First off, a bookseller who’s a friend just sent me this link, which I believe most of you are too old for, but you may know kids who qualify and would do a bang-up job on:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/tundra-true-story-contest?ref=PRH997D100A32&utm_source=Tundra_Books&utm_medium=Advertising&utm_content=Email&utm_term=&utm_campaign=Based_on_a_True_Story_Contest_Tundra_Books_-_PW

On May 23, 2019, Writing Ballerina wrote, I’m almost done with the first draft of my story!! This is really exciting, but it’s going kinda slow because I don’t know how to end it. Eventually, I’ll run out of plot points and not know what to do so I’ll abruptly stop and leave it for days trying to come up with how to resolve it in a smooth transition.
Does anyone have any tips on how to transition out?

Three of you weighed in.

Melissa Mead: Congratulations!

Transition, or ending? Transition implies that you’re going on to something else.

Some of the most effective endings tie back to the beginning somehow. Ex, Lord of the Rings takes us back to the Shire. Camelot ends with King Arthur giving hope to a young boy as idealistic as he once was, even though up to that point, his own hope had been fading, and restoring some of his own hope in the process.

Christie V Powell: Have you looked at plot structure? Studying the “beats” that make up a story might help you. I like K. M. Weiland’s (her blog is called Helping Writers Become Authors), or you can see if your library has the book Save the Cat or the book by Lisa Cron (Story Genius? Is that the title?). All three have a similar system for breaking a story down into parts, including the ending.

Writing Ballerina: Okay, so my brain was dead when I asked this question and I worded it terribly so here we go again.

How do you end something satisfactorily? I want the reader to turn the last page, thump the book closed, sigh, and say, “That was a good book. I loved the ending.”

I want to do this right, so I’m not going to rush the ending like I’ve done so many times, but it’s not as easy as it seems. I’ve basically run out of plot points now, but it seems too abrupt to end here. Plus, one of the characters is really not pleased with a new outcome, even though it solved one of his biggest problems, so I need to fix that somehow so everyone’s happy when I end it.

What I meant by “transition” is a smooth ending with pacing that makes sense. Not just like “oh look no more plot points the end bye all thanks for reading.” I don’t want it to be like I slammed a wall in front of the characters with THE END spray-painted on it.

Katie W.: I can’t help, but I have EXACTLY the same problem. The only advice I can give is: give it AN ending, then let it sit until you find the right one. And, lest you think I’m oversimplifying here, it took me about nine months to find the right final line for one of my stories. (And that was after I spent three months cutting it from seventeen pages to ten.) Sometimes I find the right ending immediately, other times, like I said, it takes a while.

One of the first things I was told when I started my long apprenticeship to become a kids’ book writer was: Get out quick once my story’s main problem is resolved, because the reader will become bored as soon as there’s nothing left to worry about. I keep that advice in mind even when I write epilogues, as I often do. Readers sometimes ask me about the future of this character or that, and generally I don’t know the answer. After I type The End, they’re on their own.

So I’m not opposed to an abrupt ending, as long as the main conflict feels complete–

–which suggests what may (or may not) be Writing Ballerina’s difficulty. Possibly the conflicts in her story–or in ours–are too even, and the reader doesn’t know which one to care most about.

If so, when we revise, we can focus on that. We can make some of the other conflicts contingent on the main one–when it’s resolved, the others will become more manageable. Or we can resolve the lesser issues earlier in our story. We can increase the other characters’ emotional investment in our MC. We can expand and intensify our MC’s thoughts, feelings, and voice in our narrative, to make our readers care about her far more than about the others. When she’s settled, they’ll be satisfied. Then, if we’re me, we can write an epilogue to mop up the loose ends. An example of this approach is my beloved Pride and Prejudice. In the last chapter, Austen delivers the fate of all the minor characters, which is nice, but I don’t really care. I’m ecstatic that Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy are together at last. Sorry, Jane and Bingley, it doesn’t matter to me if you have an ugly divorce in a year. Sorry, Jane Austen!

But this may not be the problem. If not, one approach is Melissa Mead’s suggestion of a circular story shape in which the location of the beginning and the end are the same. I find this shape cozy and comforting, if the ending is happy. If the ending is tragic, a circular story can punch up the bleakness, another desirable result. A long time ago in the life of the blog, I wrote a post on circular stories. If you’re interested, you can look it up.

Along the same lines, if we focus on what our MC wants, we’ll achieve a satisfying ending when she gets it for a happy ending, or when she irrevocably fails to get it, for a sad one. Our MC and our readers don’t even have to know what the MC wants; only we have to know, and the reader will be satisfied. In my first historical novel, Dave at Night, Dave doesn’t know that he wants safety and a home most, and I don’t think the reader does, either. He believes he wants something returned to him, but that’s just a side issue. When I make him safe and contented in his sub-optimal-but-adequate home, he and the reader are happy.

I’m a pantser, so I don’t use a beat system, but I have nothing against it. I’d recommend following Christie V Powell’s suggestions to see if they work for you.

