Dear Readers:
A perennial complaint of reporters is that headline writers “give away the ending.” Some stories have “kickers,” or special endings that reward readers for getting to the bottom. (The term ‘kicker’ is mysterious in its origin. Doc likes the explanation that it derives from vaudeville where dancers often kicked their way off stage at the end of a number.)
Consider a recent example. In the Sept. 26 edition of the St. Pete Times, Alex Leary writes about a golden retriever named Brutis who protects the children in a family by attacking and killing a poisonous coral snake.
The story has the unusual trait of beginning in the middle of the action and moving in straight chronological order, beginning to end. It begins: “On the swings under the sycamore tree, just beyond the horse pasture, 3-year-old Angelique kicked her legs into the sky. Lucca, her younger brother, tried to keep up.” There’s a snake nearby.
Suddenly, Brutis finds and kills the snake. “If it hadn’t gotten the snake, it could have been the kids. It could have been me,” says the grandmother, Fran Oreto.
Here’s the story’s complication: The dog is bitten by the snake and soon begins to suffer the effects of the venom. What follows is a desperate search for antivenin for coral snakes as the dog sinks closer and closer to death. It takes 13 paragraphs after the jump to learn that the dog is saved.
But here’s Doc’s question: The headline reads: “Heroic measures save heroic dog.” The blurb reads: “Brutis kept a deadly snake from his master and her grandchildren, but needed some quick help in turn to keep from dying from the bite.”
Perhaps suspense is overrated. After all, Shakespeare gives us the end of “Romeo and Juliet” in the first eight lines of the play: “A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life.”
But what would have happened if the headline and blurb would have teased the ending without giving it away: “Would heroic measures save heroic dog?” “Brutis kept a deadly snake from his master and her grandchildren. Would the antivenin arrive in time to save the dog from dying from the bite?”
[ Which technique do you like better? Give away the ending in the headline? Tease the reader? ]
