The End (Or, "How To Stick The Landing With Your Story And Write A Kick-Ass Ending")
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Filamena says,
“Endings. Did you do endings? I hate that part and I never do it right.”
And man, I’m with her. Endings are a bite to get right.
We all want to know how to write a good ending to a story. Don’t we?
Clearly, every story has to end. Even if you just stop writing, the story ends. Thing is, a real ending, a true ending, is more than just the brick wall you hit going 100 MPH. The ending is the capstone — or, hell, the keystone — to the story. If your story is a circle — trust me on this, it’s not a line, it’s a circle — then the ending is the closing of that circle. It’s more than just the dead-ending of your plot. It’s a culmination. It’s a knot tying together all the threads. Yes, every story is a journey, blah blah blah, but if your journey ends on an unsatisfying note (you’re left alone in a field of gray mud, or worse, you’re attacked by a pack of rabid marmots), then that journey is forever remembered as, “Hey, do you recall that trip we took? The one where we were left crawling in mud just before we were given rabies by a bunch of angry polecats? Fuck that trip. Fuck that journey right in its ear.”
A lame or shitty ending of a story runs the risk of ruining the entire story. Doesn’t matter how much someone loved it. If the end leaves them flat, or worse, betrays the reader in some way, that’s it. Might as well put a bullet in the back of the story’s head and leave its body in a ditch somewhere.
For example (and I won’t spoil): the movie, Up in the Air.
I love the first 2/3rds of that movie. Love it.
And then comes the ending.
And the ending is a terrible ending. It’s a cheat. It’s a false flag.
And now the film makes me angry.Like, vibrantly, vividly angry.
It makes me want to throw things at George Clooney. Cats. Babies. Shuriken. It’s not even his fault. It’s just a movie. But that’s how invested we get in stories. Better you fuck up the beginning of a story, really — at least I can either choose to get out early or try to muscle through. But you dick up the ending? You fail to stick the landing? Man, I was in it. I read or watched all the way through. And now you do me like that?
That’s cold. Cold as ice.
Bad endings are story-killers, plain and simple.
So. Here’s how not to fuck it up.
Define: The End
Let me quick define my terms, here. Just so we’re all on the same boat.
The end is not the very end. That’s not what I mean. The very end is part of this, yes, but I don’t mean like, the last five minutes or five pages.
In terms of narrative structure, I consider the whole of the third act to be “the end.” It’s the final turn. It’s the final sequence of events (or close to it). That third act, when everything comes to a head and must be dealt with on the page and in the character’s lives, is a big deal. That whole act needs to work. Look at a film like Batman Begins. Your mileage may vary, but it seems in wide agreement that the third act is when the wheels come off the train on that story. It fails to live up to the rest. It doesn’t tie anything together. It doesn’t really carry the themes and ideas forward. It fails to bring the story circle to a close.
We All Deserve A Good End
I’ve seen the occasional comment that pairs the notion of one’s life with the idea of a story — so, because our lives are often subject to dissatisfying ends, that makes the lives we live the important part, and so it is that stories should be allowed to follow the same pattern. Once more, succinctly put: “It is the journey that matters, not the destination.”
Bzzt! No! Nuh-huh! Someone hook a car battery up to his scrotum.
Life and fiction do not have parity. Yes, if you’re writing James Joyce’s Ulysses, you might go ahead and make a case. This isn’t that. This is a day and an age where we are trying to write fiction that sells; we must seek to tell stories that “mean something,” yes, but novels that also are capable of serving as popular entertainment. (At least, that’s what I’m trying to do. You can have it both ways. No false dichotomies here, or once more you shall find your nuts strapped up to a car battery, because that’s how I roll.)
We must then ask: what makes a good ending?
A good ending is satisfying. It resolves the threads of the story. A story has many threads: character arcs, themes, ideas, plots, and so forth. A good ending ties up most of these. The best ending ties them all.
