RSS Feed (xml)
Kat from The Thoughtful Life has tagged me to be next in the Absolute Write blog chain.
She wrote: “How to you determine the ending of your story? Do you write the happy ending you want and readers expect? Or do you work on mixing it up and not being predictable.”
Endings are important. I’ve seen movies and read books that have the “wrong” ending. I hated them. I didn't congratulate the author for imaginative and creative thinking. Instead I trashed them to anybody who would listen.
Oddly, stories with the "wrong" ending don’t show up that often because people have a cultural, intuitive grasp of “how the story should go.” Story plots are as old as the human race, but in 250,000 years we’ve never gotten tired of them and we aren’t going to any time soon.
Everybody knows how Lord of the Rings is going to end. Sauron is going to die in some spectacular way and Frodo will emerge victorious. From the first sentence of that thousand page story, the ending is never in doubt and that’s true of most genre fiction. Miss Marple is going to solve the mystery, so is Nero Wolfe. In romances girl is going to meet boy, girl is going to lose boy, girl is going to get boy back. Happy ending. What if girl loses boy, never marries, and ends up living a fulfilling life as a doctor in Indonesia? It’s a happy ending but your audience is going to feel cheated. They’ll write you hate mail--and those will be the ones who decide not to send a letter bomb.
For years people were worried that Rowling would kill off Harry Potter in the last book of the series. There’s a rumor that Stephen King (yes, that Stephen King) called her and begged her not to do it. Nobody would have been outraged over it because even if Harry died, as long as Voldemort ended up as a steaming pile of toast the books would still have the “right” ending.
To answer Kat’s question above, if we are talking genre fiction (and I am; it’s all I read and all I write) then, yes, the ending is predictable and you can’t change it to save your life. What you do to keep from writing the same book over and over is make the journey from here to there interesting. Develop delightful characters and put them through hell. Make sure there are twists, turns, setbacks and surprises. Mr. (or Ms.) Bad Guy is going to lie, cheat, steal, commit violence upon your person and otherwise hand your hero a world of suck.
Even if the hero dies, even if your reader uses up an entire box of tissues they'll still feel they’ve had rousing good story and they’ll thank you for it.
Now it’s time for me to pass the baton to The Virtual Wordsmith
And here are the other participants in the chain:
living my life all over again
Spontaneous Derivation
Jenn Hollowell: Working Writer
Peregrinas
Techtainment
Anything That Pays
Polenth's Quill
wfg thinks out loud
Spittin' (out words) Like a Llama
A Thoughtful Life
The Speakeasy
Virtual Wordsmith
The Writer's Round-About
My Copious Notes Blog
Tennessee Text Wrestling
Writings
Twisted Fantasy
awchain
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
AW Blogchain Post: Writing the Ending
Posted by Susan Brassfield Cogan Susan Brassfield Cogan at 2:31 PM
Labels: The Craft of Writing
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
18 comments:
Excellent post.
A twist I like to add is Bad Guy is Not Really Bad Guy. Or even better, Bad Guy is Bad Guy But You End Up Rooting For Him.
In which case what you can do with the ending suddenly becomes much more flexible.
You covered a really good point---as long as Voldemort got what he deserved, readers would have seen Harry's death as natural. Villains are what really drive many a plot.
"Villains are what really drive many a plot"
Can you expand why this is the case?
I am sure Steve did beg Rowling not to kill off Harry Potter,..I think it is not a rumor!
Steve knew it wasn't time and and he too wasn't ready to let Harry go!
Trust me!
I know,...L.A.Borguss
Great post -- and excellent points about endings for genre fiction!
But boy oh boy, I found out last year that with literary or mainstream fiction, perception of the "right" ending can change from reaader to reader.
Of seven betas I had at the time, six loved the ending to a novel I wrote, and one of them loathed the ending. One of the many things I learned when more people started reading my work was: "You can't please all of the people all of the time." People's perceptions of the "right" ending -- and even the "right" characters -- are heavily filtered through their attitudes, experiences, and ideologies.
I'm with thommalyn- with mainstream there's not always a clear cut good guy beats bad guy ending, so it's a little more up to personal preference.
And as for Harry and Voldy, I never once gave in to even doubting whether JK would kill him or not. I knew she wouldn't; because after all, if she'd killed him, "The Boy Who Lived" moniker wouldn't work out quite right anymore...
I'd feel totally happy if she went to be a doctor in Indonesia instead, but that's probably why I don't read romances.
I think you make a good point about genre fiction. The reader has certain expectations and if you're going to try to buck those expectations, you're writing literary fiction, not genre.
"'Villains are what really drive many a plot'
Can you expand why this is the case?"
Yup. Villains are the ones who touch the plot off. They provide the opposition the hero struggles against. Most heroes don't cause the main, serious trouble; that's usually up to the villain to take care of.
So you need villains to be as compelling as the hero. (And vice versa.) The resulting whirlwind is plot. It's even better if the villain is compelling all by himself, without conjunction to the hero.
And Voldemort really, really fit that mold. Look at how J.K. Rowling explored his past, bringing a human side to the cold madness---but never losing sight that the man WAS a serpentine, cold, mad, evil sort of fellow. She even compared his history to that of Harry's---and Harry actually feels some compassion for his enemy.
