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<HTML>EIGHT REFINING THE ENDING. Undoubtedly, by now you are sick and tired of looking at this story. Precisely the time to refine your ending. With those rush of feelings that creativity gives us, that pump of adrenaline, that can't-wait-to-get-at-it attitude; it's time to put creativity aside and let cold, calculating, materialistic logic take over. The story has to end and it is up to you to end it. Not an easy chore when you feel there are things you just feel need to be changed. ENDING NEEDS TO REFLECT YOUR PROTAGONIST. Regardless of viewpoint, the ending has to be something concerning the protagonist. It is not enough that he/she win or lose, catch the killer, get the girl, solve any and all problems. It is change, revelation. A protagonist who learns nothing that will enrichen his/her life, will be a let-down to the reader. Actually, it won't get that far, because the story will not be published. When I refined the ending of Dead Men Don't Bleed, I had three things I wanted to say: (1) SWAT teams are professional killers, (2) Cops have sensitivity, (3) A revelation in the protagonist where the seeming paradox of numbers 1 and 2 can be enjoined. Now remember, Will Hatfield (protagonist) is an Army chaplain, a minister, and as a man of the cloth, he also has to be a man sensitive to the nature of people. To save a soul, he first must have the trust of the person, therefore he MUST CARE. That is a part of his personality, we have seen it throughout the story. So the ending, brutal as it were, Will's revelation at the end <Courage is a fine thing, a wonderful thing, but it was nothing compared to that human caring> is just another giant step in a young minister's growth. DEAD MEN DON'T BLEED by Robert Cherin. A black-faced cop in a black SWAT uniform was kneeling inside the door. White smoke hung in the air like a cloud, smelling of burnt gunpowder. It seemed to come from the black gun between his outstretched hands. For a moment I was even more frightened than before. This man's quietness, his frugal movements, the efficiency of his kill was cold-blooded. They came in like ants, cop after cop. Hours spent laboring over statements that were checked and double-checked. Bad coffee poured from Thermos bottles. About all I can remember about the aftermath was when a woman police officer took Gabriel up in her arms, and said, "Everything's fine now." I remember crying, seeing that black child in her porcelain grip. Courage is a fine thing, a wonderful thing, but it was nothing compared to that true human caring when that police woman's arms cradled that child. Life really is grand. Notice, step by step, the four paragraphs that bring out the revelation also brings to fruition the many themes working within the story. There are: neighborhoods never change for the better, yet, with a willingness to understand, people who are different in religion and color can be tender to one another; although police officers can be cold-blooded killers, they still have consciences, and they will respond to the community they serve in a manner that will foster good feelings; that even in senseless violence, growth still comes about; that faced with death, and having proved himself courageous, a man of the cloth realizes that valor is not the issue. True feelings of humanity supersedes all other things. And not only as a man of God, but as a man of the world. THE KILLERS by Ernest Hemingway. Protagonist Nick Adams was present in the diner when two hired gunsels came in looking for the Swede. They tied the cook, George, and Nick; asked when the Swede would be in, and finally left without fulfilling their deed (presumably to whack the Swede). Nick knew where to find the intended victim and scurried off to warn him. But the big man took it with a grain of salt. He was not going to run any more, and Nick just couldn't understand this. The ending: "Did you tell him about it?" George asked. "Sure. I told him but he knows what it's all about." "What's he going to do?" "Nothing." "They'll kill him." "I guess they will." "He must have got mixed up in something in Chicago." "I guess so," said Nick. "It's a hell of a thing." "It's an awful thing," Nick said. They did not say anything. George reached down for a towel and wiped the counter. "I wonder what he did?" Nick said. "Double-crossed somebody. That's what they kill them for." "I'm going to get out of this town," Nick said. "Yes," said George. "That's a good thing to do." "I can't stand to think about him waiting in the room and knowing he's going to get it. It's too damned awful." "Well," said George, "you better not think about it." Nick Adams is a young man, eager to grow up, but he knows there are things he will never understand, and more than likely, he will not want to understand them, ever. To the young, death is something far removed, it is a principle that is known, but not understood. Nick, through the series of events, especially seeing that the Swede has given himself up to it, will never understand that there are