A good ending is unexpected. An ending that tumbles ineluctably toward an expected end is dull, listless, lifeless. This isn’t universal, and some case could be made for the way a tragedy plays out exactly as we expect (which is to say, with the hero damning himself full circle), but for the most part, we don’t strap ourselves in for two hours or 400 pages only to be led by the nose toward the place we always imaged. A good ending subverts our expectations. A good ending allows the storyteller to be the storyteller — meaning, she is who she is, and that’s why we trust her. We trust her to take us to a new place. It is important, however, not to conflate “unexpected” with “surprise.” Not that surprise endings are bad; I only mean to say that we don’t all need to be Hitchcock or M. Night Shyamalan.
A good ending does not betray the audience. An ending can resolve the threads and deliver the unexpected and still be a poor ending. An ending that betrays the audience is an ending that drags us kicking and screaming into a place not only unexpected, but a place we as the audience didn’t want to go. No hard and fast rules exist here, because every story is different, and every story features its own rules. But some examples are worth looking at: a story whose characters betray themselves and act against what we know will feel like a betrayal. A mystery story whose mystery is answered by elements we could have never seen coming (“It was the monkey butler that killed the starlet! Even though this story never had a monkey butler until right now!”) can be a betrayal. The needless death of a protagonist can feel like a betrayal. The goal posts shift; the rules stand on uncertain ground. Even still, you must know the tenor of your tale, and know when the turn of your story becomes an unnecessary turn of the knife.
A good ending does not go on without end. The end is a resolution. It is a finish line. Do not dangle a carrot on a stick and then pull it back, back, back. Yes, if the audience is enjoying the story, you have some leeway. But don’t get cocky, kid. Everybody has a limit. Every tale can grow tiresome. Tell only the ending you need to tell. Do not cram. Do not drag it out.
A good ending makes the audience sad that it’s over. That’s a good thing. You want to leave them hungry for more — not “more” as in “this feels unfinished,” but “more” as in “I love these characters and this world so much I want to be a part of it forever.” Good. Great. That means you left them at the top of the game, rather than at its nadir. You went out strong. That’s where you stop.
What else makes a good ending?
Stick The Landing… Or Fall Flat On Your Facemeats
In a gymnastics, how you land — meaning, how you end your routine — matters. You can do all kinds of awesome shit, flipping and back-flipping and pirouetting on your tongue and making dolphin noises, but if you dick up that landing, if you step wrong and twist the ankle and fall flat on your smug, smirking face, then that is what everyone will remember about that routine. Always and forever.
Same thing goes for writing.
You have to stick the landing.
How, you ask?
Plan for the ending. It’s like estate planning. You live a life, and while you cannot control what happens to you (run over by a bus driven by drunken wombats!), you do have a measure of control over what happens in and around your demise. The casket. The DNR (do not resuscitate). The will where all your estate money goes to your Labradoodle. Whatever. Plan for the ending in your story. It helps to know the ending before you begin, and this is again and again why I advocate some measure of planning and plotting: your ending is the biggest tentpole of them all. If you know your end, you know what you’re working toward. Even if you don’t know the exact end, try to have a hazy notion of what can, should, and must occur. Build toward it. Seed details. Include only those threads you know can be bound together.
And yet, be versatile. Your story will sometimes buck the ropes and bite the bit. Let it. Let it do what it must. You’re still in control, yes, but if the story feels like it’s straining against your preconceived notions, it just means you’re working against yourself. A natural ending may arise that is far better than the one you planned. Or, you may find that the end you planned suddenly feels bitter in your mouth: a betrayal of some ilk. Fine. Good. The proper ending has made itself known. Go with the right ending, not the planned ending. Planning the ending was still a good idea, though, because it got you this far. It prevented you from writing yourself into a dark hole or an endless hallway.
An ending is about characters. Yes, certainly some part of an end is about the world you’ve built and the lofty ideas contained within, but at the end of the day what we most want as an audience is a satisfying ending for the characters. This, by the way, is because we are all characters in our own stories. We relate to characters, and so characters are your priority.
