Barbara Kerley’s Sept 13 blog about strong opening paragraphs,
Balloons, got me thinking about what makes a good closing. Typically writers and teachers reason that the last sentence needs to sum up, tie together, or provide closure to a narrative. But science, history, and other subjects such as human rights [a personal favorite] change, grow, and evolve without an end in sight, or a clear trajectory from the past. So the last paragraph is not necessarily
end of story.
Years ago I wrote and photographed a book about the life and times of an eight-year-old dwarf. Her name is Jaime. This was the second book I authored and illustrated, and the first children’s book about dwarfism. I wanted it to be perfect. After spending months and months with Jaime, her family, and her friends, I had a large body of material to easily pare down to a thirty-two-page picture book. But I didn’t have an ending. Over and over I returned to Jaime’s home in New Jersey, trying to uncover that impeccable final phrase that would tie everything together. No luck.
Why couldn’t I get Jaime to say something like this: “Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision.” Well, Virginia Woolf had already ended
To the Lighthouse with that stunner
. But my Jaime was so smart, so wise; she
could have come up with something like that. I kept pushing, taping, waiting for a Virginia Woolf moment.
Finally in exasperation because I was driving him and this wonderful child crazy, my husband said, “She’s eight years old, for goodness sake! [He used stronger language.] She’s not ready for an ending.” Then he closed his eyes and pointed to a group of sentences on the storyboard mess of text and photos strewn across the floor. “There’s your ending.” Lo and behold, the last line was right there patiently waiting for its close up: "I’m like everybody else, just little.”
In my view the reader does need some kind of closure, but it need not be detailed, complete. I like books that allow the reader a little breathing space, space to wonder. My favorites are the ones where I wistfully reread the last lines before closing the cover.
There are gazillions of great endings in literature. One that particularly moves me is from Oliver Sacks’s
Musicophila: “But to those who are lost in dementia, the situation is different. Music is no luxury to them, but a necessity, and can have a power beyond anything else to restore them to themselves, and to others, at least for a while.”
And you? When do you know your book, article or essay is complete? Please share your favorite endings – the ones you have written, and ones you wish you had written?
And Jaime? She’s become a beloved first grade teacher, who continues to think big, and is not nearly ready for her ending.
Part I - One Line
In the early 1700's, Richard "Beau" Nash, a professional gambler, dandy, and all-around bon vivant, left London and moved to Bath. He was instrumental in turning the city into a sixteenth century East Hampton, where A-list society folks, including the royals, could party the night away. At one point Nash was appointed "Master of Ceremonies," whatever that means, and he went about laying down pretty strict rules for social engagement.
I learned about Nash last month while on a city walking tour in Bath, still a prosperous spa town known for its Roman bath and Jane Austen. Our guide, a local woman with infinite energy and charm, was chockablock filled with information about the scandalous lives of its leading citizens, especially "Beau" Nash.
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| Bath, The Circus |
At one point she explained it was Nash who established the custom that a gentlemen must walk on the street side of ladies so that oncoming carriages splashing about the mud and garbage would not soil their elaborate gowns. I had no idea that this custom started in Bath. But now that I do, it absolutely has to go into my new book. For the last two years or so I've been working on a YA book that gives voice to transgender teenagers. Is this burying the lead or what? The working title is Ze. "Ze" is a neutral pronoun for he/she/him/her. The teens featured are cool, hip, anguished, triumphant, and all-around awesome. I can't wait for you to meet them.
In one paragraph of her chapter, Christina, a trans female, talks about going on a first date with a straight man. She thought it weird that he insisted on walking on the street side of the sidewalk. Defiantly, she'd edge over to the curb every time they turned a corner. He'd walk around her. She'd step back sashaying to his right. He'd take her arm and lead her back to the left. "So annoying," she told me. I don't think this relation
My phone rang last month and a smokejumper was on the other end. “I’m jumping this week, lots of blazes, but I got your message and I’ll find a way into that safe for you even if we have to crack it open.”
I had been waiting for this call for weeks. It all started with a cold call to a guy named Steve who knew a lot about the history of smokejumping—including the period of time when the paratroopers I am writing about worked for the Forest Service as smokejumpers. This guy was an absolute wealth of information, and he ended up sending me interview transcripts and knowing just whom I should talk to.
One of the guys Steve sent me to was Wayne. Wayne was equally enthusiastic and genuinely excited to talk with me. With Wayne I hit the photographic jackpot—almost. He told me an incredible story that resulted in a big orange carrot dangling in front of my nose.
One day, as he was busy manning the jump station, a man came up to him, handed him a manila envelope, said there were priceless pictures inside the Forest Service should have, and walked away. When Wayne had a chance to look at them, he knew immediately what they were, and stashed them in the safe in his office for, you guessed it, safekeeping.
Time went by and Wayne retired. The photos, he realized when we were talking, must still be in that safe—which no one had opened for years. “Call Dan (his successor) and tell him Wayne said to find the combination to that old safe and get those photos for you.”