I’m thinking of books (that I remember well enough to discuss) with successful endings, and sometimes two themes need to be tied together to make the ending work. I’d say that both Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery and Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier fall into this category. Anne of Green Gables ends satisfyingly when both her relationship with Gilbert is straightened out and her near-term future is decided. Rebecca ends in its bittersweet way when the mystery is resolved and the MC finally understands herself and her relationship with her husband.

I love the shape of a quest. If I can frame my story as a quest, whether my MC or my reader sees it that way, I have an easier time with the ending when I get there. Obviously, Ella is on a quest to overcome her curse, and Addie of The Two Princesses of Bamarre is on a quest to cure her sister of the Gray Death, but less obviously, Aza in Fairest is questing to feel comfortable about herself, or Wilma in The Wish is questing for acceptance just as she is. If we can see our story as a quest, the ending is likely to fall into place.

Greek myths often conclude only at the end of the MC’s life or her ascent into immortality, and that strategy, too, provides a sense of completion, although often not a happy one. A modern example of this that works beautifully is– *spoiler alert*–the TV series Six Feet Under (high school and up).

Fairy tales generally end with the vanquishing of the villain even more than with the success of the romance. Think of “Snow White,” “Cinderella,” and “Rumpelstiltskin.” In “Snow White” the prince kisses her before the evil queen gets her just desserts, and the classic Grimm tale ends with the queen dancing to death. We can adapt this destroy-the-villain approach for our purposes if everything else is resolved before then, but no one will be safe until the villain croaks or is permanently put away.

Mysteries, by contrast, often continue beyond the solution of the puzzle, with a beat about the detective and the state of her life going forward. In a series that state may not be happy, which leaves the reader both satisfied and wanting more.

The big takeaway is to be absolutely solid about what our story’s problem is, because in it is our satisfying ending.

Here are three prompts:

∙ I’m not sure how satisfying the ending of “Little Red Riding Hood” is, in the version in which Red and Grandma are saved by the hunter. What lesson has Red learned? Is it the right lesson? That she needs to be cautious, and if she isn’t, she has to wait to be rescued? Write the scenes that follow the rescue and give a fuller and better resolution to the three of them.

∙ In Pride and Prejudice, headstrong and flighty Lydia marries unprincipled Wickham. Write a sequel about their daughter, whose immediate family is penniless and whose more distant relatives have the money to help, but their help comes with conditions. You may have to read or reread P&P to do this, but what’s wrong with that? Extra credit if you recreate Austen’s voice and world.

∙ In Greek mythology, Helen is as passive as any fairy tale heroine. She’s married, and Paris carries her off. Eventually, he dies, and Helen is given to someone else. Troy falls, and her husband takes her back. Really! If you don’t know the story, you can read summaries online, starting with the Judgment of Paris, continuing with the Iliad, and ending with the fall of Troy. Write Helen’s story, and give her agency, which will probably mean changing the story.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Another pre-post thingy, though this isn’t about craft. Instead, it’s a charming discovery I made in my research for my historical novel on the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Some of the fleeing Jews boarded boats for Italy, and when they got there, the city-states in the north wouldn’t let them in. The first place to reject them was Genoa, so I looked up the history of Genoa on Wikipedia, because I wanted to glimpse the harbor and the old buildings and get an idea of what was going on. During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Genoa was a mercantile powerhouse, and during this period–you can look it up yourself!–the citizens invented a fabric called blue jean, which they marketed far and wide. Who knew? So then I looked jeans up in the Oxford English Dictionary and discovered that the word, which means “a twilled cotton fabric,” comes from the name of the city-state–jean derives phonetically from Genoa. The Chinese may have invented spaghetti, but the Italians can claim denim!

What application might this have for fiction, specifically fantasy? Well, if we have an object, magical or otherwise, that’s significant for our plot, we can invent a history for it that may contribute to its mystery or its allure.

Now, a reminder that I’ll be at the Chappaqua Book Festival in, unsurprisingly, Chappaqua, New York, all day this Saturday, along with other kids’ book writers you may admire. Pre-release copies of Ogre Enchanted will be on sale there and only there. I would love to see you. Here’s a link to the event: http://www.ccbfestival.org/.

And the real release date is October 16th, when I’ll be at Byrd’s Books in Bethel, Connecticut, for a launch talk and signing. Very exciting! Here’s a link: http://byrdsbooks.com/2018/08/15/gail-carson-levine-launches-ogre-enchanted-at-byrds-books/.

On July 26, 2018, Christie V Powell wrote, I am trying to iron out the ending of my WIP, and I keep thinking of Gail’s line from “Writing Magic”– I just want to drop a bomb on all of them! If it turns out half as perfect as Ella’s ending, I’ll be happy.

I guess I’ll make a question out of that: How do you make a finale that wraps up all your different plot lines and minor characters without being too jumbled?

Melissa Mead welcomed the question: I’ll second that! Endings are my weak point, especially in novels.