Try multiple endings. Endings for the storyteller are like pairs of shoes; slip some on, kick others off. You’ll find the right fit. The storyteller has multiple endings, but the audience sees only one. Play the what if game. Keep playing it until you find the way out, until the circle closes.
Know your conflicts. A story is driven by its conflicts, because the conflicts are what prevent the characters from getting what they want. If you know your conflicts, you know your ending. You may not know that you know it, but if you really have your conflicts in hand (and a story has many), then you know the questions that must be answered.
Do not confuse “happy” with “satisfying.” Not every ending needs to be happy. Not every story calls for it. You’re aiming for satisfaction for the audience, not happiness for the characters. They may coincide. They may not. The victory may be Pyrrhic: conflicts resolved, but at what cost for the characters?
What else? What else constitutes a good ending?
What endings of what stories work for you?
What endings failed you? Betrayed you? Made you feel ehhh?
How is this complicated by episodic storytelling? TV? Comic books?
And don’t think you’re not allowed to talk about games. Games are a troubling transgressor, often committing the crime of “Crappy Ending in the First Degree.” What games have had good, or great, endings? Oh, and spoiler warnings if you’re going to go that far with it.
About The Author
ChuckWendig
Chuck Wendig is equal parts novelist, screenwriter, and game designer. He is the author of the novels DOUBLE DEAD, BLACKBIRDS, and MOCKINGBIRD. In addition, he's got a metric boatload of writing-related e-books available, including the popular 500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER. He currently lives in the wilds of Pennsyltucky with wife, dog, and newborn progeny.
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32 Responses and Counting...
Just wanna drop in and say this is another great post. Thanks man, keep it up.
Thanks, Joshua!
Hey, people, don’t forget to talk about your favorite or least favorite endings. Or, if I missed any qualifications on what comprises a good (or great) ending, toss it into the hat.
– c.
A good meditation.
Here are the endings that betray me:
1) The characters now achieve godhood, nirvana, or transcendence and become their own deus ex machina (for example, 9).
2) It turns out the whole point of the story was some lame morality tale in which we find out, surprise!, that people suck (for example, Ocean by Warren Ellis, The Reflecting Skin).
3) The ending feels like a dream or an afterlife to the main story–the story is over, there was a satisfying climax, but no, there has to be a second or even a third ending, because there will be no sequel and the writer just HAS to pack things in (for example, Y: The Last Man).
There are some movies for each that work for me, but they’re the exceptions that prove the rule–there’s always somebody who can break a rule brilliantly, but for that one person, there are 50 others who can’t.
@DeAnna:
Good stuff all around.
The ending to Y THE LAST MAN (I won’t spoil) bothered me the whole way. Not just the extra ongoing ending, but the, erm, violent conclusion.
It felt arbitrary. Without purpose.
– c.
The only thing I’ve been reading lately are the Dresden Files. Butcher pretty much nails his endings. It is set up well and if you were paying attention you see the tools he had in place to overcome his obsticle. At the same time, I know there are another 6 books ahead of me, so it isn’t a matter of whether or not Harry will make it, it is a matter of how.
Fable II ending sucked. I beat the guy, then it just dropped me back into the city. You can keep buying up buildings in the cities or finish off quests. I had to check with a friend to see if that was the ending or not.
Looking forward to trying out Mass Effect (1 and 2) soon, have heard those are great.
@Joshua:
The endings for the Mass Effect games left me salivating. The end to 2 was a little frustrating, but mostly because of the years of waiting ahead for the third game. But I trust Bioware will really deliver in the third act.
And I about threw the controller when I got to the “end” of Fable II.
@Chuck:
There’s a huge problem when it comes to television and endings – early cancellation. I’m still frothing at the mouth all these years later about how Farscape concluded. Even with The Peacekeeper Wars (which basically condensed what would have been Season 5 into a few hours) it felt rushed and far from satisfying. That’s not the fault of the writers (that show had some pretty damn good ones), but of the network and the hands involved.
