Writing Riffs

At the End, Real vs Right…Fact vs Fiction

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• by Lizann Flatt
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The best book endings feel satisfying. They feel Right. They feel like the perfect completion of something wonderful. Too bad real life doesn’t work that way.

I find myself mulling over how suddenly and swiftly life can be over…ended. That might seem rather morbid of me but I am saddened that last Friday was the funeral for my second cousin John O’Keefe, an innocent victim killed by a gunshot in Toronto the previous weekend as he was walking to the subway to return home. There’s an article about it in the Toronto Star. He was only a year older than me. He had a son a year younger than mine. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

What were the chances that he’d be in that exact position on that exact stretch of sidewalk to find himself in the exact fatal trajectory of that bullet? A foot or maybe a few inches either way might have made all the difference. What if that night he’d walked faster… or strolled slower? So many elements accumulated to create such a sudden and senseless ending to his life story. It almost doesn’t seem real.

And then there’s my brother-in-law who last week was slammed up against the wall by a charging bull. One thousand five hundred pounds of beef decides to go on a rampage and he’s in the way. He was “lucky.” His was a close call that ended in four cracked ribs and a bruised lung and many months of painful healing to look forward to before he can resume his normal life.

Even I’ve had experience with normal life abruptly snatched away for a time. A few years ago I had a snowmobile accident that ended with a broken vertebrae and left me at first incapable of even cutting up my own dinner. I cannot forget that, just before I passed out, I lay there on the cold icy snow with the fleeting thought that this might be It. I might be Done. Thanks for coming out but sorry, time’s up. My overwhelming feeling was disgust mixed with outrage and incredulity that it could all be so stupid to end that way with so many things just left, dropped, abandoned in the middle, never to be seen through to their conclusion. . .and some things never even started.

So of course I’d love to say that now I’ve learned my lesson and I live each day to its fullest. I’d love to say that I take every opportunity to fully enjoy my family and that I now follow all my dreams because I really do have a good idea that you never know when you’ll take your own final walk home, when you’ll meet your own wall and when your fall will be final. But that would be not be entirely factual.

It would however be great stuff for fiction. Fiction writers work hard to make their fictitious characters grow and learn. They work hard to make their stories seem real. But seeming real doesn’t equal really could happen. What if a book you were enjoying just ended with the main character being shot for no reason at all, just a random chance that had him in the wrong place at the wrong time? It could happen. It does happen. But that book’s ending would suck. You’d be mad at the writer. You’d say it was unfair and that you felt cheated and that it wasn’t right. You’d be right, of course. It’s not right. But that doesn’t mean it’s not real.

You Scream, so I Scream, and I’m Not Talking for Ice Cream

• Saved in: Writing Riffs
• by Lizann Flatt
• with 3 Comments

Here’s something I’ve got to get off my chest because it’s been there awhile. I’ve read a lot of stories both published and unpublished (the “un” variety as a writing instructor for the Institute of Children’s Literature for the past ten years, and as a children’s magazine editor in my previous life). From all that reading I have come to realize that I have some language usage pet peeves. One of those is screaming. Yes, screaming.

How, you might well ask, could I be peeved about screaming? It’s like this: When a story character starts screaming in complete sentences I go off into a peevey little fit (warning: it’s not pretty).

Who screams in complete sentences? The technical dictionary definition might disagree but to me a scream is an inarticulate and high volume expression of complete terror or pain. How do you even spell that?

Aarrgghgh!!!!!?

Nah, too tame. Only works in comics with a visual for the facial expression to get the right feel. To be honest I can’t even come up with a spelling for a scream. I’m a big fan of the obvious:

He screamed.

There you go. That’s all you need. Brief. Powerful. I think it conveys all you need to know.

So when I see something like this I want to scream:

“Get in here and put on some shoes or your socks are gonna turn black!” she screamed.

Okay, confession time. If you’ve ever procreated you’ve surely uttered a phrase similar to that at some point in your child-rearing career. But surely a better dialog tag would be:
hollered,
yelled, or
shouted.

Disagree? Think it has to be ‘scream’ because it needs to be a really forceful sentence and the woman is really, really mad? Imagine, then, that sentence uttered in a state of terror or pain or as a desperate last-ditch plea for salvation. Go on, imagine it. Here it is again:

“Get in here and put on some shoes or your socks are gonna turn black!” she screamed.

Now if in your story the effect you were going for really is some crazed and insane laundry-obsessed woman with spittle flying out of her mouth and maybe the suggestion of rabies about her, okay then. I concede. Go for it.

But if not may I humbly suggest:
hollered,
yelled, or
shouted.

I’m sure my man Roget could suggest a few dozen others. But then again that’s probably where the prolific use of scream in this way comes from in the first place, isn’t it? Thesaurus abuse! Thesaurus abuse!

So please, I beg you, save what little sanity I’ve got left. Save me from my peevey fits. If you’ve got to scream, scream with careful consideration, okay?

The English language…what a scream!

(What are your writing related pet peeves?)