Maggie R. responded with, Oh boy. I haven’t gotten to that point yet myself, so I can’t offer much advice. But I’ll try to put down some observations. In Ella Enchanted, Ella has a bunch of different problems, such as a stepfamily who hates her, and a person whom she loves but she can’t marry. All of this is solved by getting to the root of the problems: her curse. So, if you can find the root of all of the different plot lines and resolve that, it should mostly resolve the plot lines. Of course, the extras that don’t fit in with the root problem, those can be fixed real quick before the book is over, like the issue of Ella’s father is resolved in the epilogue. (Not saying that you have to have a epilogue. Just using one as an example.)

Thank you, Christie V Powell, for the compliment! And I’m with you and my earlier self that a bomb is tempting. Boom! Everything is taken care of.

Readers may be a tad annoyed.

I’m with Maggie R. in terms of the main story conflict, that resolving the underlying problem will provide the ending. And an epilogue is handy for mopping up any pesky loose ends.

An epilogue is mostly telling, so we can run through everything almost like bullet points. If the writing is smooth, the reader won’t mind that the information is being delivered economically. At that point, he’ll be satisfied; the story has delivered everything he hoped for; all that’s left is mild curiosity about the little stuff. He wants to know, but he’s fine with getting unembellished answers.

But I don’t think every plot thread has to be sewn up. Leaving some of them dangling feels like life. Whatever happened to my high school friend who was so popular and so dramatic about all her romances? I can entertain myself by wondering if she’s on her sixth spouse or never married or stuck with one for, by now, forty years or more. I loved her confidences, because my life wasn’t half as interesting as hers, about which she was uncurious. Has she found another attentive listener?

Also, if we leave a few threads hanging, we can return to them in future books. I’ve more than once regretted tying up all my loose ends so neatly. Although readers may cheer when Mandy teaches Lucinda a lesson and the crazy fairy starts curtailing her terrible gifts, I’ve been prevented from using her to create havoc in books that take place in the future of Kyrria–although recently I’ve thought of a possible way to get her back into action. We’ll see.

If we can think of a way to entwine our minor plot threads with the major one, then several can be resolved together. For example, in The Two Princesses of Bamarre one of the threads is that Bamarre is ruled by a fearful, indecisive king. When Addie comes into her own, the reader can stop worrying about the fate of the kingdom, assured that she’ll take charge. Just saying, lists can help us find the connections.

So we have three strategies:
∙ an epilogue;
∙ leaving some subplots unresolved;
∙ and uniting minor elements with major ones.

Let’s consider my darling Pride and Prejudice and its final chapter, which functions as an epilogue, and what it leaves unresolved. In the chapter we discover, for instance, that Lady Catherine de Bourgh forgives Darcy and Elizabeth, but not if her daughter ever marries. We don’t find out what happens to Darcy’s sister or Bingley’s unmarried sister. We learn that Elizabeth’s two other younger sisters become more sensible, but not about their marriages or their wealth or poverty, which are very important in Austen’s world. When I looked at the last chapter, I found myself wondering if Lydia and Wickham have children. Austen leaves a lot open for sequels, and, since she didn’t write sequels, for future authors to develop. Hmm…

Going back to Maggie R.’s advice, sometimes it’s hard to figure out what the root problem is. As I may have mentioned before, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about “Rumpelstiltskin,” which is complicated for a short fairy tale. The miller’s daughter is the MC, and the thrust (not the root problem) of the tale is her survival and the safety of her child, but there are important side issues. There’s her father. Why does he claim a magical power for his daughter that she doesn’t have? And what’s up with the king? It seems to be all one to him whether he kills the damsel or marries her, since, once he marries her he stops making her change straw to gold. Why does Rumpelstiltskin want the baby? And, if he wants it, why does he give the miller’s daughter a chance to keep it? The fairy tale ignores all these questions, but if we’re taking the story seriously, we can’t.

Here’s a list of four quests as possible root problems or goals for the miller’s daughter, but I’m sure there are more:

∙ to stop being exploited by her father, the king, and Rumpelstiltskin, and to become independent and powerful enough to solve her own problems;

∙ to wrest herself and the kingdom from the grip of greed, since everyone seems out for what they can get;

∙ to care for other people, like her own baby–and possibly her father, the king, and Rumpelstiltskin;

∙ to end child abduction by gnomes.

When we pick one of the ones on my list or any others you may come up with, we start to envision an ending–or that’s how I do it. Let’s take the greed one, and let’s imagine that the kingdom is poor. Famines occur regularly. The greed is the result of deprivation. Rumpelstiltskin wants the baby so he can raise her to work in the gold mines, along with other human slaves, because food is so expensive. The king wants the miller’s daughter to make gold so he can buy luxuries from a neighboring kingdom, which isn’t afflicted by famine. The miller wants to get rid of his daughter one way or another because she’s just another mouth to feed.

The miller’s daughter, who is a smart cookie, recognizes the problem and thinks about how she might create abundance. At this point I’d know that my ending will be either her success or final failure. I’d start making lists about how to move into my story. What’s this world like, aside from the famines? What caused the latest one? How might she go about resolving it? What are the attributes that will make the job easier? Harder? My lists will be guided by the ending I’m working toward.

