Have you seen the Six Feet Under series ending scene? It is without a doubt my favorite scene in all of television or film. Ever. I’m not the only one who still cries when they watch it.
Why? Because in just seven minutes, you see future, past and present filled with life’s momentary joys. Then at the end, when it’s over and the screen blanks from open road to white nothing, you remain watching with longing, wanting more.
In such a short span of time, you understand, even if only for a brief moment, the nature of life and what has been lost when it’s over.
See for yourself:
Now it’s your turn to create a story, blog post or scene that in the same simple way as the Six Feet Under finale imparts a strong impression of a human truth.
Yours doesn’t have to be life and death serious. It can be about anything. Silly, funny, sexual or solemn.
I want you to stretch your writing skills. Do something differently. Look at your writing as a whole, who you are, what you want to accomplish and share one concept, one idea with a series of ideas or images.
Then go simple.
If you’re finding yourself overwhelmed by the number of writing terms and ideas I include here, don’t worry about it. Again, simplify. Choose one idea that strikes you and use that as a focus.
How does this scene provide such powerful impact with so little?
It provides closure.
This ending fits perfectly into the theme of the show as a whole. Death. What better way that to see each character, each person we’ve grown to know and and perhaps even love, at the moment of death. Thus, giving the individual death a larger context.
It creates with clean, clear lines.
This video has no exposition. Almost no dialogue. It is just beautiful and clean.
It perfects the art of “Show Don’t Tell.”
We see people slump over, fall down and close their eyes in media res. While on vacation, in the middle of another conversation with your brother, at work, in bed, death takes them one by one. We see the dates of their deaths. We see sadness, surprise and shock at the moment of death.
No one ever tells us what we should be thinking or feeling.
Tools to create similar effect in your writing
Since this is video, the music provides additional emotional influence that is obviously not possible in writing, so how does one provide similar affect when using only what can be seen on the page?
Choose your words perfectly, carefully with precision.
Words have music and feeling. They carry with them a history of emotion and undertone.
Mellifluous, for example, brings with it the connotation of flowing honey. Whereas using simply flowing or pleasing creates a different image.
How would the story you paint change by using
detritus vs. garbage vs. fragments
or
Genesis vs. inception vs. nascent
Change the rhythm of your writing.
Say you normally write with short, staccato sentences. What happens when, suddenly, without warning, your phrases lengthen and flow with the slow, patient movement of honey?
What will your reader understand by the shift?
Change your voice and tone
Words have music and feeling. They carry with them a history of emotion and undertone.
I once got a call from the mother of a student who plagiarized. “How do you know my daughter didn’t write this?” she demanded.
I told her it’s not all that different from getting a phone call from your mom, an 80 year-old-woman who grew up on a farm outside of Alabama, but you pick up the phone to hear a deep voice in a Manchester accent. You just know.
Voice incorporates all I’ve mentioned above. It’s the words you choose. The way you say a thing. Whether or not you’re amused or serious, happy or despondent, believable or clearly lying. It is the attitude of your words and your narrator.
Which brings me to my next point.
Who is your narrator?
Who is telling the story? Male, female or unknown? Can we believe what he says? Is she omniscient or just plodding along like the rest of us? Is he part of the story or an outside observer?
There are many ways to paint a picture
If you’re a travel blogger, how can you represent a place you’ve visited based on written imagery?
Or a parent blogger? What is the core idea you’d like to impart to your readers?
Are you writing fiction? You can use dialogue only. Or focus on one aspect of a character, like hands or lips. Long or short.
Keep in mind, particularly when writing for the internet, you can include images to illustrate your text. You can post a series of images with only a few words to pull your photos, sketches or illustrations together into a whole story.
