Tool # 50: Own the tools of your craft.

. . .Build a writing workbench to store your tools.

We now come to the last chapter in "Writing Tools" by Roy Peter Clark. A very helpful summary, but difficult to condense!  Here we go:

"I've designed this final chapter as a guide for you to build a workbench to store your writing tools. So far, I have organized these tools into four parts. We began with nuts and bolts, things like the power of subject and verb, emphatic word order, and the difference between stronger and weaker elements in prose.

     From there we moved to special effects, ways of using the language to create specific and intended cues for the reader. . . The next part offered sets of blueprints, plans for organizing written work to help bothe the writer and the reader. . .This last part coalesced earlier strategies into reliable habits, routines that give you the courage and stamina to apply these tools. . .

     One final step requires you to store all of your tools on the shelves of a metaphorical writer's workbench. I began learning how to do this back in 1983 when Donald Murray, the teacher to whom this book is dedicated, stood in front of a tiny seminar room in St. Petersburg, Florida, and wrote on a chalkboard a blueprint that forever changed the way I taught and wrote. It was a modest description of how writers worked, five words that revealed the steps authors followed to build any piece of writing. As I remember them now, his words were:

     IDEA.

               COLLECT.

                                  FOCUS.

                                                 DRAFT.

                                                                 CLARIFY.

In other words, the writer conceives an idea, collects things to support it, discovers what the work is really about, attempts a first draft, and revises it in the quest for greater clarity.  .  . Here's my annotated version:

Sniff around. . .all good writers express a form of curiosity, a sense that something is going on out there, something that teases your attention, something in the air.

Explore ideas. The writers I admire most are the ones who see their world as a storehouse of story ideas.  They are explorers, traveling through their communities with their senses alert, connecting seemingly unrelated details into story patterns. . .

Collect evidence. I love the wisdom that the best writers write not just with their hands, heads, and hearts, but with their feet. . .The great Francis X. Clines of the New York Times once told me that he could always find a story if he could just get out of the office. . .

Find a focus. What is your essay about?. . .Get to the heart of the matter . . .Getting there requires careful research, sifting through evidence, experimentation, and critical thinking. . . 

Select the best stuff. One great difference stands between new writers and experienced ones. New writers often dump their research into a story or essay. . .Veterans use a fraction, sometimes half, sometimes one-tenth of what they've gathered. . . A sharp focus is like a laser. It helps the writer cut tempting material that does not contribute to the central meaning of the work.

Recognize an order.  .  . What is the scope of your work? . . .Working from a plan, the writer and the reader benefit from a vision of the global structure of the story. . .

Write a draft. Some writers write fast and free. . .other writers. . .work with meticulous precision. . .But here's the key: I once believed that writing began with drafting, the moment my rear hit the chair and my hands hit the keyboard. I now recognize that step as deep in the process, a step that becomes more fluid when I have taken other steps first.

Revise and clarify. Don Murray once gave me a precious gift, a book of photographed manuscript pages titled Authors at Work. In it you. . .watch as the novelist Honoré de Balzac write dozens upon dozens of revisions in the margins of a corrected proof. You can observe Henry James cross out twenty lines of a twenty-five line manuscript page. For these artists, writing is rewriting.

     Sniff. Explore. Collect. Focus. Select. Order. Draft. Revise.

     Don't think of these as tools. Think of them as tool shelves or toolboxes. . .

A blueprint of the writing process will have many uses over time. Not only will it give you confidence by demystifying the act of writing. . .provide you with big boxes in which to store your tool collection, but it will also help you diagnose problems in individual stories. . .account for your strengths and weaknesses. . . and build your critical vocabulary for talking about your craft, a language about language that will lead you to the next level.

We have now come to the last WORKSHOP:

-With some friends, take a big piece of chart paper and with colored markers, draw a diagram of your writing process. Use words, arrows, images, anything that helps open a window to your mind and method.

This is my final post focusing on the formal craft of writing. I hope you have found useful these chapter tidbits from Roy Peter Clark's book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer," published by Little, Brown and Company. You can find a copy here.

From time to time, I am inspired by an event, film or book that begs to be commented on. In future posts, I will share my insights, which I hope will prove to be meaningful. Until then, is there any topic that would resonate with you here on my blog? What would you like to see posted here?