So the ending is baked into my thoughts from the very earliest stages.

Here are four prompts:

∙ Pick one of the unresolved threads in P&P and write a scene from the sequel.

∙ Pick one of the unresolved threads in P&P and go through the process I used above for “Rumpelstiltskin.” Describe possible quests. Pick one and envision the inevitable ending. Write lists to move into the story. Write the first scene.

∙ Pick one of the other quests I listed for “Rumpelstiltskin.” Go through the process and write the first scene.

∙ Jump ahead in “Rumpelstiltskin” or your P&P sequel and write the final scene. Then, if you like, write the rest of the story from the beginning, aiming for the ending (which can change along the way).

Have fun, and save what you write!

On February 18, 2017, Angie wrote, I recently completed my second manuscript, and am deep into the revision stage. Something I’ve struggled with in both of my novels is writing a final, satisfactory ending. Once my characters’ stories are resolved and every plot point is checked off, I have serious trouble working up an appropriate send-off. I’m just done. I’ve received feedback that the ending in my current manuscript feels abrupt, and am struggling to rectify that problem in subsequent drafts. I’d love some help working through this end-of-the-road roadblock!

First off, congratulations on finishing not one but two manuscripts!

When I was taking writing classes and in the learning stages of becoming a kids’ book writer, the advice I heard most often from teachers about endings was, When you’re done, get out. So it’s possible that the criticism Angie received was just one person’s opinion and the ending is fine.

But let’s assume, for the sake of having a post, that the critiquer is right. What to do?

If every plot point has been checked off, have they all become equal? If yes, that evenness may give our ending a flat feeling. To break it up, we can think about which conflict is at the heart of our story. Fundamentally, what’s our story about? That conflict, the one the story turns on, should stand out in our ending, and we can look for ways to amplify it, perhaps make it come last.

Along the same lines, have we made our plot points’ success–or failure–hard won enough? If the solutions are too easy, the ending again, can feel flat or abrupt. In revision, we can go in and beef up our MC’s struggle. We can give our villains or our opposing forces more power, a few more weapons in their arsenal.

An ending doesn’t have to be unpredictable. As I’ve said here many times, when we’re working from a popular story, a fairy tale or a myth, the end is known. And even if we’re not, most stories follow arcs that readers are used to. The interest lies in how we get to the end of the rainbow. We can surprise the reader and make the ending more satisfying by throwing in lots of monkey wrenches–twists that aren’t predictable–along the way.
We can think about what feeling we want the reader to be left with. In a tragedy, for example, we want hankies to come out. Have we made our readers care enough about our MC to weep for her? Have we shown why her losses are devastating? (If I know someone has to die in a story, I usually make that character–like Ella’s mother, like Dave’s father in Dave at Night–super lovable.)

In an adventure story, we probably want a feeling of satisfaction. Our heroine has accomplished what she set out to do, with great difficulty, probably at some cost, and she’s grown along the way. We have to make sure those things have happened.

In a happy love story, we want rejoicing. Our MCs have been foolish; they’ve made mistakes; they’ve misunderstood themselves and each other. But finally, the blinders have come off their eyes. They’re together at last. We have to deliver on all the mishaps along the way to make the ending feel earned.

What else makes a satisfying ending?

My mind travels to the TV mystery series Bones (high school, possibly middle school, though I’m not sure). The series, which wrapped up recently, was episodic, meaning that, mostly, each mystery got solved in the episode in which it was introduced. In later seasons, when the mystery was solved and the murderer dealt with, the final scene almost always took place in the home of Temperance Brennan (Bones) and her husband, Seeley Booth. Chit-chat happens; often a minor spat between Brennan and Booth is charmingly resolved. The audience feels settled.

We can do something similar. After the blood has been mopped up and the main conflict resolved, we can end with a smaller scene that gives the reader time to collect himself. If we like we can use an epilogue, as I’ve done more than once, to hint at the uneventful futures of our characters.
I’d call that an order-is-restored ending. Shakespeare used this kind of ending in his tragedies, as I was taught in high school. The problem of a play, like Hamlet, is so grave that the balance of the universe is disturbed. Storms result. A ghost walks the earth. Madness afflicts Ophelia. But at the end, following the death of Queen Gertrude and King Claudius, the stage littered with bodies, good governance can resume, and all will be well.

There’s also the circular story, which I devoted a post to years ago. The circular story ends where it began, and that return provides the sense of completeness. Lord of the Ring and The Wizard of Oz are examples of stories that begin and end in the same location.

Not every book ends neatly. Take Gone With the Wind–or my understanding of it. Rhett Butler says his famous line and decamps. He understands himself better than he had before, and we readers understand Scarlet, but she doesn’t understand herself, which we realize is her fate. We know that her future life will be full of events and turmoil, whatever they may be. (I haven’t read the sequel, so I don’t know what the modern writer has dished out for her.) Still, despite the lingering possibilities, Margaret Mitchell’s ending works, I think because of the way the characters become resolved.
And there’s “The Lady and the Tiger,” which I’ve talked about before here and which is a short story rather than a novel. Look it up if you don’t know it, because it ends with a question mark, and the reader has to decide what happens. I’m not sure if this would be satisfying in a novel, but it’s great in this particular short story. The story raises a big question and then asks the reader for an answer, and the answer is more revelatory of the reader’s character than of anyone in the story itself.

