The End and . . . The Other End

There is no real ending. It's just the place where you stop the story.
— Frank Herbert

Ends are not bad things, they just mean that something else is about to begin. And there are many things that don't really end, anyway, they just begin again in a new way. Ends are not bad and many ends aren't really an ending; some things are never-ending.
— C. JoyBell C.

The end of THE END is the best place to begin THE END, because if you read THE END from the beginning of the beginning of THE END to the end of the end of THE END, you will arrive at the end.
― Lemony Snicket, The End

I’m almost halfway through the latest rounds of edits on Magickal Mayhem, which means the end is nigh. One day (sooner rather than later, I hope) I’ll be able to close the file and count it as done.

Meanwhile, I posted the final installment of my on-line serial, The Cave, on Friday. Did you read it? What did you think? Were you satisfied or disappointed? I’ll tell you honestly, it was always going to end that way. I figured out the ending about halfway through, I just wasn’t sure how I was going to get there.

Right now it’s sitting at about 15,000 words, which is a good size for a novelette. If I can write three more about the same length, I can release them as an anthology. But in the meantime, The Cave needs a lot of work. LOL

If the beginning of a story is meant to draw the reader in, then the ending needs to leave the reader satisfied with what happened to the characters. The easiest way to do this (for me at least) is to know how the story is going to end before you start, that way you can leave clues as you go along.

Flash fiction aside, I try not to start a story unless I know how it’s going to end. I don’t need to know all the stuff in between, you have to have some fun with the journey, but I need to have a destination in mind. I have written strong beginnings in the past, but they fizzled out pretty quickly when I had no idea where they were going.

With The Cave, I didn’t even realize it was going to be a lengthy story and I cannot tell you the number of convoluted ideas I had for finishing it. It wasn’t until I settled on the idea that it was a fight between good and evil (an age old theme), that things fell into place. I knew the murals would be key, but I was also constrained by what I’d already written. So it wasn’t until I was working on the ending that I figured out the importance of the spirals.

Knowing your ending ahead of time allows you to build tension throughout the story, letting you throw in a plot twist or two. This is something I can work on during the rewrites. Although I think Eve pushing Sara off of the cliff was a nice plot twist. :-)

You can try different endings to see which one works the best. You can leave room for interpretation. Eve could just as easily beaten Sara and placed the keystone first, although I think if I was going that way I would have made the evil spirit more of a presence like I did the guardians.

You can have a happy ending, a sad ending, an ending with a twist, or one that’s open to interpretation. But whatever else, the ending needs to make sense, and it should resolve the storyline, unless you’re deliberately going for a cliff hanger to entice readers to buy the next book.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

WORDAGE REPORT

It was a busy week last week, and mostly busy with things other than writing. It was a holiday Monday and I spent it getting my gardens in (it being too rainy on the weekend to do so). The rest of the week was filled with group meetings and extended visits and a very messed up Friday.

I skipped Monday’s post because I just didn’t have anything to say. The rest of the posts were up, and on time, but it was a near thing with the final installment of my serial story. And now I have to come up with an idea for next Friday

NEW WORDS:
Blog Posts –
1,329+208+1,493=3,030
Poetry – 470 (not including post)
Other words – 434 (to finish serial story)

Total words: 3,934

Three-minute words –
112+113+94+121+138+115+117= 810

Goals For Next Week:
Write something other than my three-minute words and blog posts. Decide what I’m going to do for Fiction Fridays now that the serial is done.

EDITING:
49 pages
The further into the edits I get, the more work I realize this book needs. And also, that I’ve been working on flash fiction too long. *sigh* In other words, I’m kind of rushing this round and once I’m done I still have a lot of work to do. But the good news is, every time I go through it, it gets easier.

Goal For Next Week:
Keep up the good work on Magickal Mayhem.

MARKETING MONDAY:
I didn’t forget and I did want to, I even know which pieces I’m going to start with. I just wasn’t able to squeeze out the time for it. Did I mention what a busy week it was?

Goal For Next Week:
Submit two flash stories and one poem.

TECHNO TUESDAY:
Tuesday was one of the two busiest days for me last week. Even had I the urge to do something technical, I just didn’t have the time. I did learn something though, I learned there’s only so many hours in a day you have to sleep sometime.

Goal For Next Week:
Do something else technical or educational (like access one of my tutorials).

POETRY WEDNESDAY:
I had a meeting of the CPW (Cobourg Poetry Workshop), and I thought it would be fun to finally do all of the prompts we’re given on a monthly basis. So that meant I wrote five poems. Plus someone shared a form back on Pi Day (March 14) and it was so much fun I did six of them.

Goal For Next Week:
Share a new poetry form and new poem.

CRAFTING:
I started a new cross stich for a needle book during a meeting of my stitchery guild. Considering the amount of time I’ve spent on it, I didn’t get very far. But that was about the only time I had to spend on crafts during the week. Unless you count hemming another pair of pants for my father-in-law.

Goal For Next Week:
Work on cross stitch. Finish sansevieria.

