WRITING BEGINNINGS

ONE OF SEVERAL NUGGETS FROM NANCY UPDIKE'S TALK AT THE 2006 THIRD COAST AUDIO FESTIVAL IN EVANSTON "DIE, MEDIOCRITY, DIE"

Nancy says the enemy of most producers is not "badness" but rather, "O.K.-ness." She said, "Have you ever noticed how easy it is to ignore a radio story?" After a few minutes, "it's just noises and voices and you're cooking or whatever and it's hard to get back into it. So you just say, I'll wait until the next story to tune back in and pay attention."

This mental drift is our "enemy," says Nancy. And we have to challenge ourselves to continually ask, "Is there a better way to tell this story? Is there a better piece of tape to get in there?"

The key, she says, is in the writing. Better beginnings, better endings, better construction. In this post, some of Nancy's examples of and ideas about good beginnings

BEGINNINGS

Sample 1: Until he was seven years old, Daniel Soloman slept sitting up. This wasn't because upright was a particularly comfortable position, or some exotic medical condition prevented him from straightening at the waist. It was just because Daniel didn't have another option. For the first seven years of his life, he lived in a crib, in an orphanage in Romania.

What Nancy likes about this Alix Speigel opening. "That it's one long description of a single surprising fact. She works this detail and she really engages your imagination. You able to sit with it and think, 'Wow. How would you do that? And what are the physical implications of that?' She knew this wasn't detail that she wanted to bury in a later back story...and even though we don't know anything else in this top - we don't know the conflict, we don't know the other characters - but there's this compelling, incredible detail drawing you in."

Sample 2: I was hired to interview men in the state of Utah who required medicaid support for the treatment of mental illnesses, generally diagnosed as schizophrenia. I had had little understanding of schizophrenia before I began, and little more understanding now. I took the job because I had no other. I took the job because I'd just quit my steady job, my professional job, after realizing that what I wanted more than anything was to put my boss on the floor and stand on his throat and watch him gag. Then my wife moved out. Took the kids and everything. She said, "I've thought about it and I really think it's the best thing for me in my life..."

"This Scott Carrier piece is almost the opposite of Alix' spare opening. He is just cramming information down our throats. His wife is walking out, he quit his job, he's about to interview schizophrenics. You sort of get this feeling toward the end (of this opening) like 'is this guy gonna make it?' You can't NOT want to know what happens in the rest of this story...Again, the images are the key. He has this great description of his rage at his boss that immediately channels anyone's rage at any boss anyone's ever had, but puts it in this...gruesome image of his boss slowly gagging on the floor under his foot. And then he pivots right from that to tragedy. HIs wife walking out and giving one line of her dialogue that is so non-accusatory. It's so sad. Your heart is already broken by the time this starts and there's no question that you want to know what comes next."

Sample 3: This story is like one of those Russian Dolls where there's always a smaller one inside. The smallest doll, the core of the drama, is the fact that Mubarek, a childhood sissy, grew up to be a different kind of sissy than his father. His father is nerdy and bookish. Mubarek's gay. Everything around that core gets bigger and bigger until finally you can't believe that the biggest and the smallest have anything to do with each other. The one is so bloated and the other is so tiny. At the beginning of this story, Mubarek's parents are married and in love and both prepared to live far from everything they know to be with each other. At the end of the story, they may still be in love, but they're divorced, an ocean apart, and not speaking. And Mubarek is caring for his mother the way a husband might.

Nancy says: "The last beginning is one I wrote. The trick was to give away the ending of the story. In fact, the whole thing. Here are all the characters, here's how it's going to end up. This is a tragedy. The reason for doing that is that that piece of information, ends up coloring everything else that you hear in the story and gives it this weight. So even moments that are sort of small and nuanced and maybe don't have as much portent as you would like, you still have in the back of your mind, where this is going."

Chronology is not necessarily your friend. You should not get wed to the idea of starting at the beginning.

Sample 4: Archimedes lived around 200 B.C. He's the guy who, legend has it, shouted "Eureka!" in his bathtub, used mirrors to set an enemy ship on fire, and invented a pump that lifts water with a screw. Those stories may or may not be true, but he was certainly one of the great mathematicians and physicists of ancient times. Archimedes wrote letters describing his work and copies of about a dozen survive. Two in just one place. The Archimedes Palimpsest. A palimpsest is a manuscript that's been written on more than once and this one resides at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.

"It's the ugliest thing in the collection. It's also by far the most important text manuscript in a palimpsest that the world knows."

William Knowell is curator of rare books at the Walters. His shirt suggests he's a little too busy for ironing. We walk through a dark exhibit room at the museum. He picks up a secret phone - well it looks that way. And a door opens.

Nancy: "So David Kestenbaoum (the NPR reporter) has this ancient mathematician. And he makes us care about him right away. He throws out these compelling details. You know this guy (Archimedes) has his fingers in all kinds of pots. He's shouting EUREKA...he's setting enemy ships on fire with mirrors. And then Dave says, which I thought was very sly, "Now these may or may not be true..." Now this is a news story that he's doing. Throwing in these details, doing due dilligence by saying this isn't fact, but he knows that they're interesting and they're going to make you engage with this guy. The other thing he does is use this great opening quote. He's got this sort of long set-up, telling us about Archimedes and defining a palimpsest. Then he has this British guy talking about how ugly it is. And it's just comedy. It makes you want to keep listening, partly because you just admire him for making you laugh in this story that you didn't think you were going to laugh in. And he tosses off this incredible little description that also gets a laugh, his shirt suggest he's a little too busy for ironing. You totally get something about this guy from this little description...I just love this. We don't know how tall, short, anything...but from this detail we know something about how he looks, but also something about his character.

Then he takes us into the exhibit and there's this secret phone- well it looks that way. He's really being playful. You can feel his energy in telling the beginning of the story. It's as if he's saying 'Come with me, this is interesting...I swear you'll be interested in this.' And that energy is a really powerful force.

Writing beginnings is hard, but that time invested always pays off because the rest of the story is so much easier to write."

This was a great talk which you can hear in its entirety by clicking here and scrolling down to Nancy's talk. There are many great talks on that page from that conference. I may return to this one and others at a later date to extract other gems for easy reading. Thank You Nancy and Third Coast for a great session.