The Payoff

Every--repeat, every--dramatic narrative concludes with an action or presentation of the verge of an impending action, either of which tips the scales in a result that produces an emotional effect.  You feel the thunk of it in your gut, as you often do after reading a short story by Deborah Eisenberg or Louise Erdrich, or William Trevor.  You know something has happened or will happen to persons you know, now that you think about it, as well as you knew your high school chums and even, yes, even some of your university chums.

You know and you have some concern because none of these writers is likely to be translated into Hallmark cards; rather each of them depicts plausible endings, momentary conclusions in on-going lives--because each of their characters has a life off the page, so far as you are concerned.  You would be more likely to call one of them and say hey, let's meet for a coffee or drinks than you would high school classmates or university chums.  Not that you have anything against these, to be sure, but rather you are impressed at how close you get to individuals who are dredged up from the imaginations of these superb writers, dipped in a bit of batter, then tossed on the page to get crinkly done.

In the longer form fiction, the emotional effect is articulated in greater detail, a killer is brought to justice, separated lovers reunite, the bond between then different and more durable; a deadlocked jury finally reaches a verdict, a tyrant recognizes the error of his ways then vows to change his ways.  Shorter fiction has a less conclusive effect, often deliberately vague as a reflection of how inconclusive and episodic mush of life is.  In a true sense, the short story makes life seem less a series of episodes.

Over the lifespan of long and short forms, beginnings have undergone more significant change than middles or endings, being more disposed now to begin in medias res than in their eighteenth or nineteenth century forbears.  The notable example of The Iliad, composed more or less in the year 850 BCE, comes to mind as an exception to the tendency, along with the wonder more writers did not see the potential for such beginnings.  Middles have more or less gone their own way, allowing variously for shifts in narrative voice, jumps ahead or to the rear in story line, and introductions of subplots or themes.  Endings have grown more tentative, as if in direct relation to the complexity of life, the Balkanization of states, institutions, organizations.  Nevertheless, we do want some sense that a story has come to as much of an end as it can get without appearing to tack on another story.  Many stories thus end with a significant death, not particularly the death of a front rank character as, say Charles Ryder, the narrator of Brideshead Revisited, but of Lord Marchmain, a distant second-tier personage.  Doesn't hurt that Ryder's marriage has come to an end, either; there is a sense of the vital events having taken place, the chips fallen where they did.  And of course with Gatsby dead, there is nothing left but a brief valedictory from Nick Carraway, the narrator.  Even though it is a bit much to put The Sun Also Rises in the same shelf as Brideshead and Gatsby, there is to be sure that requisite emotional thump when Jake Barnes, reflecting on Bret Ashley's subjunctive scenario, gives her famous soliloquy.  And not to forget James Joyce's major work, Ulysses, which does belong in the same shelf; Molly's soliloquy leaves us with a gut wrench.

Payoff is what we read for.  It is emotional information melded with an opening of the senses, an awareness of some part of life.  Payoff is what we work at and hope for in life; it is what we read for when we read; it is the private dance Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire do in our minds when we set forth to get a story down, perhaps to be performed as the Homeric tales were, perhaps as a joke to be told among a group of friends, perhaps as a poem or short story or long-form work that would not leave us alone until we got it in a way we thought was right.  Now we can close our eyes and see our words and their effects, come to life like Rogers and Astaire, endlessly lithe, supple, beautiful, radiating the sense that whatever happens in life or story, there is music and dance to take us up and cast us as lithe, supple, and beautiful as they.

What's That on Your Nose?

aftertaste--a feeling or vision evoked after reading a short story or novel in which the reader takes up the characters and dramatic situations, giving the characters and their circumstances life off the page; a resonant impression triggered in the reader by the events, circumstances, and personalities in a dramatic narrative.

Some novels and stories are so evocative that they seem to continue in their readers' mind long after the ending has been resolved. For instance, how many of us have considered what would happen next to Jake Barnes and Brett Ashley after Barnes has delivered his famed closing line in The Sun Also Rises, “Yes, isn't it pretty to think so?” 

 Or, still with Ernest Hemingway, this time A Farewell to Arms. Catherine Barkley has just delivered a stillborn baby, then died of a hemorrhage. Frederic Henry stays with Catherine until she dies, attempts to find ways to say farewell, realizes he cannot, then walks back to his hotel in the rain. The endings of both novels, as written, leave no doubt that the story is over, but the characters were drawn so well that they do not fade from the imagination. The result is aftertaste.