things worse than death. In the Swede's case, he is tired of running, fed up of living with the fear of death. To Nick, being young, the threat of death is far worse than the actual execution of it. Not to Swede. Having lived with that fear, he has learned there are things worse than death. But Nick does grow. First, he says he's leaving town. Then he says he can't stand to think about the Swede waiting passively for the inevitable. So, he's beyond the point of leaving town, he'll stick around. He's qualified it by stating, it's too damned awful. Then George tells him, you better not think about it. So we know that Nick will not run away. That he will stick around. Death is something that you can't hide from by running. Just don't dwell upon it. THE ENORMOUS RADIO by John Cheever. Irene and Jim Wescott discover that the radio they had put into their posh Sutton Place apartment livingroom was broadcasting conversations going on in other apartments. Irene found it entertaining, hearing all the dirt. Jim, of course, didn't. After a lot of arguing between themselves, Jim prevailed, with the argument that people have their rights to privacy. Irene couldn't see what was so bad about being entertained. Some of it was horrible, but so what? It was, first and last, entertaining. As said, Jim prevailed, so he got the radio fixed. But not without a lot of hurtful things being bandied back and forth. And so, the closing paragraph: Irene stood for a minute before the hideous cabinet, disgraced and sickened, but she held her hand on the switch before she extinguished the music and the voices, hoping that the instrument might speak to her kindly, that she might hear the Sweeneys' nurse. Jim continued to shout at her from the door. The voice on the radio was suave and noncommittal. "An early-morning railroad disaster in Tokyo," the loudspeaker said, "killed twenty-nine people. A fire in a Catholic hospital near Buffalo for the care of blind children was extinguished early this morning by nuns. The temperature is forty-seven. The humidity is eighty-nine." Keyword in the last paragraph is noncommittal. When Irene heard the arguments and the conversations in the apartments, they were human, concerned, committed. There were genuine human emotions involved in everyday living, whether it was who was to walk the dog, or somebody's drinking problem and what it was doing to the family. Besides, Irene knew them. These were real people to her. In the broadcast, which was noncommittal, 29 die in a railroad accident. An act of bravery by a nun keeps blind children from burning to death. The weather, a blah forty-seven degrees, not hot, not cold. And humidity, a dull eighty-nine percent. All of it noncommittal. Josef Stalin once remarked that a huge number of dead is a statistic, but the death of one who is known, is a tragedy. TRUST ME by John Updike. Although his family were simple, hard-working folk, poor Fegley was born with artistic talent. He had gone far, being a junk-iron sculptor earning six-figures yearly. His father's only piece of advice was to learn a trade, because it was practical. And it was something Fegley wanted to do because he respected his father, but never did. He became a creature of his own age, married young, had four children, got divorced. And now that Fegley has grown kids of his own, he relives the guilt and how he had guided his children to become scientists and money analysts. All his children, save one, turned to the arts, so Fegley is hopeful. If he could produce even one adult to be practical, it would relieve him of his guilt. But, after a phone call from his ex-wife, Fegley is really bothered. The one, Warren, who was to become practical seems to have on his horizon, the promises of rewards that becoming a successful mobile-ist will bring him. The ensuing end to the story has Fegley coming to grips with his guilt. "Poor little Warren," Fegley said, and descended the steps to his former cellar. Scrap lumber and stray junk from the long ago when he had worked at home had mysteriously disappeared; his old workbench supported an unfamiliar litter of pliers and snippers, coiled wire, cut tin, new fluorescent tube brightened the work space, but Warren had hung the finished mobiles in the dimness that stretched beneath the cobwebbed pipes and floor stringers to the faint far foundation wall. Each mobile embodied a different idea: some suggested the flight of birds, others the scales of a dragon; some were twirled of copper wire into terminations like the heads of fiddlehead ferns, and some held at the ends of invisible black-wire arms cardboard paddle shapes, or crescents or circles, ranged in sequences drifting outward in precarious spacy cascades that gently moved as the creator's mother's footsteps, heavy with fatality, descended the stairs. "See?" Sarah asked. Each mobile by itself might have looked spindly, but the effect of so many, hanging unsold, unrequested by the world, waiting here in the dark, was of a leafy forest or a firmament of stars twinkling one behind the other in a recession as good