I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Tool # 48: limit self-criticism in early drafts.

. . . Turn it loose during revision.

This is certainly what holds me back as a writer: self-criticism.  Since many writing-related challenges are in full swing, I think this is a perfect topic for today's post!

Roy shares from two books on writing, both published in the 1930's: "Becoming a Writer" (1934), by Dorothea Brande, and Brenda Ueland's,  "If You Want to Write" (1938).

"Brande. . .is most powerful on the topic of self-criticism. To become a fluent writer, she argues, one must silence the internal critic early in the process.  The critic becomes useful only when enough work has been done to warrant evaluation and revision.

Four decades later, (Roy goes on to say), another writer, Gail Godwin, would cover the same territory in an essay titled "The Watcher at the Gate." For Godwin, the Watcher is the "restraining critic who lived inside me," and who appeared in many forms to kick the doors of her creativity:

'It is amazing the lengths a Watcher will go to keep you from pursuing the flow of your imagination. Watchers are notorious pencil sharpeners, ribbon changers, plant waterers, home repairers and abhorrers of messy rooms or messy pages. They are compulsive looker-uppers.mthey cultivate self-important eccentricities they think are suitable for "writers" and they'd rather die (and kill your inspiration with them) than risk making a fool of themselves.'

Brenda Ueland, writing on the same topic of self-criticism notes that "all people who try to write. . .become anxious, timid, contracted, become perfectionists, so terribly afraid that they may put something down that is not as good as Shakespeare."  

"That is one loud critical voice, one bug-eyed watcher", Roy observes.

For Godwin (Mr. Clark continues), weapons against the watcher include such things as deadlines, writing fast, writing at odd times, writing when you are tired, writing on cheap paper, writing in surprising forms from which no one expects excellence.

So, how can we put this all to use in the WORKSHOP?

Try this:

Godwin writes that she fools the Watcher by disguising the form of writing. So if she is working on a draft of a short story, she may disguise it in the form of a letter. The next time you struggle with a story, put a salutation at the top ("Dear friend") and write a message to your friend about the story. See what happens.

I hope you found useful this chapter tidbit from Roy Peter Clark's book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer," published by Little, Brown and Company. You can find a copy here.

NEXT WEEK: Tool #49 Learn from your critics

Tool #47: Recruit your own support group.

. . .Create a corps of helpers for feedback.

". . .In the real world, writing is more like line dancing, a social function with many partners. . .

     You must create a system of support both wide and deep. If you limit yourself to one classroom teacher or one editor, you will not get the help you need. You must create a network of friends, colleagues, editors, and coaches who can offer feedback--and maybe an occasional feedbag.

Roy goes on to suggest later that we:

"Work on developing the support system you need and deserve." 

And he then lists the kinds of people he needs:

* A helper who keeps me going.  For years, my teaching partner Chip Scanlan has played this role for me, especially when I am working on a long project. . .He says to me, over and over again, "Keep going. Keep writing. We'll talk about that later."

* A helper who understands my idiosyncrasies. All writers have quirks. The fleas come with the dog. . .My wife, Karen, understands this. While I cower under the covers with my dog Rex, she sits at the breakfast table, crunching her Rice Chex, reading my story in the paper and making sure no unforeseen horror has appeared. "All clear," she says, to my relief.

* A helper willing to answer my questions. For many years writing coach Donald Murray has been willing to read my drafts, and he begins by asking me what I need from him. . .My response might be, "Is this too Catholic?" or "Does this seem real enough to publish as a memoir?" or, "Just let me know if you find this interesting." 

* An expert helper to match my topic. My current interest often dictates the kind of helper I need. When I wrote about the Holocaust, and the history of anti-Semitism, I depended on the wisdom and experience of a rabbi, Haim Horowitz. When I wrote about AIDS, I turned to an oncologist, Dr. Jeffrey Paonessa. Such people may begin as interview subjects, but the deeper you get into a topic, the more they can turn into sounding boards and confidants.

* A helper who runs interference. Joyce Barrett blessed me with her assistance for twenty years. I especially remember the morning she came to work, saw that I was writing, closed my office door, and put a motel-style Do Not Disturb sign on the handle. . . .