Here are three prompts:

∙ Rewrite the unsatisfying ending of a book that frustrated you. Make it work!

∙ This is an old and silly joke that I may have told before here: A congregation’s rabbi is dying. His most important congregants gather around his deathbed to hear his final words of wisdom, which are “The world is a barrel.” His listeners are shocked. What are they to make of this? They beg him to explain. He lifts his veined eyelids. His watery eyes go from face to face. His chest heaves. His wheezes sound painful. Finally, he gasps out, “So it isn’t a barrel”–and dies.

Make the barrel world be true for at least the youngest person around the bed. Write an adventure in this barrel world and bring it to a satisfying ending, which can be the same or different from the ending in the joke.

∙ Pick a moment in history–an assassination, the fall of Rome, an election, the purchase of Manhattan from its original inhabitants, whatever. Go into it in detail, peopling it with real or imagined characters. Ignore the historical outcome and follow the characters to an ending that flows from their conflicting wishes.

Have fun, and save what you write!

First a little lovely news: Writer to Writer, From Think to Ink (based on this blog, for any of you who don’t know) has been chosen by the discerning people at the Junior Library Guild as one of their selections when it comes out, and both Publisher’s Weekly and Kirkus will soon be giving the book lovely reviews. Publisher’s Weekly calls the book “valuable,” and Kirkus says it’s “comprehensive.”

Onto this week’s post. On July 23, 2014, Penelope wrote, I’ve been having a really hard time with my endings. I’m doing a redo of a fairy tale and I’m split on the ending. What I originally had was perfect, I thought. So unbelievably perfect. The element of surprise, the setting, the MC’s heroism, everything. It was a Happily Ever After, for sure. But now I’m realizing that it just won’t do. It makes everything too easy. I’m thinking of changing it only because it ends too quickly and makes everything too simple. 


So here’s my dilemma: Should I mold the story to my satisfying but easy ending? Or should I go with the less appealing alternative which is probably better, but a little anti-climactic?

In reply, Bibliophile suggested, Write both and see which your friends/critique group like better.

I like both parts of Bibliophile’s suggestion. Let’s start with the critique group idea. Some of us are great critics of our own work, but some (me) not so much. We may be too hard on ourselves. Nothing we write is good enough. And some are blind to the flaws in our masterpieces. My guess is that most who read this blog fall into the severe category, because people who think everything they pen is pure gold probably don’t read writing blogs.

So it may be helpful to get another perspective from someone or several someones who can be counted on to be constructive. (We don’t need harsh critics to provide another voice in our heads telling us that what we’ve done is a mess.) If you’re in a critique group, that’s great, and it’s not too much to ask members to read two versions of an ending. After all, you’d do the same for them. You’d be happy to. It’s an interesting dilemma.

If you aren’t in a critique group, you can still get help. A good critic is, first of all, a good reader. You can ask friends who read almost as voraciously as you do, whose taste is similar to yours. You can ask family members who aren’t hyper-critical. You can reach out to a teacher or, especially if you’re home-schooled, a librarian. You can say that you want an opinion about the alternate endings only. If they offer more, you can say no; just that one thing. (If your readers are helpful and you think they may have other things to say that you can use, you can ask for more afterward, but don’t open the floodgates right away.)

If possible, it’s nice to get more than one opinion. If the two agree, that’s pretty solid. If they don’t, you still have fresh perspectives to consider.

But–and this is important–you don’t have to listen to the advice. Just because your critiquers did you a (little) favor, you have no obligation to do what they say. It’s still your story.

On to Bibliophile’s second point, I’m all for trying things more than one way. Writing the ending both ways may make all clear to Penelope, and to all of us when we’re not sure which way to go. And writing both ways may lead us to a third way, which turns out to be the best of all. Or, trying both ways can lead us to a middle ground that satisfies.

In this kind of dilemma, I like to back up and dream up even more than two possibilities. I list all the endings I can think of. Sometimes I run through fairy tale endings and endings of books I love, looking for a key to my story.

I may revisit the problem at the core of my story to help find the ending that fits best. Let’s do this with a couple of examples.

First, we’ll take “Rapunzel,” a fairy tale with, in my opinion, an imperfect ending. Aside from the mystery of why the witch wants a child in the first place, I’m on board with the story almost until the end. The prince is thrown from the tower and Rapunzel is sent far away; that’s fine, just what this witch would do. But then the witch seems to forget about both of them. Rapunzel is reunited with her prince and cures his blindness, and they live happily ever after. Their troubles are over. But the problem at the heart of the story is the witch! The ending should include her, and she doesn’t want Rapunzel or the prince to be happy. She wouldn’t stand by and let them be. According to Wikipedia, there’s a version in which she’s trapped forever in the tower where Rapunzel was imprisoned. Better. But there are other options as well. She could grow and become a better being, or she could be distracted by another baby for her to adopt and behave weirdly to. Or something else. The best ending, I think, would involve Rapunzel and the prince settling matters with the witch: destroying or reforming or distracting her.

