today's moment of self-realization

[truepenny]

I suck at endings.

My charming and talented beta reader, heres_luck, pointed out to me that The Project vol. 1 ends with aggressive abruptness, not unlike someone who has been guillotined. So, since I have been unexpectedly productive this weekend, finishing up with the Tribulations of Chapter Eleven (go me!), today I tried again with the ending. I'm not sure it's any better. I just have no sense of HOW to end a story--not in the sense of not knowing what has to happen, but in the simple sense of how do I twist the words around to signal closure. (I also suck at this in my academic writing, so perhaps it's just a congenital difficulty with shutting up.) I had the same problem with the novel that's currently out in the field; the story was over and nobody had anything else to say, really, and I finally said, Well, fuck, I have to end it SOMEHOW, and more or less just stopped writing.

This is not satisfying, but I haven't a clue how to go about it better.

But the good news is I have finished this pass at editing this ms, having taken for-freaking-ever at it. I feel good about this. I might even go eat some minstrels.

Must now begin again with the battered, scribbled-on ms and the computer files; perhaps by the time Chapter Twelve comes 'round again, I'll have figured out how to tie it off neatly. Probably not, but I can hope.

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Well, one doesn't get to practice them as often as beginnings.

I used to suck at them, but it was actually part of my general suckiness at plot. Now I love the way everything comes together with an ending, all the threads bending in, like making a wicker basket when you start to fold inwards to tie off.

What you're describing sounds like not knowing when to stop?

Is it a problem with identifying the end of the story, or with finding a suitable climactic pause point in a longer story, or with telling stories that do not have ends? Or something else?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

It's a matter of, once I've got all my plot threads tied off, how do I stop writing? In this case specifically, there's also the fine line to walk between signalling that the larger story isn't over and not ACTUALLY starting Vol. 2, but the problem is much more pervasive than that. I always have a kind of uncertainty about where and when and how to end a narrative; it gets much worse with novels, because of course there's so much more narrative and I've been going so much longer.

I have yet to write a last line that I like.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I adore my last lines. This is sickening. I can actually word for word remember the last lines of all five of them and I am actually relieved that I can't remember the last line of my unpublished Pan novel -- damn, no, yes I can.

Structure works for me like throwing a ball on a high curve into mild blue hazy British-summer sky. You throw it up. Then it curves around up there -- middle, that's what I hate. Then it starts to come down again, and you gather it in, and then it all narrows down to one point, and you catch it, splat, on your last sentence. Having control of structure helps me a whole lot.

I wish I could help, but I don't think I usefully can, because I need to make an empathic leap to imagine not knowing where the end comes, and that requires thinking of it as if I were in the middle of it rather than writing it. Life does not make pretty patterns, novels do.

Did it look awfully weird to you when I had one chapter to go and I thought I might get it done that night but I was tired and hungry and so I left it and got it done the next morning? Because what you're saying looks weird to me.

Can you recognise the ends of chapters? Rysmiel asks me how I do, because this is an area where he has trouble, and I say because they have the chapter-end nature.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Huh. No, I haven't the slightest difficulty with chapter ends. They're obvious, and I can manage them tidily, and I actually quite like some of my chapter ends. Come to think of it, the end of Part One of this exasperating ms was perfectly obvious and satisfying and came rolling out like a dream.

Okay, now what I'm saying looks weird to me. I wonder if maybe the problem in this specific case is that vols. 1 & 2 were originally one book, and so this wasn't INTENDED to be anything as strong as the end of a book. I think my guillotined ending would be just fine if it were the end of a chapter, or even the end of Part Two (which, I mean, it is, but if Part Three came right after it). But the ms is somewhere around 183,000 words long, and it's done so much stuff that I think it's TIME to gather up the threads and tie off--stop and let everybody take a breath and regroup. So perhaps my problem isn't with the ending per se, but with the particular process of ending this particular book in this particular place.

You said you couldn't be helpful, but you have been anyway. I don't know if I can solve this problem in a way that will satisfy me, but at least now I know where the problem's coming from, which makes me feel better if nothing else. Thanks!

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Good.

But that's not sucking at endings, that's sucking at the amazing saw the novel in half trick, which is firstly really difficult and secondly not something you'll have to do every time you finish something. I've never had to do that, though I did have to stick the first two parts of the Sulien thing together that I thought were separate novels. (Which meant that my perfect last line for part 1 and my jolly good first line for part 2 were only a piece of paper apart, which still seems a pity.)

When I stop mid story, I like to stop with a resolution followed with an eep. But it's still an end in my ball-catching metaphor way, just that the ball's going up again.