Facing the Long Road Home
No element gives shape, weight, and impact to a story more than its ending.
Writing Updates
I am currently in Malta, and though I won’t be taking on new clients until January, I’m always more than happy to hear about what you’re working on. Writing-wise, I’m knee-deep in edits for the submission draft of A Lullaby of Stolen Stars, and will be sharing the preliminary draft of A Murder of Crows (Ravenscourt Tragedies #1) starting this Halloween.
Facing the Long Road Home
At five am, the airport is quiet, but not dead. Airports never sleep — it seems there's always at least one place open so that late night layovers can grab a snack, a bottle of water, a quick coffee to fight the red-eye. Airports, more so than anywhere else, are the very definition of liminal space; a boundary between the ordinary world and elsewhere.
But for every hero crossing this threshold into the world of adventure, there is someone like me — someone who is not setting out to answer the call, but rather facing the long road home.
When I first started writing, by far the most difficult story element I grappled with was the Ending. There were so many times when it seemed a story I was working on might go on forever, never finding its resolution, new plot problems piling on top of mysteries piling on top of half-reveals. Even now, when it comes to short stories, often the ending eludes me. It can be months, even years between the moment I set down the first tentative lines of a story or essay, and when I finally find the place I mean to go with them.
One trick that I've learned in order to deal with this is figuring out the ending (or at the very least, an ending) first. With longer pieces, this seems to work fairly well, though rarely will my endings line up exactly as I envision them in the beginning. Still, this technique gives me a target to aim for, and it helps keep my stories bounded.
But this is perhaps the biggest difference between fiction and real life. In reality, there are no true endings. Time simply ticks on. Lives begin and end, but their effects echo. Stories pile up upon stories.
And so here I am, flying back home. Yet if, somewhere along the way, I have won the Elixir of Life, I certainly cannot find it now. So perhaps this is not a return after all, but rather another road, another threshold, another beginning.
As writers, the most important thing we must decide is when we will stop telling the tale.
Writing Tip
Often, ideas will come to us in the sense of a character, a vague concept of plot, a broad premise. The most effective way to turn these impressions into the skeleton of a story is to figure out what it's all leading up to: ie, the Ending. Here are three routes to figuring out an ending before you even begin to write.
Premise: Often, the plot itself will suggest an ending or two. The mystery is solved (or it isn't). The game is won (or lost). The quest is completed (or failed). What twists can you add to the most straghtforward conclusion of your premise to make the story more satisfying and perhaps less predictable?
Character: If stories come to you mainly through character, then try examining the biggest changes for your protagonist or core cast. In which ways will their situation at the end be different from the beginning? In what ways might the ending also mirror the beginning, without being precisely the same?
Theme: Theme is often most starkly drawn by the ending and by the decisions that your protagonist makes during the climax. What big themes are you trying to explore, and how might different endings demonstrate different perspectives on those themes?
Do you often know the endings of your stories from the very beginning? If not, when do you usually discover them? Let me know in the comments!