Now let’s look at Anne of Green Gables, which, to me, has a perfect ending. *Spoiler Alert!* If you haven’t read Anne of Green Gables and intend to (I recommend you do!), skip this paragraph because I’m going to give the ending away. As I see it, the central problem is that Anne needs a home where she feels at home, an outer home and an inner home. At the beginning she doesn’t feel loved or understood, and she isn’t at ease with herself. By the end she gives up something up that’s important to her, and she does so because she’s achieved self-knowledge and a deep sense of belonging. It feels inevitable. Any other response to Matthew’s death would be wrong.

When Penelope says that her first ending is surprising, I’d call that a plus. We want inevitability and surprise at the same time. Of course, not all surprises are good. Dropping a bomb on our characters may be tempting, but it’s never good. Likewise, bringing in a fairy to solve everybody’s problems.

Inevitability arrives when we solve the main problem. Surprise comes in through the way it’s solved. In a romance, for example, we know that the lovers will be united if the story is happy or separated if it’s tragic. But we don’t know how the two will come together or how they’ll be torn apart. To take another fairy tale, “Beauty and the Beast,” as an example, what seems inevitable as we first encounter the story is that Beauty will finally agree to marry Beast. The surprise is the transformation that follows. So satisfying!

Here are three prompts:

• Write a new surprising ending for “Beauty and the Beast.” Yes, there’s a transformation, but it isn’t the one we’re used to.

• Write a Rapunzel story and weave the witch into the ending.

• The ending of “Rumplestiltskin” is problematic. We’re left with a loveless marriage and a dead imp. I know there are versions that fix this. Write your own. In this case, consider what the problem at the heart of the story is. I don’t think that’s so clear. Could be the imp who desperately wants a child for reasons fair or foul, or an impoverished king, or a neglected girl, whose feelings nobody cares about.

• One of the twelve dancing princes is in love with one of the princesses, a love that’s outside the enchantment he’s under. Write the story of their romance. Think of five possible endings and write at least two of them.

Have fun, and save what you write!

To the NaNoWriMo writers: How did it go?

At the end of October, McKennah wrote this on my website: How do you know when to stop writing stuff for a certain story? I mean you could keep writing a story forever, but how do you know when enough is enough?

E.S. Ivy commented, Hmm… I get what she means because when I read a book, I always think about the story that goes on after it ends. 🙂


Maybe: Think in terms of an obstacle, task, or main milestone for the main character to achieve. Then your story is about how they go about getting there and the failed attempts. The story ends when the goal is obtained. I find that looking at early MG or chapter books are a great place to start picking out how to plan a story arc.

I piped in with: Just a definition for anyone who’s uncertain: MG is middle grade, which would include books and stories for kids roughly in the eight-to-twelve-year-old range.

And Nikitah Luse added, Think of your over-arching story: Maybe you have such a long idea that it “may never end”, but find places where you could cut a logical ending while still leaving it open for future stories. Example: Your story idea might be about a group of questers whose destiny it is to save a kingdom. Unfortunately, that can go on forever and ever with all of the side quests and problems. So you find that in your head the story has three main moments: the questers meeting, learning to work together, and fighting the bad guy at the end. That’s three stories right there! Conclude the first after they have all managed to find one another and figure out what the problem to be overcome is, the second after they have bungled through many problems and are finally a team (maybe even one of their own is threatened–great cliffhanger!), and the third when the bad guy is defeated, the heroes are figuring out what to do to clean up the mess and what is next for them. And then you can keep going with another foe in your next story, but by this time your readers will know the characters and how they work together, so the hard part is done.

And Kenzi Anne contributed this: I used to have the same problem, and I felt like my stories were becoming never-ending rants. I decided to choose my endings by finding a point in the story when I could wrap up all my loose ends, especially the main problem that my story revolved around. That way I could find my ending. If I wanted to write a second book, then I could also use this method to separate the first story from the second but leave enough strings “untied” to still have an ongoing plot.

I think all these ideas are right. I’d like to highlight E. S. Ivy’s suggestion about looking at other books to help figure out how writers keep from nattering on forever.

Let’s do that together, using Peter Pan by James M. Barrie as an example. If you’ve never read it, Aaa! I don’t know what to suggest for reading this post, because it’s going to be full of spoilers. Maybe you should read it and come back. In my opinion, there’s a treat in store for you. It’s one of my favorite books.

Usually, a book introduces a problem somewhere near the beginning and solves it somewhere near the end. In Peter Pan, there are a few problems. One starts in the backstory when Peter runs away from home and becomes the enchanted character we know and love. His problem, which we pick up from hints that Barrie drops, is the conflict between his wish to stay a child and his desire for a family. Next, Wendy, Michael, and John lose their parents and their Nana (their dog) by flying away from home. And the Darlings and Nana lose their children. We’ve got three problems that are central to the plot. Important also is Captain Hook’s ambition to defeat Peter. That’s Hook’s problem; Peter doesn’t think about Hook all that much.