Aftertaste is the emotive awareness in the reader of the entire narrative, the literary equivalent of the aftertaste of a particular wine or ale, the lingering effect of the very process by which evocation works, the affect and effect a skilled actor produces when portraying a character.

How to achieve aftertaste? Consider the goals of each character and the actions the character takes to achieve that goal. Consider how each character responds to frustration and reversal. Consider the endings of stories as dramatic moments of theme rather than explanations of their significance. 

 Consider the way Anton Chekhov ended his stories. Consider ways by which hints are introduced to pique the reader's curiosity, for instance what further conversations or actions Fortinbras and Horatio might have had at the conclusion of Hamlet.

A story that lingers in the reader's sensitivities has a life of its own, a life that will draw the reader back to hear more from the writer.


on the nose--a theatrical term indicating an action, behavior, or description is too literal; a reminder of the need for greater evocation of a desired result in all dramatic storytelling.

In a larger sense, being told a particular interpretation or scene is too "on the nose" is being alerted to the absolute moral white or black of meaning, of the operatic nature of one's drama. Human behavior tends more to gray than white or black; it is rich with shading and shadow. The judgment of "too on the nose" is a cry for greater complexity and depth of character and, accordingly, of the motive of character.

Do the Endings Justify the Meanness?

ending--the point at which a dramatic narrative delivers its payoff emotion; characters in a story being led from a precipitous brink to a more comfortable landing spot; the arrival at an offered solution to the major dramatic issue.

As in all events where humans are involved, story endings are at best temporary because one or more of the characters involved will quickly become caught up in another strand of activity--even if it is only a return to some old conviction, habit, or pattern, where a new chapter will begin. Ending is a sense that things are over for the moment. At the final curtain of Hamlet, with so many of the dramatis personae dead, only Fortinbras and Horatio are left to deal with the energy of the previous activities, but just as playwright Tom Stoppard saw possibilities for a spin-off in which Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern had their own show, Horatio could challenge Fortinbras after his final tribute to Hamlet, working himself up to wonder why Fortinbras hadn't done anything sooner, to which Fortinbras could have wondered a similar wonder to Horatio, whereupon the two would get into the exchange of blows and a sequel to Hamlet would have been in the making. Huck Finn could have done quite nicely in the territory ahead, but Tom Sawyer, fed up with the heavy responsibilities of family life, civic affiliations, and the weight of The Social Contract heavy on his shoulders, could have come looking for Huck and, once again, became caught up in Huck's life style.

Endings are a sign to the reader that things are over for now--not necessarily solved, but done until the next defining moment settles upon the characters.

Reminder: not ending soon enough may produce anticlimax.


layer--a stratum or single element manifest within a story; a subplot, thematic, or character-related motif found in a dramatic narrative.

Stories, even shorter ones, tend to have more than one layer of activity accompanying the main thrust of the story, perhaps extending to a remote past or possibly not quite as recent as the present moment. Layering often takes form in the interaction between two or more characters, relying on attitudes related to past experience or experiences between them. Results from conflicting or disappointed expectations among characters may also add layers of complexity to a narrative.

The conventional wisdom for layering holds each tier responsible for some enhancement of story line (plot), character development, subtext, or an enhancement of theme.

Thus may a story be seen as an archaeological dig in which the reader discovers more about the individuals involved in the narrative, their social make-up, artifacts, and attitudes as each layer is excavated. In general, plot-driven stories tend to have fewer layers than literary, but as with all generalities related to story, the writer must take care not to be driven by them to the point where imagination and inventiveness are overridden.

Front Tier Justice

ghost of Hamlet's father, the--a young prince being invoked by his father's ghost to pursue revenge on his uncle; a metaphor by which a character is reminded of some debt from the past, related to a much loved or much feared friend, relative, or mentor, calling upon the character to become an instrument of revenge; the forces of guilt or retribution conspiring to drive a character to exact payback for events not directly related to him; the long, heavy-handed reach of obligation, conflicting with a character's personal agenda.

The ghost of Hamlet's father wants revenge against Claudius, his brother, for having murdered him and subsequently become the husband of Gertrude, his widow. What better instrument for the ghost than his son? A productive line of inquiry in family and dynastic narratives, placing the squeeze of conscience and duty on the present day protagonist, undercutting his or her own ambitions and recipe for achieving them.