I know some people don't like Rowling's work, but she played the villain very, very well (as well as other characters more in the gray, like Snape). She does this far better than many books do. That's one of the reasons why Harry Potter was so freakingly successful.
And if you look at a lot of really successful books, you'll find similar things. Coraline... every single Stephen King books... many mainstream books... really good mysteries, psychological thrillers, horror, romance, everything.
Even if the villain is the weather, like in The Perfect Storm.
Villains drive the dynamic. Your hero has to survive it.
"otherwise hand your hero a world of suck"
I've really had problems with that world of suck...I mean, how much is too much? How many horrid things can happen to a protaganist and still keep the reader with you...I guess that's the challenge of writing a good story though...I'm still learning...slowly.
Thanks for the great post!
Loved the post!
I really do think it is the journey that matters. Readers need to love the good guy and hate the bad guy, and feel through every step of the book.
And on a side note: am I so happy she didn't kill of Harry Potter. :-)
First, I loved the Harry Potter series, you can watch Rowling grow as a writer through it. She was an average writer but a BRILLIANT plot artist from the very first page. Of course, after all the hype, build up and years of waiting from book one through to book seven the ending felt a little flat to me. Given the extent of Voldemort's touch, the cataclysmic event seemed too localized. Then of course the epilogue was just a jibberish wrap up to stop fans bothing her with constant, "So what happens to Harry?" questions.
Onto the topic at hand I love Arachne's comment, "Villains are what really drive many a plot." If you alternate the word villains with conflict then this is 100% accurate. In hero/villain plots of course the villain creates the conflict for the hero but in all stories it is the conflict that drives the story. Without it the protagonist would be living an every day average normal boring life like the rest of us. ;-)
Of course, while there are fiction genre where you would expect the typical "happy ever after" it is NOT a requirement of a compelling and satisfactory ending. Yes, there needs to be a tie up at the end, all the threads of plot must come together in some way that leave all questions answered but the good guy doesn't always have to win.
In the HP example as mentioned, if Harry HAD died at the end, so long as Voldemort did too it would be a completed ending. What made the story more compelling were the gripping moments of sadness throughout. (As a sidenote, I didn't much like Sirius' death, it felt too easy. As a primary character it should have had more purpose. When I read it I saw Rowling's plot driving showing.)
Anyway, this is a captivating topic. This blogchain has invoked some incredible posts and thoughts from everyone involved. :-)
I agree with what you say but I also feel that there are times someone must die to make the story complete. I think that sometimes it makes the story even better. I've heard authors say many times "I know you didn't want them to do that, but they had to."
"yes, the ending is predictable and you can’t change it to save your life."
Because I am nothing if not a nit-picker, I'm going to nit-pick. :)
I know what you're saying, but I'm going to disagree with the specific wording. I agree that endings have to be predictable when seen from the end of the book and looking to already-read pages. I don't agree with it being necessary for the ending to be predictable from page one of the book, or even page 20 or 50. As long as, in hindsight, it all makes sense, then I'm all for all the twists and turns that the author can throw at me. :)
I LOVE surprised endings. It takes real talent to create an ending that surprises me these days because I know so much about writing, plot, character development and the various tricks involved with creating a gripping story so when one is capable of ending in an unpredictable way I admire the art involved in keeping readers guessing.
Not all stories have predictable ends. There are some genres readers would expect to end predictably but there are others where the twists and turns are a greater part of the story and leaving a reader guessing is a power unto itself.
Sincerely,
Rebecca
The Writer's Round-About
“It’s a happy ending but your audience is going to feel cheated. They’ll write you hate mail--and those will be the ones who decide not to send a letter bomb.”
It actually happened to one of our most popular novelists. He wrote a drama and people did not like the ending and they started protesting in the university about the ending of the drama.
Excellent post.
I really liked the way you presented your blog. At first, I could not understand that it is a blogspot blog.
I don't think the specific ending has to be predictable, but I agree it has to fit, which constrains the author's options.
My take on the Harry/Voldemort issue is that I agree that JKR could have killed Harry if she also killed off Voldemort, but only if Harry dies heroically. If, on the way to the battle, Harry were to get hit by a bus, it wouldn't matter if Voldemort were killed by a suddenly empowered Neville Longbottom. Readers would riot in the streets, because the ending would be a cheat.
I think there's a name for that kind of ending, but I can't remember what it is (that's what I get for never taking an English class in college).
Rowling started losing me at the beginning of book five. I read book six hoping I'd be lured back in, but alas, it was not to be. I didn't read book seven, and I probably never will. Something changed in the feel and style of her writing, and it tossed me right off the joy ride.
It is good that someone distinguished the difference between Genre and Literal fiction. I think the line can blur but I now see how the "wrong" ending really only applies to genre.
Sometimes I think the "wrong" ending is the point. Take "No Country for Old Men" for instance. WARNING: MOVIE SPOILER. The characters in most direct conflict seem to be the central plot, and then suddenly the protagonist of the two dies, a little over halfway through the movie, not even at the hands of his nemesis. I think everyone really expected him to go the distance. The randomness and unpredictability is probably the point. It wasn't just a good ol' action where the good guy finally kills the bad guy. But then you would call it Literal and discuss philosophically the symbolism of such a movie.
Still thought it was good, by the way. In a way, much more real life for the way randomness controls the plot, continually changing the course.
Post a Comment