Famous last words can make all the difference
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- July 27, 2024
- 580
“This,” sighs the exasperated Durham Bulls manager, “is a simple game: You throw the ball … you hit the ball … you catch the ball.”
That, in movie-making parlance, is what’s known as tight writing.
It’s the lifeblood of the less-is-more school of screenwriting, one that posits the notion that words are a finite resource and ought to be spent wisely; hence, lines like “There’s no place like home” and “After all, tomorrow is another day” still maintain their potency.
Here’s another handful of pithy closings to hammer home the point:
—“I was cured alright” (“A Clockwork Orange”).
—“Why, she wouldn’t even harm a fly” (“Psycho”).
—“This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship” (“Casablanca”).
—“Well, nobody’s perfect” (“Some Like It Hot”).
—“The rest is silence” (“Hamlet”).
I remember a class in creative writing I took as a junior in college. The backbone of the course revolved around short stories each student would write, duplicate and distribute to the others.
After a week spent reading and annotating each others’ works, it was time to face the music in a public examination by your peers.
It was a brutal mashup of “Lord of the Flies” and “The Paper Chase,” an academic survival-of-the-fittest exercise aimed at ferreting out the weakest narrative points in someone else’s carefully crafted creation, a chance to flaunt your arrogant intellect.
We loved it … we hated it … we couldn’t wait for more of it.
“Is it time for the long knives to come out?” my girlfriend asked.
“Tomorrow morning,” I said, “they’ll sit in judgment of my work.”
“I think it’s the best thing you’ve written all semester,” she said.
“You’re prejudiced,” I said. “Besides, you’re just a freshman.”
And that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is why I spent the majority of my collegiate days and nights alone, mistaking candor for truth, offering a rose in a fisted glove, to quote Stephen Stills.
That’s from “Love the One You’re With.” Can you taste the irony?
You know who was good at that kind of cut-to-the-bone prose?
Hemingway.
“Write hard and clear about what hurts,” he famously said.
My short fiction teacher had an addendum that went something like, “Press down on the details, dig into the marrow … excavate!”
Those were high-wire instructions for a group of undergrads just beginning to experience the thrill of elevated plot structure, the miraculous way a sentence would sometimes finish itself, the fugue state that surrounded you when you were buried in it and the way, when it was over, you couldn’t remember where you’d been.
There was a time, once I’d turned pro, when I’d be invited to speak to high school writers, aspiring journalists, young people sitting attentively in neat tidy rows, listening as I explained the mystery of inspiration, knowing I was missing the mark by miles at a time.
“Where do you get your ideas?” was the most common question, one that suggested a map inside my head, though none existed.
“It’s hard to say,” was my usual reply. “Everywhere and nowhere.”
For the last several weeks of American political upheaval, I’ve been spending an inordinate number of hours each night mainlining “The West Wing.” It’s been a welcome and necessary palate cleanser, a remedy for what’s been ailing me for a while.
I can’t say that Sam Seaborn, the White House deputy communications director played by Rob Lowe, is my favorite character, but that’s only because Aaron Sorkin is a writing god.
Every major role he created is played by extraordinary actors. Thus it’s literally impossible to promote one above the rest of the cast.
But Sam, being the wordsmith with a conscience, speaks to me.
In one scene he tells Toby, “I can’t find it. I can’t seem to write.”
I might not have quoted the line perfectly, but you get the idea. Here’s a guy with a gift, and he knows he’s not doing his best work.
And it eats at him … keeps him up at night … creates serious doubt.
Then he comes up with this line, written in the aftermath of a deadly campus bombing, words the president will share:
“The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels tonight.”
Just sit back and admire those 10 words, their pacing, their heft.
That’s the apotheosis of not only tight, but brilliant, writing.
I’m a nobody, a mere typist, not in that league; still, when I witness the best, I think of Bogart and the ending of “The Maltese Falcon”:
That kind of craft is indeed, “The stuff that dreams are made of.”
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 1317 Troy Road, Ashland, OH 44805. He invites you to find him on his Facebook page, where no one’s words are ever subject to judgment.