WHAT I’M READING:
You know I had a busy week when I didn’t even have time to read. I finished The Bookshop of Second Chances, by Jackie Fraser, and I’m on the last of four stories in an anthology called Night Shift.

No reading on the Paperwhite.

Goal For Next Week:
Keep up the good work with the variety of books I’m reading. Stop ignoring the Paperwhite.

GOAL REVIEW:
Missed my Monday post, but the others were up, and all on time. I wrote some extra poetry, which was kind of nice, and I had to add some extra words to finish up the serial story. I suppose I could have just saved them to do one more installment, but I really wanted it wrapped up with Part 20.

I did not get anything sent out for publication, nor did I do anything technical on Tuesday.

I just didn’t have time to spend on crafts last week, and with all the crafts I already have on the go, of course I started something new. And just to add to the fun, I received a felting book I don’t remember ordering. Hopefully, that will be the last of the craft supplies for awhile.

So . . . once again last week was kind of three steps forward, two steps back. But I’m still moving in the right direction and next week should be even better. *knock on wood*

Happy writing.

The End of It All

Some writing advice came up in my Facebook feed the other day, and it said to “write the ending first.” It was linked to an article that listed 7 reasons why you should do this. I’m not going to go into all the details, if you want to read the entire article you can do it HERE, but I will agree that it makes some good points – but only if you’re a plotter and not a pantser.

Oh, c’mon. You know the difference between a plotter and a pantser right? A plotter starts out with an outline, plotting every step of their story. A pantser writes by the seat of their pants, taking the story as it comes.

When I wrote my first serial, which had the working title of Space Opera (later to become An Elemental Wind), I was a total pantser. I had no idea what I was doing, but I’d been challenged to write a serial on my blog and I was not going to back down from a challenge. It was kind of nerve-wracking – each week I was expected to provide a new instalment and I wouldn’t know what was going to happen until it did.

The story deviated a great deal from the original idea. And then it turned into a series. When I started writing it I wasn’t thinking beyond just getting the book done, but once I was at the end it seemed only logical to continue on. After all, there were three other elements to write about.

Being a pantser has its drawbacks though. Sometimes you start working on an idea and because you don’t know how it’s going to end, sometimes the story just peters out. I don’t know, maybe there’s something to this whole plotting thing after all.

At the very least, maybe I might consider working on the endings a little sooner.


Prompts of the Week

Prompt One
While shopping downtown one day, you find an antiques store that has a rare, old doll. You buy it for your daughter. A few days later she tells you her new toy can talk. You don’t believe her, until one afternoon you find yourself alone in the house and it starts . . .

Prompt Two
You’re playing a video game called Wizards & Warriors when, suddenly, lightning strikes the house, searing you and causing you to black out. When you wake up, you’re trapped inside the game. The only items you have is a sword, a backpack and a note attached to your shirt that reads, “Beat me and I’ll send you home.”

Remember, don’t spend a lot of time on these, they’re just meant for fun. Take 5 minutes to think about it, then write for 10 or 15 minutes. And if it turns out you like what you’ve written, then by all means turn your exercise into an actual story. You can find these prompts, and others like them, at Writer's Digest .

E is for Endings

This was a hard decision. As an editor, my first thought for the letter E was something editing related, and I have an editing checklist I could have used but it's rather long. Then I thought about something a lot of people have trouble with, the ellipsis, but again, that was a rather long post.

So then I thought of something I'm not seeing a lot of these days - a good ending to a story/novel. I don't know about you, but I'm seeing a rash of serials this days. Now when the author is up front and lets you know the story/book ends on a cliff hanger and you have to buy the next one in the series for the story to continue, that's fine. But when I read a book that ends abruptly and without warning - well, that gets my dander up.

Before I segue into rant mode over cliffhangers, let's talk a bit about proper endings.

Can't say I've ever been too fond of beginnings, myself. Messy little things. Give me a good ending anytime. You know where you are with an ending.
~ Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

While it’s true that a strong opening can pull a reader into the story, a strong ending is just as important. A good ending is the reader’s reward for sticking with the story. It not only leaves the reader satisfied, but it will also send them in search of more stories by the same author.

The beginning is all about providing the main character with an overall goal and making him decide to act on it. The middle shows him taking action, or a whole series of actions. The ending deals with the consequences of these actions.

You cannot promise apples in the beginning of your story and deliver oranges at the end. A satisfying conclusion to a novel happens when the ending is fitting, when the characters get what they deserve, and when the questions asked at the start of the novel are answered.

How do you create an ending that delivers?
~ make sure the ending is logical
~ the hero should find a way to solve his own problem
~ resolve any subplot
~ tie up all loose ends
~ leave the reader with a strong sentence, thought or emotion

There are, of course, degrees of being fitting or definitive. The hero should win, but that doesn’t mean his experience won’t leave him without scars. And although the ending should be clear, that isn’t to say you have to spell out everything for your readers. Sometimes leaving something to their imaginations or curiosity isn’t a bad thing.

Everything has to come to an end, sometime.
~ L. Frank Baum, The Marvelous Land of Oz