Okay—I had a location, information, and a plan. The first time I called Dan he was out on a jump. The second time, too. I left a message that must have sounded crazy, to the effect of ‘you don’t know me, but the guy who worked in your office before you left some photos in a safe and he wants you to get them for me.” I didn’t know if I would ever hear from him.
It took a while, what with Dan being kind of tied up smokejumping into blazing forest fires, but he did call me back. He also promised that he would find the combination of the safe in his office. A week later came the bad news that no one seemed to know where that combination was, and the safe was so old and tough it was looking like it would be a big job to break into it by force. Still, he told me not to worry. He’d get the job done. Firefighters are like that.
Not long after, Dan had more news for me. They still hadn’t located the combination, but he had discovered the photos had been digitally scanned at some point. A CD was on its way to me! Some time after that, a package arrived in the mail. On that CD were a few old images I had seen before, but instead of the old blurry, many-photocopied, hard-to-reproduce versions I kept finding, these were crisp and clear and bright. Better still, there were a few images I had never seen before. Jackpot!
These are the kinds of detective trails that need to be found and followed for just a handful of photographs that will end up in my forthcoming book, Courage Has No Color.
There are many more photo stories where that came from. Sometimes these chases turn out to be of the wild goose variety; sometimes they are sheer gold.
Thank you Steve, Wayne, and Dan!
While on vacation in the Adirondacks this summer I read Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken. For those who might not know the book, it's about a World War II crew of a B-24 (not affectionately called a "Flying Coffin") that plunges into the Pacific, killing most of the men. The few who lived through the crash, including Olympic runner Louis Zamperini, survive in a tiny, disintergrating rubber raft for over a month, are captured by the Japanese and imprisioned on a small island, and then sent to Japan and made to do hard labor, accented by senseless torture. It's the sort of story where just when you think nothing worse could possibly happen to these guys something even worse does indeed happen.
It's an amazing book and one I would highly recommend to anyone interested in gripping, well-written nonfiction. But here's the thing: it's almost too perfect. Hillenbrand has clearly done a ton of research as even a casual glimpse of her Notes and Acknowledgments makes clear, with Zamperini providing a wealth of information in over seventy-five interviews. Even so, I sometimes found the level of detail startling and wondered if it all came from Zamperini or whether some was author speculation. Take this brief paragraph (that I picked by opening the book and, without looking, pointing at a part of the page) that describes the moments after Zamperini is thrown into a small, wooden cell on the island of Kwajalein:
"At first, Louie could barely see. His eyes darted about uncontrollably. His mind raced, flitting incoherently from thought to thought. After weeks of endless openness, he was disoriented by the compression of the space around him. Every nerve and muscle seemed in a panic."
I have no problem with the basic facts; the notes for p. 174 say that Zamperini provided them. But do any of us think he described his eyes darting about or the panic in his nerves and muscles? I'm willing to say "well, maybe," but in my heart I'm thinking this is made up stuff. And I wouldn't be bothered by one or two places where this happens. Or ten. But it seemed that every scene (whether Zamperini is the focus or not) is fleshed out with similar rich, dramatic detail and emotional insight. It's almost as if they're too complete and rounded out
It's possible that I was recalling the numerous blog-o-sphere discussions recently where non-fiction writers have been urged to speculate more about their subjects (to build drama and emotion and to help go beyond "history as story" in order to discuss opinions and ideas). Or maybe I was remembering an article that (wiesly in my opinion) warned about fictional details sneaking into children's non-fiction. So I may be a little too sensitive to these things and as a result totally unfair to Hillenbrand. Maybe she did write a perfect book! Even so, it did make me wonder where the line should be drawn when it comes to speculation and who, besides the author, should be monitering it. I've had editors (Dinah Stevenson to name one) who know history and can sniff out every false note in a text. But I think that a lot of editors might not be quite so versed in history and might not be able to spot fact from decent, based-on-solid research speculation versus made up stuff. Reviewers? Again, a mixed bag of expertise that might allow a nonfiction book loaded with questionable speculation to pass unchallenged.
It's a complex and potentially troubling situation (especially considering who our main audience is) and one that may never be resolved in a clear and satisfying way. I'd love to hear what others think about this and what we should do.
The Horn Book's current issue is focused on nonfiction and contains many interesting and thought-provoking articles, including a great one by I.N.K.'s very own Tanya Lee Stone. If you have a chance, you might want to visit the HB site (
www.hbook.com/) and check out what is being discussed (and even if you don't have a subscription -- and I don't -- you can still access a number of the pieces).
