From time to time over the past year, this space has been devoted to how to write a good ending - how to "stick the landing" as they say in gynastics.
If a story doesn't have a good ending, just as if a journey doesn't have a good ending, it leaves its audience unfulfilled.
Knowing that full well, that is the chance I take today as I tell you this is the last post I shall do of "The Writing Life." In all journeys, there is a time to move on and I find myself in that situation. Maybe someday I will take the 97 posts of "The Writing Life" and put them in the form of a little book. That would be yet another journey.
Good luck to all of you in your journeys. Au revoir.
Monday, August 20, 2012
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Your lighthouse
There is a wonderful passage in Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" that offers great advice to writers.
Here is the passage: "One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. `Which road do I take?' she asked. The response was a question: `Where do you want to go?'
`I don't know,' Alice answered. `Then,' said the cat, `it doesn't matter.'"
As writers, if we know where we are going with our work, we'll never be puzzled by the fork in the road. We need to stay focused. Billy Wilder, the late, great screen writer, put it this way: "If you are having trouble writing the third act, the problem is probably in the first act."
The best way to handle the ending to a story is to know what it is before you begin. The ending is the lighthouse in the sea as you go to your keyboard and begin your voyage.
Here is the passage: "One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. `Which road do I take?' she asked. The response was a question: `Where do you want to go?'
`I don't know,' Alice answered. `Then,' said the cat, `it doesn't matter.'"
As writers, if we know where we are going with our work, we'll never be puzzled by the fork in the road. We need to stay focused. Billy Wilder, the late, great screen writer, put it this way: "If you are having trouble writing the third act, the problem is probably in the first act."
The best way to handle the ending to a story is to know what it is before you begin. The ending is the lighthouse in the sea as you go to your keyboard and begin your voyage.
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Be a trouble maker
The best book for writers on writing is Sol Stein's "Stein on Writing." Every writer should have it on their bookshelf. Stein, an author, playwright and publisher, provides many tips on writing and tells why they work. I purchased the book many years ago and get it out every once in a while and thumb through it, reading only the parts that I underlined the first time through. Here's one example.
"Writers are trouble makers. A psychotherapist tries to relieve stress, strain and pressure. A writer's job is to give readers stress, strain and pressure. The fact is that readers who hate those things in life love them in fiction."
The same holds true in factual writing if it is a story about a dramatic experience in someone's life. So, be a trouble maker.
"Writers are trouble makers. A psychotherapist tries to relieve stress, strain and pressure. A writer's job is to give readers stress, strain and pressure. The fact is that readers who hate those things in life love them in fiction."
The same holds true in factual writing if it is a story about a dramatic experience in someone's life. So, be a trouble maker.
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