[What Came Before]

As there are at least three of us who wish to improve our craft, I thought I'd start this series of weeklies - how exactly punctual I will be, I don't know.

The good thing about the paragraph exercises I was telling sciborg about is that they force you to write, within a constraint, with a limited degree of creative freedom.

I hope my teacher doesn't mind me sharing his wisdom. I'll try and make up some of my own writing weeklies rather than just wholesale jacking his, admittedly loose, curriculum.

Start with endings:

I can remember for years and years of studying writing, takes classes, courses, contests, there has been the prevalent attitude about beginnings. Instructors always seem to latch onto the idea of the perfect opening lines - literally, a hit-list of "great opening sentences" runs through my head thinking about this.

However, my latest teacher turned this assumption on its head and advocated taking our epic one-liners and making them endings.

You'd be amazed the patterns and ideas that suddenly emerge when your scratching your brain to work towards a goal, rather than constantly inventing material to top yourself.

We can discuss more of the class insight after as it comes up but I feel like the experiences speaks volumes.

Cheers.

These two paragraphs are off the top of my dome. The ending sentences are from a common phrase - though, I strangely think I've ripped this version from Neuropath - and from a epigraph I have for a fanfic piece I've been writing for TPB. I figured a week was good to do two, online, for criticism and chatter to develop. We did one a day for homework in my class.

1. Death always comes a stranger.

2. Revelation is simply another flavor of ignorance.

1. The sword point rested against his neck. He turned, feeling numb. His eyes followed the shining length of steel, not bronze, to an armored figure framed by burning sun. The figure removed her helm and dropped it to bloody grasses atop the mound. And he knew that he looked at the mask, that the face from a thousand memories, cast in innumerable molds, were all versions of this lie that was her truth. He found himself on his knees, looking up the folded blade to the face of a woman he'd once loved. The face of a stranger. Death always comes a stranger.

2. The sounds are discordant, reverberating the plaster chipped walls around the Grand Piano. I struggle to move my fingers in time to the relentless metronome but my hands simply fumble across the cold ivory keys, aping the beautiful symbiosis of harmony, of finesse. They seem crabbed strangers, creatures who've come to taunt and remind of yesterday, always yesterday. I pound these arthritic claws across music's yin-yang. My mind is clear. Purposeful. Obsessive. Until they relent. Until the slip and crunch of sounds becomes the flowing voice of melody. Until my fingers, my hands, become the very instrument I am playing. Until I remember that I will forget. Revelation is simply another flavor of ignorance.

Edit: The sounds were discordant -> The sounds are discordant.

[What Came Before]

ETA: Both piece are intriguing, I can see them being poignant finales, just hard to gage endings divorced from stories.

I'll confess, both last phrases seem to be going for a Zen koan "paradox", and in both cases I'm confused as to what they are supposed to explain in context of their paragraphs.

I'll think of more to say but also note that "crabbed strangers" feels awkward, as does "music's yin-yang".

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I think the ambiguity of the sentences and context is part of the experience of writing in paragraphs like this. The sentences as endings are automatically meaningless until framed by the paragraph.

Start with endings. Make up your own if you like rather than using mine. The point is to see how your writing is shaped by working towards one particular sentence rather than from one particular sentence.

I'll think of more to say but also note that "crabbed strangers" feels awkward, as does "music's yin-yang".

It's things like this that I think are ultimately important to our discussion. These are actually both parts I spent time toying with different metaphors and analogies. I wanted to suggest rigidity and the music's yin-yang was an unsuccessful play off the colour of a piano's keys.

Thanks, sci. I will take a look at your stories. I've read them through but I feel so ill-prepared to give criticism. You made it seem effortless and tactful, though.

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For some reason it reminds me of how the first star wars movie to come out was actually the 4th. The whole of a new hope was kind of the big ending of three other (at the time, unmade) movies. That also reminds me of how much prior history Earwa seems to have before the PON series. I'm wondering if that's a writing technique as well - a whole lot of story that just isn't shown, it's simply the build up - an ending upon which the latter published books are entirely about.

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Madness - Gotcha. I'm curious, is it supposed to be Death always comes [as] a stranger? (I do think I remember that in the parts of Neuropath I did read.)

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The line from Neuropath is "Death always comes as a stranger," I think.

My teacher did this exercise twice.

And it was the exact colour of her scarf.
Dean felt shame, but resentment more.

It really certainly changed my perspective shaping my words towards a goal rather than this directionless beast raging away from the "great opener."

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You know, for whatever reason, I'm having trouble coming up with anything to fit those endings. :-)

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Lol, the prof picked some of the better ones in the class and read them back to us at the time. Just unbelievable what people come up with. I tried to showcase the versatility of the strategy by doing a "literature"-like paragraph and a "fantasy"-like paragraph.

Another thing he stressed was transmitting only one thing in a paragraph - something I'm terrible at. That topic was actually a number of assignments in their own right but re-contextualizing communicative datum into things like a single emotion, symbol, word, evocation, and spending one paragraph on them transforms your writing.

Start off like that, sciborg. An emotion, an object, or a place, and a sentence. After that it's as simple as the five W's - shit writes itself.

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Okay, thanks for the clarification! Will attempt to incorporate each ending into the next four Story a Day posts (which everyone should feel free to post in).

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Heh, that didn't end up going anywhere. I think I messed up by trying to drive into the last sentence instead of working backwards.

I kind of think...the scarf one isn't some kind of dramatic ending? The fates of mortal lives do not hinge upon it. I'm not sure It's a good idea to try really hard to fit something before it.

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Yeah, I think that one was trying too hard. My first thought was the scarf was the color of blood.

Looking back on it, I think I'd have written a story where the scarf represents something more mundane, perhaps the first gift to an ex after a break up?

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I'm critiquing the end line itself ("And it was the exact colour of her scarf."). Something more meaty like 'But I'd killed too many, there was no turning back.' seems like something to build up to. To me trying to build up to the scarf sentence is trying to add life to something that lacks life? To me it seems a lifeless sentence, not a poignant one. I dunno how to describe it, but some sentences seem to have life in them, then you can add more life to that core in the build up. Others are skeletons - I'm not sure of the purpose of trying to add life to those?

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I think what makes it interesting is that it offers more possibilities than the phrase you mention, because the scarf could be a piece of evidence in a murder, the last gift given in a relationship now worn by an ex, the clue that makes someone realize the time stream hasn't been healed and their enemy is out there, and likely other shit I can't think of at the moment.

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Yeah, I get you can add that life to it.

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You know, there might be a way to connect the scarf's color to justice -as the POV percieves it- without utilizing intimations of physical violence...