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An article that caught my attention was Marc Aronson's "New Knowledge." In it he draws a razor sharp line between the old nonfiction, where, according to Marc, writers simply take the work of the expert adult scholars and make it "engaging and accessible to young readers," while the new nonfiction is where writers "set out to discover new knowledge" and then bravely interpret and speculate about it "however parlous and fraught with possible error that may be." *
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Now don't get me wrong; I find the kinds of books he describes as exciting as Marc does, and the authors he cites as fine practitioners (including Stone, Susan Campbell Bartoletti, Phillip Hoose, Kadir Nelson, and himself) are all people and writers I applaud for their bravery and tenacity in hunting out the truth and their skill at presenting it to young readers. Still I bristled at some of Marc's reasoning and in particular over the way he so soundly deposited Russell Freedman in the old (and by implication inferior) nonfiction category. I would never presume to speak for Russell, but I will say that in my many chats with him over the years about research and, yes, how he interprets the gathered information, I think Marc's representation is both limited and unfair. Russell is a long-time friend and colleague, a writer and researcher I admire a great deal, so maybe I'm over-reacting a bit; and maybe it's that most of my own books would probably be classified as old nonfiction and pushed aside as well. So I thought I'd address a few of these issues here. [By the way, I would have responded directly on The Horn Book site, but didn't see a way to do this.]
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Marc's article rambles a bit and some of it seems dropped in, possibly because it was an after-thought or a last minute editorial suggestion. Even so, I think I can summarize a few of the reasons why Marc feels the new nonfiction is completely different from the old and therefore unique: the new nonfiction 1, requires original research, often side-by-side with "pioneering experts," 2, this research often reveals information not available in adult books, and 3, these writers (he refers to them as "explorers") venture to interpret and speculate about the historical record. I realize there is more to Marc's definition of the new nonfiction, but I thought I'd start with these three for today.
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My books always begin with a careful study of the scholarly thought on a topic, what Marc refers to as the "settled knowledge." I do this to establish a solid understanding of the subject, to see how opinions and conclusions have changed over the years, and to provide the route to further research, a path that has hundreds of branching leads to follow.
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In fact, I have never done a book that did not entail significant detective work that required exploring beyond the edge of the known -- to root out primary sources, interview and question experts (established and pioneering) on their ongoing research and their conclusions, and sometimes to work alongside these experts. In short, doing whatever it takes to unearth a new detail or voice, all of which can lead to a slightly different interpretation of events from what has usually been accepted. Take what happened with The Boys' War.
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Way back in the Dark Ages of 1985 I was reading a book about the Ci
Well, Susan, what a great way to start October, with tears in my eyes. Thank you for this post. I love thinking about endings. I struggled over the ending of my novel (sorry, I know it's not nonfiction), but when I got it, I smiled and then cried. I am so happy to know what Jamie is doing now, and I just love how you get into your subjects so thoroughly. I will be using YOU and this blog in a talk this weekend. Thank you!
The most powerful lesson in writing came from my first husband's high school English teacher whom I never met. I wrote a post about his lesson back in March, 2009, "Begin with a Bang, End with a Snap." I've found that often, the close is a huge generalization that is powerful because it is at the close. The last sentence of my book Lots of Rot is "Rotting is a part of the circle of living things." If that sentence had been the first in the book it would have been a huge yawn. I think the same thing could be said of Susan's closing sentence. A powerful closing sentence is usually a weak opening one. Flat, uninteresting writing begins with the generalized conclusion, and preempts the suspense that comes from building the case and making it the point of the book.
Can't remember who said this, but I typed it out and pinned it on my bulletin board: "The first scene shines like a flashlight throughout the story, and the last scene will be haunting, something to chew on."
Susan, your quote is perfect. I'm going to put it up on my bulletin board, too, next to "Life Is Huge Reclaim the Awe.
Vicki, your closing sentence is so evocative it would be great anywhere. Rot! What an interesting subject.
And dear Deborah, thanks for the tears, smiles and struggles. Can you take me with you this weekend?
You're right, Susan, endings are so important. As both a writer and a reader, I feel a great sense of satisfaction when the ending hits just the right note. My favorite quote about endings comes from modern dance choreographer Doris Humphrey. She said "The ending is 40% of the dance." She knew the right ending makes a huge difference to the effectiveness of the entire composition--and it's equally true for piece of music, a dance, a poem, a movie or a book.
Great post, Susan.
My favorite endings are the ones that make me want to flip back to page one and read the book again :)
A NF book that eventually shaped my life is Karen, by her mother, Marie Killilea, telling the early life of her daughter and their struggles and advocacy for equal opportunities and experiences (long before IDEA). The last line of that has never left me:
I can walk, I can talk, I can read, I can write- I can do anything.
Great post, Susan.
I think a good ending often brings the reader full circle, back to the beginning of the book. There is something very satisfying about that.
Thank you all for your comments. I'm so glad Susanna mentioned the great choreographer Doris Humphrey. Sandy's last line made me want to read KAREN. And Melissa and Barbara's comments bring us full circle. What a pleasure it is to share this blog with you all.
Great Susan. My favorite ending is "only connect" and this so connects-- and I am thrilled with reading about Jamie. It is such a struggle....
Cheers,