Triple Writer’s Block)
It seems that every part of creating a story is tricky. Knowing where to begin is tricky, maintaining interest through a middle is tricky, and ending it all is tricky. In different stories, though, one of those three parts will be harder to pull of than the other two.
Beginnings are usually hard when your outline started with something vague like “there is a conflict between two families.” Perhaps you wrote that because you knew that your hero needed a background of strife to emerge from, but now you struggle to define just what the nature of that strife is. The beginnings of a story are usually used to establish the tone and atmosphere of a tale, something difficult to do when all you had accounted for was events and dialogue.
Middles are difficult when you know where your characters come from, and you know were they wind up…but not how they get there. This is an easy dilemma to get into, because the first ideas for a story are often based around an interesting contrast. Something like “a man wakes up with awesome power, but eventually he learns to relinquish it for love.” That’s great, there’s a beginning, an ending, and an interesting voyage suggested in between. But now you have to turn that “suggested” into something more concrete.
And finally, endings are difficult when the initial motivation for writing the story was to explore an atmosphere or concept. Writing is a very meditative exercise, and sometimes an author simply wants to hash out an idea that’s weighing on their mind, to slowly walk within themselves and process what they find. Such sojourns can be quite fruitful, leading to an entire gold mine of new discoveries. That is all well and good for a beginning and a middle, but now how does one cap off such a wistful wandering in a way that is satisfying?
Today we’ll focus on just this last quandary, how to end a story that doesn’t want to finish.
See What Your Story Wants to Be)
My story Does What He Must actually began with no particular ending in mind. My notes simply stated that I wanted a character who did increasingly impressive feats one after another, always rising to the occasion to do what had to be done. And then he was supposed to face some penultimate and impossible task, something the audience would feel he couldn’t do because it broke the laws of physics or something like that. But then, to their surprise, he would simply grit his teeth and do that impossible thing, simply because that was just the natural continuation of his arc. And that was as specific as my notes on the story were.
So I just started writing. I came up with his background at random, and started working through a series of escalating challenges for him. All the while I was trying to figure out what this nebulous “penultimate and impossible task” would be, but nothing came to mind. I simply continued writing until I reached the point where the final act should go, and then I paused.
At this point I reread everything I had written, looking for some subconscious arc that I might have imbued into the tale. Much to my delight, there absolutely was one. I realized that the whole piece had been very family-centric, and so the ending should maintain that theme. I also realized that I had shown my main character performing miracles for his wife, his friends, his brothers in arms, and even strangers, but still had not done one for his son, who was the narrator of the tale. And thirdly I realized that this Old-West-Tall-Tale format practically begged for him to become a legend whose influence extended beyond the grave.
As I made note of all these points the only proper ending was obvious. I needed for my character to die in one of his miracles, but then still come through as a ghost (or an angel) for his son. This end fit with all of the themes I had been writing, both conscious and sub-conscious, and it made the whole experience complete.
Fictionalize Your Epiphanies)
As I mentioned at the top, a most common reason for beginning a story without an ending is because you just want to explore a concept that you are curious about. It might be a new technology, a strange setting, a philosophical question, or a real-life drama. You want to wrap your head around it, and writing gives you time to walk around in that concept and get a real feel for it.
In these situations, the answer to how to end your story might be staring you in the face. The fact is, people that spend enough time exploring an idea often find out something about it, something that wasn’t obvious from the outset. Though it is easier said than done, all an author needs to do to close their story is have it teach those same epiphanies.
Currently, I am trying to find a way to take this same approach for Instructions Not Included. I began that story with the desire to explore a simple notion: the process of scientific research and discovery. I thought it would be fun to take an idea that is usually so stiff and prickly, and turn it into something fun and playful. As I did so, I found my mind coming to rest on an important principle of inventions: creativity is a great power, and he who wields it is responsible to employ it well.
Like I said, turning an epiphany into a plot point is easier said than done. I’m still trying to figure out a way to actually implement this idea in my story, but I do have hopes that I’ll figure something out by Thursday!
Let a Meditation be a Meditation)
If the above approaches fail for you, then my last recommendation is that you perhaps just let your story be what it is: endless. I think stories with rich endings are wonderful things, I think they are important, I think humans depend on this structure to learn some of life’s greatest truths.
But none of that means that every time a pen touches a page it has to create a story with an ending. There’s no need to be so limiting in our idea of literature. Not everything has to neatly fit into categories like story, research paper, or instruction manual. Some things can just exist within their own sphere without having to justify their existence.
One of my favorite short pieces on this blog is Deep Forest, and that particular piece really doesn’t have a proper ending at all. I began writing it by wanting to explore an atmosphere that was so ancient it had become timeless. I wanted to capture a deep and heavy nature, one that knew no civilization or history. I had a lot of fun writing it, but when it came time to finish I didn’t have a proper ending in mind. I couldn’t see any arcs that needed to be concluded and there weren’t any epiphanies that it had to offer, it just kind of was what it was and that was it. So I posted it anyhow.
In hindsight, I realize it would have simply been wrong to tack an ending onto an exercise in timelessness. The fact is the only way for that story to have ended was without an ending at all. Though I did not realize this at the time, I am glad I went with my instincts.
All of these solutions come down to the same root though, that first idea of letting your story be what it wants to be. If you’ve written your tale properly, then it has its own ambience and tone, its own themes and styles, its own wants and desires. By knowing your story thoroughly, you will naturally gravitate to the end that is right for it.
On Thursday we’ll see what sort of ending I come up with for Instructions Not Included. Presently my hope is that I’ll be able to incorporate that epiphany I mentioned earlier, thus giving it a sense of thematic closure. At the same time I want to leave it with a sense of ongoing adventure, and so I will want to leave the plot somewhere more open-ended, as I did with Deep Forest. But more than anything else, I want to give it an ending that feels right with its personality. Come back on Thursday to see how it turns out!
Give Me Pen and Paper 