ending a story

[marycatelli]

Inspired by a post of jimvanpelt 's -- about how to get your stories to end.

"Trust an expert -- trust someone with experience." And since I started to write about the age of 11 and think I never managed to finish a story until I was seventeen, I think I have some experience here.

So -- some advice.  (Free, and worth every penny.)

The first piece is, if you have discovered like me that you get half way through your stories and don't complete them, take a whole stack of those stories and sit down to re-read them.  Do not do this from memory.  Re-read them.  And something beneficial may come leaping out of the stack at you.  (At worst, you will have lost a few hours.)

The second is that if your stories just peter out and don't go anywhere, try outlining them.  No, not the sort of outline your English teacher would approve of.  Write down the events of the story in order.  You don't have to keep them all on the same level.  (Mine tend not to be legible for anyone but me.  0:)  Terry Pratchett once described writing as

There's a phrase I use called "The Valley Full of Clouds." Writing a novel is as if you are going off on a journey across a valley. The valley is full of mist, but you can see the top of a tree here and the top of another tree over there. And with any luck you can see the other side of the valley. But you cannot see down into the mist. Nevertheless, you head for the first tree.

And it's like that for me to, but instead of actually building a path, I blaze a trail.  If I can actually go somewhere, I go back and build the path.  And if I can't -- I grab the story idea by its scrawny little neck and throw it out the window.  Since it's an Anthropomorphic Personification, it's not likely to kill it -- sometimes it even comes back in improved form -- but I do not start a normal first draft until I have completed that really, really, really sketchy first draft known as an outline.

(I will, however, note that this advice is not very useful to people who find they can't stick to an outline.  Such people exist; they have told me so.)

The third is for people who, like me, frequently can't stick to a piece.  You do not have to go on to something new when something goes flat on you.  Go back.  Circle 'round and pick up the last piece you dropped because it went flat.  Or the piece before that.  They can come back to life, you know.

And do not decide that a piece has gone flat or hasn't come back to life until you've actually taken a stab at getting words on paper (or screen).  Sometimes the flat feeling is just vacuuming the cat.

Comments

[fairyrevel.livejournal.com]

Speaking of circling around, lately I've been writing scenes out of order, as they come to me, which is new. I think I tried four or five different outline methods before deciding to try it this way. I have no idea if it's going to work. It's pretty frightening, really. But doing everything in order according to an outline wasn't working very well, so I figure it can't hurt to try something else. I haven't finished anything in a very long time.

[marycatelli]

Humm. I should have put that in.

In fact, I will go put that in now, just in case.

[marycatelli]

Got it.

Because I knew that that's not always a useful piece of advice and I intended to put in such a disclaimer, and forgot in the heat of composition.

[stormsdotter.livejournal.com]

Outline? Check.
Ending? Check.
Figuring out how the heck I'm getting there? Priceless.

Sorry, I couldn't resist. :)

I feel like a rarity in the world of writing; I'm a plotter, not a pants-er. I've got the plot, the twists and the relationships set. I'm not entirely sure How They'll Defeat the Bad Guy, but I've got the general idea down.

[marycatelli]

Cool.

All in your head?

[jongibbs.livejournal.com]

Great post. Thanks for sharing :)

[marycatelli]

Glad you like it

[brni.livejournal.com]

I wrote an outline once.

It was about 30k words into the story. I was taking a shower. Suddenly, the whole structure of the novel laid itself out in my head. I was still dripping as I typed it all up.

That was over a year ago. Haven't been able to work on that novel since.

[marycatelli]

Yeah, I've heard some writers suffer from that problem -- once the outline is written, they lose all interest.

The thing that always baffles me is -- how do you ever manage to revise a first draft? Don't you lose interest after that, too?

[brni.livejournal.com]

It's not that I've lost interest. I have gotten another 10k words written over the last year on it, but nobody (the characters, that is) wants to cooperate with the outline... So I feel like I'm writing stuff that isn't part of the story and/or isn't going to get me where I need to go by the end. And I end up frustrated and blocked and stare at it for days on end and then write a short story or three.

[marycatelli]

Ah, the other problem! I misread your post because some people do lose interest if they outline.

But -- well, throw out the outline and try again. The problem is that writing down an outline can "fix" it in your memory; I often don't have to consult mine. If that's a problem -- ehm -- maybe rename characters to jar them loose?

[brni.livejournal.com]

Also, my first drafts are always perfect. Especially after extensive editing.

[marycatelli]

:D