Endgame Part 4 - Everything Else

So, if we take out happy-ever-after endings, revelation and climax endings, what's left?

Everything else. And, yeah, that doesn't all fit tidily into categories.

But, never fear because I'm going to give you my insight into rules of thumb for any type of ending (which may or may not apply to the special endings I've already described—use your own judgement). These are things I keep in mind when writing the ending, including where to end the story.

First and foremost, remember the point of your story. Point of the story? What if it's just a frothy romp for entertainment? Nothing wrong with that. But, if your story is just to entertain the reader with a charming story or fun characters, don't kill them all in an earthquake or strike one down with AIDS. By doing so, the point of your story (having fun with fun people) has been subverted with an ending that sucks the joy out of it. That doesn't mean you can't have fun frothy adventures that end in despair, but the seriousness of the consequences, the reality that lurks behind the adventure needs to poke through in the story before the ending. Or the reader will feel cheated.

But most stories have something to say. It might be minor or even cliche, but the characters should all be striving and growing, be motivated by something or learning something. The ending needs to be working with that, part of that, in keeping with that intent. If the story involves the striving of people to be together against the odds, having them go their separate ways for spurious reasons at the end will be irksome. Give them good reasons, remembering their time together fondly, that's fine. But you don't want the reader getting to the last page and "Why did they try so hard for so long just to throw it all away?"

Some books have a very significant import, highlighting important issues like child abuse or war. Given the import of those topics, even if the story ends happily, it shouldn't be too easy, too tidy, too pat. There need to be scars and struggles with the ending emphasizing how challenging correction can be or the topics themselves become easy to dismiss.

The key is to not to lose sight of what you're trying to say. Bad things and good things can both happen at the end, hope from despair, reality striking fantasy, as long as you haven't subverted why you told the story for in the first place. That doesn't mean the guy gets the girl—perhaps giving up the girl is the greater expression of love, the greatest available. That doesn't mean tragedy is prevented, but you need to be careful about making every effort in the book seem futile. Hopelessness rarely makes a reader feel good about the reading experience. The key is that the ending should be part of the message, instead of negating it.

Don't be a tease. This goes somewhat hand in hand the first one. A novel is something like a promise that you build on over time. You're telling the reader what kind of book it is, what to expect from and for the characters. If you promise hot and heavy romance, having your main characters meet for coffee and then go their merry way is not likely to leave the reader feeling satisfied. If the book is all about someone training and striving to succeed at something, having them come in seventh with no fanfare or no particular reason can be frustrating. Why, again, did I bother suffering with this character? The ending needs to deliver on at least some of that promise, even if it doesn't happen to be exactly the way expected.

It can be tempting to pull a sneaky and do something shocking at the end. That's fine, but you can't break your promise. You don't have to give the reader the obvious solution, but you have to deliver something as good or better. Not necessarily happier, but as satisfying and meaningful as what the reader was hoping for. Pulling a quick change at the end just so it's NOT predictable is like trotting out a new suspect in a mystery at the last minute and making them the culprit. It's a cop-out and a cheat. The last thing a writer should want to do is have the readers feeling cheated. So, take a look at your novel, at the hints and breadcrumbs you left along the way, the promises and teases you offered on what the reader can expect and make sure you fulfilled those promises, even if it wasn't the way the reader might have expected.

Give the reader time to grieve. Tragedy can be a very effective part of an ending. Reality can be harsh and misfortune, even "senseless" misfortune, is part of it. But, if you, the writer, have taken the time to get your reader to know and love a character who is struck by tragedy, you need to give the reader time to grieve, either before the tragedy (seeing it coming like say, Love Story or Tale of Two Cities) or after the fact by allowing the reader (and the other characters) to come to terms with what's happened. Killing off the couple's toddler three pages before the end or losing one's mentor in the last paragraph can leave the reader without the ability to come to terms with their own loss if they've become entrenched with the character. It doesn't mean you can't kill off favorite characters or visit tragedy, just that you have to help the reader come to terms with the loss just as the characters must.

