Writing Tools (19 page)

The creepy experience of my youth was reading Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," a short, short story that begins in innocence: "The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green." What a splendid day to conduct the annual village lottery, I must have thought, and who will be the winner? And what will they win?

The "winner," of course, turns out to be Tessie Hutchinson, whose prize is to be stoned to death, a scapegoat to the villagers' blind adherence to tradition: " 'It isn't fair, it isn't right,' Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her." Those words still crawl up my spine, years after I first encountered them.

Yet, the "surprise" stoning is foreshadowed right there in the story's first few paragraphs: "Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest stones." Surely, I thought, those stones must be instruments in some boyhood game. Little did I know they prefigured the story's unthinkable finale.

Not long ago, I saw a movie that reminded me of the power

of foreshadowing. Clues planted early in the story offered what a dictionary definition describes as "vague advance indications" of important future events.

In
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,
terrible events are reversed at the end when Hermione reveals to Harry her ability to travel back in time by means of a charm she wears around her neck, a time turner. On first viewing, the plot twist comes as a surprise. Watching the film a second time, I noticed how often the director makes reference to time, especially in visual images of huge pendulums and giant clockworks.

For novels and movies, it may require several readings or viewings to appreciate all the effects of foreshadowing. The technique becomes more transparent in works of shorter length. Consider this narrative poem, "Uncle Jim," by Peter Meinke:

What the children remember about Uncle Jim is that on the train to Reno to get divorced so he could marry again

he met another woman and woke up in California. It took him seven years to untangle that dream but a man who could sing like Uncle Jim was bound to get in scrapes now and then: he expected it and we expected it.

Mother said, It's because he was the middle child, And Father said, Yeah, where there's trouble Jim's in the middle.

When he lost his voice he lost all of it

to the surgeon's knife and refused the voice box

they wanted to insert. In fact he refused

almost everything.
Look,
they said,

It's up to you. How many years

do you want to live?
and Uncle Jim

held up one finger.

The middle one.

The poet gives us a verse with a punch line, set up by the foreshadowing in the middle stanza. Jim's the middle child, always in the middle of trouble, so why not at the end flash that middle finger?

Foreshadowing in fiction? Yes. In film? Yes. In narrative poetry? Yes. In journalism? Let's see.

In 1980 a huge oil tanker collided with a tall bridge near my hometown, destroying more than one thousand feet of the span, sending a bus and several cars two hundred feet to the bottom of Tampa Bay, killing more than thirty people. The late great Gene Miller of the
Miami Herald
was in town on another assignment and managed to find the driver of a car that skidded to a stop twenty-four inches from the jagged edge. Here is his memorable lead, a sidebar to the main story:

Richard Hornbuckle, auto dealer, golfer, Baptist, came within two feet Friday of driving his yellow Buick Skylark off the Sunshine Skyway Bridge into Tampa Bay.

That simple sentence takes twenty-five words, but each one advances the story. First, Miller takes advantage of the protagonist's unusual name — Hornbuckle — with its auto imagery. This will turn out to be the story of an auto dealer driving a used car with good brakes. And Miller, a master of detail, gets good mileage out of "yellow Buick Skylark." "Yellow" goes with "Sunshine," and "Skylark" goes with "Skyway." He's playing with words.

But the real fun comes with those three nouns after the subject, for each foreshadows a thread of narrative in the story. "Auto dealer" sets up a description of Hornbuckle's work schedule and how he came to be at that spot on that day. "Golfer" prepares us for the crazy moment when — during his escape from the vehicle — Hornbuckle turns back to retrieve his golf clubs from the trunk. (He probably had a tee time later that day.) And "Baptist" makes way for a wry quote in which the reluctant believer turned survivor swears that he'll be in church the next morning. "Auto dealer, golfer, Baptist."

In dramatic literature, this technique inherits the name
Chekhov's Gun.
In a letter he penned in 1889, Russian playwright Anton Chekhov wrote: "One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it."

I conclude with a strategy I call
Hitchcock's Leg of Lamb.
A 1958 episode of Alfred Hitchcock's mystery series told the story of a pregnant housewife who kills her cheating husband with a frozen leg of lamb, and then feeds the murder weapon to the investigating detectives. Written by Roald Dahl, the action in this dark comedy is prefigured in its title, "Lamb to the Slaughter."

WORKSHOP

1. Do you ever violate the principle of Chekhov's Gun? Do you place seemingly significant elements high in your work that never come into play again?

2. Until now, you may not have noticed the technique of foreshadowing in movies, fiction, and dramatic literature. Now that you have a name for it, look for examples.

3. Foreshadowing can work not only in narrative forms, but also in persuasive writing. A good column or essay has a point, often revealed at the end. Which details can you place early to foreshadow your conclusion?