Though on the topic of both Farscape and Mass Effect, cliffhangers can be perhaps the most aggravating endings if its not treated with a deft hand. Even if a book/show/movie/game is part of a series there needs to be a certain sense of closure for that installment.
Let’s see, endings I particularly liked, in no discernible order:
Avatar: the Last Airbender (all 3 seasons really, but especially the finale)
28 Days Later
The Ring
Final Fantasy VIII
Watchmen (the comic)
Bone
… several others that I’m not thinking of right now.
What’s interesting to me is that for the most part, none of these are perfect. There are little details that are off a bit about them all, from the epilogue with Dan and Sally in Watchmen to the slightly nonsensical final villain of FF8. But, for me at least, any problems are dwarfed by what these endings did right.
I’d ramble more, but I have a comic to go draw. Will come back later.
Oh, Kate reminded me. Terry Brooks.
I picked up the first Shannara book in 6th grade and read through everything he had. I lost interest when he started the Knight of the Word stuff until I found out he was linking them back into the Shannara books. Oh, cool, let me pick those up.
So I am reading along and get to Armaggedon’s Children. He ends the book with a HUGE FUCKING cliffhanger. Litterally. Man was I pissed. I haven’t gone back to finish the other books yet. Maybe I can now that he has finished that series too.
I want to go back and read them all over at some point. It was a huge part of my teen years. Maybe I would have went for that kind of shit as a kid. Not anymore though.
@Joshua, et al –
FABLE II ending was… well, I liked the idea. Clever execution, but the result was a feeling of deflation.
Mass Effect — yeah, great endings. Good stories in general in those games, for the most part, despite any complaints I may have.
– c.
@Kate:
Definitely a challenge with TV and comics. Episodic does not lend well to an overarching story, because you’re always pressured to keep producing. That said, of course each episode has its own ending, an each arc does, too — but the best ones are the ones with a natural ending built in, I think.
– c.
Good ending, in my opinion? Assassin’s Creed II. Overcomplication of the plot aside, there’s a great bit that paints the fourth wall and definitely leaves the player wondering what’ll happen next. Again, just my opinion.
Bad endings are ones that collect the plot threads to finish them but do so out of total contrivance, like Revenge of the Sith. After actually making some of the bits tolerable to watch, which is more than I can say for Attack of the Lame Title, the duel on Mustafar went on for way too long, there’s the whole broken heart business and Vader’s first lines as a badass armored harbinger of doom and destruction is whining punctuated with a Big No. What a total let-down.
Sorry, that turned into a bit of a rant, there.
Also? I’m ambling ever closer to the ending of my current project, and this post is a big help in keeping me focused on that goal. Thanks, Chuck.
I’m hoping I burn most of my lean tissue over this weekend writing.
Oh, that Avatar 3rd Season was utter crap. WTFO?!?
Yeah, I disliked the violent ending to Y. After spending 10 volumes in a world populated by women of all types, the only way to be happy is THAT? And then the violence. GLUH. And the ending before that, with the “explanation.” Also GLUH.
Almost at the end of my book. I’ll have to reread this when I’m done.
@DeAnna:
Oh, no! Why didn’t you like Avatar S3? I pretty much adored… close to every episode of that show.
– c.
@Josh:
How close to the end are you?
Need to play AC2, I think.
Need to play a lot of things.
Revenge of the Sith was… well, I’m an apologist for the new trilogy, but even through my gauzy apologies, I wince at a lot of the decisions made there.
– c.
Avatar is such a great show…and I will have my own sky bison when I grow up. I WILL okay…so back off.
What do you think of the predilection of literary novels to have unhappy endings (mine included)? Or of romantic novels and their requisite happy endings (blogged about this today)? They both seem to violate some of these rules and yet readers are gobbling them up. What say you?