* A coach who helps me figure out what works and what needs work. For more than a year, an intern named Ellen Sung edited a column I wrote for the Poynter Web site. She could articulate the strengths of a column, ask great questions that would lead to revisions and clarifications, and framed negative criticism with persuasive diplomacy."

He ends with this paragraph:

"You may choose these helpers one by one, but over time they form a network, with you at the center. You may address them as a group via e-mail or ask them in various combinations to help you solve a problem. You can test the criticism of one against the wisdom of another.  You can fire one who gets too bossy. You can send another flowers or a bottle of wine. It's good, on occasion, for the writer to be the king--or queen." 

Now put this tool to use in the WORKSHOP:

--Look at the six categories of helpers described above. Make a list of six people who might be able to serve you in these capacities. Rehearse a conversation with each with the goal of expanding your network.

I hope you found useful this chapter tidbit from Roy Peter Clark's book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer," published by Little, Brown and Company. You can find a copy here.

Next week I feature another of Roy's "Useful Habits": "Limit self-criticism in early drafts."

Tool #46: Take an interest in all crafts that support your work.

. . . To do your best, help others do their best.

Roy Clark opens his chapter with these words:

"I abhor the image of the writer as a solitary figure. That romantic stereotype, associated with loneliness and struggle, has alienated many aspiring writers and blown a cloud over one of the craft's shining truths: that writing is a social activity. . . "

He goes on later to explain:

"In fact, you will never reach your potential as a writer unless you take an interest in all of the associated literary crafts. Cultivate this habit: ask questions about the craft of copy editing, photography, illustration, graphics, design and Web site production.  You need not become an expert in these fields, but it's your duty to be curious and engaged. One day, you will talk about these crafts without an accent. . .

As I develop as an author and journalist, these key figures continue to make my work better:

-Copyeditors. . .think of copy editors as champions of standards, invaluable test readers, your last line of defense.  .  . talk to copyeditors. Learn their names. Embrace them as fellow writers and lovers of language.  Feed them chocolate.

-Photographers. Make sure photo assignments are considered early in the process, not as an afterthought . . .Let the photographer teach you about focus, framing, composition, and lighting. Ask the photographer what you can do to help.

-Designers. . . Learn from them what you need to see and bring back from a scene, material that can be converted into sparkling visual and design elements. Ask your editor and visual journalists how you can  help them while you are doing research or writing early drafts."

Roy ends with a colleague Bill Boyd's Platinum Rule: Treat others the way they want to be treated.

Now a suggestion from Roy's TOOLBOX:

- Read about the associated crafts. Find a good book on photography. Read some design magazines. Listen to conversations about these crafts and develop a lexicon so that you can chime in.

I hope you found useful this chapter tidbit from Roy Peter Clark's book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer," published by Little, Brown and Company. You can find a copy here.

Four chapters to go!  Next week? "Recruit your own support group"

Writing Tool #45: Break long projects into parts.

 . . . Then assemble the pieces into something whole.

Anne Lamott's book Bird by Bird gets its title from an anecdote about her brother.  At the age of ten, he struggled with a school report on birds.  Lamott describes him as "immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead," but then, "my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'

     We all need such coaching to remind us to break long projects into parts, long stories into chapters, long chapters into episodes.  Such advice is both encouraging and practical. . .Tiny drops of writing become puddles that become rivulets that become streams that become deep ponds.

Then Roy speaks from his own experience:

You are now reading Tool 45-- in what was once a yearlong online series -- headed for Tool 50.  If I had said to my editors, "You know, I'd like to write a book of writing tools, "I never would have done the work.  At the front end, book projects seem impossible to get your arms around, like hugging a polar bear.  Instead, I pitched the writing tools project as fifty short essays, delivered at the rate of one or two per week. . . 

Bird by bird, tool by tool, line by line.

Let's put this tool to work in Mr. Clark's WORKSHOP:

- Admit it. You want to write something bigger than you've ever written before, but you can't get your arms around the project.  The length or breadth of it intimidates you.  Cut up the monster.  In a day book or journal, break it up into its smallest parts: chapters, sections, episodes, vignettes.  Without referring to any note or research materials, write one of these small units.  See what happens.

