HOW do you make
THE End?
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"When will you make an end?"
- The Pope on the painting of the Sistine Chapel
"When I'm finished."
- Michelangelo.
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THE End?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"When will you make an end?"
- The Pope on the painting of the Sistine Chapel
"When I'm finished."
- Michelangelo.
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Okay, so you got this GREAT Idea for a story!
- This Great Idea...that births chapter after chapter...
- This Great Idea... that you can't seem to finish. (WTF?!)
Crap.
So what do you do now?
HOW do you make an End?
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Fairy tales and Myths were my foundational reading, so they became my base model for how a story should finish -- by ending where you began with a solution.
This doesn't mean ending a story in the location it started, or that full irrevocable transformations don't happen, but that the story ties the knot to the Emotional or Karmic place they began. ...The lost find their way, the wicked are punished, the weak become strong, monsters are faced, emotional hang-ups are dealt with, and problems are solved. What is begun - finishes.
However...
-- Stories aren’t just about characters Doing stuff, it’s about character’s Dealing with stuff and Figuring out stuff about themselves. The really good stories, the ones that grab us and stay in our memories the longest, all illustrate normal people problems and issues, and the SOLUTIONS they come across.
No matter how fantastic the setting or characters are, stories are still about people being people dealing with people stuff. It isn’t what they Do, it’s How they did it, and what they discovered about themselves on the way.
It sounds perfectly simple, and it can be, however I despise stories I can guess the ending to, so naturally, I refuse to write them that way. (Insert evil snicker.) I prefer to make my stories a bit more unpredictable.
How? Subterfuge.
The Wrong direction is the Right direction!
I prefer to write stories that throw the reader completely off the obvious path, straight through the center of the village, and force them into the deep dark woods. I deliberately make every straightforward solution unbelievably problematic!
• The obvious answer is the wrong answer.
• The simple solution is impossible to accomplish.
• What seems to be a easy task has impossible if not fatal complications.
Once the reader has been sent careening off into territory they never expected to go, and gotten utterly wrapped up in a plot they never expected - that's when I start tying up ends by way of pulling rugs out from under the reader's feet.
Characters reveal motives that change how their base characters are perceived.
• The obvious bad-guy isn't the bad guy, he's AFTER the bad-guy. However, he's completely ruthless in his hunt, which is what made him seem like the bad-guy in the first place.
• The bumbling fool that merely wants to help improve his fellow man, is in fact completely deranged sociopath that likes to do his improvements with a scalpel.
• The person the main character is trying to rescue, not only doesn't want to be rescued, but in fact resents the intrusion.
Random events and objects are revealed to have unexpected connections.
• The gun on the mantelpiece wasn't merely a decoration.
• The strange recluse neighbor turns out to be the one person who actually knows what's really going on.
What was accepted as fact is revealed to be something else entirely.
• "We're all living in a computer generated dream-world."
And in the process of dealing with all that...
• Monsters are faced.
• Emotional hang-ups are dealt with.
• Problems end up solved.
• What was begun - finishes.
The END
"HOW do I fix the problem I have right now?"
"...Too many good books, book series, anime, etc. suffer from Bad Endings."
-- A Frustrated Reader
-- A Frustrated Reader
THE #1 Most Common Problem:
“The story is already halfway written and I have no idea where to go from there!"
This most frequently happens when:
-- A) The author didn't know how they wanted to end the story before they started writing. They just wrote ... until they couldn't write any more. (AKA: Writing by the seat of their pants.)
-- B) They planned the end, but painted themselves into a corner by tossing in a major (head/heart/sex) problem they didn't know how to fix before they could get to the end. (AKA: Bit off more than they could swallow.)
FIXING the Problem
1) Written by the Seat of your Pants
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-- When you've written something by the seat of your pants, the only way to fix it is by stopping cold and figuring out where you want it to end - then adjusting the whole story to suit your ending. This means extensive rewrites.
This also means making a decision.
What's more important to you as an author?
A) The hours you spent writing all those words that got you nowhere?
- OR -
B) Making a story your readers will swoon over?
2) Bit off more than you can Swallow
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-- I've noticed that this shows up most frequently when you have an ANGST plot. Oddly, it also shows up when someone wants to write a smut scene, but never had sex before.
Fixing Smut
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- This is actually really easy. READ smut stories. (Porn movies give you the visuals but not what it FEELS like.) Just, for God's sake, don't copy someone's smut scenes word for word - that's plagiarism. Paraphrase instead -- that's perfectly legal.
Het smut - I recommend reading books by author Angela Knight for excellent graphic detailing without making you wanna hurl.
M/M smut - go here: Minotaurs Sex Tips for Slash Writers Read that.
Fixing Angst
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- This one's tough. If you're trying to fix a serious problem like Grief over lost loved ones begin by Googling 'stages of grief', so you know what your character is supposed to be going through, and follow the advice given for getting over it. If you're trying to fix a heart-ache like a break-up between lovers, the stages of grief still works.
If you're trying to get them back together again, then you have a real problem.
-- Here in the West, getting back together rarely ever happens in real life because it's just easier to end the relationship completely and not deal with it anymore.
-- In the East, it's another story entirely. People do get back together because they are taught from childhood that Family and Personal Honor is far more important than one’s personal feelings.
• Enemies WILL put their personal vendetta on hold until a common enemy is vanquished.
• Wives WILL go back to their husbands for the sake of keeping the rest of the family safe from harm; giving those husbands a chance to make their wives fall in love with them again.
In Conclusion...
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-- When you've come up with the most diabolical problem known to man (or beast) the only way to fix it is by finding out how REAL People fixed it and applying that to your characters. Ahem, RESEARCH. (Hint: Google.com is your friend.)
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DISCLAIMER: As with all advice, take what you can use and throw out the rest. As a multi-published author, I have been taught some fairly rigid rules on what is publishable and what is not. If my rather straight-laced (and occasionally snotty,) advice does not suit your creative style, by all means, IGNORE IT.
So, go ahead and write all the stories you like that way! I assure you, I'll be glad to see every single one you post. ~evil grin