I can live with any of the endings endorsed above, so long as it’s appropriate. That’s the key word; appropriate. I can deal with what some would call anti-climactic ending. Bittersweet ending. Happy ending. (Not saccharine.) I just have to be able to say, “Yeah. I can see that happening. He’d do that.”
Examples:
SEXY BEAST; Without spoiling it, the ending could be seen as anticlimactic, since the real climax comes well before. But at the end, i was left thinking “that’s EXACTLY what Ian McShane would do in that situation. It’s perfect.” Even though the actions taken weren’t all that active, they were appropriate. And dramatic as hell.
THE GRIFTERS; Same deal. Yes, that’s exactly what John Cusack would do, and exactly what Angelica Huston would do when her plan goes to shit. The ending’s a downer, but it’s dramatic, and it’s appropriate.
When I think of endings, I look back at the smorgasboard that was the Time of Judgment for the old World of Darkness. Reading those final books – Gehenna, Apocalypse, Ascension, ToJ – was a primer on how people look at endings, and forced me to recognize and codify the kind of endings I like to see. And I was more than a little surprised by what I found.
See, when push comes to shove, I find that more often than not, I root for the Zeppo. (That’s a Buffy nod, for those not in the know, referring to Xander, the token “normal guy” in a group of Slayers, witches, werewolves and so on.) I like the ordinary, the human, the emotional response. Big, flashy, pyrotechnic conflagrations tend to leave me pretty cold – there are exceptions, of course, but as a rule it’s fairly solid. I don’t usually want the fight between two rampaging Antediluvians that’s uprooting whole continents; I want to see the ordinary guy on his way home from work trying to figure out how to deal with all the madness. To use a more cinematic example, when I was watching the final Matrix movie – I know, first mistake, but let’s move on – I gave up caring about Neo and his prophecy mumbo-jumbo early on. It was so portentous and so stuffy that every time anyone in the movie talked about it I felt like someone was stuffing cotton balls in my ears. No, the storyline that had me hooked was the lone ship of essentially unimportant side characters, on the run from hordes of machines and just trying to return to Zion. Maybe because they were just ordinary folks (or as ordinary as you get in that universe), trying to make it back to their loved ones, and that was more relatable than Neo’s weebly-wobbly, hokum-pokum, timey-wimey, destiny questiny business. Maybe it was because since they were minor characters, I knew that unlike Neo and other big hitters, they could be killed at any time, and that ratcheted up the tension. I can’t say exactly, but emotionally, I responded.
I think part of it is also a normal evolution of a gamer’s experience. When I was younger, I played in a lot of those games that people play when they’re just starting out in RPGs. You know the ones I mean – those D&D games that ended with someone cracking open “Deities & Demigods” and saying “Let’s see how far we can get through killing the Greek pantheon”, or those Vampire games that ended with everyone having cheesed, cheated and diablerized their way to being Faeblooded 2nd Generation Streetfighting Mummified Gypsy Abomination Papal Mage-Wraiths. From Hell. (With hunter code tattoos.) Like a lot of bad or inexperienced movie directors, GMs often equate “more bigger” with “more better” until you have the classic “but we saved the world three times this week” problem and the only way they can possibly try to top the stories they’ve done so far is to make the ending something truly cosmic and staggering. And no one cared even so, because our sense of scale and consequences was so out of whack by that point that we could be in a steel cage bikini tag team mud wrestling match with mighty Jesus against deathless Cthulu and “Blue Thunder” Krishna, and it wouldn’t really matter any more than any other fight.
My point – dammit, I started with one, now where the hell did it go – is that over time I’ve found that often the smaller, quieter endings have more of an effect on me. I’m not saying that huge conflicts and emotional resonance are mutually exclusive, nor am I arguing that every book, movie or RPG needs to have a sweet Lifetime Original Movie ending to be effective. What I’m saying is that if the emotional core hasn’t come through intact, I couldn’t care less. Hence, I root for the Zeppo.