In the traditional ghost story, the ghost has remained in a particular corner of reality, wanting retribution or some related form of justice before moving on to its place in history, reaching across time and cultures for an instrument to represent it in the here and now. Thus haunting is brought into the dramatic sphere as a force that wants something, reminding characters of obligations, debts unpaid, talents undeveloped, justice hanging fire--all of these connective tissue to someone, some ideal, some unfinished business. Thus too the haunted character is placed in the exquisite conflict between his goals and those of another, placing the haunted in a position to discover attitudes, qualities, and techniques which will allow him or her to cope on behalf of another, then become that great dialectic of independence with a long list of influential connections.

Not all ghosts rattle chains or moan at midnight, some are more subtle, attracting their mortal instruments across centuries, cultures, traditions, drawing complete strangers into their orbit. Sometimes the instrument of justice is merely an individual who speaks up to insist that Uncle Fred may have likes his peppermint schnapps but he was as well a wise, empathetic, and kindly man. In another such a fanciful scenario, the ghost and mortal instrument could easily be as diverse as, say the iconic but no-nonsense English poet great, John Milton, and a word-loving hip-hop singer from South Philly, happening on an unpublished manuscript in a centuries-old reading room at a college in England, then bring yet one more last and resonant word, perhaps his most important word of all, from the old poet to the world of literature. Thus too the genie in the bottle, waiting with growing impatience for someone--anyone--to find the bottle in which he has been imprisoned for thousands of years, remove the stopper, which allows the genie to step out for a stretch.


justice--a sense of closure to a conflicted outcome; the payoff of a story; the rendition of a negotiated settlement on some moral, ethical, or artistic conflict.

In a legal sense, justice should be impartial, balanced, perhaps not quite satisfactory to all built at least carrying a sense of attempted fairness. In the sense of reality, which fiction approaches with some degree of ironic vision, justice is more likely to reflect blindness or bias or rank unfairness, even to the point of referring to some outcomes as poetic justice.

One instructive way of determining the attitudes and visions of a particular writer is to consider how that writer's stories payoff as related to a scale of justice. Suggested authors on whom to start: Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Joyce Carol Oates, Willa Cather. Another instructive approach is to ask after reading any work of fiction, Was justice done in this story?

Revision.1

revision--a systematic review and examination of raw thematic material; a process of searching for the optimal form and deployment of a story (also applies to nonfiction). A final and emphatic editorial vision of a project, reflecting as nearly as possible a unified editorial tone, vibrant characters with uneasy choices, and a satisfying, plausible resolution.

Writers have been advised for some time by instructors, literary agents, and editors to revise a recently completed work. Often those same instructors, literary agents, and editors have an inchoate vision of what they mean by the term "revision," adding an entire layer of confusion to a process than can be a joy.

Thus three important revision rules for writers at the outset: (1) Unless a literary agent or editor offers a specific quid pro quo offer to represent or publish the work if specified revisions are made, their suggestions are worthless; (2) Unless the instructor, literary agent, or editor cannot articulate a specific list of revisions --change the point of view, change the verb tense from past to present, remove fifty percent of the physical description, etc--their suggestions are not nearly as valuable as rereading the material yourself; (3) If the revision suggestions from the instructor, literary agent, or editor do not resonate as appropriate, ignore them.

These basic questions follow for the individual essaying the revision:

1. Is the work complete? A significant way to determine this is to set the work aside for between one day and a week, then return to read it afresh, hopeful of not discovering any "How could I have forgotten that?" moments. Accordingly put in any forgotten that.

2. Does it begin in the right place? Always a tricky call, especially if the present opening circumstances were the cause for the work congealing as an idea to pursue. Reread the work specifically for another place where there is a greater sense of opening velocity and character involvement. Stories need not be set in strict chronology; a perfect place for the beginning may be the penultimate or even final scene. Remember beginnings are not places where much in the way of background is set forth; beginnings are more likely to be eighty percent movement and twenty percent description. Quirky, interesting people doing quirky interesting things make the most engaging beginnings.

3. Does the reader have someone to root for? Sure, the manuscript has a protagonist, but is the protagonist invested enough in his or her agenda to make readers want to become emotionally involved as the characters tread their paths? American readers for instance, would not seem likely fans of Mr. Stevens, the protagonist of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day. After all, what's the big deal about wanting to be a butler? But of course, Mr. Stevens didn't want to be an ordinary butler. And who among us could root for Fast Eddie Felson, a kid who wanted to be a pool hustler? Not just any pool hustler. Thinking about the dramatic strengths of Carrie Bradshaw and her ultimate goals, we begin to get an interesting perspective on both sides of the coin as it were, rooting for her in Sex in the City and rooting as well for the eponymous Pamela to retain her chastity in her own dramatic venture.

