Happy endings are all alike

This I can really understand-- The Tyranny of the Happy Ending-- why Dickens outsells Hardy. What do you think? Have we been so addicted to happy endings, we don't want to read books that end unhappily?

Click on that link to see a great graphic-- Olivier as Hamlet. Very clever.

Alicia

The last line

Mickey Spillane: “Your first line sells the book. Your last line sells the next book."

I'm finishing up revisions on a book, and thinking about how nice it is to write the last line, and how seldom I think I have the RIGHT last line.

So what's a good last line? Have you written one? Why is it good? How about from books you've read?

Alicia

More about the ending and resolution of conflicts

So am consulting on a book approaching the ending. Here's the scenario:
College football player learns to commit during a terrible season. When he commits, he helps the team win the last game.


The big climax is of course the game and the victory. That wraps up/resolves the internal conflict about the young player's refusal to commit. He commits, and it works out.

Okay, so there's another event which is sort of a culmination of a subplot, the sort of sentimental interest of an old NFL coach in this raggedy team (donating old equipment from his NFL team, etc.). As it is, in the end of the second-to-last chapter, he calls the young player and says, "I like your spunk, kid. I'll give you a tryout on my pro team if you like it-- no promises, but you can show your stuff."

Now what's interesting is the placement. The writer had it preliminarily placed before the game climax, just before, in fact, so that the young player goes into the game with this on his mind. I pointed out that to me that just opens up a new conflict for him (as he has plans to take a job in Europe for the summer when the tryout would be). And posing it on page 282 and resolving it with a yes or no on page 294 might feel, well, too pat. Too "wrapped up."

I suggested experimenting with putting it at the very end, after the big game. That way it wouldn't really be a new conflict (no time to debate), but rather the validation that he was right to commit to football. No matter what he does, this shows that he's "made it," done the right thing. It's actually an answer, not a new question.

Anyway, it felt that way to me, that placing the very same event a dozen pages later-- at the end of the final scene rather than at the beginning-- would give the reader satisfaction and not disorientation.
What do you all think? Can placement make that big a difference? What if he never makes a decision (which he wouldn't if the request comes at the very end)? Do you think that having it early would let him make a decision and thus close something? Or is it better ro leave the reader unsettled, with an earlier "demand" but no decision?

 That made me think, btw,  of that great sports story Rocky. I have always thought that the ending of the first film was one of the aspects that made it so much better than all the other films. You remember that Rocky doesn't WIN the big fight; rather he gets a split decision. The champ wins (they wouldn't let a challenger back then win on a split decision), and with his last breath, says, "No rematch!" (Of course, they do have a rematch in the next film.) That was Rocky's big victory-- he conviinced one judge that he'd won, and he sufficiently intimidated his opponent that Apollo didn't want to fight again. That was a satisfactory ending without being too "wrapped up." He just wanted to prove he wasn't a stupid thug, and he did that.

Alicia

The art of leaving things not all wrapped up.

I was contemplating how to make a happy ending of this romance novella, and of course, this being a romance novella, the young couple end up together and happy. But what about the other conflicts?

Does a happy ending mean everything is all wrapped up in the ending? That the conflicts presented at the beginning of the story are all resolved happily?

I'm thinking no.  Much of the "contrivance" and "deus ex machina" that annoy us as readers will come from trying to resolve every conflict happily. That is, it's not like a god needs to intervene to make two young people fall in love-- that's the way of nature. But to make a poor person rich? To heal the lame leg? If these are not the main plot-- where the protagonist works the whole book to resolve this conflict or achieve the aim-- then it's going to take an outside event, like the death of a rich aunt or the charity of a miraculous surgeon, to solve that problem.

In fact, having every conflict neatly resolved, especially by miracle, could cast doubt on your entire ending. So what MUST be in the ending? Probably the resolution of the main plot, the genre plot (those are usually the same--- a murder investigation is usually the main plot of a mystery, and a romance is usually the main plot of a romance) should happen. (Satisfactory, not necessarily happy.) But the other conflicts? If they aren't resolved BY the plot, by the action of the main characters, then maybe they shouldn't all be resolved.

For example, I am working on a romance where the young man is poor, and this is a real problem. But the heroine decides she loves him anyway, thus resolving the romantic plot. Now I really think if his aunt dies and leaves him a million pounds, that will render irrelevant the heroine's sacrifice of her plans for a wealthy marriage. So I think I'm just going to leave him poor. Okay, he's a poet, so I'll let some success at least glimmer at the end, but poetic greatness has so seldom meant wealth! So they'll be poor but happy. Works for me. :)

So when you think about your own stories, what do you think must be resolved satisfactorily? What would you leave unresolved?
Alicia

Article on ending

I thought it was just me, but this article on endings reports, "Earlier this year, researchers demonstrated that readers enjoyed stories more when they knew in advance how they would end, but the belief persists that an untimely revelation of plot points will ruin the experience."

