d shot himself in the head. It’s still a jump in time far away from the frame of the story but echoes an earlier time he couldn’t save someone.

To apply this approach, don’t be shy with time. Look for a big moment well in the future. Or, if the story has had few flashbacks, but the reader senses that the main character has a complex backstory, maybe you can go there to add another layer.

Trick #2: Change Lenses

Makkai points to Percival Everett’s hilarious and subversive “The Appropriation of Cultures,” as an example. Daniel, a Black man in South Carolina, decides to change how he sees the Confederate flag. He decides to treat it as a “Black Power flag,” then reinvents “Dixie” as a celebration of his own racial and cultural identity. Baffled racists are left floundering as Daniel appropriates the icons of their hate.

In the story’s final movement, the scope changes completely, pulling back to reveal the landscape from a more distant perspective. We leave Daniel’s story behind as the narrator shows other Black folks in Columbia, S.C. adopting the trend. We’re told the state’s white leaders decided to take down that flag—its meaning now inverted—from the state house.

To apply this to your own work, play with perspective—try stepping out of the confines of the story and looking at what might happen as a result if you pull back, or change the POV to an omniscient narrator. However, you can’t usually switch perspectives from one character to another. This tends to feel forced and jarring for the reader.

Trick #3: Make a Flat Character Three-Dimensional

This is a favorite of mine. Tobias Wolff’s “Bullet in the Brain” combines this technique with a swing to a new POV—many great stories use several techniques at once.

The unpleasant POV character is shot dead about two-thirds of the way through the story, and the story pivots to an omniscient narrator. The narrator now catalogues Anders’ memories that didn’t flash in the final milliseconds of his life—memorizing hundreds of poems so that he could give himself the chills, seeing his daughter berating her stuffed animals, and so on.

Crucially, these unrecalled memories transform Anders from unlikable flat character to someone complicated. By the time the bullet leaves his “troubled skull behind, dragging its comet’s tail of memory and hope and talent and love into the marble hall of commerce …” readers are moved to tears.

Interestingly, the character in Wolff’s story has no epiphany, he doesn’t evolve. Only the reader’s understanding of the character changes. As novelist and short story writer Jim Shepard once wrote: “a short story, by definition, does have a responsibility in its closing gestures, to enlarge our [the reader’s] understanding.”

To do this, look for a character in the story who might be fairly important—possibly an oppositional character to the protagonist—but remains flat or slightly cliché. The mean jock. The shy nerd. Find a situation at the end where they’re acting in a way that complicates the reader’s sense of them. You can also see this in the final scene of “Brownies,” when the shy narrator and her shy friend become the center of attention.

Trick #4: Shift From Summary to Scene

Donald Barthelme’s surreal, darkly funny “The School” is told primarily in summary, narrated by a teacher describing a school year marked by death. His students try to grow orange trees but the trees wither; then the snakes die, along with herb gardens, tropical fish … the class’s puppy. The deaths are increasingly surreal and funny.

No scenes occur until the final page, when Barthelme “lands,” finally, in a scene, where the students grill the teacher with amusing and improbable over-eloquence over the meaning of death and life. The students press him for a demonstration regarding the value of life and love; he kisses his teaching assistant on the brow, and she embraces him (yes, the story is very strange). A new gerbil walks into the room to enthusiastic applause.

After reading “The School,” I borrowed this technique—summarizing a broad period of time, and then landing in a pivotal scene—for my story “Two Sisters,” which is unreliably narrated by a young man who hangs around with a wealthy jet-setting group. After summarizing the preceding year, the story shifts to scene where one of the rich kids says he’s no longer welcome—they find him too weird. Overwhelmed, he tries to attack her, but she gets away. He’s literally and metaphorically stranded in the wilderness.

The story couldn’t be more different in style and tone from “The School,” but the technique is the same.

To make this technique work, just look for a story that has a conversational style and covers a lot of ground, in terms of time. A narrator who seems to be chatting away about a period of time, and then drop them into a moment which animates and changes the situation they’ve been describing.

Trick #5: Return to an Object or Situation Mentioned Earlier

If a student or author who Kelly Link is editing is struggling with the end to their story, she suggests looking to “the beginning of the story, to see what was being promised there.”

Often, a story closes by returning to an object, situation, or idea mentioned early in the story. Kirstin Valdez Quade’s remarkable story “Nemecia” describes the narrator’s cousin’s shattered doll on the first page. By the story’s end, the narrator has been safeguarding this doll for half a century. She calls her now-elderly cousin to ask if she wants the doll, which the reader can now see symbolizes the cousin’s harrowing childhood. The cousin says she doesn’t even remember the doll.