4. Does it end in the right place? Does it,we must ask, end by explaining itself too strenuously or defensively? Does it bury emotional effect in a welter of logical details to the point of producing anticlimax? And since we're on a questioning jag, does the ending take the reader well beyond closure? Do the characters and situations have life off the page? Does the current ending foreclose on that delicious sense of aftertaste that appears after the last page has been turned and a final effect appears? Does it usurp reader participation by not allowing the reader to get a word or thought in edgewise, thanks to the control-freak nature of the author?

5. Not forgetting that some types of stories require descriptions of places, clothing, food, local customs and politics, is this story too descriptive, too heavy handed with theme and atmosphere?

6. Is the story told in the most effective point of view? Could someone have told it better? Think about it In this case better relates to more tension, more suspense, more irony, more naivete. Ah, naivete as in a naive narrator instead of a worldly or trustworthy one, which takes us back to Mr. Stevens in The Remains of the Day, and makes us question the benefits of a trustworthy narrator. Doctors and lawyers frequently complain that they cannot trust their respective patients and clients; should readers be able to trust narrators?

7. Is there a better narrative effect to be had than the present one; is it perhaps too literal? Could the narrative be enhanced with an edgier voice?

These last questions are of particular importance because the answers to them will have a direct effect on the first item in the next installment: Dialogue--the things characters say to attack stasis.

Roberts' Rules of Ardor

1. There is no right moment to begin a story or, if necessary, a novel. This goes beyond such propaganda as waiting or not waiting for inspiration. Beginning a story is the beginning of enthusiasm, even more it is the beginning of a friendship because by the time you've finished with the story or the novel, you will have come to share strengths and weaknesses with it, its and yours. There might be times in the process where neither of you is speaking to the other. Tempers flare. It may not care what you're doing for it; you may well not care what it is doing for you. Stories may be embarked upon at any time. One proof of this is a test that may be made by as simple a move as picking up at a time of only mild enthusiasm a story by an author you like.

2. You will undoubtedly have heard some rule of thumb about the amount of revision necessary to get the story or novel in shape, the particular rule of thumb being stuck in at the behest of an editor who likes numbers or because of your own sense of guilt that the story seemed to tell itself and was accordingly too easy. Revision is a structured process, its goal being to effect the most telling portrayal of the feelings set loose by the work at hand.

3. It is fun to seem contrary and bemoan how difficult writing is. It may have been difficult to learn the tools, and occasionally a story will require more thought, more trial and error. The fact is that you may have been sold a bill of goods by a used story salesperson, the bill of goods being that writing stories is difficult. You will then assume that writing is hard work, odious work, work that is no fun. If you began with the sentiment that writing was fun, you will begin to feel more justified in shifting your attitude when friends and teachers and professionals ask you when you're going to write something serious.

4. Writers who are perpetually miserable are likely to write stories about persons, places, and events where misery is a salient feature. Ask yourself if there is some embarrassment about having fun while you work. Be sure to change your ways if you ever catch yourself singing in the shower.

5. Does it make you some kind of creep if you enjoy writing stories about characters who are feeling miserable?

6. Revision is, as noted previously, a structured investigation to determine if you are telling the story at the correct pace, in the correct point of view, and whether significant emotions are being raised and discoveries being made.

7. Revision is making decisions about which of several alternatives you find most interesting and illustrative of your dramatic goal.

8. Ending a story or novel means not sticking around trying to tack on arguments or footnotes or, for that matter, introducing a digression that will result in anticlimax.

9. Ending a story is analogous to not being the last guest to leave a party. It is better to leave early than stay too late.

10. When readers tell you they want more details about your characters, they are confessing their interest in the characters.

11. When you revise, you carefully check each line and word of dialog to make sure it carries its weight and does not become talky or conversational.

12. One sure way of knowing you've completed your revision is the realization that only you will recognize the new things you're putting in or taking out.

The Point of No Return

Beginnings are neither easy nor natural, sometimes remaining unrecognized until they are well under way. Even then, beginnings are often recounted in retrospect, often sad retrospect, as in, If I had only known, or Little did I recognize then. Beginnings confound us nearly as much as endings. We often aren't sure where or when a thing begins until we decide where it ends, allowing us to scroll back to the literary equivalent of a Big Bang. Yogi Berra may well have observed that it isn't over until it's over, but had he been more observant, he'd have also recognized that we need a sign from on high that the ending really is over, allowing us to scramble back through the parking lot, looking for the lost keys of the beginning.

