Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer

by Roy Peter Clark

  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.

  TOOL 30

  To generate suspense, use internal cliffhangers.

  To propel readers, make them wait.

  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 s
econd 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?

  2. Pay attention to the narrative structure of television dramas. Writers of these shows often place dramatic elements just before the commercial breaks. Look for examples that work and for ones that fail to keep you intrigued.

  3. If you write for a publication, consider what it would take to put a mini-cliffhanger near the end of a section, especially when the reader is asked to turn inside to another page.

  4. If you write for a blog or Web site, consider what it would take to place a mini-cliffhanger at the end of the first screenful of text online so that readers could not resist a click or scroll.

  TOOL 31

  Build your work around a key question.

  Stories need an engine, a question that the action answers for the reader.

  Who done it? Guilty or not guilty? Who will win the race? Which man will she marry? Will the hero escape or die trying? Will the body be found? Good questions drive good stories.

  This narrative strategy is so powerful that it needs a name, and Tom French gave it to me: he calls it the “engine” of the story. He defines the engine as the question the story answers for the reader. If the internal cliffhanger drives the reader from one section to the next, the engine moves the reader across the arc from beginning to end.

  In the book Driving Mr. Albert, Michael Paterniti narrates a bizarre cross-country adventure, no ordinary road trip. His driving companion? The old medical examiner who dissected the corpse of Albert Einstein and kept the great man’s brain in a jar for forty years. The three of them—writer, doctor, gray matter in the trunk—head west to meet Einstein’s daughter. Will the quirky old doctor finally give up the brain, which is his talisman and life’s work? That sentence never appears in the story but keeps the reader focused on the destination through the curious side trips along the way.

  As I thought about this tool, I came across a story in my local newspaper about a man hired as a greeter at a new Wal-Mart:

  Charles Burns has been waiting for weeks to say three words:

  “Welcome to Wal-Mart!”

  When the doors open this morning at St. Petersburg’s first Wal-Mart Supercenter, Burns’ face will be one of the first that shoppers see.

  He is the greeter.

  Because this amiable feature is written the day before the opening, we never see Charles Burns in action. He never greets anybody. As a result, there is no engine, not even a simple How did his first day of greeting go? or What was the response from the first customer? or How did the experience match the expectation?

  In the same edition, I read a much more serious story about tsunami survivors in Sri Lanka:

  In the pediatric ward of the town hospital here, Sri Lanka’s most celebrated tsunami orphan dozes, drools and, when he is in a foul mood, wails at the many visitors who crowd around his crib.

  His identity is unknown. His age, according to hospital staff, is between 4 and 5 months. He is simply and famously known as Baby No. 81, the 81st admission to the ward this year.

  Baby No. 81’s awful burden is not in being unwanted, but in being wanted too much.

  So far, nine couples have claimed him as their own son.

  This story, which first appeared in the New York Times, has a supercharged engine. If you are like me, the engine took the form of questions such as these: What will happen to Baby No. 81? Will we ever learn his name and identity? Who will wind up with Baby No. 81, and why? How will they determine the true parents among conflicting claims?

  To its credit, the story raises questions of its own, not just about what might happen next, but also about the story’s higher meaning:

  Could it possibly be that nine couples honestly believe Baby No. 81 to be their flesh and blood? Could it be that childless parents are looking for a boon amid the disaster? Could it be that a photogenic baby boy has inspired a craving that a girl would not have? All these theories circulate on the streets of Kalmunai.

  A story, especially one with subplots, can have mini-engines. In the movie The Full Monty, unemployed factory workers try to make money as male strippers. The engine is something like, will these odd-shaped men go all the way—and how will it bring them love and money? But here’s what makes the story work: each man has something important at stake and is motivated by his own particular engine. Will the overweight guy restore the spark to his marriage? Will the skinny guy lose custody of his son? Will the old guy find a way to pay his debts?

  When Jan Winburn served as editor at the Baltimore Sun, she helped her writers create a cast of characters for their stories by asking the question Who has something at stake here? The answer can lead to the creation of a story engine: Will the loser of the contest still get her wish?

  I think of the story engine as a distant cousin of what Lajos Egri calls the “premise” of a story. “Everything has a purpose, or premise,” he writes. For Romeo and Juliet, it is “Great love defies even death.” For Macbeth, it is “Ruthless ambition leads to its own destruction.” For Othello, it is “Jealousy destroys itself and the object of its love.” The premise takes the question of the engine and turns it into a thematic statement. It can easily be converted back: Will Othello’s jealousy destroy him and the woman he loves?

  Tom French makes a distinction between the engine of the story and its theme:

&nb
sp; To me, the engine is this raw visceral power that drives the story and keeps the reader engaged. How the writer uses that engine—the ideas that we explore along the way, and the deeper themes we’re hoping to illuminate—is a matter of choice. A good example: Citizen Kane. Its opening scene sets up one of the most famous story engines of all time, what is Rosebud? Yet the movie isn’t about the sled, or even particularly about Kane’s childhood. Still, the reporter’s quest to unlock the riddle of the dying man’s last word drives the story forward and keeps us watching as Orson Welles explores deeper themes of politics, democracy, America. The mystery of Rosebud drives us through what’s essentially a civics lesson on the real nature of power.

  Finally, we should note that some stories are driven not by what questions, but by how. We know before the opening credits that James Bond will conquer the villains and get the girl, but we are driven to know how. We imagine that the affable Ferris Bueller will not be punished for his truancy, but we delight in knowing how he will escape detection.

  Good writers anticipate the reader’s questions and answer them. Editors will keep lookout for holes in the story where key questions are left unanswered. Storytellers take these questions to a narrative level, creating in the reader a curiosity that can only be quenched by reaching the end.