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Consider the first sentence of a story. Some call it the “open window.” “The door.” “The key.” “The arrow that points the way.” “The hook.” “The open lock.” All useful metaphors. All suggestive of the power and importance of an opening line. Every story has one.
Now consider the last line of a story. “The closing of the door.”
“The anchor.” “The last truth.” “The closing of the ring.” “The last breath.” “The final handshake.”
It too has great importance. It is the end of the narrative experience, one that brings, literarily, (and hopefully) closure.
And again, every story has one.
But what if I told you about another writer’s saying: “You can’t write a good first line until you write a good last line.”
I believe that.
It may seem to be a contradiction, and even an impossibility, but actually it’s perfectly reasonable. That is because no one — no one — sits down and writes a complete — and final — draft of a book in one go. The professional writer is constantly rewriting her or his work, so that the whole piece appears to be one cloth, if you will. But that draft is written from first to last, last to first, bit by bit, even side to side, section by section. Its sense of wholeness comes from the writer being attentive to its myriad parts. Its wholeness is an illusion created by the writer’s craft and skill.
An example. I am working on a book, and I almost have a first draft, having already rewritten it countless times. Last night I was ready for sleep but thinking about the book. Nothing special there. But that’s when I had a thought: that moment in the story on page 24 in the manuscript, the character should say this.
This morning when I got up, I went to the page and inserted that line.
The reader will never know (I hope) that line was written six months after the lines surrounding it. It will seem (I also hope) to be a perfectly logical thing for that character to say at that moment. That’s not how it was written. But I hope it will read that way.
I had to discover the line.
I hope this suggests that one of the great difficulties in writing something good is that it needs to be logical: Logical as in “An underlying structure or coherent pattern,” to quote the Oxford Unabridged Dictionary. It needs to be — for the reader — a mostly continuous stream of events, movements, actions, dialogue, etc., that flows from one narrative moment to the next. You don’t want the reader to say, “Wait! How did that happen?” “Well, that came out of nowhere.” “That makes no sense.” “That’s impossible.”
Never forget that the writer is learning the story even as it is being written. The writer is creating a logical pattern out of random thoughts.
Yes, surprise is a good thing, but you want the reader to feel and know — “I didn’t see that coming, but I can now understand how it did.” Don’t forget, it’s very common for writers to say, “I didn’t know what I was thinking until I wrote it.”
As you read a story and wonder how it will all work out, just know that the writer went through the same experience.
But if the writing is good, you won’t know it.
Trust me, the writer does.
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