Toe in the Water

Do You Want a Hammer With That?

Do You Want a Hammer With That?

I was very young, certainly well before my tenth birthday, when I discovered my mother’s collection of books. Being an avid reader for as long as I can remember, I proceeded to go through each one of them.

Presuming that they were the survivors of her youth, they were evidence of a surprisingly broad range of interests. Many of them were crime novels and books about true crime, and she had a number of suspense and romance novels too. Names like Ngaio Marsh and Dorothy L Sayers became familiar to me, although I did not spend too much time on their books.

There was a collection of Shakespeare’s works and the collected short stories of O. Henry as single examples from the many genres represented by only one book. I was too young to know that I should be bored by Shakespeare and I devoured each one of his plays. His sonnets were included as well, but they had less of an impact on me.

It was O. Henry’s short stories that had probably the most influence on my later life, however. In reading them repeatedly, I learned what constituted a good short story, and I presume that it was this that made it so easy for me to begin writing short stories many years later.

The lesson was that, as well as being short, this discipline required a twist at the end of each story. I took this to heart and made sure that I found a twist to end each of my short stories.

Yesterday I discovered that there are more ways than one of providing a twist. I had, in fact been searching for a twist of great impact to end my tales, something that I now call “looking for a hammer.” But I had lately written a few that had tails that, although unexpected, were not as blunt as the hammer, instead being rather subtle and presenting the reader with a question. I wrote one of these yesterday and this is what made me realise what was going on.

It’s a strange little story and has an ending entirely unexpected. It left questions in my mind that I have pondered ever since. There are several interpretations of the tale that are possible, the most obvious of which is political (most unusual for me). And this is what rescues the thing from being disqualified as a short story, I think.

The hammer will give the reader a moment of enjoyment in the sudden reversal of assumptions in the story. This more subtle approach, however, gives the reader something he can take away with himself, something to consider in his spare moments and to reach his own conclusions about. It’s a lasting gift rather than a slap in the face.

Don’t get me wrong - I still love the impact of the hammer. But I have discovered an alternative that I may well use again in the future.

To illustrate all this, an example of the hammer method is this, a recent favourite of mine:

STATIC

Percy's Night Out  (18+) Percy meets a newcomer on his night out. #2260960 by Beholden

I can think of three examples of the other approach but here is the one I wrote last night:

STATIC

Rain Boy  (E) A boy stands in the rain. #2280179 by Beholden

Nothing like a bit of unashamed self advertisement, is there?


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