Re: Story
Hiya, Kim --
No, I've never been on scribendi's bb (and I go by my real name wherever I go -- I'm me, I stand behind my opinions).
Hi, Hapi. Good to see you here. Chime in any time you like.
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What shall we talk about tonight?
How about endings?
Books have beginnings, middles, and ends.
If your book doesn't have an end, your readers will be left unsatisfied, as if the chocolate cake they were promised for desert was snatched away from them at the last minute.
I've talked about chess games as a metaphor for the novel. All chess games end. Either with a checkmate, a stalemate, a draw, or a resignation.
Of these, only the checkmate is of interest. We want that checkmate ending to our books. When the reader puts our book down, he should say "I didn't see that coming, but by golly that was the absolutely right ending."
("What do we do if we're planning a sequel? What if this is one book in a series? What then, Uncle Jim?" I can hear you asking.
"My children," I reply, "the book must have an end anyway. You can leave room for more stories in the same world, with the same characters, but this story is finished. Suppose your reader is a sailor, a thousand miles away from shore, six months before he'll get home, and this is the only book on board his ship. Do you want to frustrate that poor swabbie, leave him hanging? No! Give him a conclusion, a satisfying conclusion.")
How to tell you've reached the end of your story:
The characters suddenly don't know what to do next. They wander around. One of them orders out for pizza.
A novel is not life: In life there are always loose ends; the story never really finishes. This is art: Here all the plot threads are gathered together. Sure, you can leave little things lying around ready to pick up in another book, but you can't leave major plot-arcs unresolved. The reader won't stand for it; he will throw your book against the wall; he won't buy your next book. Here's the game: You win if the reader buys your next book.
Do not leave your reader in any doubt that you've come to the end of the story! Imagine a play ... where the audience didn't know to start applauding, when to rise to their feet, when to throw bouquets on the stage. The playwright gives the audience clues that This Is It. If nothing else, when the lights come up, and the whole cast walks on stage and takes their bows, the audience knows This Play is Over, and it's time to go home.
So ... signal that it's the end. Coming to the last page isn't enough. I've run into books where I've been frustrated because the last page wasn't the end of the story. Do not do likewise.
Bad endings: There are three classic errors. One is getting into a land war in Asia. But the other two, almost as deadly are ending your book thusly:
1) It was only a dream.
2) ...and they were all run over by a truck.
Yes, yes, I know. <a href="http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/People/rgs/alice-table.html" target="_new">Alice in Wonderland</a> ends with "Oh, I've had such a curious dream!" That book has many other virtues, and the ending is in fact perfect for that book. The danger with using the "it was only a dream" ending with your book is that the reader has been worried about these characters all the way along, he's been hoping for them, fearing for them, and now, suddenly, you've told him that it didn't matter. Yes, it's all a fiction, yet our readers have laughed genuine laughs, shed genuine tears, actually checked to makes sure the windows were all locked, all over our creations. Don't remind him that you just made it up. One of the little fictions of our fictions is that we don't tell them that it's fiction.
The "...and they were all run over by a truck" ending has the element of arbitrariness to it; the author has gotten tired of these toys so he throws them away. Possibly the author didn't know how to end the story, and this presented a convenient way to do it after about three hundred pages. Again, the reader has gotten to care about the characters (at least we hope so, and if the reader is still following along at this point we know he does), and will be upset, perhaps angered, that someone he likes dies for no good reason other than the author said so.
Okay, okay, you're trying to make a point that life is random, brutish, and short, that we all die, and that existence is meaningless. Make your point some other way; this one has already been done.
What both of these endings have in common: The characters' actions didn't matter. That's disrespectful to your readers. Readers can tell when they're being dissed.