posted
I keep running into this problem, and I wondered if any of you either have the same one, or have solutions! (I hope it's the latter.)
I struggle with endings for my stories. I'll get ideas all the time, though my initial inspiration is usually about a world or a character rather than a plot. I can go along great guns for awhile, come up with depth and additional characters and conflicts; but my main problem is how to end the stories.
It is harder for novels than short stories, but I struggle with both lengths. About the only time endings are not a problem is when the story springs forth full-formed, as from the head of Zeus.
Do you guys know the ending of your stories when you start, or do they come along later? Can anyone help me by telling me how you come up with the ending?
I know that you pose problems, and the ending comes with the solution of the problem, but I'm still stuck.
For example, in my novel Outleaf, the hero commits patricide, gets banished, then escapes his society and explores the rest of his world. My problem is how to make him face his community again; I don't know if he should become their leader or never return or what. I'm having problems writing the beginning of the novel because of this; I'm not entirely sure where it is going.
On the other hand, no matter how much time I spend note-taking and outlining, I discover much much more about my characters, the world and the plot by simply writing out what I have and seeing where it goes. Does anyone else do that?
posted
It could you are looking for a perfect happy ever after solution which just won't fit the story you are writing. A guy who has commited patricide may come to terms with himself in the end but he's unlikely to get his father's old friends to appreciate his fine qualities. So the ending of such a story would probably be some sort of compromise where your hero finds his true self and redemption, but at the cost of knowing he can never go home.
Short stories, I always know the ending before I start. Novels are more of a problem. I kinda know the ending, but I do struggle to put all the pieces in place. Usually it is because something at the beginning of the book just doesn't fit... i.e. things in my head have changed slightly.
I seem to remember hearing that one solution was to just bull through with an ending, and then try to adjust it until you are happy... I think the idea is that in forcing the ending through you will have more appreciation of what is needed, and whether anything is lacking in the main body of your story/chaacter development.
posted
Some talks about "dramatic questions". The thought basically goes something like this; at the beginning of a novel/short story you pose a question such as, "Will the buggers be defeated?" The novel ends when you answer that question. Some stories, like Ender's Game, have multiple questions so all of them have to be answered for the audience to feel like there's a satisfactory ending.
I sometimes find that I write best when I know my ending scene. I'm doing this new thing where I write out a short hand idea of the story, which shows me the main arc. It's not a scene by scene outline, but it gives me an idea of my major plot points and the ending that I'm aiming for.
posted
I'll say this: I'm not very good at stories. What I mean to say is that I can tell an entertaining, literate story if I have to, but I really struggle when it comes to planning and construction. I have a very organic style of writing - if I come up with a strong beginning, I let the rest of the story come as it will, tying the narrative up as logically as I can.
Which is probably why I've never written anything that amounted to much more than pulp.
posted
I had/have this problem too. Turns out, I have to figure out my ending before writing. Other people will say they write, and the characters lead them to the conclusion.
I can't do that - I go nowhwere. I have written notes - research, ideas, etc., then done some preliminary writing to figure out where I want to go, then I write an outline. Of course, things change as I write, but if I don't have a clue where I'm going, I stall out.
My stories have gotten better by figuring out an ending. Sometimes the ending changes, but that's ok!
posted
Endings are my single biggest problem. I can almost always hook people into reading my stories and almost as often as that get them to follow through the middle....and the comes the end. I blow my endings big time. They either fall short of the dramatic tension built up in the rest of the story or fail to fulfill the promise or mark character change that wasn't supported in the rest of the story or....(hold on, I'm searching my brain for other comments) get preachy.
But I can tell you this for certain...when I PLAN out my stories my endings only such about half the time, and then it's usually because I did something wrong in the middle. When I don't plan my stories then I can rely on about a 10% rate of success with endings.
Please not that I am not suggesting to everyone that they should plan and outline...God knows we don't need another one of those debates. But from the POV of onew riter who struggles with the end, figuring out what it is going to be in advance increases my success rate dramatically. In fact, if I plan them out beginning, middle, and end with character sketches (real planning, not just knowing where to start and where to go) then I don't usually fail when it comes to endings.
posted
IN OSC's book on writing science fiction and fantasy (How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy, by Orson Scott Card ), he talks about MICE: milieu, idea, character, events. For each he explains what your reader is expecting from you, and that you had better deliver it, including endings.
Why don't you read that section of the book, analyze a story or novel that you had difficulty ending, and use his approach? Then when you start your next work, decide early on which of the MICE are nibbling away at your sanity.
posted
Chistine, that's ridiculous! Not every writer writes the same, okay? Some of us aren't outliners, and we don't work the same as you. You just need to accept that, and stop trying to cram your opinions down my throat!
Dude, chill out, I was just joking.
I'd say I have ending problems about 50% of the time. Some stories, my initial inspiration is an ending that I want to get to. Others, my inspiration is a beginning. Those are the stories that give me ending problems. (The other stories give me beginning problems.) Here's what I do when I hve ending problems.
Generally, in any given story there are only a handful of possible endings. I find it tends to be around four or five with me, but everybody is different, so that probably wouldn't hold true for everybody. I get to the point in the story where it's time for the ending to happen, write INSERT ENDING HERE in big bold letters, and then write all four or five (or however many) endings. I let it ferment for a while, then go back and read the story with each of the different endings. Almost always with me, there is one ending that feels strong when I read it, and three or four that feel weak.
posted
Mike Munsil beat me to the MICE advice. So I'll just offer a big "what he said" on it.
Another thing you can do is consider what Barry Longyear talks about in his SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS WORKSHOP I book (there is no II, so far as I know). In order to have a satisfactory resolution of the story's problem, your protagonist has to pay a price. (OSC talks about prices, too, by the way.)
He recommends having the protagonist try and fail a few times to solve the problem, finally think it's been solved (he calls this the "bright moment"--my favorite example is near the end of TERMINATOR, when they blow up the semi), then find out that it is far from solved and maybe even worse now (he calls this the "dark moment"--when the robot comes walking out of the semi's inferno in TERMINATOR), and a price must be paid before the problem really can be solved (for those of you who might not have seen TERMINATOR--which I consider a lovely, romantic movie, in all senses of the word "romance"--I won't tell you what the price is, but it's tragic), and once that price is paid, the resolution can come.
The price isn't necessarily someone's life, it may be enough for the character to change his or her way of thinking, but it has to be real and it has to cost an amount that fits what the character gains in the resolution.
In your case, Autumnmuse, if you want to bring your guy back home, you are going to have to come up with a really BIG price for him to pay for that patricide.
Ender had to leave his world and give his life to Speaking for the Dead, and that wasn't really the price he paid. The price he paid was to become a xenocide (worse than genocide) and to live with that, even though he hadn't done it knowingly.
posted
Now, are you talking about the climax of your story or the denouement? I find that the climax of the story is easy to write, becasue, as Mary said, it answers the dramatic question. The denouement--the final lines of a story--is a lot harder for me, because that's usually where the thematic questions are resolved (at least in the stories I like to read and write).
Posts: 130 | Registered: Apr 2007
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But from the POV of onew riter who struggles with the end, figuring out what it is going to be in advance increases my success rate dramatically. In fact, if I plan them out beginning, middle, and end with character sketches (real planning, not just knowing where to start and where to go) then I don't usually fail when it comes to endings. 