 I do like to know the ending (I know, I'm a wuss), but I wonder if part of the pleasure of reading the perfect ending might be the surprise. That is, you're momentarily surprised, but then the rightness of the ending impresses you even more?

I don't mean twist endings. (I'm your father, Luke!)  I mean the sort of end the article talks about, that truly makes sense of the whole story, like 1984 ending with Winston professing his love for Big Brother. Will that realization be spoiled truly if you're told ahead of time, "Oh, Winston is brainwashed and ends up loving Big Brother?"

I hate coming up with last lines.  I never seem to find the right one. I often do a variation of "and they lived happily ever after" (well, not that bad).
\
What about you? How do you decide on a last line? Do you feel like you want to provide some philosophical coda?

Alicia

Fixing the End Point

So, maybe this is one of those Pantser-versus-Plotter* dilemmas, but some of us were talking on twitter recently about how to wrestle a recalcitrant ending onto the page. There were two side-by-side discussions unfolding in my stream simultaneously. One involved an author who had written the ending but thought it was flat and maybe a little to overcrowded with extra plot threads. The other involved an author who had brainstormed a dozen climax scenes and hated them all. She had no idea how to end her book.

I know both of these writers pretty well. In fact, I've edited both of them, so I have a strong sense of how their work is put together. I could be wrong, but my sense is that one of them is very controlled about her plotting methods, and the other prefers a more "discovery draft" type approach. Either method is fine, of course. The process is never as important as the final product -- in fact, the process serves the final product.

In any case, I thought it might be a good idea to take a look at some of the strategies we batted around. I think these are probably useful for either plotters or pantsers.The thing that struck me about this situation is that no matter the method you employ, you can still run into the same kinds of problems with the endings.

When I'm editing a book, the first thing I do is read it straight through to get a sense of the story elements. I might pause to mark up a few details or make some notes along the way, but my goal for this first reading is to grasp all the large-scale and mid-scale elements as quickly as possible. Almost the first thing I do after reading the last page is return to the first chapter. I read the opening and ending together like this so that I can be sure the ends match. Ordinarily, they do. If the book opens with a dead  body, it ends with the arrest of the murderer. If it opens with a man and a woman seeing each other as potential romantic partners, it ends with them committing to each other. These kinds of big story questions -- Who done it? Are you the one for me? -- provide the large-scale structure for most books.

It sometimes happens that they don't. It sometimes happens that the initial problem in the first chapter has no impact on the outcome of the book. If this is the case, I have to figure out why. Did the plot get off-track? Or did the author use a false opening of some kind to get the plot moving before the real conflict could be established? Which piece better matches the middle of the book, the beginning or the end? Asking questions like these can often help pinpoint structural plot issues and identify possible solutions.

After I do this particular analysis, I think about what actually happens in the end scenes (the crisis and denouement scenes). Which details were surprising and which were expected? Some mix of both is usually best. That is, we might not know who is the murderer until he's revealed (surprise), but we can be darn sure he'll be revealed (expected). We might know that the hero and heroine will end up together (expected), but we don't know how (surprise). In other words, the innovative ending innovates in particular ways, within the established parameters of the type of story and the plot as it unfolds up until the end.

Then I think about all the loose threads that need to be tied up. Can any of them be tied before the denouement? Or before the crisis? A lot of times, authors try to withhold all of the answers until the very end, but this can lead to a crammed-text feeling that might interfere with the reader's enjoyment of the ending. For example, if your historical romance has an external plot about pirates and an external subplot about spies, you might be tempted to finish those plot lines during the same scene in which the hero and heroine demonstrate their commitment to each other. This might work. Or it might be better to wrap up the externals first (subplot, then main external plot) and let the internals have their own moment on the page. How do you know which would work better? It really all comes down to impact on the reader. If the externals and internals each have a strong enough impact to stand alone, it might be better to separate them. Let the hero swash and buckle and perform heroic feats, and then, after they've returned to safety, let him declare his love for the heroine. Especially if that declaration is going to be a powerful moment.

