The Haiku Turn

I am finally getting around to discussing my notes from Roy Peter Clark's Writing Tools. It's sure taken me long enough, hasn't it?

The book is an odd mix of advice for news reporting and storytelling, with most advice applying in both fields but some only mattering in one or the other.

There were also some great jokes and anecdotes. My new favorite English joke: "I dropped the toothpaste," he said, crestfallen.

An anecdote I loved told about a fellow reading through old stories from children, then thinking to himself that one of the kids sounded like E.B. White. He looks, and it totally was. True voice, that; no pretending or following trends.

One piece of advice that stood out to me in particular was to create paragraph turns, similar to those in a haiku.

Haikus are some of the funniest poems out there. In ancient times, poets would get together, get drunk and make a game out of writing haikus. Here are some I love. The first three are by Yosa Buson, who was brilliant with imagery, and the second three are by Matsuo Basho, whose bluntness and imagination I adore. The final three (I was restraining myself, okay?) are by Kobayashi Issa, who wrote well about how he viewed the world, placing himself into all the poems, it feels like:

Morning breeze
riffling
the caterpillar's hair.

The old man
cutting barley -
bent like a sickle

A tethered horse,
snow
in both stirrups.

Still alive
and frozen in one lump -
the sea slugs.

What fish feel,
birds feel, I don't know -
the year ending.

Don't imitate me;
it's as boring
as the two halves of a melon.

I'm going to roll over,
so please move,
cricket.

Washing the saucepans -
the moon glows on her hands
in the shallow river.

In this world
we walk on the roof of hell,
gazing at flowers.

Now that you have enjoyed some haikus, my point: Haikus have surprise endings. Whether the surprise starts on the second line or the first, it is not what was expected, yet it somehow fits. Paragraphs can and should be written similarly, when possible, particularly in academic or media writing.

The first sentence of a paragraph is supposed to introduce the concept of the paragraph. Then you have support and a conclusion. Make sure your conclusion is not the same as your first sentence. You ought to have given new material that affects what you are saying and advances it. The more interesting, the more your reader will like it. Surprise them.

I don't know how this would hold in fiction or storytelling, except on the chapter level. Insert a plot twist in every chapter. Characters should not do the expected, and they should never face the expected (unless it is the dreaded, of course). This keeps the story interesting.

Let's call this tool the haiku turn: the moment when you turn from the expected.