Hello, writers. Last night I did a talk for incipient writers at my local library, conveying a lot of the useful info that people who comment on these diaries have given me. I realized that everything I was saying about one's chances of getting published was very discouraging, but was quickly able to correct that-- because here's the thing.
There are basically four things a would-be writer needs:
- talent (probably not the most important thing)
- a willingness to work very hard (probably the most important thing)
- persistence
- flexibility/willingness to learn
I don't know anybody who has displayed those four qualities and stayed in the slush pile. Not one person.
Just a thought about the slush pile that I wanted to share with anyone who's still in it. By the way, the conventional wisdom seems to be that 90% of the slush pile is composed of manuscripts that are improperly formatted, badly spelled, and/or have been sent to the wrong place (eg "Las Vegas Hooker Tells All" submitted to My Weekly Reader). Of course, it's the other 10% that are the competition.
But that's not really what I wanna talk about. I wanna talk about
Endings
The ending of a novel (or a story) should cause the reader to sit back in his seat, smile up at the ceiling, and say, "Now that was a story."
Or, as my guru says, "The ending should cause the reader to say 'how unexpected, and yet how perfect'."
Teh GussieFN remarks that no ending has ever made him say that, and I am hard put to think of one that has ever made me say that. My guru also says that the two most important sentences of a story are the first one and the last, and in this I think he is right.
The ending is where you keep the promise that was implicit in the beginning. Things get as bad as they can get, and then the world explodes (or the marriage, or whatever) and then the pieces are gathered together. Every character who was important to the story is somehow present in the ending, even if they're long dead. This is the grand finale, when you shoot off all the fireworks at once.
Terry Pratchett is particularly brilliant in-- well, in everything, really, but in building the ending throughout the story. In Small Gods ** SPOILER ALERT ** the main character, the innocent teenage monk Brutha, finds himself paired with an evil companion, Vorbis. At various points, when all of Brutha's, and the novel's, problems could easily be solved by Brutha leaving Vorbis to die, Brutha saves him instead--causing himself and everyone else more trouble. (On the Discworld, the end does not justify the means. Ever.)
The denouement finds the elderly Brutha (as so often in Terry Pratchett books) newly post-mortem. And there's Vorbis again, in the afterlife, lost and helpless and needing Brutha to rescue him. Which Brutha resolutely does.
A test for your ending is this question: If my protagonist were a radically different person, would this story still end the same way? The answer should be No. If it's Yes--if the events of your book would be unaltered no matter whom they happened to-- your ending will not feel convincing.
Nancy Kress, Beginnings, Middles and Ends
Terry Pratchett is one of the few writers that never seems to write much about writing, but I imagine he goes back in the revision and puts in the building blocks of his endings. In Monstrous Regiment
** SPOILER ALERT ** the fundamentalist Ruritanian nation of Borogravia has many peculiar customs and sayings, including one saying which is repeated several times in the course of the novel: "The new day is a great big fish". After everything has gone wrong and defeat has been snatched from the jaws of victory, this serves as the last line of the novel. Neatly done. And you can do it too.
Climax and Denouement
The climax is the point at which the explosion that's been promised throughout your story arrives. It's the payoff for the reader, and it had better be big. The Ring is destroyed, Voldemort is defeated, and that annoying goody-goody goldfish was perfectly right about the Cat in the Hat.
According to Nancy Kress in her book Beginnings, Middles and Ends (which, like all her books about writing, you should read) the climax should do four things:
- satisfy the view of life implied in your story
- deliver emotion
- deliver the appropriate level of emotion
- be logical to your plot and story
The denouement is everything that comes after the climax. The cuddling, if you will. Now that the world has exploded, what does it mean to the people still left alive? (Or, in the Discworld, dead?) Usually the denouement is short-- the half-book-long denouement to Lord of the Rings being a famous exception. The denouement's job is to provide some sense of closure for the reader.
(It should not, however, destroy any sense of possibility and wonder that your story may have created, as J.K.Rowling did with her regrettable ** SPOILER ALERT ** "Epilogue" to the last Harry Potter book, in which the main characters are shown middle-aged, married, and clearly incapable of ever having another adventure ever, ever again. Stephen King loved the "Epilogue", but as far as I know he is the only adult who did.)
How Does That Make You Feel?
In my field, kiddylit, there is an understanding that endings must be, if not happy, life-affirming. (You can break this rule, as the author of The Boy In Striped Pajamas did, but no one will thank you for it.) There should still, at least, be hope. All may be lost, but humans aren't irredeemable-- E.L. Doctorow doesn't write kiddylit.
John Gardner, in On Becoming a Novelist (or maybe in The Art of Fiction), argues that a writer has a social responsibility not to be depressing. I think this is very true and whenever I mention it someone tells me I'm wrong. I hope that's not gonna happen here, being as how we liberals are all about teh social responsibility. Your ending should not be suicide-inducing.
At best, at least in kiddylit, your ending should suggest a world of possibilities waiting to be discovered.
Says Ms. Kress:
Often--not infallibly, but often-- the last sentence or paragraph evokes the theme of the entire story.
Write On! will be a regular Thursday feature (8 pm ET) until it isn't. Be sure to check out other great lit'ry diaries like:
sarahnity's books by kossacks on Tuesday nights
plf515's What Are You Reading? on Wednesday mornings.
cfk's bookflurries
on Wednesday nights.
Here's an interesting link-- Stories We've Seen Too Often. Hell, I think I've written all of those.
AnthologyBuilder's Match-That-Artwork Contest looks interesting-- you pick a picture and write a story to go with it. No fee, of course.
Oh, and here's a contest for fantasy short stories.
Here's a website that offers everything you ever wanted to know about query letters.
Since the question of online critique groups comes up from time to time, here are a few:
Critters(science fiction, fantasy and horror)
Baen's Bar (science fiction)
Forward Motion for Writers