Peter’s problem is temporarily solved when Wendy and her brothers take up residence with him and the lost boys. He has a family and he doesn’t have to grow up. The Darlings and Nana are miserable. The story returns to them now and then but they don’t do much more than wring their hands or whimper.

The middle of the book, which isn’t very long, not long enough for me, brings the children to Neverland, introduces the island and its inhabitants, establishes a way of life there (which suggests time passing), and puts the boys and Wendy through an adventure on the lagoon. A single adventure! Unless I’m forgetting something. Maddeningly, Barrie dangles an array of adventures but chooses only one.

Then the beginning of the end begins. In the course of evening story time, Wendy’s brothers, John and Michael, reveal that they’re forgetting their original home. Wendy is alarmed, and a decision is reached to return. Then Hook attacks, which launches the book’s crisis .

With Hook’s demise and the return of the children all the problems are solved, not happily for Hook. Peter remains young but alone, so the ending is mixed for him, and possibly also for the other children, who, in my interpretation, have a little lingering regret.

What an economical story it is! Barrie could have invented other adventures and threatened Peter and his merry band in myriad ways. The Darlings could have taken action, too, set out from the mainland or hired detectives or whatever else. Nana could have started swimming. Maybe Barrie did write more and cut those extra parts when he revised. The point is, he made a decision. He said, Enough!

And because he left us wanting more, stories have spun off his for a hundred years.

It’s up to the writer. Our story may not announce that it’s finished. We get to make that determination.

Let’s look at my The Two Princesses of Bamarre for a minute. It’s longer but simpler. There are two essential problems: the Gray Death and Addie’s timidity. When she sets out on her quest for the cure the middle of the book begins. There are three kinds of monsters in this world, and I wanted her to contend with each of them and with her fear. But I could have gone on longer. I could have made the disease develop more slowly so that other adventures could happen. I didn’t think it out that clearly, but I guess I felt that more would have been overload.

As we continue to write, we get better at sensing when we’ve reached a satisfying point in our story. For now, try the rule of three, which we often find in fairy tales. Cinderella goes to three balls and loses her slipper after the last one. The evil queen in “Snow White” makes two attempts on Snow White’s life before she finally seems to succeed on the third. The miller’s daughter gets three chances to guess Rumpelstiltskin’s name.

Success on the first or second try can seem too easy. On the fourth or twelfth, readers may be yawning or thinking our MC is useless. But we do want to vary the number in our stories sometimes. If we always follow the rule of three, we can become predictable.

Not all books introduce an overarching problem and then solve it. Some just cover a period of time with smaller problems along the way. I’m thinking of Little Women, for example. In the course of the book the girls face challenges and grow from little to big. Louisa May Alcott decided how many incidents to include at each stage in the lives of her MC’s. When they’re big, the story ends.

Here are three prompts:

• Your characters are shipwrecked on an island inhabited by unfriendly dwarfs and fierce pirates. There’s a traitor among the survivors. Staying alive is the problem. Endanger them three times before they establish themselves safely or escape.

• Your MC is at summer camp or boy or girl scout camp. The story ends when camp does. Create a series of problems as the camp experience progresses. Develop supporting characters, who can be other campers, counselors, the camp director, parents. Decide how many incidents you need to make the story feel complete.

• Cinderella and her stepsisters are just backstory. Your MC is the prince. At midnight, in the middle of the third ball, Cinderella runs out. Your MC chases her, trips on the stairs, tumbles down, hits his head, loses consciousness, and wakes up, holding one glass slipper, his memory gone. The only clue he has to his identity is the slipper. Take the story from there. He can wind up with Cinderella, or not.

Have fun, and save what you write!

For anyone in the area and able to come, on Saturday I’ll be at the Children’s Festival of Reading in Knoxville, Tennessee. Here’s a link to the event: http://knoxrooms.sirsi.net/rooms/html/KCPL/calendar.html#/?i=2. I’m speaking at 10:45 am and 12:45 pm and signing books after each presentation. If you come, please let me know you heard about it here.

On to the post topic, on November 27, 2011, Jenna Royal wrote, Does anyone have any thoughts on open or unresolved endings? I’ve been fascinated with endings lately that don’t end up where you think they do, or that don’t really end at all. How do you make one that’s still satisfying, even though it’s unexpected?

I’ve written one unresolved ending. It was in my short story “Little Time” that was published in an anthology called Unexpected, which is probably long out of print, but you may be able to find a copy somewhere. It’s one of my favorite of my few short stories. Here’s the gist: Erica, a middle schooler, recently moved to a new school where she has no friends. Her parents are super busy with their careers and not interested in her. In fact, in the first scene she overhears them saying she bores them.