Assassin’s Creed 2 is a great game. The ending… I’ll have to disagree with Josh. It could be a good ending, just not for that game. The ending had nothing to do with the other 99% of the story. It’s like if you took Needful Things and you gave it Fight Club’s ending. While Needful Things is one of my favorite stories ever, and Fight Club’s ending is one of my favorite, the two together just don’t work at all.
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories has my favorite video game ending by far. It brought me to tears. It had the strength of a Shamylan twist, but made me connect with the characters so much that it tore into my gut. It would have been a cult classic if it were a film.
@Mayowa: Certainly those types of endings stick more to formula, but I suppose that isn’t inappropriate. While I like to say, “Hey, break formula,” part of genre *is* formula. That said, I don’t know if unhappy or happy endings violate any of these rules, exactly. (And feel free to link directly to bloggage!)
@Dana: Appropriate is definitely the word. Good call on both GRIFTERS and SEXY BEAST (the latter being a truly great film; I watched it the same weekend as LAYER CAKE, which is a solid double feature). An inappropriate or ill-fitting ending definitely is part of that betrayal I’m talking about.
@Pete: The Zeppo. Heh. (That BUFFY nod is of course a MARX BROS ref first and foremost.) Good call on the emotional core (which is a whole other blog post, as per Filamena’s request) — bigger isn’t always better, unless “bigger” speaks to the emotional conflict at hand. The emotional conflict is the conflict of the characters, which comes back to what I’m talking about — the ending is best served when it’s first about the characters.
Because, really, we’re all just characters.
– c.
I think the most important thing about an ending is that it keep the promise the story made at the beginning.
A noir novel better not have a happy ending. A romance better get the protagonists together. If you set up the tone of the story at the beginning the reader is going to have certain expectations. You can throw a twist in there, sure. But it has to be in keeping with the story. Blow it and your readers will hate you.
Chinatown, for example, had to end the way it did. It promised a story of a fucked up world where power rules and the little guy might as well just give up and go home. If Jake Gittes had succeeded in saving Evelyn it would have broken the promise of the story.
Or Blade Runner. The ending in the original theatrical release was garbage. Wait, wait! We must have a denouement! Our audience is too stupid to get it otherwise! Cocksuckers.
But the director’s cut, the way Scott wanted to do it, is great. The characters are finding their own humanity and taking control of it, not knowing whether they’re going to make it or not, not knowing what’s going to happen next. And we don’t get to know, either. Cutting right there as Deckard and Rachael are leaving is in keeping with that idea. The end of that story is the beginning of a new one.
Re: The End
I have one more semi-major character and one more society to introduce. Then everybody takes their places for the final act.
It’s a few conversations and one major scene-change away.
Great tips, Chuck. Thanks for covering this topic!
As for bad endings, I point to Japanese anime as a genre and laugh a hearty “Yeah. I’m looking at you” belly-laugh.
Anime series are typically given the axe with two or three episodes to wrap things up. It doesn’t matter if your series was equated to “Dick and Jane Take a Trip to Grandma’s” or if it rivaled “The Stand” in terms of scope, when the axe falls, the writers only have 25 – 50 minutes to wrap it up.
Cases in point:
- Full Metal Alchemist (Gloom, gloom, gloom, drama, action, BAM! Main character gets teleported into World War 2 England, wtf?)
- Big O (Everything’s a mysterious mystery. Pieces are falling slowly into place. BAM! The whole story took place in the Matrix and nothing really mattered.)
- Neon Genesis Evangelion (their famous ending actually included random handicam work outside the office and scanned bits from the art director’s notebook because their budget ran out)
My least favorite “bad ending” was from “The Descent 2″
SPOILER
Protagonist survives an onslaught of mutant bat people in the caves of VA. Everyone else is dead. Her best friend sacrifices herself so the protagonist can get away. As she is running from the cave exit and is calling 911, a bit character from the beginning of the movie smacks her in the face with a shovel and throws her back in the hole. Roll credits.
