So this is the second installment of “Different Types of Endings, Why I’m Bad at Them and How I Might Get Better.”
Today, I’m talking about Why I’m Bad at Them.
Well, I suppose the main reason is because endings are really, really hard. Scratch that. Endings are really, really hard to do well.
I mean, sure, writing “The End” on the backside of your manuscript isn’t all that difficult. In fact, I’m pretty certain that’s exactly what I did with my first novel. But two little words tacked on after the last sentence of your story does not an ending make.
And don’t get me started on the whole “denouement” thing? As far as I can tell that’s French for “let the reader calm the F down.” But how do you have that while still making the last sentence interesting and memorable? And how long is that calming down scene supposed to last anyway? Oh yeah, and why are they so easy to make boring?
The other real kick-in-the-pants thing about endings is that the ending is really just a byproduct of your whole entire book. Yeah, the whole thing. You’ve got to have all these loose threads hanging around in your story and then, in one fell swoop, you’ve got to tie most of those suckers together. You’re lying if you say that’s not tough.
See, the thing is, you could have this one little bitty building block that you forgot about or misplaced and that can topple the entire set of grand plans you had for the ending. And then it’s a matter of going back and fixing the whole thing just so you can write that one or two scene climax.
Plus, nothing needs revising quite like endings, right? I mean, a huge chunk of the revision requests I hear from my writing friends’ agents or editors is “fix the ending.” Or it needs a new ending. Or…you get the picture. Because with endings, often there is a right answer. Ok, maybe not a right answer, but definitely a wrong answer. When the book has the wrong ending, you can feel it. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it really is disappointing to read a huge buildup throughout an entire story and get to the ending and have it be just blah. Readers have this thing about exciting endings. It truly is a lot to ask of us, I think.
So, to sum this up, endings are hard. Maybe I’ll get better at them. The end.
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I can truly sympathize. I just completed the first draft of my current project, and while the whole thing was pretty much straightforward and I was able to tie up all the loose ends by the time I got to the end, it was the last two paragraphs that gave me the most grief.
To whit: I finished the the thing this past Sunday. Thought about what I wrote and didn’t like it, so I re-wrote the last paragraph during break at work on Monday.
Added it in, thought about throughout the evening afterwards and into the next day. Didn’t like it, so I spent the next day rewriting it. Got to the last paragraph and that took me about thirty minutes and pilfering an ending from a short story to make it work to my satisfaction.