On her spring break she walks on open land not far from her house and follows a sign that reads Hidden Village. In a barn she discovers an enormous town of doll houses complete with dolls and animals, dogs, a zoo. Turns out that the dolls and animals are alive, shrunken, and that the village is a benign utopian experiment. (Among other things, these tiny people and animals age very slowly.) Erica is invited to join by being shrunk too.

At the end I don’t reveal Erica’s decision, although it’s clear to me, but I didn’t want to tie the story up with a bow.

The key to a satisfying ending lies long before the end is reached. In “Little Time” the seeds are sewn in that first scene; Erica is unmoored to her life. Most of us would be sorely missed if we vanished; we’d be irresponsible and cruel to just go. Not Erica. But I didn’t stack the deck so the reader thinks, You have to join. I wish I could. It’s a real choice.

In a mystery series, the mystery itself is usually tied up with that bow by the end of the book, but the larger, ongoing story of the detective is left open. This is a neat way to end. The reader gets the satisfaction of a solution and the sizzle of no solution. We remain attached to the heroine and her troubles. She may be lonely, afraid of the dark, uncontrollably honest, whatever. She may not even have troubles, but the future course of her life isn’t established. Elodie at the end of A Tale of Two Castles is happy, but we know she’s going to have more adventures, and we don’t know whom she’s going to marry (if she’s going to marry), where she’s going to live, whether she’ll stay a dragon’s assistant. And we haven’t found out if the dragon Meenore is male or female or if the ogre Count Jonty Um can find a place among humans where he’s accepted and not feared.

In my opinion, this kind of series (not just mysteries) doesn’t ever have to be resolved for the main characters. I’m thinking of comic book characters, and I’m sure there are legions of other examples. We don’t want Superman or Spiderman to achieve permanent happiness. If they get a break from their troubles, we enjoy it with a little lump in our throats. It’s all the more beautiful because their moment of relief is fragile and certain to end.

A mystery series is kind of an ending cop-out, I guess. The author has the (somewhat) easier task of solving the mystery and never has to face the more difficult work of finding an ultimate ending. Nancy Drew sleuths on with new authors.

In the classics, there are no absolute final endings either. Writers keep going back and resuscitating established stories. I assume James M. Barrie thought he’d finished Peter Pan, but writers, including me, are forever spinning new takes on the original. William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and many more get the same treatment. Even the Greek myths, which generally end in death, are revivified.

If you haven’t read the young adult novel The Giver by Lois Lowry, spoiler alert! Skip this paragraph. The book ends in uncertainty. We don’t know if Jonas makes it to safety, but I wouldn’t call the story unresolved. Jonas leaves the security of his home and acts morally. The problem that the book raises is answered whether or not Jonas survives.

This was a prompt from my post of January 26, 2011, which was also about endings: You may know the story, “The Lady and the Tiger.” If you don’t, it’s basically this: A princess, whose nature is jealous, falls in love with a man below her station. The king finds out and arranges a punishment for him. The man is thrown into an arena with two doors. Behind one is a beautiful maiden and behind the other a tiger. If he picks the maiden door, he lives, but he has to marry her. If he chooses the tiger door, he gets eaten. In the arena he looks to the princess, who knows what’s behind each door, for a signal. She has to decide whether to endure his marriage to someone else or condemn him to death. The story has no ending; the reader is asked to decide what the princess will do. So the prompt is to write the ending. If you didn’t do it then, you can now.

“The Lady and the Tiger” is certainly unresolved, and it does this curious and marvelous thing: it turns the problem around to point at the reader. Until we get to the final question mark it’s about the princess and her forbidden love. When it finishes without an answer, the problem, jealousy, becomes us. What do we think of human nature? How would I behave in this situation? How do I believe others would act?

The strangest non-ending I’ve ever read was Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man (adult), which the author, Thomas Mann, never finished – he died the next year. If I remember correctly (which I may not – I read it many decades ago), it ended mid-sentence. I had loved the book up until then, and I knew this would happen, but it was still a teeth-gnashing experience.

The only real ending sin is failing to respond to the problem a story sets out. I don’t know how that failure could be made to work and satisfy; maybe if you’re writing humor it could be done. The conclusion of Ella Enchanted, for example, had to be about the curse. The end of all Jane Austen’s books had to be about a young lady unraveling her own character flaw that stood between her and a suitable match. The finale of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca had to be about innocence, although that problem is wonderfully disguised in the novel.

Here are a couple of prompts:

•    The Giver succeeds, I think, because, while the surface ending is uncertain, the deeper problem is resolved. You do the same thing. Simone is preparing for a competition, whatever kind you like, real world or fantasy. Write the story and end it without the reader finding out how she fares. However, decide on the real issue underlying her struggle and solve that. The real issue could be gaining self-confidence, winning someone’s approval, or something else.

•    I’m not a fan of Alice in Wonderland because I think the story lacks a problem. One fantastical thing happens after another without any reason. Rewrite the beginning, giving Alice a problem or something she desperately wants. Then write your own ending and anything in the middle that you need.

Have fun, and save what you write!

And a reminder: please share any writing success you’ve been having on the blog.