I hope you found useful this chapter tidbit from Roy Peter Clark's book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer," published by Little, Brown and Company. You can find a copy here.

Next week?  "Take an interest in all crafts that support your work."  Join us!

Writing Tool #44: Save string

. . . For big projects, save scraps others would toss.

Roy Peter Clark shares his methods for collecting project ideas:

". . .To save string, I need a simple file box.  I prefer the plastic ones that look like milk crates.  I display the box in my office and put a label on it, say, "The Plight of Boys."  As soon as I declare my interest in an important topic, a number of things happen.  I notice more things about my topic. Then I have conversations about it with friends and colleagues.  They feed my interest. One by one, my box fills with items: an analysis of graduation rates of boys versus girls; a feature on whether video games help or hinder the development of boys; a story about decreasing participation by boys in high school sports.  This is a big topic, so I take my time. Weeks and weeks pass, sometimes months and months, and one day I'll look over at my box and hear it whisper, "It's time." I'm amazed at its fullness, and even more astonished at how much I've learned just by saving string. . .

. . .The trick for me is to grow several crops at the same time.  Fertilize one crop, even as you harvest another. In my office I have several boxes with labels on them. . AIDS, the Holocaust, racial justice, the millennium, World War II, literacy. These are topics of inexhaustible interest, capable of generating a lifetime of reporting, storytelling and analysis. Each one, in fact, is so huge, so imposing, it threatens to overpower the writer's energy and imagination.  This is the reason to save string.  Item by item, anecdote by anecdote, statistic by statistic, your boxes of curiosity fill up without effort, creating a literary life cycle: planting, cultivation, and harvesting. . ."

Here is a suggestion from Roy's WORKSHOP:

-Review your writing from the last couple of years.  List your big categories of interest and curiosity.  For which of those topics do you want to save string?

This was another chapter tidbit from Roy Peter Clark's book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer," published by Little, Brown and Company. You can find a copy here.

Next week I will feature Tool # 45: Break long projects into parts.  This is a tool we can all put to use immediately.  I'm looking forward to sharing it with you.  Any ideas for my next "Monday Mechanics" book or topic?

Useful Habits: Tool #43 Read for both form and content.

. . . Examine the machinery beneath the text.

"If you piece together a puzzle, you benefit from the image on the box.  If you try a new recipe, it helps to see a photo of the finished dish.  If you work with wood, you need to know the difference between a bookcase and a credenza.  The writer must answer this question: what am I trying to build?  And then this one: what tools do I need to build it?

     Whenever I take a big step in my writing, I begin by reading.  Of course, I read for content.  If I'm writing about anti-Semitism, I read Holocaust memoirs.  If I'm writing about AIDS, I read bio-medical texts and social histories of the disease.  If I'm writing about World War II, I read magazines from the 1940's.  So, by all means, read for content.

     But also read for form, for genre.  If you want to write better photo captions, read old issues of LIFE magazine.  If you want to become a better explainer, read a great cookbook.  If you want to write clever headlines, read the big city tabloids.  If you want to write a screenplay about a super hero, read stacks of comic books.  If you want to write witty short features, read The Talk of the Town in New Yorker magazine. . .

     When you find you can't put a story down, you should put the story down.  Put it down and think about how it works. What magic did the writer conjure to propel you from paragraph to paragraph, page to page, chapter to chapter? I call such an act X-ray reading. . ."

Roy then goes on to give examples.  Here are three:

• Sample--for free--a wide selection of current magazines and journals in bookstores that sell coffee.
• Read on topics outside your discipline, such as architecture, astronomy, economics, and photography.
• Read with a pen nearby.  Write in the margins.  Talk back to the author.  Mark interesting passages.  Ask questions of the text.

Along with those suggestions, try this tool from Roy's WORKSHOP:

--Find an author to admire.  Read several works by this writer with a pen in hand.  Mark passages that work in special ways.  Show these to a friend and X-ray them together.  What writing tools did you find?

This was another chapter tidbit from Roy Peter Clark's book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer," published by Little, Brown and Company. You can find a copy here.

Next week, tune in for Tool #44: Save string. . .For big projects, save scraps others would toss.