The bit character had no motivation to do so, and the exit was miles from where they had left him, so the audience is left wondering:
- How did he get there?
- How did he just pop up in the middle of the clearing without her noticing?
- Why did he do it?
Up until that point, the movie was mediocre. After that last 30 seconds, it was terrible.
It was like getting a bad meal at a restaurant and then getting kicked in the crotch for dessert.
For this I am sorry, for I usually worship the paper his books are printed on but…”Anathem” Neal Stephenson……WTF????
First, the end of Up in the Air was fantastic. When I first saw it, I raged for three or four days after, but then my woman and I chatted, and it call became clear. Unlike Thank You for Smoking, UitA was a painful, sad, poignant movie the whole time. I just didn’t notice because I love both George Clooney and Anna Kendrick so much.
Tina: The ending to Anathem was also brilliant. Totally spot on, excellently fitted, and every bit of a brain-bender as the whole book had been so far. What didn’t you like?
Noah
Just so you know, Chuck, the ending to Assassin’s Creed 2 is the exact opposite of good. Josh just likes it because it was like “fourth wall? lolol” which I rather liked too, but yeah. I would still highly recommend the game, if only because it’ll teach you how to swear in Italian.
Have you ever read Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay? It’s still hard for me to decide if it was a good ending or an enormous dick move, and I read that a while ago. Really, it’s both. It had me absolutely bawling for a while, only to get better and then leave me just frustrated by the last sentence. The fact that it provoked such emotion was a good sign though. It wouldn’t have made me go “YOU CAN’T END NOW” if I wasn’t emotionally involved.
What I really hate is when people end a story in the middle of the action or something and then put an irrelevant epilogue onto the end. Sometimes I don’t mind it as much, especially if it’s ending a pretty long series — i.e. Harry Potter, Animorphs (though the last Animorphs book wasn’t technically an epilogue it didn’t end when the main story did). But that’s usually because it doesn’t feel irrelevant. In most cases it’s just stupid, though. Like the end of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood just made me go “..Why is this here? Why did I need to know that?”
Bloggage as commanded by the sith lord himself.
http://www.penswithcojones.com/2010/06/romance-novel-as-drug.html
@Danielle:
Heh. Got it.
Haven’t read TIGANA. Always looked at them, but believe it or not, I do sometimes judge books by their covers.
– c.
Noah:
Lies. LIES!
Okay, no, what it does though is illustrate that endings remain subjective in quality.
For me, Up In The Air’s third act was a betrayal of the first two. It set a number of things up, and some of those things were things bound to mood and theme, and then it turned a hard right and headed straight into Miserytown — so, what was once a fairly funny and frank film becomes dark and nihilistic pretty darn fast.
I haven’t read Anathem. I have a very hard time getting into Neal Stephenson these days. It’s my fault, nothing to do with the quality. It’s just too heavy, too intense and dense.
– c.
Great post. I have a real problem with endings, both as a writer and as an audience member. I have trouble getting to them, in both cases, and I am often unsatisfied with them. Here’s one true reason: I don’t like endings to be too tight and pat. I don’t always like it when every little thread turns out to be tied off, or when everybody dies by a poetic hand, or when every storyline gets its inevitable and most “satisfying” conclusion.
One great ending I saw recently, though, was the first season of SPARTACUS: BLOOD & SAND. That show builds terrifically (its worst hours are easily its first hours), and its ending is a mix of ugly vengeance and subtle twists. Really well done. (And you can watch the whole thing on Netflix, so do it.)
But, seriously, fretting over how to end things — and fretting about ending things “wrong” — keeps me from carrying too many stories to fruition. I need to get better at the endings.
[...] it’s just me, as I amble towards the end of my current project, doing my utmost to follow my own tenth rule of writing fiction. [...]
[...] doesn’t always include an epilogue, an epilogue should always be part of a good ending. Chuck gives great advice on endings which I won’t repeat since he said it first & better, but [...]