Ted Gup gave me lots of great writing advice when I was in his creative nonfiction class in grad school. Write through to the end; don’t edit as you go. Don’t talk about what you’re writing because that steals the life from it. Be careful about parroting yourself.
But by far the best wisdom he ever shared with me was this, “Look for the story behind the story.”
A few years ago, the memoirist Donald Miller was approached to turn his book Blue Like Jazz into a movie. (Have you seen it yet, by the way? I heard it’s pretty good.) As he started to work with the producers to turn his book, which is essentially the story of his life, into a movie, he was surprised when they said they’d have to cut sections because it wasn’t interesting.
His life wasn’t interesting? His life wouldn’t make a good story?
Trying to start a short story or novel can be difficult, but providing a satisfying ending is just as hard, if not harder.
Recently, I submitted a flash fiction story hoping to get it published. Two days later, the editor replied telling me how much he liked how the story. Unfortunately, he said, the ending didn’t provide enough answers. “Make the end worthwhile”, he said in his last sentence, “and I’ll publish it.”
How many of you struggled in writing a satisfying end for your story? I know I did. After reading that email, I quickly edited my story. I revised and revised and created different versions on how the story ended. Eventually I came up with one that I found satisfying. This time, the story got accepted!
This experience taught me one thing: Writers have to finish strong.
I’m editing a book by an author who lives outside the US. Most of the novel takes place in locations I’ve never seen except in pictures. Sometimes there are words I don’t understand The book has a strangeness I find captivating. Since working on it, I started to wonder if I could write something outside of my own cultural tradition.
Why? Except for his histories, Shakespeare wrote plays that took place in exotic locations like Florence and Scotland. Nearly all of Hemingway’s novels took place outside of the US, usually in Europe or the Caribbean.
We like stories that feel a little foreign.
One of the great gifts a writer can give to the world is to tell someone else’s story.
I learned this when I started ghostwriting: no credit, no glory, just the knowledge that without me, the story wouldn’t be told. It’s surprisingly satisfying.
If you’re still trying to write stories about yourself, I want to challenge you to try your hand at writing someone else’s story. Here are three reasons why…
The dramatic question is probably the single most important element in an entertaining story. Even if you are a terrible writer, if you can use the dramatic question effectively, people will read your work. The dramatic question lies at the heart of suspense, and, as my father-in-law told me recently, the rewards for writers who do suspense well are disproportionate to all other writing skills. The dramatic question is why Twilight is selling millions of copies and the average literary fiction novel is lucky to sell a few thousand.