Sounds like good advice!  Can't believe we have only 7 more tools to go. . .I hope you are finding these posts helpful.  Do you struggle with a certain aspect of the writer's craft?  If so, let me know what it is in the comments below.  It will aid me in deciding what book to concentrate on next.

Tool #42: Do your homework well in advance.

. . .Prepare yourself for the expected--and unexpected.

Today I am featuring another chapter tidbit from Roy Peter Clark's book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer," published by Little, Brown and Company. You can find a copy here.  This last section of chapters is entitled, "Useful Habits."

"That great writing coach Prince Hamlet said it best: 'the readiness is all.' Good writers prepare for the next big writing project, even if it is not yet on the radar screen,  they expect the unexpected.  Like Batman, they cinch up a utility belt loaded with handy tools.  They fill a reservoir of knowlege they can drain at a moments notice.

     Virginia Woolf argued famously that to prepare to write fiction, women would need some money and 'a room of one's own.'  Her contemporary, Dorothea Brande, describe a more disciplined form of writing preparation:

Mind you, you are not yet to write it.  The work you are doing on it is preliminary.  For a day of two you are going to immerse yourself in these details; you are going to think about them consciously, turning if necessary to books of reference to fill in your facts.  Then you are going to dream about it. . . There will seem no end to the stuff that you can find to work over.  What does the heroine look like?  Was she an only child, or the eldest of several?  How was she educated?  Does she work? (from Becoming a Writer)

She then cites novelist Ford Madox Ford, who adhered to an even more exacting regimen:

I may. . .plan out every scene. . .in a novel before I sit down to write it. . . I must know--from personal observation, not reading-- the shape of windows, the nature of doorknobs, the aspect of kitchens, the material of which dresses are made, the leather used in shoes, the method used in manuring fields, the nature of bus tickets.  I shall never use any of these things in the book.  But unless I know what sort of doorknob his fingers close on how shall I . . .get my character out of doors?

So, with these quotes, let's go on to the WORKSHOP:

-With the help of a friend, list possible big writing projects that could emerge from your specialty or area of interest.  Begin homework on these topics, preparation that will help you down the road.

Next week's excerpt is from the chapter: "Read for both form and content."  Stay tuned!

Tool #41: Turn procrastination into rehearsal.

. . .Plan and write it first in your head.

Today I am featuring another chapter tidbit from Roy Peter Clark's book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer," published by Little, Brown and Company. You can find a copy here.

Almost all writers procrastinate, so there's a good chance that you do too.  Even among professionals, delay takes many forms.  The film reviewer checks yet another trip to Starbucks, his fourth tall vanilla latte of the day.  The famous scholar stares into space. . . 

The word procrastinate derives from the Latin word cras, meaning "tomorrow." Never write today what you can put off until tomorrow.  With that sentiment, writers experience procrastination as a vice, not a virtue.  During the process of not writing, we doubt ourselves and sacrifice the creative time we could use to build a draft.

     What would happen if we viewed this period of delay not as something constructive, even necessary?  What if we found a new name for procrastination?  What if we called it rehearsal?

    A wonderful teacher of writing named Donald Graves began to notice that even little children engage in this process of mental preparation.  He discovered that the best young writers rehearsed what they wanted to say. . .Put simply, productive authors write stories in their heads. . . Each act of procrastination can become a time of planning and preparation.

And now, Roy gives you a tool to use in his WORKSHOP:

-Have a conversation with a writer who seems to be procrastinating.  In a diplomatic and supportive way, ask open-ended questions about the writing: What are you working on?  How's it going.  It turns out that talking about the writing can transform procrastination into rehearsal, maybe even into action.

Next week, another tool from the "Useful Habits" section: "Do your homework well in advance."  Stay tuned!

Tool #40: Draft a mission statement for your work.

. . .To sharpen your learning, write about your writing.

Today I am featuring another chapter tidbit from Roy Peter Clark's book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer," published by Little, Brown and Company. You can find a copy here.

We are now in the fourth and last part of the book, entitled "Useful Habits". . .

In 1996 the St. Petersburg Times published my series "Three Little Words," the story of a woman whose husband died of AIDS. The series ran for twenty-nine consecutive days and received unprecedented attention from local readers and journalists everywhere. . . 