Don't wind down indefinitely. Just as it applied to the happily ever after endings, for heaven's sake, bring the story to a close within a reasonable timeframe. Everything that happens after the climax should serve a purpose to the story: cleaning up loose ends, bringing everyone into a stable condition, letting everyone come to terms with tragedy (and you need time for this, but don't let it drag on indefinitely)—you know, tidying up. Character exposition and development, adventures, should be minimized after the main core story has reached it's climax. Make it entertaining, sure, but don't take on chapters or episodes during this crucial period for no purpose other than entertaining. If it's not part of the winding down and putting the story to bed, move it to before the climax or let it go.

Foreshadowing with care. I have said and I maintain that a novel should be self-contained and complete, not leaving key story-arc issues unresolved or key characters in imminent destruction. However, some books, particularly those intended to be part of a series, frequently have an on-going conflict above and beyond the current story arc. In those cases, having a few loose ends to be tugged and tied in a later volume is fine as long as this story arc is complete, as long as someone can get a satisfying and complete story from this novel. In such cases, particularly if you know there are more books to come (or even if you want to leave the option open), a certain measure of foreshadowing is a fine way to end things...as long as you don't actually start a new story arc. Whether you note the existence of a particular threat or remind the reader of how much work is still to be done, despite the successes of *this* battle, a little hint that there's more to come is fine.

About horror. The guidelines I've been discussing on endings largely don't apply to horror (with the possible exceptions of denouement/climax endings) because the intent of a horror novel is generally less about satisfaction and more about being unnerving. That doesn't mean you can't have a satisfying ending, just that it's not necessarily the best choice. To get the effect you're looking for in your horror novel (depending on what your intent is) might mean killing off beloved characters at the last minute or leaving promises dangling, even nudging your characters to the cliff edge. In those cases, one can deliberately add to the disturbing effect of the story itself by leaving the ending, well, not so ending-ish.

I have an announcement on a revamping of my Ask Me Anything blog and then I'll move off into other plot related topics here. Stay tuned as it were.

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Endgame Part 3 - The Happily Ever After Ending

The denouement ending is hardly the only one that's cliche. In fact, most type of endings tend to get done to bits because, let's face it, there are only so many ways to end something. But there are variations within those types of endings that make them suitable to certain types of stories and certain story resolutions.

For instance, the "happy ever after" ending (and variations thereof) is ubiquitous to romance novels but you can find them in all kinds of novels that (a) end happily and (b) aren't in a series. Although it's as cliché as possible, it's also effective and satisfying if done properly (more on that later), but it's also not appropriate for dealing with stories that have ugly or tragic endings or stories that are part of a larger saga where we'll be revisiting our characters elsewhere. A happily-ever-after ending is well suited to romance or adventure or character-driven stories where our characters end up in a happy place.

Happily-ever-after endings have tremendous variations. Some follow so closely on the climax or revelation ("I love you!") they could look like a climax/revelation ending, but there are several key factors that makes them different.

First, the relationship situation must be resolved—love confessions made and accepted, friendships, partnerships, and familial relationships clarified and perhaps celebrated. Generally, the action/excitement climax has happened before we clean up the relationship aspect. So, though the relationship climax may be on the last page, chances are good the action/danger aspects have generally already been resolved. This relationship resolution can be simple and straightforward ("I love you, you know." "I know.") or complicated as one likes, taking paragraphs or whole chapters. Note that all relationships don't have to be resolved, but the key relationships of the main characters (including with each other) need to be.

The situation of the main characters have to be in a good position for the long haul. That means they're not dealing with horrible tragedy to struggle through or left in a situation where the end result is in question. That means, if they're left stranded in a lifeboat, we need to be certain rescue is coming. That means that one can't be dying of cancer unless a miracle cure is on the horizon. However, it does not mean the hero and heroine are a couple, or married, or even romantically involved in any way, just that they're both satisfied with the relationship as it has become. It does not mean that all their problems are solved—they don't have to win the lottery or have their dream jobs or make their business a success. Asthma doesn't have to be cured or the pegleg regrown, as long as the characters are content with the lives that face them. It doesn't mean that the main characters got what the wanted (gold metal), just that they're happy anyway.