Asked how she came up with this ending, Quade explained the initial draft was about 50 percent longer. An editor pointed out a sentence that would become the story’s last line, which echoes the doll’s shards. She took the advice, and “remembered the doll from the beginning and saw the opportunity.” Once she saw the proper end, she cut away everything unnecessary throughout, leaving this unforgettable conclusion.

To do this, add things to a story that you don’t know how or if you’ll use later. If they don’t end up being useful, cut them, but it’s easier to find these opportunities if you’ve scattered potential reference points in the first half of the story.

Trick #6: If All Else Fails, Keep Going

Danielle Evans points out that she often writes a paragraph that could end the story, but then she keeps going, “and those extra beats are what open it back up and make everything more interesting.”

Means offers a similar recommendation—and clearly Quade did this with “Nemecia.” “When you’re starting out as a writer,” Means said, “you sometimes write past the ending and then have to go back and cut, finding the right place to let it stop,” he says. “It’s a horrible feeling, cutting your own work, a sort of self-amputation, like the hiker who has to cut off his own foot—stuck between rocks—to keep living. But the end result can be stunning. The reader wonders how you did it. You’ve covered your tracks.”

Wrapping It Up

The best short stories can seem miraculous, intimidatingly perfect. Ends so inspired that no mere mortal could ever come up with something like that. But people do it all the time.

Sometimes it’s just trial and error. Sometimes you have to overwrite, pile up the writing and then see what should be kept. Then again, as Evans said, if you can make it to the final third of a story, and the first two-thirds are right, then you can “find the ending on momentum.””

Seeing What a Child Sees

Posted by

0

On The Epoch Times website, there is an article by Kate Vidimos, dated 2/11/2023 which illustrates how emotionally powerful a short story can be. Ms Vidimos describes a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the early nineteenth century American writer, about a walk he took with his young daughter.

Kate Vidimos is a 2020 graduate from the liberal arts college at the University of Dallas, where she received her bachelor’s degree in English. She is a journalist with The Epoch Times and plans on pursuing all forms of storytelling (specifically film) and is currently working on finishing and illustrating a children’s book.

Ms Vidimos writes: “Look! Do you see how that light shines on the pavement in the rain? It sparkles like magic and spreads its light, despite the dark clouds which seem to discourage it. Such is the world as seen through the eyes of a child.

In his short story “Little Annie’s Ramble”, Nathaniel Hawthorne encourages us to take a childish view of the world to refresh and simplify the sober, complex adult world. As he takes his daughter’s hand for a walk, Hawthorne shows how a child can lead us on a magical and wise journey.

Hawthorne takes his little 5-year-old daughter Annie by the hand to wander and wonder aimlessly about the town. They set out for the town-crier’s bell, announcing the arrival of the circus: Ding-dong!

From the beginning, Hawthorne notes the difference between himself and Annie, like the bell’s different notes (ding-dong). His adult step his heavy and somber (dong). Yet Annie’s step is light and joyful, “as if she is forced to keep hold of [his] hand lest her feet should dance away from the earth” (ding).

They journey along, looking at the different people, places, and things that present themselves to their view. Hawthorne moralizes and philosophizes about these different subjects, seeing the objects within the windows as they are, while Annie trips along dancing to an organ-grinder’s music and seeing in the windows her reflection.

Yet, as they pass along, Hawthorne’s mind grows more aligned with Annie’s. As they pass a bakery, they both marvel at the many confectionary delights in the window. He remembers his own boyhood, when he enjoyed those treats the most. As his daughter’s hand wraps around his own, childhood magic wraps around him.

But behold! The most magical place on earth for a child is the toy store. In its windows, fairies, kings, and queens dance and dine. Here, the child builds fantastical worlds that “ape the real one.” Here lives the doll that Annie desires so much.

Hawthorne sees Annie’s imagination weave stories around this doll. He thinks how much more preferable is the child’s world of imagination to the adult world, where adults use each other like toys.

They continue on and journey through the newly arrived circus. They see an elephant, which gracefully bows to little Annie. They see lions, tigers, monkeys, a polar bear, and a hyena.

The more they see, the more Hawthorne’s view adopts a childlike wonder. Just as Annie imagines the doll’s story, Hawthorne weaves different stories around the animals. The polar bear dreams of his time on the ice, while the kingly tiger paces, remembering the grand deeds of his past life.

Through this story, Hawthorne realizes that, though he can never truly return to his childhood, he can adopt his daughter’s wonder. Such a wonder-filled ramble teaches much wisdom.

Others will discount such a ramble as nonsense. Yet Hawthorne exclaims: “A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.”

A child’s sense of wonder can enable one to see light in the air, beauty in the normal, and magic everywhere. The world is a place of wonder and magic, and a place of “pure imagination,” so look for it and you will see it.”