     Good writers turn stories into workshops, intense moments of learning in which they advance their craft.  I learned more about reporting and telling stories from "Three Little Words" than from any other writing experience of my life.  I'm still learning from it.  But I did not learn how much I learned until I stumbled on a strategy I've turned into a tool: I write a mission statement for each story. 

Roy goes on later to say:

I scribbled my mission for "Three Little Words" on two pages of a legal pad.  It covers the content and the form of the story, what I was writing about and how I wanted to write it.  My mission begins: "I want to tell a human story, not just about AIDS, but of the deeply human themes of life, love, death, sorrow, hope, compassion, family, and community."  The mission statement included these goals:

(I've chosen three out of Roy's five)

• I want to portray my protagonist as a fully human character--and not some kind of cardboard saint.
• I want to do this so people can identify with and care for her and her family. It's so easy to see people with AIDS as "the other," the outcast, suffering sinners.
• I want to do this in a form--twenty-nine short chapters--that will give people a chance to know, to learn, to care, to hope.

As for the format:

• I want to restore the form of the serial narrative to newspapers--using the shortest chapters possible.
• I want to reconcile the values of short and long writing in American newspapers.
• I want to write each chapter with (a) a stand-alone quality, (b) a cliffhanger ending, (c) a sense of a new starting point.

I cannot overstate the value of this exercise.  It gave me a view over the horizon as I drafted the story.  This 250-word mission statement, which took about ten minutes to write, helped create a 25,000-word series.  It provided the language I needed to share my hopes with other writers, editors, and readers.  It could be tested, expanded, revised--and it was--during the writing process.

Roy ends the chapter with these words:

     My "Three Little Words" workshop goes on and on as I hear from readers and journalists years later.  From this distance, I see things I would have done differently: reduce the number of chapters; make the reporting and writing methods more transparent; create a straighter narrative line by eliminating one flashback.  By writing that mission statement, I not only kick-started my own learning, but I also created a path where many others could ride along.

Now, use the tool in Roy's WORKSHOP:

1. Write a short mission statement for your next work.  Use it to think about your writing strategies and aspirations.  Share it with someone else, as a reality check, and to get suggestions on how to achieve it.

2. Study some of your old pieces, especially ones you deem successful.  Write a mission statement after the fact, listing what you learned from each.

Check in next week for Roy's 41st tool: Turn procrastination into rehearsal.

Tool #39: Write Toward an Ending.

. . . Help readers close the circle of meaning.

Today I am featuring another chapter tidbit from Roy Peter Clark's book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer," published by Little, Brown and Company. You can find a copy here.

There are endless ways to begin and end a piece of writing, but authors rely on a small toolbox of strategies, just as musicians do.  In musical compositions, songs can build to a crescendo, or fade out, or stop short, or echo the opening.  In written compositions, the author can choose from among these, and more:

(I have listed six of the ten for you)

-Closing the circle.  The ending reminds us of the beginning by returning to an important place or by reintroducing us to a key character.

-The time frame.  The writer creates a tick-tok structure, with time advancing relentlessly.  To end the story, the writer decides what should happen last.

-The epilogue.  The story ends, but life goes on.  How many times have you wondered, after the house lights come back on, what happened next to the characters in a movie?  Readers come to care about characters in stories.  An epilogue helps satisfy their curiosity.

-Problem and solution. This common structure suggests its own ending.  The writer frames the problem at the top and then offers readers possible solutions and resolutions.

-Look to the future.  Most writing relates things that have happened in the past.  But what do people say will happen next?  What is the likely consequence of this decision or those events?

-Mobilize the reader.  A good ending can point the reader in another direction.  Attend this meeting.  Read that book.  Send an e-mail message to the senator.  Donate blood for victims of a disaster.

Roy finishes the chapter with this helpful suggestion:

I end with a warning.  Avoid endings that go on and on like a Rachmaninoff concerto or a heavy metal ballad.  Don't bury your ending.  Put your hand over the last paragraph.  Ask yourself, "What would happen if this ended here?"  Move it up another paragraph and ask the same question until you find the natural stopping place.