A similar type of crammed ending appears in mystery plots when the heroic sleuth gathers all the suspects in one location and dazzles them all by analyzing the clues and revealing the murderer. Every suspect represents a type of subplot, you could argue, that is being resolved in a single scene. In this case, of course, you don't want to eliminate all of the red herrings before the final scene. You want to keep some suspense about the ultimate outcome. But a clever writer will still analyze each of those bits closely and think about which can be resolved in advance. Focusing on some of the lesser suspects between the midpoint and the climax can actually help keep tension high in the rising action, as long as each eliminated suspect leaves the reader in doubt of the outcome.

So, if the ending is crammed, I try to think of ways to reel it out so that smaller threads can be tied down earlier in a way that will help the rising action. But sometimes, a final scene will have the right combination of characters taking the right combination of actions, and it will still feel flat. In that case, my knee-jerk reaction is to change the setting.

Does this seem like an odd solution? Remember our formula for a scene. A scene is:

• Characters
• In meaningful motion
• Against a background

If you've got the right characters and the right actions, then this leaves the setting. In my opinion, this is the most overlooked aspect of fiction writing. It's not that we don't create good settings. We do. But then we use the same settings over and over again. Or we fail to incorporate setting details in ways that affect the characters and action. Or we always use the expected settings -- the bedroom for a sex scene, a coffee shop for a meeting between friends, and so on. Sometimes, if a scene feels flat, the best thing to do is change the setting and force a different backdrop into place. This almost always has an effect on the way the action unfolds and the way the scene reads. I mean, what happens if you take that sex scene out of the bedroom and place it on a balcony? Or under a moonlit waterfall? Or in the backseat of a car on the side of a busy highway? You instantly "see" a different scene, and it might be less flat.

(We brainstormed setting possibilities as an exercise for NaNo a couple of years ago. We also looked at some ways to use those setting lists to generate better scenes. Take a look at those posts for ideas about ways to leverage settings.)

So these are sort of the global things I examine in each book: matching the ends, testing the resolution of various threads, and setting. Specific books might also require other kinds of analysis, but these are the things I tend to do with each book.

Theresa

*In case you're not familiar with these terms,
Plotter = someone who plans the book in advance, often with scene charts, indexing systems, and other tools.
Pantser = someone who "discovers" the story by writing it, usually in several drafts, and usually generating many discarded scenes along the way.

Romance Endings

Romance follows fairy tale structure. Not mythic quest structure. Can't say that often enough. Study Voegler, study Campbell, if you think it will give you something to think about or a point of comparison. But never forget, dear romance author, that you're actually writing a fairy tale.

Exhibit A

Say it with me now. Fill in the blanks.

"And they all lived ______ _______ _______."

This concept is so intrinsic to genre romance that authors have shorthanded it: HEA, for Happily Ever After, a/k/a the way the good romance novel ends.

There is some debate about the shape and form of that HEA ending. Vladimir Propp, the Russian formalist who studied thousands of local wonder tales and created a 31-step template for this type of folklore, held that the final step was a wedding. All other steps -- whether obstacles, challenges, triumphs, or meetings -- led inexorably to the wedding IF the protagonist was successful on the journey. Cinderella marries the Prince in the final moments of her story.

Now we're less inclined to view a formal wedding ceremony as essential to the HEA. Now we discuss this ingredient in terms of the promise of commitment or the proof of an enduring relationship. Regardless, the final moments of a romance novel will demonstrate to the reader that the pair-bond has been created and will not break. The form of that pair-bond can vary a little, but its presence is mandatory.

Or, as Leslie Wainger puts it in Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies (which is actually a damned smart book),

The final expectation every reader has when reading a romance novel is that it will end with the hero and heroine expecting to spend their lives together and face any future trials as one.

Compare this to the mythic quest structure, which ends with the hero recrossing a threshold and becoming the master of two worlds. Dorothy returns to Kansas in the end and is as comfortable there as in Oz. But she doesn't marry the wizard, does she? Of course not. Marriage can occur along the path of the hero's journey, but it's not the destination.

I'm going to keep this short -- there's more I could say on this subject, but my goal in this post is to make you think about the differences between fairy tale endings and mythic quest endings. A lot of you are going to resist these ideas because you've been taught quest structure as if there are no other options. There are. And we use them. We just don't always recognize them.

Theresa

Secret hinting

Now this isn't a likely scenario for anyone's book, but I always love this sort of twist. So let me set it up and ask you all.

One of the most agonizingly painful scenarios is when character A is betrayed by the lover, really betrayed. And you can really milk that for angst and pain and all that good stuff.

However, there are a few of us who want to make it EVEN WORSE. The 'betrayer" is actually doing it to save the betrayed, only this requires that everyone think it's betrayal.

