{"id":876,"date":"2017-08-02T08:17:21","date_gmt":"2017-08-02T12:17:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/?p=876"},"modified":"2017-08-02T08:17:21","modified_gmt":"2017-08-02T12:17:21","slug":"as-it-turns-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/2017\/08\/02\/as-it-turns-out\/","title":{"rendered":"As It Turns Out"},"content":{"rendered":"

A little good news\u2013for me, anyway\u2013to start the post. HarperCollins\u2019s marketing folks have approved Ogre Enchanted<\/em> as the title for the Ella<\/em> prequel. This is lucky, because I\u2019ve never felt as strongly about a title. So, hooray and woo hoo! And thanks to all of you on the blog who’ve helped me with titles in the past.<\/p>\n

On June 4, 2017, Samantha wrote, My work in progress is about ice hockey. In a nutshell, my MC\u2019s parents died a year before the story takes place and he has to struggle with life, adolescence, friends, and\u2026 well, his life. Anyway, in the end his team ends up wining the series in the finals. I\u2019m wondering if it is too dramatic to make my MC score the winning goal.<\/em><\/p>\n

Christie V Powell responded. I don\u2019t think it would be too dramatic, but it is a touch predictable. I love how Pixar\u2019s \u2018Cars\u2019 played with the archetype\u2013you expect McQueen to win the race, when instead he wins in a different way. There is a whole subgenre of sports stories, but I\u2019m afraid I\u2019m not very well read in that genre. You might want to try to check some out and see how they end. The last couple I\u2019ve read (about dog agility and 4H) both ended with the main characters being disqualified but reaching some personal goal or important character growth. Maybe that\u2019s become cliche now and delivering the winning goal is new again.<\/em><\/p>\n

I agree with Christie V Powell that it doesn\u2019t sound too dramatic. If there\u2019s going to be drama in a story, the ending is the right spot for it.
\nIt\u2019s been decades since I watched the movie Rocky (the original\u2013I haven\u2019t seen any of the sequels), but my recollection is that, in the end and against all odds, Rocky Balboa wins, and the audience is delighted. I think the reason the ending works is that so much is stacked against him. Since victory seems impossible, when it comes, we\u2019re surprised. In my opinion, there\u2019s a trick here that our minds play on us. We go to the movie pretty sure it\u2019s going to come out okay. We may even choose it for that reason, but when the action starts, we drop the belief and abandon ourselves to the unfolding story.<\/p>\n

So a complete happy ending can works if the route to it is full of surprises. In some cases, we\u2019re disappointed if the happy ending is at all tarnished. Some of you may have seen the musical Into the Woods<\/em>. I confess to loving the happy first act and hating the unhappy second act when everything falls apart.<\/p>\n

In a way, most plots are like sporting events. Something important is at stake, and, in the end, the MC either succeeds, utterly or to some degree, or fails, utterly or to some degree.<\/p>\n

Take Hamlet<\/em>, for example. ***SPOILER ALERT*** It\u2019s a tragedy. However, Queen Gertrude and King Claudius\u2019s successful conspiracy to kill Hamlet\u2019s father is exposed. They die, and the ghost is avenged. In a grisly way, those are positive outcomes. Hamlet\u2019s death isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Or take my beloved Pride and Prejudice. ***SPOILER ALERT*** again. The main romance ends happily, but Lydia has to suffer the consequences of her disastrous flirtation. Even Elizabeth and Darcy in their married bliss have to put up with that bounder Wickham forever.<\/p>\n

We may–because anything is possible in writing\u2013be able to write a satisfying, unpredictable, believable ending in which everything goes right and there is no shadow. Try it as an early prompt. Your MC is a member of a team (you decide the sport, which can be a real or a fantasy sport) that has lost for ten straight seasons. His grandmother is very ill. His dog has bitten someone and may have to be put down. He is failing biology in school. His best friend isn\u2019t talking to him. Write the story, or the final scene, and make every single thing come out well.<\/p>\n

After those spoiler alerts, I want to mention this interesting report I heard on the radio that is at least tangentially related to predictability. Research was done that shows that people enjoy a story more if they\u2019re told in advance how it ends. Turns out, those of us who peek ahead and turn pages in books are really heightening our pleasure.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if the study can be replicated, so it may not be true, but the way I understand it is that a spoiler doesn\u2019t spoil the details, the character development, the flow of the story, and readers still have the delight of discovery\u2013untainted by the anxiety of not knowing how it will all wind up. I get this. Sometimes I\u2019m tense enough about what will happen that I don\u2019t take in a lot of the story in my desperation to reach the outcome. That\u2019s why a second read is often rewarding, because I slow down and really pay attention.<\/p>\n

We certainly don\u2019t want our endings to feel improbable. No matter how much \u00a0luck contributes to success or failure in real life, in fiction, it can\u2019t. Luck can come in earlier, but not at the end. If Samantha\u2019s MC scores the final goal because, as luck would have it, the opposite team\u2019s best athlete is injured late in the game, the reader is going to bellow, \u201cFoul!\u201d<\/p>\n

So we\u2019re going for believability. Our MC\u2019s character has to justify the end. If Samantha\u2019s MC, again, is so lost in depression that he doesn\u2019t drag himself to practice very often, the reader isn\u2019t going to buy his win.<\/p>\n

He can be depressed! He can finish practice every day and wonder if it\u2019s worth his effort. But he has to practice. He can even throw a game, or his part in it, earlier in the story, so that the reader can fear that he will throw this final one, too. She can believe that throwing the game and really going after it are equally possible. She\u2019ll be stiff with suspense.<\/p>\n

If we\u2019re not sure about an ending, we can bring in my favorite weapon: the mighty list. As I said in an earlier post, lists are predictability poison. We can list possible endings, including scoring the final point. We can decide to list at least twelve options. And we have to remember that no possibility is too stupid to go on our list. Our brains can be exploding from effort by the time we reach number seven, but we must soldier on, because, after we exhaust the obvious, the surprises pop up. The ending that appeals to us most may arrive as number eleven, and we\u2019d never have gotten to it if we hadn\u2019t slogged forward.<\/p>\n

Here are two more prompts:<\/p>\n

\u2219 Shannon, your MC, has the job of guarding the crown prince against both the enemies of the state and his own bad proclivities. Problem is, Shannon, a staunch patriot, doesn\u2019t think much of the prince and is convinced he\u2019ll make a disastrous king. Matters come to a head at a reception for the queen of the neighboring kingdom, with which relations have lately been tense. The prince often behaves badly during ceremonial occasions, and there\u2019s intelligence of a plot against him. Write the story or the final scene.<\/p>\n

\u2219 Pick one of these: \u201cSleeping Beauty,\u201d \u201cSnow White,\u201d \u201cBeauty and the Beast,\u201d and rewrite it as a tragedy. Moreover, make the sad ending come from something in the character of the heroine or hero. I don\u2019t mean they have to be evil in the slightest\u2013their own goodness can do them in. Or some other character trait that\u2019s neither good nor evil. (This can, by the way, be comic-tragedy, if you prefer.)<\/p>\n

Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A little good news\u2013for me, anyway\u2013to start the post. HarperCollins\u2019s marketing folks have approved Ogre Enchanted as the title for the Ella prequel. This is lucky, because I\u2019ve never felt as strongly about a title. So, hooray and woo hoo! And thanks to all of you on the blog who’ve helped me with titles in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[27,275],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=876"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":877,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876\/revisions\/877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}