Get out your tools and use them to craft or edit your story in Roy's WORKSHOP:

1. Read stories, listen to music, and watch movies with endings in mind.  Pay close attention to details and themes planted early to bear fruit at the end.

2. Just for fun, take some of your recent work and and switch the beginnings and the endings.  Have you learned anything in the process?

Next week, we move into the "Useful Habits" category. . ."Draft a mission statement for your work.

Thanks for stopping by!

Tool # 38: Prefer archetypes to stereotypes.

. . . Use subtle symbols, not crashing cymbals.

Today I am featuring another chapter tidbit from Roy Peter Clark's book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer," published by Little, Brown and Company. You can find a copy here.

     Good writers strive for originality, and they can achieve it by standing on a foundation of narrative archetypes, a set of story expectations that can be manipulated, frustrated, or fulfilled in novel ways, on behalf of the reader.  Examples include:

     The journey there and back

     Winning the prize

     Winning or losing the loved one

     Loss and restoration

     The blessing becoming the curse

     Overcoming obstacles

     The wasteland restored 

     Rising from the ashes

     The ugly duckling

     The emperor has no clothes

     Descent into the underworld

My high school English teacher, Father Bernard Horst, taught me two important lessons about such archetypes.  First, he said, if a wall appears in a story, chances are it's "more than just a wall."  But, he was quick to add, when it comes to powerful writing, a symbol need not be a cymbal.  Subtlety is a writer's virtue.

     "The Dead," by Irish author James Joyce, is the take of a married man named Gabriel who learns at a holiday party that his wife is haunted by the memory of a young man.  Years earlier, Michael Furey had died for her love.  Countless times I have read the final paragraph:

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window.  It had begun to snow again.  He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight.  The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward.  Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland.  It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves.  It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey laid buried.  It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns.  His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

When I first read that paragraph in college, it struck me with a force that transcended its literal meaning.  It took me years to recognize the rich texture of its symbolic iconography: the names of the archangels Gabriel and Michael; the instruments of Christ's passion ("crosses", "spears," and "thorns"); the evocation of the last days ("fall," "descent," "living and dead").  The fact that these were veiled from my first view is a virtue of the story, not a vice.  It means that Joyce did not turn symbols into cymbals.

His last words of advice?  "Use archetypes.  Don't let them use you."

Now, on to the WORKSHOP:

Discuss Father Horst's advice: a symbol need not be a cymbal.  Can you find a symbol in your work?  Is it a cymbal?

Next week: Write towards an ending. . .

Tool #37: In short works, don't waste a syllable.

. . . Shape short writing with wit and polish.

Today I am featuring another chapter tidbit from Roy Peter Clark's book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer,"         published by Little, Brown and Company. You can find a copy here.

In the ideal, the author of a great big novel should not waste a syllable, but he will, and chances are, in an ocean of words, the reader will not notice.  The shorter the story form, the more precious is each word. . . 

Poet Peter Meinke taught me that short writing forms have three peculiar strengths: power, wit, and polish.  Their brevity gives short works a focused power; it creates opportunity for wit; and it inspires the writer to polish, to reveal the luster of the language. . . 

     In his column for the Charlotte Observer, Jeff Elder wrote this response to a query about the extinction of an American species:

Passenger pigeons looked like mourning doves, but more colorful, with wine-red breasts, green necks and long blue tail feathers.

In 1800, there were 5 billion in North America.  They were in such abundance that the new technology of the Industrial Revolution was enthusiastically employed to kill them.  Telegraphs tracked their migration.  Enormous roosts were gassed from trees while they slept.  They were shipped to market in rail car after rail car after rail car.  Farmers bought two dozen birds for a dollar, as hog feed.  

In one human generation, America's most populous native bird was wiped out.

There's a stone wall in Wisconsin's Wyalusing State Park.  On it is a bronze plaque of a bird.  It reads: "This species became extinct through the avarice and thoughtlessness of man."

When I asked readers to appreciate this piece, they point to its many shiny facets.  They notice:

     -"The phrase 'rail car after rail car after rail car' looks like a rail car."

     -"The words 'were gassed' carry connotations of a holocaust."

     -"The first paragraph is filled with natural imagery, but the second contains      
       the language of destructive technology."