Let me set it up so I can use he/she pronouns. I'll summarize the world's most tearjerking ending, of Dedicated Villain, by Patricia Veryan.
Roland is a "dedicated villain," a charming rogue who manages to ingratiate himself with a traveling troupe of performers who are (he knows) trying to leave with Prince Charley's gold to return it to the donors.

Roland of course wants to steal this gold from them. Along the way, he becomes friends with everyone and falls in love with Fiona, one of the girls in the troupe. They have no idea he's anything but a nice guy who wants to help them. Well, a couple of the men are suspicious of him because he's so smooth and handsome and all that.

Anyway, in the end, he realizes that the Evil Army Officer has figured out that the troupe has the gold and is going to arrest them (and after the Bonnie Prince's rebellion, arrest meant they'd be hanged). To save them, he has to make them all believe that he has betrayed them and stolen the gold.

And they do, realizing that he never was who he said he was. So he's sacrificing his own redemption (getting these good people to care about him) by exploiting the terrible reputation he thought he'd escaped. And he's sacrificing Fiona's love, but so that he can save her life.

Sigh. It is so wonderful.

Anyway, the question. If you've set up this sort of double-cross, this fake betrayal, would you (in the "betrayal" scene) hint somehow that there's something off about his actions, so that the reader kind of doubts that he's really betrayed them?

Or would you let the reader have the same experience as Fiona, thinking that Roland has really betrayed them?

And why? And how?
Alicia

Endings and Anarchy

Did anyone see the season finale of Sons of Anarchy? I was trying to tell my sister about this, and she said her co-worker Missy is also watching it, and she'd direct her to the blog. So Missy, this one's for you, if you're out there.

Now this makes me think about endings, and this is important: The ending tells what's really important. How the characters resolve the various conflicts is how you tell the reader who they really are, and what they really stand for, and what they really value. But it also tells what your whole story is ultimately about-- the theme. That's actually why good books so often go bad in the ending, I think, because they don't truly let the reader know what's important. The ending should give the reader events that show the characters and who they are now and what matters, after all else.

Well, the end of Sons of Anarchy shows a lot, but above all it shows that it's about fathers and sons. (There's a daughter too, the archvillain's.) At the center is the powerful romance between Gemma and Clay, but her actions here in the end show that she doesn't trust this, doesn't trust his love, doesn't maybe even want him to love her above all (she is selling him short, I think, but this part is definitely from her POV). Gemma has just been framed by the FBI lady for a murder (committed actually by the FBI lady). At that very moment-- and see how effectively events are stacked here in the end, so that there's no downtime at all, and no let-up of pacing), Clay and her son (his stepson) Jax are in the process of avenging her gangrape by ambushing the evil overlord. Now Gemma is, more than Clay actually, the keeper of the motorcycle gang code. She knows that by this code, their revenge and the taking back of the power of the town is all important. And she doesn't interfere with it.

Instead, she calls Wayne, the sheriff. He's an old friend, and probably in love with her, and he has confided to her that he is dying of cancer. Somehow she knows that he will help her, that his own code as a lawman will be secondary to his desire to help her-- and I think because it is not HER code, she is fine with this. And he does-- he helps her escape. She apparently never thinks to call her husband or her son (although I think they've both shown they love her and would put her first-- this is her choice, to let them do their work).

However, Jax (the son) gets a panicked call from his girlfriend, and rather than go through with the ambush, he decides to go with her (choosing love over revenge, and showing what he values). But interestingly, he says to Clay, "I have to go to her," and waits for his permission. This is (for those of us who love this relationship) where he shows that he once again accepts Clay as his father, as the authority, after a season of hating him. Clay does not do as Clay would have done earlier, asserted that authority and ordered him to finish the job of the gang. Rather he shrugs yes, and even orders one of the others to "go with your brother", thereby depleting the hit squad by a third.

Then Jax discovers that his own baby son has been kidnapped by the Irishman (who thinks Gemma killed his son-- that's the murder the FBI lady is framing her for): "A son for a son". Jax calls Clay and says only, "I need you." Clay abandons the ambush and immediately goes to Jax, telling the others, "Irish took my grandson." He chooses love over revenge, but here it's love of son/grandson. Before, his revenge was a sign of his love for his wife, but here he shows that actual love-- being with a loved one in crisis-- is more truly --now-- what he knows to be love.

