Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Complication/resolution without the resolution

Since we've been talking about complication/resolution stories we've also talked about how some stories don't have the classic ending you need for such a structure. Here's a piece in which a friend of mine who's appeared in this blog from time to time, Dustin Long, basically immersed himself with NASCAR driver Mark Martin's team as they prepared their car for last weekend's race, with their narrow loss in the Daytona 500 still haunting them.

Had Dustin reported through the race itself, he would have had his ending. But he and his editors decided they wanted the story to set up the race, so there is no classic resolution. Yet -- and this is why I'm posting this -- the story does end. In fact I think Dustin found a pretty strong, satisfying ending for this piece -- and as writers and editors, that's what we're going for.

There are some other things he does well in the story -- in particular, most of the quotes he uses are in the form of dialogue, which I think really helps the story (any story).

Anyway ... take a look and judge for yourself.

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