Lane 1-5 Response

Barry Lane's After the End, chapters 1-5

Even after reading only five chapters of Barry Lane, I am learning a lot about how to write better and help my students write better. First, I really appreciated the section on leads in the first chapter. The bare-bones story he tells his students about the dog is a great example of how to find questions that will make the story more interesting and then choose one of these questions to answer as a lead. On page 17 he writes, "If they can find the right first sentence, the right lead, the piece will write itself." This is exactly the reason I have always struggled with getting started writing - I know I need a "perfect" first sentence, but I had never realized that asking questions about my subject will take me there.

I also felt that the chapter on snapshots and thoughtshots was very useful. Going back and forth between the "mountain" and the "sea" is something I have never done well in my writing. The quote from Carolyn Chute on page 31 really hit me: "What they do to show the big picture is to use details they see with the small lens." This has challenged me to look at every detail I do or don't include in my writing and decide what to do with it based on the meaning it brings to the piece.

There are so many practical ideas Lane gives for bringing his ideas to the classroom that this is a book I will definitely refer back to over and over.