(Okay, details matter!! First, he has always identified Jax as his son and Abel as his grandson, but Jax has deliberately this season referred to him as "my stepfather/not my real father". See how precisely this is written-- today, Jax says, "I need you." That's all we hear, but that is a son talking to his father, isn't it? And as Clay is talking on the phone, he's holding the phone with his left hand. Hands are very important with Clay, because his hands are becoming crippled with arthritis. On that left hand is his wedding ring. Now the director could just as easily made that the right hand, but it's the left, and the ring is showcased-- the symbol of the wedding that brought him Gemma, but also brought him Jax as a son.)

In contrast is Zobelle, the evil one, and he is definitely sorry his beloved daughter is killed (by Gemma, but in self-defense). He really is. But when he amazingly escapes death by Clay (because Clay has gone to his son), Zobelle runs, getting on the plane that he chartered. Again, watch the precision of the staging here. The clerk asks him if his daughter is coming, and he says no-- that is, the writer has shown that Zobelle does not veer from his plans because of his daughter. This doesn't happen just in his head, or offstage, but right there in the action of the scene. I think it's important to SHOW the changes and the changing in the ending-- give the reader the ammunition. (Zobelle is played by Alan Arkin's son, btw, and has that sort of grave good humor that goes interestingly with villainy.) "We adjust and adapt," he tells the clerk, showing that he has not been changed by the events. That's his character theme, actually-- "We adjust and adapt," but for him, he adjusts but doesn't actually adapt-- a refusal to adapt his values and his agenda to the circumstances. Interestingly, in this he resembles Gemma, who loves fiercely, but cannot change her certainty that the code matters more than love does.

Jax and Clay, however, show how much they have changed. Both have chosen love over revenge, and love over their code of honor. In the end, they even choose love over what they think of as manhood (protecting what's theirs). Jax cannot save his son (let's hope there's another season), and collapses, and Clay grabs him and holds him up, and the end shows the two of them embracing and weeping. For such macho guys, this is a transformation.

But this ending-- and ending HERE-- shows that this is about parental/paternal love, not romantic love, or honor or manhood. This closes the circle of the season, which started out with Jax rejecting Clay as his father.

By "allowing" her men to continue with the revenge, Gemma is paridoxically liberated from the claustrophobically intense love that ties her to her husband and son and forces her into venerating a macho code that has injured her. She accepts rather the less complicated love of friendship instead. Her parental love has been exhibited throughout the season, but here she is breaking free of the tie that binds. (I'm sure she'll come back.) The conflict for her has always been what she has willingly given up for that love-- her love for Clay leads to her being raped, and her love for Jax has confined her to a continuing mother role (she's pretty much raising his son). She also, as Keeper of the Code and matriarch to the club, has always given up what matters to her for what's required by the code. She's never counted the cost, but now she knows that her freedom is more important than continuing in her Leather-Madonna role.

SO what does this show:

1. The ending is where you decide what the theme is, what the story is really about, what really matters-- and your final scenes should show that.

2. The ending should have characters act in a way that demonstrates how and if they've changed.

3. If some characters haven't changed, that shows something about them, doesn't it?

4. Write precisely here. Make the characters' dialogue and actions say what you want to demonstrate. At this stage, the ending, the characters are raw and true, all their defenses stripped away by the plot events. At this point, they will speak more truly than they have ever before, so let them speak.

5. Watch your staging and adapt it to your purpose. Show that something's important by "surrounding" it with conflict. For example, when Clay calls off the ambush, one of the brothers protests. That highlights that Clay is going against what's expected, and what seems sensible. Similarly, the clerk asking Zobelle about his daughter sets up the display of his inability to change, his central coldness. The scenes are set up and the events are structured so that these important points can be made.

Alicia

Tragedy is just comedy cut short?

If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.
Orson Welles

I mean, of course, comedy in the sense of a positive ending, not ha-ha. I was thinking that in popular fiction, we have the same structure as a tragedy, but the tragedy happens in the dark moment ("When the worst that can happen happens"), not at the climax-- in "comedy" there's a climax where the tragedy is resolved and maybe fixed or at least transcended. (The tragedy, I suppose, does have to be fixable-- you don't really have much room for a happy ending tacked on to Hamlet, after all! Everyone's dead! But you know, it IS a happy ending for Fortinbras, who gets a new kingdom without any work at all.)