All of this doesn't have to be overt either. Our main characters can just resolve/clarify the relationship, with the reader left to conclude that all is well. ("And they lived happily ever after." Or "Let's go home." etc).

Or it can be overt (even exhaustingly so). There are a whole slew of options on how to show this, including considerable time with characters post "resolution" that allow both relationship/future to be further clarified and some/all of side threads tied up. Or, there's the ever-popular foreshadowing of the future with glimpses of near or far future with situations that clarify long-term success either with walks down the aisle, watching a child graduate or the infamous old couple celebrating their umpteenth anniversary.

There's nothing inherently wrong with the happily-ever-after ending in my opinion. I've used it for three out of five novels. It's well suited, particularly, to character-driven novels when, even when the story's effectively ended, you're not quite ready to let the characters go. But, there are dangers and a reader should be aware of them.

Making everything too happy. If everything tidies itself up perfectly, with all conflicts resolved to the best possible outcome and our main characters cooing at each other incessantly, I won't be the only reader with his or her stomach turning. Life isn't that tidy and having everything too rosy is a good way to alienate the reader or to make even a very believable appealing story come off sounding false. Nor am I the only one who tends to think idealized relationships are probably doomed.

Dragging it out too long. It's hard, when you have characters you love, not to add bits and pieces to share with readers you hope love them too. Still, once the story arc is ended and the crisis is past, there's only so long you can drag out the thread-tying and relationship clarifying/reveling without boring the reader to death. Happy relationships, I might add, are boring relationships to the outside most of the time. Set up what you need to so the reader is comfortable with where they are and where they're going, then leave the rest for the reader's imagination. I have a rule of thumb that, post climax, the book should end within two chapters (and only that long if you have some big pieces that still need to be put into place). Not saying that has to be your rule, but if you look back and see the story climax happening nine chapters back, you might want to ask yourself if (a) you need everything afterwards and (b) what resolutions you might be able to clear up before the climax so that it can wind down a bit faster.

Happy endings fall in and out of fashion, even if there are some genres where they are de rigeur, but there's nothing wrong with one as long as it's not too sugary and not dragged out too long. End it when you have the resolution you need and not beyond that point. Keep the characters as charming and entertaining as they need to be until the end.

The goal is to leave the reader satisfied, not bored, not anxious.

More endings to come.

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Endgame Part 1

So you know what an ending is supposed to do, barest minimum: resolve things and bring the story arc to a close. But is that enough?

Not hardly. The ending, like the end game in chess, makes a hell of difference on the caliber of the game. Leaving the story arc unresolved may ruin the story, but making an ending that totally rocks can mean the difference between a "not-bad" book and "the best book ever!"

If it's the second kind you're shooting for, you'd best aim to do more than just resolve a few loose ends and write "THE END." Endings can have tremendous impact and power, can really reinforce the sense of the story, set a tone, add dessert to the meal of the book as it were and even set the stage for future work (or just a future for your characters). But that doesn't just happen. You have to make it happen. To do that, you have to know what you're trying to do with your ending.

For instance, in a high-tension thriller type novel, you might want to be keeping the reader guessing until the last minute taking the climax to the very end. Something like:

Mickey smirked as the last of his shots echoed and faded. Cautiously, he approached the figure sprawled face down in a muddy puddle rapidly turning red,. His smirk turned to a grin as he saw the gaping red holes in the black duster. The bastard was dead for sure.

Mickey kicked the corpse for good measure. "Prick," he said around his cigarette. "You should have killed me when you had the chance."

"True," he heard behind him. Mickey swung around in disbelief and hardly had time to register Lamont was alive behind him before the top of his head was blown away.

"Wrong prick," Lamont said, holstering his weapon. He walked away without a glance behind him for the dead.

