Beginnings, Middles & Ends Prologue THE STORY IN YOUR HEAD    There's story in your head -- or may just the start of a story. Characters are walking around in there, talking to each other, doing things to furniture, gesturing and shouting and laughing. You can see it all so clearly, like a movie rolling in your m ind. It's going to be terrific. Excited, you sit down to write.    But something happens. The story that comes out on the page isn't the same as the story in your head. The dialogue is flatter, the action doesn't read right, the feel just isn't the same. There's a gap between the story you can visualize and the one you know how to write. And a the moment, that gap resembles the Mariana Trench -- deep, scary, and uncrossable.    If you've ever felt this way about your writing, you're not alone. The truth is that there's always a gap between the story as you imagined it -- compelling, insightful, rich with subtle nuance -- and what actually ends up in the manuscript. Thi s is because stories must be written, and read, one word at a time, with information accumulating in the reader's mind to create the full picture. This slow, linear accretion of impressions can't ever quite equal that perfect flash of inspiration in which all the parts of the story -- action, meaning, nuances, insights, all of it -- burst into the brain all at once. Words, unlike movies, are not a multi-sensory event. Words are symbols, and symbols don't work directly on the human senses. They work second hand, through suggestions to the reader's imagination, through words describing what you saw in your imagination.    No wonder there's always a gap between the story in the writer's head and the one she puts into the reader's head.    For professional writers, that gap may be small. A professional learns what information to present -- and in what order -- to make the words convey her original vision as closely as possible. The beginning writer must learn to this too. One way to do t hat is to write a lot -- some people say a million words -- until you get better through trial and error. Another is to receive reliable criticism on which parts of your story are conveying your vision and which parts are not. A good writing class can do this for you. A third way is to read books like this to learn how good writers present information to their reader's imagination.    That "third way" isn't really sufficient by itself, of course. Learning about writing won't help you write better unless you actually apply what you learn to a story in progress -- just as learning about the ideal golf swing won't improve your s core unless you actually practice on the links. The Mariana Trench doesn't get crossed by discussing it.    Nor will this book help you improve the quality of the story in your head. That vision comes from everything about you: your experiences, your imagination, your beliefs about the world, your powers of perception, your interests, your sophistication, yo ur previous reading, your soul. Vision, sometimes called talent, is not a teachable attribute.    What is teachable, and what this book can help you with, is craft. Craft is the process of getting the story in your head onto the page in a form that readers can follow, and remain interested in, and enjoy. Finding that form means taking litera lly hundreds of decisions in the course of a short story: What do I show first? How much background should I tell here? What scene should I put next? This plot development or that one? This noun, or that one? This ending, or something else I haven't thoug ht of yet? Help!    Craft can be helped. Craft can be taught. Craft can help you narrow -- if not completely eliminate -- the gap between the story in your head and the story on the page. Craft is a set of navigation tools for crossing the Mariana Trench. THREE PATERNS FOR STORIES THAT AREN'T WORKING    In my years of teaching, I've noticed three distinct patterns in student stories, which are often habitual patterns for the stories' writers. One kind of story starts very slowly. Events drag, characters seem confused, and even the prose is a bit clums y. Then, somewhere around page five for a short story or chapter three for a novel, the writer suddenly hit his stride or finds his voice. The story picks up, and from that point on it becomes more and more interesting.    This writer needs help with beginnings.    A second type of story start well, with a strong hook and a sure tone. The first scene presents intriguing characters and raises interesting questions. Sometimes even the second scene works well. After that, however, the story flounders. It's as if the writer didn't know how to answer the intriguing questions, or develop the characters and their situation. In desperation he plunges ahead anyway, and the story winds down in to confusion or dragginess or boredom.    This writer needs help with middles.    Finally, there is the story that sustains interest right to the last scene. The read is racing along, dying to know how it all comes out or what it all means. But she never does. Instead she finds a resolution that leave major plotlines hanging, or is out of character, or doesn't seem to add up to anything meaningful, or trails off into pseudosymbolism that doesn't seem connected to the events in the story. The reader feels cheated. The writer gets rejected -- but often not right away. Many such storie s earn editorial requests for rewrite, since the editor doesn't want to believe that such promising works have to fizzle out. The request spotlights the problem but doesn't solve it.    This writer needs help with endings.    To some extend, of course, these are artificial divisions. What you write in the beginning of your story is intimately connected with the middle, which in turn gives birth to the end. A well written story is a living whole. But by examining beginnings, middles and ends one at a time, we can identify some of the problems associated with each. By looking at solutions, we can address some of the issues of craft that move a story from a writers head to the page.    Even the Mariana Trench, after all, has been conquered. On January 23, 1960, the bathyscaph Trieste settled 35,800 feet below the surface of the Pacific, shining light for the first time on the murky depths of the Trench.    Bon voyage!

Copyright ©1999 Nancy Kress