Hey, I learned something! I was wondering why there's this trend in performances of Shakespeare comedies to have all the actors appear at the curtain call and then dance to some happy music (usually pop). I assumed there was some Journal of Shakespearian Comic Theatre and they'd had an article saying that audiences like this, so all the directors stole the idea. Turns out this has been done since S's time, and it's called "the Jig," and the purpose was to get the audience to see that all the actors were alive again and everyone was happy. (I don't know why they didn't have those after tragedies, where you think they'd be more needed.) What a good idea. It's fun, but what if you could act but you couldn't dance???
Alicia

Resolution scenes

In more character-driven books (where the internal journey of the main character is important), the final scene isn't just a way to ease out of the story, but an essential last chance to show how the internal conflict is resolved in some actual but symbolic action. This is why the final scene (after the climax) is often called "the resolution scene," because it shows the resolving of the internal conflict. (The scene doesn't RESOLVE the internal conflict-- that's done through the process of the entire plot-- but this is your chance to show in some concrete and yet symbolic way that the conflict is resolved and that has some measurable effect on her life.)

BUT... it probably helps to think this scene through and make sure you've set this event up and aren't undercutting the significance.

For example: Let's say you see Joan's journey as something like "alienation to reconciliation". The final scene might be her visiting her mother's grave-- see? Reconciled to Mom.
However, if she has been going to Mom's grave every year on Mom's birthday, this gesture loses its force. You've undercut the power of it in your setup... yes, even if you make a big point that this is NOT Mom's birthday. Come on, "Visiting Mom's grave on June 20 instead of July 19" doesn't show a real journey ending.

But if she's been unable to go to Mom's grave at all, out of guilt or anger or whatever, then her going to the grave at the end will show a real change.

Let's try another. I'm a sucker for stories where a cynic is reminded of the importance of whatever by association with an innocent. So here's a scenario:
A handsome and cynical rogue of a space pirate (sigh... you cannot believe how many of my buttons just that description pushes) has won a pretty little ship in a cardgame. He won it from, I don't know, the fellow that built the ship, or something that indicates a deeper connection between the first owner and the ship than Pirate has. (Makes me wonder why the original owner gambled it away then... but that's another story.)

Innocent youngster stows away on the ship. He/she is being chased by bad guys. But his/her innocence, though a subject of amusement to Pirate, ends up winning the day, and Pirate ends up less cynical because of exposure to the blushing naif.

Final scene after bad guys are thwarted: Pirate says, "I'm giving the ship back to the original owner."
Now see how this loses force if he says (and it's true), "I always planned to give the ship back after this voyage." That means that the exposure to the innocent and the events of the plot didn't change him. He's just following through with the planned return of the ship.

But let's change that. He NEVER meant to give the ship back. He was going to use it to secure his fortune and fame as a pirate. But then, after exposure, etc., he has changed. In the last scene, he turns the ship around (and notice that an actual action towards giving it back is going to be stronger than him just saying he'll give it back), and says, "Okay. It's his ship. I'm taking it back to him."

That is, set this up so it's a real change in his plans, in what he thought he was going to do, in what the man he used to be (when the story opened) would have done. Only then will the resolution event have the symbolic significance of the end of the journey.

And I want to stress again that this should be An Event-- an action on his part, not just a thought or change in attitude or decision or avowal, but an action that concretely shows that. Not "I love Mom again," but going to Mom's grave. Not "I'll give back the ship," but turning the ship around and heading for the owner's home planet.

Now one question: If you were writing this, would you go back and make it clear that he had cheated in the card game to win the ship? Or would you have it be that he won it fair and square? (No right answer here-- just your thoughts on which would work better from your perspective.)

Alicia

Ending after the climax

Teresa asks:
Did the ending come too soon or not fast enough after the climax? I know the writer has a certain latitude before we give the reader their catharsis, but I beginning to think it's a more of a feeling than a technique.

If Alicia or Theresa have any hints, I'd love to hear it!


Well, it all depends on the individual story, of course. But in general, yes, most novels tend to end better with a resolution or coda scene rather than smack after the climax.

Now a lot depends on what your story conflicts are. If it's a fast-paced, entirely plot-driven story, and you've got the murder solved or the quest fulfilled in the climax scene, the reader might not care to have the story drag on. "We're done! Leave me alone already!" is not the last thought you want the reader to have.

Also beware of the perpetual ending, where you just drag on and on after the climax, resolving one subplot, and then another. One scene after the climax is usually sufficient. Truth is, most or all subplots should be resolved in the rush towards the climax. (Watch Casablanca and see how the 6 or 8 subplots are resolved on the way to the romantic/external climax, leaving only the internal conflict-- Rick's alienation-- to be solved in the short coda after the climax.)

There has come a trend in Hollywood called "You always kill the dragon twice." That is, there's a false climax where the hero/ine THINKS the dragon (or external conflict) is resolved, but noooooooo. Here it comes again! Right over that building! Miraculously alive! Must slay it again!

