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your story linger in his memory after he closes the book or mag-
azine.
More on revision in the next chapter.
MORE EXERCISES FOR ENDINGS
1. Choose an anthology of short stories. Read the last para-
graphs of the first four stories. Out of context, do they seem
evocative, emotional, significant? Now read the four stories. In
context, do the final paragraphs imply more than they seemed
to at first?
2. Classify each of the four stories as "traditional plotted
story" or "contemporary literary short story." Do the stories fit
neatly into categories, or not? How do the endings of the two
types differ?
3. Study each story's opening and closing paragraphs. Are
any of the same symbols, motifs or images present in both? If so,
how has their meaning expanded or changed by the end of the
story?
4. Study the final paragraphs of three of your favorite nov-
els. Do they seem to carry thematic significance, or do they
merely round off the action? Do you see any differences in the
The Very End: Last Scene, Last Paragraph, Last Sentence 131
closing paragraphs of the novels from the closing paragraphs of
the four short stories you examined in exercises one through
three?
5. Look at the last paragraph of one of your own finished
stories. Does it imply as much as it could? Even if the answer is
"yes," write three or four different last sentences for your story.
Which works best? Why?
CHAPTER 9
HELP FOR ENDINGS:
THE LAST HURRAH
YOU'VE DONE IT. THERE IT is, sitting on the table in a pristine pile
of pages. A first draft. It's finished. After weeks (or months, or
years), it's finally finished, with a beginning, a middle and an
end. You want to break out a bottle of champagne, or turn a
cartwheel, or imagine word for word the review in the Times.
It's actually finished. Go ahead, indulge. You've earned it. But
when the bottle's empty or the reverie complete, come back down
to earth and pick up those pages again. You're not finished yet.
As thousands of commencement speakers tirelessly remind
us every June, it's in the nature of endings that they turn into new
beginnings. Nowhere is this more true than in writing, where
the term "first draft" automatically implies more to come. That
"more" consists of the second and third (and maybe more) drafts.
Many new writers don't like to rewrite. After weeks or
months, or years of work on a story or novel, they want to con-
sider it done. Yet revision is the single most important thing you
can do for your work. In almost all cases, you'll end up with a
much stronger story and much better chances of selling it.
But how do you go about revision? If you knew a better way
to write your tale, you'd have done it that way the first time,
right? Well, no, not really. During the actual process of writing
you learned a lot about your characters, plot and setting. An
organized approach to revision allows you to use that new knowl-
edge to sharpen some aspects of your story, excise others, add
background and secondary variations. You have the melody; revi-
sion can create the harmony.
132
Help for Endings: The Last Hurrah 133
There are as many ways to rewrite as there are writers. What
follows is one organized approach. Try it, selecting whichever
parts of the plan seem applicable to your particular work. This
approach has six steps: (1) becoming the reader, (2) tracing the
promise, (3) scene analysis, (4) major rewrite, (5) image patterns
and (6) polishing the prose.
STEP ONE: BECOMING THE READER
Although you may have revised sections of your story as you
wrote them (the beginning scene, for instance), this is your first
chance to consider the strengths and weaknesses of your manu-
script as a whole. The first step in doing this is to not do it imme-
diately. Put the story away for a while a few days or a week or
a month, depending on how long you need to get some distance
from it. When you no longer think it is (a) absolutely brilliant, or
(b) absolutely stupid (different writers have different postpartum
reactions), you're ready to try to consider the manuscript dispas-
sionately.
I say "try to" because you will never be able to be completely
objective about your own work. No one can this is your mind,
your heart, your imagination set down in black and white. Still,
a cooling-off period increases your chances of reading your story
not as its writer, but as one of its future readers.
"Becoming the reader is the essence of becoming a writer,"
said author John O'Hara. Read over your short story or novel
as if you've never seen it before. Jot quick notes in the margin:
Where does the story seem to drag (you know it's dragging if
your attention wanders while you're reading it)? What might be
unclear if you didn't know the ending (and you don't if you're a
reader picking up the story for the first time)? Your protagonist
developed as you wrote her; does she seem sketchy in the first
scenes, just one more generic office worker or housewife or pri-
vate detective? Write "char, sketchy" in the margin. Do any
scenes seem to go by too quickly? Are there places where you're
telling us about important action, instead of dramatizing it for
us? Write "dramatize!" in the margin. In fact, write anything in
134 BEGINNINGS, MIDDLES AND ENDS
the margin that comes to you as you read. What would you think
about this story if you'd never seen it before?
Sometimes it's useful to also have someone else read your
story in this way. I say "sometimes" because, as you probably
already know, not all friends or relatives are equally useful critics.
Some will love anything you wrote just because you wrote it;
others will attack anything you wrote for the same reason. Some
won't care for your particular genre, or won't understand its con-
ventions. Some just can't verbalize reactions to fiction beyond
"I liked it" or "I didn't like it." Some, on the other hand, will
enthusiastically mark up every paragraph, in effect rewriting
your story the way they would have written it.
But if you're fortunate to know someone who can and will
tell you honestly which parts of the story are interesting and
which are not, enlist this precious resource to read your first
draft. He doesn't have to be able to tell you how to fix the prob-
lems; all you want at this stage is an informed, articulate aide
we'll call him "Sensitive Reader" to help you spot him.
STEP TWO: TRACING THE PROMISE
You already worked on this step as you wrote. Now try to look
with fresh eyes at the three parts of your story beginning, mid-
dle, end in terms of the implicit promise. You're still reading as
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