Ending It All (Re-published)
On September 1, 2010, I published this piece. Only one person viewed it. I don't know if it's the title or because it was a Wednesday, but I thought, heck, I'll give it another try. So here it is again.
Writing teachers often talk about the "hook." That little something that grabs the reader and lures them into continued reading. It's a big deal to hook the reader, especially in this Barnes & Noble culture, where a potential book-buyer has stacks and cases of books to choose from but only a few minutes to make up his mind which of the hundreds is THE ONE to read.
At the other end, though...is The End. Nothing drives me crazier than reading a good hook, enjoying the story and the characters for 100,000 words, and then dive-bombing into the Sea of Disappointment. It happens to all of us. Recently, my step-mother gave me a book called Out Stealing Horses by Norwegian writer Per Petterson, translated by Anne Born. It is an unending conversation of the narrator and a truly special book that won the 2006 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. It has tragedy, epiphany and rich detail in time and geography. I enjoyed the journey I took with the narrator, Trond. But, in the end, I was left not just wanting more--which is a good thing--but wanting impact. The book didn't have a strong climax, but I attributed that to the theme, which might be salvation through labor. I needed something more striking to end the book. If you read the reviews of this book, though, you'll accuse me of being low-brow and a whiner. The reviews raved about this book and everything they said about Petterson's book was true. But I was just disappointed. I'm sorry. I can't help it.
Now, I can't make every reader happy with how I write or how I end a story. But I began to think about...well...ending it all. So here's a few things I came up with to help me when I'm writing my stories:
Wrap up loose ends in the story line. In my new novel, The Plunge, I had more ends to tie than a shoelace factory. And it took several re-writes before I figured out not just what to tie but how to tie the story lines into a cohesive ending.
Resolve situations. If I start some plot element, like having a minor character falling in love with my main character's girlfriend and having them duke it out, there should be a resolution to the relationships from all three sides, not just that my main character kicked my minor character's butt and that's that. That's trite. I have to find a way to use this situation to move the story to it's end--or take the situation out. I list each character and the situation they face, decide what I want to happen for each character, then find solutions to their situations. A good ending is when all conflicts are resolved and all misunderstandings are sorted out.
The climax has to being meaningful. The best way to accomplish this is to have the main characters deal with each other directly--not distantly or through other minor characters. Batman didn't send Robin to outwit and disarm The Joker--he did it himself. This is what led to my disappointment in Petterson's book. Since the story was a conversation about Trond dealing with and forgiving his father, whom he loved but who abandoned the family, by accepting loneliness as solitude by leaving Oslo and moving to the country. Since much of the book is this pensioner's remembering his life during the German occupation and a summer living with his father in their cabin in the country before he abandoned him, the ending left me without anything more meaningful to have for Trond than pity. For me, pity isn't meaningful. It's one of the easiest emotions to have and almost always short-lived.
Foreshadow what comes after the last page. What I mean is that the story in the reader's mind doesn't stop at the last sentence. I often think about the what-will-follows. For me, this is important for the story, because in life we have situations that end but life continues. Things don't end just because we say they do. I want to end my story with the main characters continuing their lives either happily together or comfortably apart. There are, of course, darker endings where the conflict is not resolved. Conflicts can be unresolved but only if the character sees something new in the conflict and now has the tools for resolving it.
Endings must accomplish something. Not just to end the action, or the character's life on Earth. The story is a journey where a destination is reached...or will be reached...or there is hope for the character in reaching it. The destination can be abbreviated, re-directed and even interrupted, but in the mind of my reader I want my characters to accomplish something--even if it happens after The End.
Writing teachers often talk about the "hook." That little something that grabs the reader and lures them into continued reading. It's a big deal to hook the reader, especially in this Barnes & Noble culture, where a potential book-buyer has stacks and cases of books to choose from but only a few minutes to make up his mind which of the hundreds is THE ONE to read.
At the other end, though...is The End. Nothing drives me crazier than reading a good hook, enjoying the story and the characters for 100,000 words, and then dive-bombing into the Sea of Disappointment. It happens to all of us. Recently, my step-mother gave me a book called Out Stealing Horses by Norwegian writer Per Petterson, translated by Anne Born. It is an unending conversation of the narrator and a truly special book that won the 2006 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. It has tragedy, epiphany and rich detail in time and geography. I enjoyed the journey I took with the narrator, Trond. But, in the end, I was left not just wanting more--which is a good thing--but wanting impact. The book didn't have a strong climax, but I attributed that to the theme, which might be salvation through labor. I needed something more striking to end the book. If you read the reviews of this book, though, you'll accuse me of being low-brow and a whiner. The reviews raved about this book and everything they said about Petterson's book was true. But I was just disappointed. I'm sorry. I can't help it.
Now, I can't make every reader happy with how I write or how I end a story. But I began to think about...well...ending it all. So here's a few things I came up with to help me when I'm writing my stories:
Wrap up loose ends in the story line. In my new novel, The Plunge, I had more ends to tie than a shoelace factory. And it took several re-writes before I figured out not just what to tie but how to tie the story lines into a cohesive ending.
Resolve situations. If I start some plot element, like having a minor character falling in love with my main character's girlfriend and having them duke it out, there should be a resolution to the relationships from all three sides, not just that my main character kicked my minor character's butt and that's that. That's trite. I have to find a way to use this situation to move the story to it's end--or take the situation out. I list each character and the situation they face, decide what I want to happen for each character, then find solutions to their situations. A good ending is when all conflicts are resolved and all misunderstandings are sorted out.
The climax has to being meaningful. The best way to accomplish this is to have the main characters deal with each other directly--not distantly or through other minor characters. Batman didn't send Robin to outwit and disarm The Joker--he did it himself. This is what led to my disappointment in Petterson's book. Since the story was a conversation about Trond dealing with and forgiving his father, whom he loved but who abandoned the family, by accepting loneliness as solitude by leaving Oslo and moving to the country. Since much of the book is this pensioner's remembering his life during the German occupation and a summer living with his father in their cabin in the country before he abandoned him, the ending left me without anything more meaningful to have for Trond than pity. For me, pity isn't meaningful. It's one of the easiest emotions to have and almost always short-lived.
Foreshadow what comes after the last page. What I mean is that the story in the reader's mind doesn't stop at the last sentence. I often think about the what-will-follows. For me, this is important for the story, because in life we have situations that end but life continues. Things don't end just because we say they do. I want to end my story with the main characters continuing their lives either happily together or comfortably apart. There are, of course, darker endings where the conflict is not resolved. Conflicts can be unresolved but only if the character sees something new in the conflict and now has the tools for resolving it.
Endings must accomplish something. Not just to end the action, or the character's life on Earth. The story is a journey where a destination is reached...or will be reached...or there is hope for the character in reaching it. The destination can be abbreviated, re-directed and even interrupted, but in the mind of my reader I want my characters to accomplish something--even if it happens after The End.
Posted by Tom Eubanks at 10/11/2010 12:04 PM 
Categories: On Writing
Tags: Working It Storytelling Ends Justify
Categories: On Writing
Tags: Working It Storytelling Ends Justify
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