It's a cheap shot of adrenaline, and less and less effective now that we watch the first kill and think cynically, "The dragon's not really dead." If you must do this, make the two kill scenes dissimilar in several important ways, like use a different setting and a different method the second time.

Okay. Resolution scene. Don't think, "What threads have I not knotted up?" Think instead of the ending as resolving the major conflicts. So the climax usually resolves whatever you've set up as the external conflict-- that's what the climax is for. She solves the murder, or he wins the gold medal, or they save the king's son. Ta-da! What's left? Well, presumably, if this is a character-driven story, the protagonist has an internal journey to complete (to forgive Dad, to show trust in the future, to abandon materialism, whatever). THAT is usually a great, satisfying way to end a book, to show that the protagonist is changed by the events of the book and does in fact complete the journey. (Sometimes this is also a great place to resolve any remaining romantic or interactional conflict-- but remember, often what is holding him back from really loving is that internal conflict, so determine which has to be resolved first.)


If you have more than one scene after the climax, think about combining the events into one resolution scene. If he needs to make up with his sister AND say a final goodbye to his late father AND decide to move back to the hometown, well, how about he goes to Dad's cemetery, and there by Dad's grave, he says goodbye, and turns to leave, and there is his sister, and they kiss and hug, and she offers to cook him dinner before he leaves town, and he says, oh, I'm not leaving-- can I bunk on your couch for a few days till I find a house of my own?

End of story. Smiles and sighs all round.

(And I am NOT a fan of the "we're having a baby!" epilogue so popular in romances. If, I think, the reader isn't convinced by the story that they're going to be happy together, an epilogue of them beaming at each other over her belly won't help. But I realize I'm in the minority on this... just please don't make it TOO treacly. Make it reflect who they are as a couple. If they've wisecracked like Grant and Russell for 300 pages, they're not going to turn into simpering fools in the last scene, are they?)

Alicia

Epilogues and ambiguous or otherwise endings

There's a lively discussion going on in the comments for my epilogue post, and one inspired a long response from me, and I figured that I'd just put it upfront. Don't expect much. I just decided that because my response was so longwinded, not brilliant. :)

Gwen says:
I feel like epilogues provide the opportunity to tie up things that make a point but don't fit into the main plot. I can't very well stop the action after this character dies to find out what happens to him since it wouldn't interrupt the entire pace of the story. It sounds more like you're opposed to 'and they had 10 babies and lived happily ever after' types of epilogues, so I wonder what you think of this.


I don't know. All I can say is-- be analytical. You know what the pitfalls are. So be skeptical and examine this as a reader would-- and it has to be in the context of the whole story, not just by itself-- ESPECIALLY if your prose is pretty damned good... because that can be sort of seductive and disguise whether it's needed or not. You're talking about a 3-book story here, so there are lots and lots of plot threads. Why does this one need to have a finish AFTER the finish? (A bad guy defeated and dead... that's a finish. :)
So I can't tell, but I have to say that my question is-- why do you need to tell what happens to him?

Hollywood has this tendency to have two endings: "You have to kill the dragon twice." I've ended up against it because I think it's kind of corrupted the story by forcing this unnatural conflict, and in fact, now it's predictable, and in a theater, when the bad guy is killed or the good guy loses, viewers will whisper, "No, wait, there's still ten minutes left. He'll come back." It's as artificial as the encore in a concert-- you know if the band doesn't play its biggest hit, well, they'll come back for an encore and play it. Predictable.

So-- and I'm just using yours as an example, and I don't really know what you should do, but you know how good it is to be used as an example, right? :)-- What is served by showing that, I don't know, he's forgiven and he's in heaven now, or he isn't forgiven and he's in hell, or he's reincarnated as a worm, or... why isn't death enough of an ending? What is the reader going to get out of a final final finish to his story?

You might be absolutely right. I don't know, and can't know without reading the whole thing, but I'm naturally wary because epilogues, frankly, seldom work. (As I've said, I've written a couple, and I felt like I needed to write them for ME, not for the reader-- I needed to take the story one more step to assure myself that Jerry and Maisie were happy, or whatever. Now none of these epilogues made it into the printed version of the story-- either I or the editor decided against it-- so my batting average isn't very high.)

You know, this might have some connection to the tendency in genre and popular fiction to tie up all the ends in the end. I think that's in part in response to the tendency in literary fiction to make endings ambiguous. In popular fiction, we usually have finished endings, that is, we actually answer the story question: Yes, the murdered was identified and brought to justice. Yes, Jerry and Maisie end up happy together. Yes, the colonists reach the planet safely.