This kind of ending is terrific for a short story, where you don't have much to clean up and the impact of the ending is enough to flavor the whole story. You can use it for a novel too as long as you've already resolved anything else that needs cleaning up. If not, don't use it. And, if you do use it, leave it as close to the climax as you can. Don't succumb to the temptation of going back and adding more. This kind of ending is most powerful if you end it like I did without extraneous winding down like describing him getting into this car and having some philosophical thoughts. You can end with philosophical thoughts, of course, but it's no longer a climax ending.

If you need a minimum of clean-up to your climax ending you can do the mystery staple, a denouement ending wherein the climax comes only a handful of pages from the end but is still centered on shock and awe, before explaining why it ended the way it did:

"In the end, the real murderer was his apparently innocent teenage daughter, frustrated beyond belief at the limited number of text message she was allowed on her cell phone. Driven to madness by being able to text only once every other minute, she killed her father by sliding her nail file into his ear so that the wound was hardly noticeable, especially after the car accident."

[Then explain, explain, explain, perhaps some tearful remorse by our teenager, now faced with the prospect of jail where she'll be stuck with a corded phone shared with twelve other inmates. Maybe our detective with smoke a well-earned pipe.]

The tighter and shorter you make the after explanations/winding down, the more impact it tends to have, so open questions and resolutions are often crammed in there willy nilly. Mysteries tend toward this model because you don't have to tie up loose ends as you go, it keeps tension up until nearly the very end and, well, it's easy. Let's face it, it's a formula that's been played until cliché. You can use it for non-mysteries, of course, but you need to be careful. Cleaning lots of stuff up neatly in a couple of pages often feels contrived and bewildering. It can be done, cleverly and so tidily that you impress the reader instead of bore them, but it takes a crisp conclusion that tidies itself to really make it shine. Otherwise, it tends to sound slipshod and clumsy.

More to come.

[Wow, a whole blog post without mentioning manga!]

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Bringing it to a Close...Part 2

When it comes to endings, it's important to appreciate what an ending is supposed to do. And not do.

Endings, in general, should pull the story arc together and bring it to a close. There are exceptions to this, of course - television shows left hanging, manga chapters with shocking revelations on the last page so that readers will be desperate to find out why and what the implications are in the next issue. It's a gimmick that's worked well for long-running serial works for ages.

But, in my opinion, that's not the kind of "ending" for a novel. Oh, it's been done and there are series of novels where several volumes are nothing more than a lead-in to the next. But, it's a copout, and a stupid gamble for any author that doesn't already have a huge and slavish following. A novel is a sizable investment in time and effort, not just on a writer's part, but on a reader's part. If a reader comes to the end of that investment and feels cheated, well, what are the chances they're going to invest in your next book? Maybe, if they're completely in love with your characters and story, but they are just as likely, if not more likely, never to pick up anything you've written again in case they get cheated again.

Oh, and for the record, even if you have a huge and slavish following as an author, shame on you if you play this "leave 'em hanging" game. Can't you keep your following without such gimmicks?

A novel, like a short story, should be able to stand on its own. It should have a complete story arc with beginning, middle, and ending that an unfamiliar reader should be able to absorb and enjoy without reading five novels before or having to read what follows. Everything required should be there. That doesn't mean there can't be allusion to characters and situations from before that would allow a fan who read the whole series to get something special. But the book should not require outside information pivotal to the story arc of this novel. This story has to stand on its own using only information provided inside the story or it's a cheat and a dirty trick to force more sales.

Not that I'm opinionated or anything.

Which leads me to my number one, my biggest and most essential ingredient to any ending: resolution. You've got to bring this story arc, novel or story, to a satisfactory close. Not necessarily a joyous one or a comfortable one. Happily ever after isn't required. Everyone doesn't have to fall in love and every loose end doesn't have to be neatly tied.

But the big ones do. The characters need to be in a stable condition (even if something else might be looming in the amorphous future). The crisis(es) that formed the focus(ii) of this story need to be resolved, even if it's not the ending the reader was hoping for. Ideally, relationships should be at an equilibrium (though, if that's just a sidelight instead of the focus of the story, that's less important). Key people need to have learned something, grown in some way.