Being born is one beginning, promising in the sense of now being on stage, collecting coordination and memories. My own earliest memories come from a time when my family was driven by economic need from the Santa Monica, California of my birth to a distant suburb, Burbank, and a Mediterranean-style home on Providencia Street, which must have placed me in or about age three, where I remember being locked (probably by my own hand) in a bathroom with a corrugated glass pane in the door. Some time later I recall being taken by my older sister next door to see some baby alligators in the wash basin of our neighbors, the Browns. The Browns also had a dog named Silver with whom I had a relationship of sorts in that once Silver bit me and I in turn bit him.

Beginnings are not always where you expect them; in dramatic fiction, they are determined by the nature of the story and are every bit as important to get fine tuned as it is important to establish who or whom among the dramatis personae is/are relaying the story to the reader. Endings are not always where you expect them, either, meaning you either go on too long and thus risk the distraction of anticlimax or the quite different risk of stopping too soon, risking the reception of the narrative as a shaggy dog story.

Thus observed, with perils from both ends as it were, story in general is a risky business, particularly for those of us who follow the character-driven story as opposed to the compulsively orchestrated plot-driven story. And so we approach a given story with the sense that there is some safety in the middle part of the narrative arc, which in many ways is like the spare room or garage in which things are piled helter-skelter, waiting for use or, worse, waiting for guests to arrive, which occasions a need to clear our a sleeping space, which very need occasions some calamitous discovery such as the bed or sofa having an exposed spring or stain the size and shape of the former Soviet Socialist Union.

Okay, there is no place in story to go for safety, no soft spot, no lee cove or haven. Add to this menacing landscape of beginning, middle, and ending, there is the pulsing sense that a story need not be scrolled forth in chronology. If anything, a story told in strict chronology needs some added touch of suspense or characterization or moral quandary to leaven the unremarkable time frame.

I am mindful of these lurking menaces by a tart email from Digby Wolfe, reminding me it is time--another sort of time--to get on with the book we have been threatening for some time now, The DNA of Story. "I believe the middle is the minefield," he writes. "That's where the real danger lies--the matter of choice, where one may or may not safely tread, when in fact safety is the detonating word for the real menace:predictability..."

Our assignments are made. He will begin with middles and I with a dissection of the basic dramatic unit, the scene, which has beginning and middle and ending.

In the process, I am reminded of a time some years back, when The Writer was still quartered in Boston, and its remarkable editor, Sylvia Burack, approached me to do a piece on middles, which I could possibly still be grappling with to this very day had I not had the good bad fortune to watch that iconic film, The High and the Mighty, on television. The story is quintessential disaster film, wrapped in an ensemble cast, all of whom are caught on a flight between Los Angeles and Honolulu, where things go wrong. Seriously wrong. Engines catch fire. Storms approach. One of the flight crew--the pilot--has a heart attack. As one disaster after another is announced, we are delivered the dramatic equivalent of a one-two punch. The flight engineer announces that the fuel supply is in trouble, the radio man chimes in with the storm being up-graded, which will require greater fuel use. And now, the navigator with his announcement. We've reached the point of no return.

I was up immediately, reaching for my note pad, my reliable Moleskine. PONR, I printed. The middle is the point of no return; the story cannot end, the characters are committed to a course of action that will produce consequences. We cannot guess what those will be yet and indeed may change our minds as we proceed, but given the archetype, the plane cannot return to safety of the LAX airport; it must forge ahead. Not to worry, John Wayne was the copilot and he'll overcome his own issues to bring us safely under the storm and into Honolulu.

The reader needs to see the PONR to be invested fully in it. Check out Antigone, for instance, if you find this trope of mine is too modern. Check out Shakespeare and Ben Johnson, check out Middlemarch and even the short stories in this year's New Yorker.

It is instructive to see the more successful--by which I mean the more enduring--stories arriving somewhere at that Point, which throws facts and circumstances and surprise together, effecting and affecting the beginning and the middle. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night, the PONR comes almost exactly in the middle, a stirring circumstance in which two of the principals, Dick Diver, the young psychiatrist, and Nichole Warren, his patient, are caught in a rain downpour while strolling in downtown Vienna, and in a matter of moments, to quote from Dick Diver's point of view, "he knew that from now on, her troubles were his." Were they ever!

There is a splendid PONR in Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby, and an equally moving one in Huck Finn.

I shall direct Digby to these vagrant lines, curious to see if indeed we now have two chapters. On with the dialectic.