Today’s post is from guest writer Dr. John Yeoman.
To succeed in a major writing contest – or even get published – you must give your story a strong sense of form. But why? After all, our everyday lives often have no obvious form or shape – and we want our stories to seem ‘true to life’, don’t we?
Yet, even if we’re writing a facumentary – a blend of fact and fiction – a story must show a powerful sense of direction and unity, simply to be readable. A wholly authentic story, told true to life, would be a ragbag of odd incidents going nowhere.
The hunger for form seems to be imbedded in our DNA. The first time we look up at the sky, as a naive child, we see stars as random dots. But we soon learn to connect the dots to make the Plough, Hercules, Cancer the Crab, and other patterns. And we give them names.
Perhaps the appeal of a good story is that it shows form at work in the world. We hunger for form to make the chaos of our lives meaningful. We want closure in a story, whether the end is happy or sad.
We know that life does not really have neat closures. As the old joke has it, a classical comedy ends with a wedding – but a tragedy immediately begins with one. Life goes on.
Total finality is not necessary in a great story.
Some fine tales end without any clear closure. John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman ‘ends’ by asking the reader to decide how the tale should continue. But do note: Fowles asks this question at the end of the story. An ending, of some sort, is still implied.
What’s the easiest way to achieve a strong sense of closure in a story? Try the Book End.
In the first section, you use a vivid incident, theme or phrase. The story then wanders down various byways. But at the end, it returns to that same incident, theme or phrase.
The ‘book end’ can even be an object.
For example, imagine that a story starts with a man climbing a mountain in winter snow. He has a big problem with his girl friend. He makes much use of his ice ax. The reader notes that it’s cold, ugly and hard – like the man himself. He drops his ice ax in a crevasse by accident and leaves it there.
More than a year later, the story ends with the man climbing the same mountain. But this time it’s spring. The ice has thawed. A lot has happened in his life in the past 15 months. He’s a changed man, more mature, more humane. He has become reconciled with his girl.
He sees his ice ax under the melted snow. He retrieves it. It’s cold, hard, ugly – just like he once was but now isn’t. He smiles. He throws the ax back into the crevasse.
With that symbolic gesture, the story closes. The Book End formula has given it a satisfying unity. That formula is a tested way to gain a prize in a story writing contest. It’s also a great way to overcome writer’s block.
Write the first paragraph then, at once, the last paragraph of your story. The last section can be very similar to the first, but give it a significant twist. The paragraphs don’t even have to be good. All can be tidied up later. The mind then persuades itself that the story has already been ‘written’. All that’s needed now, it tells itself, is to complete that trifling gap in the middle.
The Book End maybe a formula, but many of the novels in The New York Times bestseller list are based on shameless formulae. Try it! It’s a lot easier to complete a story that appears to be already half finished and well structured, with two strongly defined Book Ends, than to stare at a blank sheet of paper.
Dr. John Yeoman, PhD Creative Writing, has 42 years experience as a commercial author, is a former newspaper editor, and one-time chairman of a major PR consultancy. He has published eight works of humor, some of them intended to be humorous.
John judges the Writers’ Village story competition and is a tutor in creative writing at a UK university. He has a free 14-part course in writing stories and novels for the commercial market.
Reblogged this on christinaow.
Nice hat. Thanks for the advice and validation – I always envision a beginning and end to all my stories.
Thanks for the hat compliment, Laura! Perhaps I should have termed my formula the Hat Trick
This is great advice. I’m currently working on a short story which would be ‘facumentary’ and there are points that I want to make but don’t know how to. But advice on writing the first paragraph and then the last, seems like a great idea. Can’t wait to try it out! Thanks for this!
Great post. And very familiar. I once read in someone’s Guide to Writing, a section on how to end story. This particular guide listed six main ways to do this and for some reason the Book End is the only method I seem to keep in mind and use often. Everything else I do is a bit random! I think it was described as tying the end to the beginning or creating a loop back to the start. Same thing, I believe. I find it very effective.
Thanks again!
R.
Excellent, I wish children’s books authors would read this. I read many books from the library to my grandchildren over Skype and at times I’ll turn the page only to discover that was it. Hello? Where’s the ending?
Does this theory apply as well to non-commercial fiction (IE “literature,” though I hate to use that word, as if the rest of it isn’t)? I think the answer is probably yes, but it has to be a little subtler. Readers of “true-to-life” literature like to experience closure, but sometimes I think they don’t want to KNOW they’re experiencing it. Like you almost have to trick them by having a sense of form that seems like it’s just Life. Or maybe I’m just jaded?
Excellent post! I always love it when stories feel like a giant circle. Very symmetrical.
LOVE this Book Ends idea! Will be using it for sure. Thanks so much for hosting Dr. John Yeoman here today.
Thanks, Granbee. It’s simple and it works!
Interesting.
I’m more programmer than writer, but it seems that telling a story from within a universe – fictional or not – can be seen as analogous to subsetting and visualizing a large dataset for presentation to a user. You’re breaking down events into those that are meaningful and related, and arranging them into a narrative. The difference here is creative synthesis – you have to simulate the interesting events and consistencies before the relationships and meanings can be guessed at – even if it’s just an ad hoc, “this character would react this way”, etc.
And while reality rarely has neat closures, it has termination signals galore – as the book end seems to be – that let our minds say, “hey, ok, this thing is finished”. I guess in stories, these are arranged to occur at around the same time for closure, or at least mosly (a loose end is an opportunity for a sequel, if it’s not too giant, right?)
Anyway, musing outside my profession. Let me know how far off my analysis is.
That’s an interesting observation, Fordi. It goes back to that old axiom about speaking in public: tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them you’ve told them. Perhaps it’s evolutionary? We feel safer if we know – or can suspect – what’s around the next bend than if we don’t?