4. In nonfiction, literary effects must be researched or reported, not invented. In your next writing project, see if you can visualize the shape of an ending during your research. That way, you may be able to gather details to help foreshadow your ending.

What makes a page-turner, an irresistible read, a story or book that you can't put down? One indispensable tool is the internal cliffhanger. This device leaves the reader in suspense, a word derived from the Latin
suspendere,
"to hang under." Suspense leaves the reader, and sometimes a character, hanging.

The immense popularity of the novel
The Da Vinci Code
comes not from Dan Brown's graceful prose style, but from a clever plot built on a series of cliffhangers. A small sample will demonstrate this simple but powerful effect:

• "As he fell, he thought for a moment he saw a pale ghost hovering over him, clutching a gun. Then everything went black."

• "Before Sophie and Teabing could respond, a sea of blue police lights and sirens erupted at the bottom of the hill and began snaking up the half-mile driveway.

"Teabing frowned. 'My friends, it seems we have a decision to make. And we'd better make it fast.' "

• "Langdon dialed zero, knowing that the next sixty seconds might answer a question that had been puzzling him all night."

"Langdon felt shaky as he inched deeper into the circular room. This had to be the place."

Each of these examples ends a chapter, fueling the reader's desire to learn what happens next. So if you want to sell a gazillion books, learn how to craft the cliffhanger.

You don't need a cliff to write a good cliffhanger. In the memoir
Father Joe,
Tony Hendra describes a wise and benevolent priest who comforts and directs the young Hendra through a time of adolescent trouble. Here's the end of chapter three: "All of a sudden there was the sound of sandals squishing along the corridor and the swish of long skirts. The door opened. And there stood one of the oddest human beings I'd ever laid eyes on." Father Joe is not tied to a railroad track. The simple need to learn what he looks like drove me to the next chapter.

I found a great example of the internal cliffhanger in my own backyard. A page one story in the
St. Petersburg Times
described the struggle to keep desperate folks from jumping from the top of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. This turns out to be a terrible problem, not just in St. Pete, but wherever a high, dramatic bridge lures the depressed and suicidal.

Here's the opening segment of the story by reporter Jamie Jones:

The lonely young blond left church on a windy afternoon and drove to the top of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge.

Wearing black pumps and a shiny black dress, she climbed onto the ledge and looked at the chilly blue waters 197 feet below. The wind seemed to nudge her. It's time, she thought.

She raised her arms skyward and pushed off the edge. Two boaters watched as she began a swan dive into Tampa Bay.

Halfway down, [she] wanted to turn back. I don't want to die, she thought.

A second later, she slammed into the water. It swallowed her, and then let her go. She broke through the surface, screaming.

I've wondered whether the reporter should have stopped the action at "She raised her arms skyward and pushed off the edge." But the effect is still strong, and the reporter organized the whole story that way. She divided the work into seven sections, each separated from the others by the visual marker of three black boxes. Each section has a bit of drama at the end, a reward for the reader, and a reason to plunge forward.

We don't think of the cliffhanger as an internal device. We associate it with serialized film or television adventures with big endings. The super-sized ones come at the end of a season and sustain your interest until the next, as in the famous "Who shot J. R.?" of
Dallas
fame. Think of it as the "to be continued" effect, and consider how much some of us resent waiting six months to find out what happens.

I stumbled on the internal cliffhanger by reading adventure books for young readers. I hold in my hand a reprint of the very first Nancy Drew mystery story,
The Secret of the Old Clock.
I quote from page 159, the conclusion of chapter XIX:

Clutching the blanket and the clock tightly in her arms, Nancy Drew partly crawled and partly fell over objects as she struggled to get out of the truck before it was too late. She was afraid to think what would happen to her if the robbers discovered her in the van.

Reaching the door, she leaped lightly to the floor. She could now hear heavy footsteps coming closer and closer.

Nancy slammed the truck doors shut and searched wildly for the keys.

"Oh, what did I do with them?" she thought frantically.

She saw that they had fallen from the door to the floor and snatched them up. Hurriedly inserting the right key in the lock, she secured the doors.

The deed was not accomplished a minute too soon. As Nancy wheeled about she distinctly heard the murmur of angry voices outside. The robbers were quarreling among themselves, and already someone was working at the fastening of the barn door.

Escape was cut off. Nancy felt that she was cornered.

"Oh, what shall I do?" she thought in despair.

There you have it, the internal cliffhanger, daring you to stop reading.

Think about it. This technique energizes every episode of every television drama. Even the so-called reality shows force us to sit through a commercial break to learn which character has been excommunicated. Any dramatic element that comes right before a break in the action is an internal cliffhanger.

WORKSHOP

1. As you read novels and nonfiction books, notice what the author places at the ends of chapters. How do these elements drive you to turn the page — or not?