The closer a novel gets to lit fic, I notice, the more likely the ending is to be ambiguous, so, say, PD James's mysteries will seldom wrap everything up in the end (which sometimes annoys me :).

Now an epilogue can make an ending ambivalent (like the Indiana Jones one-- well, that was more ironic, but it was ambivalent in the sense that the all-important Ark is lost), but more often, it makes the ending very, very certain.

Now I tend not to love ambiguous endings, but you know, those are the ones that linger. The most famous: "Tomorrow is another day!" When Scarlett thinks that, it's leaving open a possibility that she'll manage to change things. And here it is, decades later, and there's even been an authorized sequel, but we still think about that ending, right?

Another that has occasioned enormous controversy (okay, among a small group, but trust me, this is HOTLY debated!) is the ending to the Lymond Chronicles (Dorothy Dunnett). Don't read this if you're halfway through the series, okay? But it ends with Lymond as the putative father of a little boy, and -- this is really complicated in the story, and I won't even try to summarize it-- this is probably a substitute for his actual son, who probably died years earlier. Now I say "probably" because some have argued that Kuzum is actually his son, presenting a lot of intricate evidence-- and Dunnett, I suspect, planted that evidence just to be difficult. :) Anyway, what's left ambiguous is whether Lymond will ever fully accept K as his son. We STILL debate that, and Lady Dunnett is long dead, and that book was released in 1975. If there were an epilogue that settled that issue... well, I don't know if the story would still have that much resonance.

Another example, from TV. Think of how Buffy the Vampire Slayer ended. Yes, some questions were answered-- the vampires were defeated, the apocalypse averted, Buffy survived. But the MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION was left open, that is, did Buffy love Spike? She said, "I love you," to him, but he said, "No, you don't, but thanks for saying it." So the question is left open-- was she right? Was she telling the truth? Was she just saying that because he was about to sacrifice himself to save the world? Did he know the truth better than she did? Or did he believe her but just wanted to get her to leave him so she'd be safe? The ambiguity of that ending has launched a thousand fan-fics. :)

So, anyway, ambiguous endings do have advantages. That's something to consider also, as an epilogue could potentially remove all doubt, and that might make for a LESS satisfying ending. Just a thought-- what do you think gives the reader the more satisfying experience?

Hmm. Now I'm thinking of that... let's say that you want an ambiguous ending for this bad guy, just let's say. How can we stage a bad-guy-death-scene that would leave a bit of ambiguity? But not an annoying amount of it. I can see, as he dies, he kind of looks up and smiles suddenly, like he saw something he liked. Then we'd all speculate, "What? Did he see heaven?"

When I was in parochial school, we were utterly convinced that if we said the Our Father as we died, we'd go to heaven no matter what evil we'd committed in our little 4th grade lives. So I can just imagine the bad guy muttering, as he bleeds out, "Our Father, who art in heaven...." The End.

So... Gwen... no good answer on epilogues. But thanks for the example!
Alicia

Epilogues

Epilogues are almost always a sign that you don't think you proved your case.

That's my categorical judgment. What do you all think?

I'm talking about the sort of epilogue that is not a twist (like the ironic epilogue in Indiana Jones, where we see that the Ark that Indy and the Nazis were fighting to the death over is going to lie forever forgotten in some government warehouse) or a poignant bittersweet moment of completion (like in the final Prison Break, where the conspirators all gather, and only Michael is missing, and we realize it's for the dedication of his tombstone, and he has died). I'm talking about an epilogue that is really about reassuring the reader that yes, this couple ended up married and pregnant, so of course they love each other; or the one the detective outed as the murderer is convicted, so see, he must have really done it! That is, it's giving the reassurance that the story question was answered appropriately... however, it indicates that you think the reader NEEDS that reassurance. Why? Because you don't think your actual story events and resolution scene did the job.

Now, see, I think prologues often have their uses, but I think epilogues are seldom necessary (except maybe to provide a final twist), and if the epilogue IS necessary, I would take another look at the final scene before that-- what was insufficient about that, and can that be fixed?

So what do you think? What do you think would be an effective epilogue, and when do you think an epilogue should be extraneous? What works and what doesn't? Have you ever written an epilogue, and why?
Alicia

Endings ironic

I'm trying to think of some ironic endings that work. Can you all help?

Like the first Indiana Jones film, where they battle the whole film to win the great Ark, and finally do, and the last shot is a guy stuffing the crate into some government warehouse where it will never be noticed again.

What else? Film or novel or story?
Alicia