as infinite. "Yeah," Fegley had to say, half to himself. His former wife came and stood beside him, to get the same perspective. "That's right," he said. "Keep breaking my heart." What could be better than to have all your children emulating your life-style because they admire you? Once Fegley goes down to where his cellar used to be, and sees how his son improved on it, and sees his son's works, he's somewhat relieved. As a father, he had to have been successful, since all his children emulated him. To that end, he was able to apply what he had done well to that which he hadn't done at all. Although he had given materially to his children, he felt he was not successful, because he was unable to implant in them, what his own father couldn't implant in him practical wisdom. This is the theme of the story...you become your parent. In all, he has respect for Warren, and for himself, so he only allows himself a little guilt. After all, isn't that practical? GOING BACK TO THE SCENE OF THE CRIME AND RIGGING THE SCENE. Now that the story is written, it's time to revisit key scenes and add those missing ingredients. Scenes need to be tight, riveting. Let's look at the following examples: LADY, BE BAD by Mike Shayne. He came around for another pass. He roared down, swinging the wheel at the last possible instant. The skiff was barely afloat. Sam Rapp, behind Lib, was knee-deep in water, his face disfigured. Shayne completed the top loop of a long figure-eight and started back. The skiff was gone. As he approached the spot where he had seen it last, his headlight picked up the two figures in the water. Lib cried, "Mike, he can't swim!" Shayne wheeled around in a slow, contracting circle. Picking up a cork cushion he scaled it out as he passed. It skidded over the choppy water and Lib grabbed it. Shayne cut his power and continued to tighten the loops until the boat lost way. Lib called urgently, across the ten yards that separated them, "I can't hold him! He's going under." "Will I get shot if I pull you in?" Shayne asked quietly. "He didn't know it was you. Please. I can't " "Hang on and don't panic," Shayne said without sympathy. "How deep is it, can you stand?" "No!" "Give me a minute. Maybe I can think of something." That is one riveting scene. What could be more frightening than being in the drink at night and having someone with you who can't swim? And the only person to rescue you, is the man you just took a shot at. THE WILLOW POOL by John D. MacDonald. I would say it was almost three months ago that a man named Paul Warcroft telephoned me long distance and asked if he and his wife could have the cabin for the month of May. He sounded like a pleasant young man over the phone. I asked him how he knew about the cabin, and he said a good friend of his had stayed in the cabin for a time and had liked it. I made sure he knew that it does not have all the extras that city people expect. A lot of summer people had rented it during the two summers since Norrie Ames had stayed there. I told him he could have it if he would send me a deposit. I got the deposit in the mail the next day. When they arrived in their shiny new car I recognized the bride right away. There was no mistaking their being on their honeymoon. She was very friendly. She did the introducing, all smiling and lively. Of course, at that time I didn't know why Mabel was so upset and finding out that Mrs. Paul Warcroft was Norrie Ames. I could hear Mabel all over the house, setting her feet down harder than usual, muttering to herself the way she does when she is working herself up to something. I think she came close to telling me a couple of times. If she had, maybe I could have stopped her. I don't know. I know I would have tried. In all fairness, I know that if she had had any way of knowing what would happen, she would never have said the first word to Paul Warcroft. She feels miserable about it. I guess she always will. I know I will. We seem to have even less to say to each other these days. The days are long and quiet. We'll never rent the cabin again. So, who is this Norrie Ames, that she can have that kind of effect on a landlord couple? Notice the narrator says of Paul Warcroft <He sounded like a pleasant young man over the phone> but never, during the rest of the narration did she say that Paul Warcroft was a pleasant young man. The last two lines are a nice hook. Things not only will never be the same, but more than likely, events are going to unfold from here that will get worse and worse. YOUR ASSIGNMENT. Rewrite your short story, paying particular attention to the beginning, the first and second plot points, and the ending. Are the plot points positioned correctly? The first plot point should be 25% of the way through your story; the second, 75%. And your scenes, are they tight? Does each scene have a lure and hook? And is the narration as inobstrusive as possible? Did you limit description? Are your characters genuine? Did they tell you the story? And be sure the story doesn't exceed 2,500 words. And yes, spelling counts. </HTML>