When I was an undergrad at the University of Missouri-St. Louis (or UMSL), I took a class in magazine feature writing because that seemed like a feasible career (instead of teaching). You could just pick a random topic, research it and write about it. Kind of like what Monsieur Big Bang does now on his new anthropology podcast. In my romantic mythical imaginings one could make their own hours and never get bored.
Problem was I was too shy to actually go out there and interview strangers. And at the time I had a huge phone phobia. This was before I became a Kelly Girl and they sent me out on all these nightmare receptionist temp jobs ((all those phone calls!!)); but then I had a total Schitt’s Creek driving test moment and realized “nobody cares.”
But that epiphany came much later. Back at UMSL I stewed in anxiety for a few weeks and then ended up just interviewing my own grandmother about her life on Indian reservations, which was a complete cop-out but the result completely enthralled the teacher and I ended up getting an A. Plus I then had three cassette tapes of my grandmother doing her great storytelling thing (and my funny Aunt Edna for a bit, too). Having run out of interesting family members, I then had to turn to my dog Helga’s veterinarian, interviewing him about ways to rescue your pets during house fires, floods and tornados. I’ve never had a cat so learning about scooping one out of their hiding places with a fishing net was very informative.
Anyway, in this feature writing class we also read William Zinsser’s guide On Writing Well, particularly the chapters on “The Lead” and “The Ending.” Back at Parkway North High School, we had already learned about the juicy non-sequitur lead paragraph. I used it when I wrote my first high school comp paper on the untold logistical and political food-delivery problems behind the efforts of Band Aid and U.S.A. for Africa. In that paper I somehow miraculously managed a lead involving Sonny & Cher. Don’t ask me how. But I got some margin-scribbled praise for that feat of lead-footwork
So I was informed about the magic of the lead, which according to Zinsser is “the most important sentence in any article…[because] if it doesn’t induce the reader to proceed to the second sentence, your article is dead. And if the second sentence doesn’t induce him to continue to the third sentence, it is equally dead.”
But you can’t be deader than dead, sentence #2.
And although these chapters are about features and prose writing, this is similarly true for poems, maybe even more so because readers tend to skim and skip around a set of poems more than they do for prose and abandon rates for poems are arguably higher.
Zinsser does acknowledge that in literary pieces, you can delay your point a bit longer than in mainstream feature writing. I abuse this allowance all the time. But Zinsser warns, “I urge you not to count on the reader to stick around. He is a fidgety fellow who wants to know–very soon–what’s in it for him.”
Sheesh. Aint it the truth though.
Zinsser has some ideas to help us with the lead. He literally says to “Cajole him with:”
- freshness
- novelty
- parody
- humor
- surprise
- an unusual idea, an interesting fact
- a question
“Anything will do as long as it nudges his curiosity and tugs at his sleeve….but never patronizing him…”
Sounds uncomfortably like flirting to me. Or the perils of Scheherazade.
“Next the lead must do some real work,” Zinsser says. Like a date, I guess. Get to your proposition statement, Zinsser says, “but don’t dwell…coax the reader a little more…continue to build…adding solid detail.”
Don’t be a tease. Nobody likes a tease. Even the reader. Don’t frustrate the reader by not going anywhere. Ok, there are some readers who enjoy going nowhere sort of experimentally, but finding those readers can be tricky and most likely other less-accommodating readers will find you first.
Zinsser has some good advice here about your first whole paragraph: “Take special care with the last sentence of each paragraph–it is the crucial springboard to the next paragraph.” First and last sentences. Very important. Give them “an extra twist of humor or surprise,” a little snap and pizazz. Or find funny quotations for those spots.
Zinsser also believes in substance over style. He says “salvation often lies not in the writer’s style but in some odd fact that he was able to unearth.” This is true for feature writers 100% more than for poets. Poets can be all style and little substance. But some substance is good. Have a little bit of a point. Unless your point is pointlessness. But hasn’t that been done to death already?
He advises us to “always collect more material than you will eventually use.” Good advice for all writers.
“An even more important moral is to look for your material everywhere, not just by reading the obvious sources and interviewing the obvious people.” He says to read your telephone bill fillers, read the back of menus and catalogues and through junk mail. He says this, and it’s invaluably true, “you can tell the temper of a society by what patio accessories it wants. Our daily landscape is thick with absurd messages and portents.”
(I see from my marginalia in the late 1980s I had to look up the meaning of the word ‘portent.’)
Zinsser excerpts his favorite leads from Joan Didion (“7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38,” her essay on Howard Hughes from Slouching Toward Bethlehem), Garry Wills (from his book Nixon Agonistes) and actor Richard Burton’s essay on rugby.
So quickly, what does Zinsser have to say about an ending? He says few writers know how to stop well, but that “you should give as much thought to choosing your last sentence as you did to your first. Well, almost as much.”
“A good last sentence–or paragraph–is a joy in itself. It has its own virtues which give the reader a lift and which linger when the article is over.” This is even more important to the poem, which often demands to resonate, more than prose. “The perfect ending should take the reader slightly by surprise and yet seem exactly right to him.”
He elaborates:
“It is like a curtain line in a theatrical comedy. We are in the middle of a scene (we think) when suddenly one of the actors says something funny, or outrageous, or epigrammatic, and the lights go out. We are momentarily startled to find the scene is over, and then delighted by the aptness of how it ended. what delights us, subconsciously, is the playwright’s perfect control.”
“For the nonfiction writer, the simplest way of putting this into a rule is: when you’re ready to stop, stop. If you have presented all the facts and made the point that you want to make, look for the nearest exit.”
I find this maybe is too pat. Knowing went to end is something that takes practice. It’s a feeling. It’s understanding the flow you’re in, the current that’s taking you along. When to leave is an art, not a science. It’s refined calibration and a fine-tune. The way to get good at it is to keep working at it (and to keep reading delightfully crafty endings).
When in doubt, Zinsser always comes back to that funny quotation, to end with “some remark which has a sense of finality” or “adds an unexpected last detail.”
So when you don’t know how to end it, let someone else do it. (I’m here to tell you this article is breaking up with you.) This scheme not only provides a get-away vehicle but emotional distance. Sometimes what you don’t say at the end is just as important as what you do say. (Joan Didion was a master of this.) Likewise, Monsieur Big Bang’s favorite song (and he quotes it all the time) is by singer-songwriter Mike Stenson who elaborates about the end of flirting itself when he tells the story of inviting a girl to see The Rolling Stones. She never called him back. He surmises maybe she didn’t get the message but he never followed up. Instead, he wrote a song where he says, “I got your message when I never got your call.”
~~~
So, does that quote work as an ending? Yeah, I don’t think it does. Because Mike Stinson-fan Monsieur Big Bang did actually end up calling me twice in the beginning and I honestly didn’t get the first message. So the moral of the story here is that sometimes you can end a thing too soon.