     -"Given their extinction, it is fitting that the pigeons looked like 'mourning'  
       doves.  The author takes advantage of that coincidence."

In short writing, the reader sees the ending from the get-go.  With his ending, Elder adds a finish to the surface of the text. . .

Now, get out one of Roy's tools and put it to use in the WORKSHOP:

     -Begin a collection of short writing forms.  Study how they are written.  Make a list of techniques you could use in your writing.

Next week. . . Tool # 38: Prefer archetypes to stereotypes.

Tool # 36: Mix narrative modes.

. . . Combine story forms using the broken line.

Today I am featuring another chapter tidbit from Roy Peter Clark's book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer," published by Little, Brown and Company. You can find a copy here.

     Some writing tools work best for straight reports and explanations.  Others help the writer craft compelling narratives.  The author will often need tools to do both: construct a world that the reader can enter, and then report or comment on that world. The result is a hybrid, best exemplified by a story form called the broken line. . .

     Most movies are unbroken narrative lines. . .On occasion, a director will break the line of narrative for some other purpose. . .Writers can draw on dramatic literature and movies for examples of explanatory interruptions of narrative action. . .Think of the stage manager who addresses the audience in countless high-school productions of Our Town by Thornton Wilder. . .

     That is the secret and the power of the broken line.  The writer tells us a story, then stops the story to tell us about the story, but then returns to the story.  Imagine this form a a train ride with occasional whistle stops, something that looks like this:

---------------[Inform]--------------------[Analyze]-------------------[Explain]--------------------»

                                                              Narrative Line

 Roy then gives a few examples from early literature:

To many, Moby Dick feels like two books: the tragic story of a crazed sea captain's search for a deadly whale, interrupted time and time again by explanations of whaling and the humdrum life of sailors.  Even Huckleberry Finn describes a journey down a river, a narrative line with several landings along the way. . .

     The broken line is a versatile story form.  The writer can begin with narrative and move to explanation, or begin with straight information and then illustrate the facts with an anecdote.  In either case, the easy swing, back and forth, can feel like clockwork.

Now put to use a tool from Roy Clark's toolbox:

-As you read or write fiction, pay attention to the way information and explanation mix with narrative.  Notice if facts are blended into the story or framed as separate elements.

Next week: Tool # 37: In short works, don't waste a syllable.

Tool #35: Report and write for scenes

. . . Then align them In a meaningful sequence.

Today I am featuring another chapter tidbit from Roy Peter Clark's book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer," published by Little, Brown and Company. You can find a copy here.

Tom Wolfe argues that realism, in fiction and nonfiction, is built on "scene-by-scene construction, telling the story by moving from scene to scene and resorting as little as possible to sheer historical narrative."  This requires, according to Wolfe's manifesto in The New Journalism, "extraordinary feats of reporting,"so that writers "actually witness the scenes in other people's lives."

     That advice was offered more than forty years ago, but adherence to it still makes eyewitness storytelling seem new.

BAGHDAD, Iraq--On a cold, concrete slab, a mosque caretaker washed the body of 14-year-old Arkan Daif for the last time.

With a cotton swab dipped in water, he ran his hand across Daif's olive corpse, dead for three hours, but still glowing with life.  He blotted the rose red shrapnel wounds on the soft skin of Daif's right arm and right ankle with the poise of practice.  Then he scrubbed his face scabbed with blood, left by a cavity torn in the back of Daif's skull.

The men in the Imam Ali mosque stood somberly waiting to bury a boy who, in the words of his father, was "like a flower."  Haider Kathim, the caretaker, asked: "What's the sins of the children?  What have they done?"

This is the Pulitzer Prize-winning work of Anthony Shadid, covering the war in Iraq for the Washington Post, practicing a form of immersion journalism, getting close to the action, capturing scene after bloody scene.

Using this example for inspiration, Roy suggests strapping on your tool belt, and getting to work in the WORKSHOP:

-Try an exercise created by Tom French.  With a group of friends or students, view an interesting photograph or portrait (French favors Vermeer).  Although these images are static, the writer must place details in an order that the reader can follow.  Write a scene describing each image, then compare your work.

Next week, Tool #36: Mix Narrative Modes. . .combine story forms using the broken line.