{"id":11212,"date":"2024-09-25T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-25T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11212"},"modified":"2024-09-24T18:37:54","modified_gmt":"2024-09-24T22:37:54","slug":"take-aways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11212","title":{"rendered":"Take-Aways"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In a post last week<\/a> based in part on an interview with award-winning author Laura van den Berg, she talked about the strangeness we encounter in daily life. Some people may see mysteries in that strangeness, some see the workings of the supernatural, and some just pass right by, eyes glued to cell phone. Now that\u2019s strange! The current Ellery Queen Mystery Maga<\/em>zine includes a number of stories that anticipate Halloween and the different ways people react to such hard-to-explain happenings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strangeness and ambiguity are useful tools in fiction, not just at Halloween. In real life, friendships may suddenly end, marriages dissolve, and we may not know why\u2014even when we\u2019re one of the principals. Conversely, the things that keep a relationship going can be equally puzzling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To van den Berg, the ambiguity in a story can be either positive or negative. Even when a story doesn\u2019t provide all the answers, she says, \u201cit should give [readers] something to take away.\u201d Inexperienced writers, trying to achieve a sense of mystery, may under-explain, running the risk of merely creating confusion and giving their readers nothing to latch onto. It\u2019s equally off-putting when authors over-explain. Trust your readers to figure many things out. A friend used to write sentences like, \u201cHe threw the plate against the wall because he was angry.\u201d Clearly, the \u201cbecause\u201d clause is completely unnecessary. \u201cShe spent an hour on her makeup because she wanted to look her best.\u201d Ditto.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A story\u2019s ending is an important contributor to what the reader will take from it. Van den Berg\u2019s approach to finding the endings of her stories doesn\u2019t sound like a huge assembly of 3 x 5 cards and post-its. Nor does she flail around trying to discover the ending in a morass of prose. Instead, she says she often sees the ending as \u201can image of some kind.\u201d She may not initially see all the action steps (plot) that will get her there, but she\u2019s moving toward it, through the fog of creation, following the glow of a distant light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the mystery\/crime\/thriller genre, an ending is likely to be unsatisfying if it leaves too many mysteries unsolved, too many loose ends. When I\u2019m writing, I keep a list of unresolved story questions. They may be tangible issues such as, How does Evie know Carl has a peanut allergy? Or less tangible ones, like, If Steve really loves Diana, why did he have an affair?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t have to work out an answer to them the moment they come up (an invitation to backstory that derails the flow), but when I arrive at the end, I check my list. Are all the questions that can be answered with a fact addressed in some logical and preferably unobtrusive way? Have the intangible questions at least been considered by the character? It isn\u2019t necessary that readers completely believe<\/em> a character\u2019s explanations, but they should be confident the character believes them, at least at some level. A frequent and annoying cop-out is the phrase, \u201che had no choice but to . . .\u201d following which the author steers the character into some plot-necessary action. Of course<\/em> there were choices, and it is the writer who made one. Slightly better is when characters say, \u201cI<\/em> had no choice . . .\u201d Yes, you recognize they\u2019re probably just rationalizing. Weakly. Unpersuasively. Which of itself says something about them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You may recall that one of the necessaries of a short story is \u201cit needs to have a point.\u201d That doesn\u2019t mean a political point, or a hit-them-over-the-head-with-a-hammer point. It\u2019s more subtle, something that grounds the stories despite and because of life\u2019s mysteries. Irish author Anne Enright said it well, \u201cRemember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand.\u201d You, the writer, are the rock in a sea of ambiguity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a post last week based in part on an interview with award-winning author Laura van den Berg, she talked about the strangeness we encounter in daily life. Some people may see mysteries in that strangeness, some see the workings … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The mysteries of life are fodder for fiction writers and need to be handled well to create an impact. Give readers \"something to take away.\"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[174,3,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-draft-blog","category-mystery","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2UQ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11212"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11214,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11212\/revisions\/11214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}