As an author, you need to be aware of where your story's headed, whether you're a planner or a seat-of-the-pantser like me. Maybe not the specific ending for the story, but where you want your characters to be and what you want to accomplish with the story. The ending is your last chance to have your say and accomplish your goals, but you lay the groundwork for that ending from the very beginning, whether your ending is effectively polishing off a fulfilling entree or topping off a light meal with dessert.

You want to leave your reader feeling satisfied, you need an ending that makes the reader feel like all their time and effort was worth it. Which is the best possible advertisement for your next book. Or even an incentive to read that book again.

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Bringing It to a Close...Part 1

So. who did I scare?

I'm not talking about bringing this blog to a close, by the way, but wandering back to topic, i.e., writing. Not that I didn't think the talk on manga wasn't about writing, but it wasn't about novels per se and was focused on what both mangas and I tend to like best: characters.

In fact, I've spent an inordinate time speaking about characters, protagonists and villains and even side characters. But, as Relax Max pointed out (correctly) characters ain't enough. You're going to need a story. There's several pieces to the story: the premise, the plot, including climax and wind-down. How you introduce the story (and the characters) can make or break a novel/short story because many who might be interested in such things will stop reading quickly if the beginning doesn't grab their attention no matter how good your follow-through might be.

But, far too often I think, I find writers are lax with endings. Since I'm a backwards soul, I'm going to talk about that first. Partly because I'm contrary. Partly because I just had a distinct example.

[Spoilers here for Hana Kimi - if that's a manga you've been meaning to read and you don't want to know how it ends, stop here and come back after the "spoilers over" notice]

Pardon me for a moment as I temporarily allude back to manga. I recently read a series called Hana-Kimi, a long one (145 chapters, 23 volumes). Lovely characters, weak premise (as it frequently is), but amusing (not laugh out loud) and appealing. I wanted to know how they were going to pull it all together. I wanted to know what would happen to all these interesting people. I'm all geared to put this on my "must-have" list, put all the volumes on my wishlist for Amazon and then read the last handful of chapters.

Oh. Damn.

143 chapters of everyone working toward a single goal, allowing our heroine to stand side-by-side by her hero, no matter what. All of that was tossed away in chapter 144 for no discernible reason. True, our protagonists get "sort of" back together a year later (at least they're in the same country), but really, that was the only alternative? What was the point of the 143 chapters that came before? The dozens of friends and compatriots standing up for them? The many sacrifices made along the way? OK, it's a very Japanese ending, self-sacrifice in the face of support, but still. Everyone suffers. What were we all rooting for for so long?

And all the loose ends, those suffering from unrequited love or having the potential for all kinds of things (including winning national/international championships) left undone or unnoted. Even the MAIN characters are only promised to be promised three years after the original parting.

[End spoiler]

How frustrating!

Instead of me desperately trying to figure out how to justify buying 23 volumes of a manga when I've already bought so much, I'm quietly removing them from my wishlist. I no longer "have to have them" - now I'm not sure I want them at all.

Now, people can sell a lot of books that way, and not just manga. There are many series that have gone on forever, dragging on love stories or a plot arc over so many books that you wonder the author can remember what the characters look like. And, in all fairness, if you managed to capture an audience's interest for book after book without a real resolution, the temptation to continue to cash in on that notion has to be pretty high PLUS you could make an argument that, once you've gone to a certain length, no ending's going to be quite good enough to make your readers satisfied.

I suspect, in the case of some book series, some movie series and undoubtedly any number of manga, the end comes across as anti-climactic or unsatisfying because there's no ending good enough. Or worse, it comes to a close unexpectedly and they just don't have enough room to put it together properly.

But it can happen within in a single novel, too. Mickey Spillane said, "Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it's a letdown, they won't buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book." That's true of any book, in my opinion, not just mysteries.

A satisfying read means that, when you're done, you feel like things have been resolved sufficiently that the time you spent with these characters and in this story arc were well-spent. A bad ending can send even the best read into a tail-spin to crash and burn.

So, what do you need for a good ending? Good question. And one for the next post.

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