|
|
|
Hi again
it's Gaynor here, with the
third of my monthly newsletters, and this time
I'm looking at story endings
Always
remember, writing advice should be taken with a pinch of salt,
what works for one person will be impossible for another, but I
hope you find something here to inspire you! If there are
particular topics you would like me to write about in the future,
then give me a shout on gaynor@retreatwest.co.uk
|
|
|
|
Start with
the end in mind...
How often have you heard that advice when writing? I think I hear
it most from novelists, who, to be fair, have a lot more words
ahead of them, and all the intricacies that come with writing a
long book. People argue about 'pantsing versus plotting' and I am
firmly in the former. In non-writing life, I am meticulous, I keep
three different paper diaries - for me, for my child, for work, and
every minute of my day is portioned up and scheduled. But when it
comes to my stories, I just think, ah well I'll throw the words on the page
and sort it all out later. I rarely sort it
out later! This is why I have 5 unfinished novels to my name, so
far. You can see which you are in this quiz, I can honestly say that
I never, never start with the end in mind while writing, but I'm
beginning to think that I should, especially as I'm about to
attempt novel number 6.
|
|
|
|
Someone, though I can't remember who, once told me
that short
fiction should leave the reader with more questions than answers.
I like this, and it's something I keep in mind when I'm writing. My
favourite short story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by
Joyce Carol Oates has stuck with me since I first read
it, and I think a lot of that is to do with the ending.
*SPOILERS AHEAD*
The story centres on Connie, a teen girl who is home alone when a
mysterious man pulls his car up to her house and tells her she will
be going with him. But this isn't a straightforward home invasion
or kidnapping story, because, in the end Connie chooses to leave
the house and go to the car herself. The final line of this story
still gives me chills
so much
land that Connie had never seen before and did not recognize except
to know that she was going to it.
Why did Connie choose to leave the house and go with Arnold Friend?
How did Arnold know so much about her and her family? What's the
significance of the strange symbols on Arnold's car? What does
the author want me to think of Connie? Am I meant to understand
her, to pity her, to judge her? What will happen to Connie next?
Will she be killed, or will she join Arnold in a Bonnie & Clyde
situation? Is Arnold the devil? I don't know, and I love that I
don't know, and I have a different idea every time I read the
story.
So, in my short stories,
I resist the urge to provide answers for the reader, I don't tie
everything up neatly in a bow for them, I leave space for them to
make their own interpretations as to what just
happened. But it's important not to upset or frustrate the reader
too much, which leads me onto trees.
|
|
|
|
Yes that's right, I said trees. This is a little
trick I use to make myself (hopefully) write better stories. Trees
are to me as twist endings are to other writers, by which I mean, if you want a big tree
to suddenly show up at the end of your story, you better have
planted the seeds first.
Planting seeds - or clues, or snippets, or hints, or phrases -
throughout your story is vital is if you want anything resembling a
twist ending. People are torn on twist endings as we traditionally
think of them - I
woke up and it was all a dream is pretty much frowned
upon these days - but you can still certainly have unexpected
things happen. To
explain it in highly technical vocabulary, you're aiming for the
reader to reach the ending and go 'huh?' then go back over the
story and go 'ah!'.
Let's look at another favourite short story of mine, The Fruit of My Woman by Han Kang,
translated by Deborah Smith.
*SPOILERS AHEAD*
The first line of this story is
It was late
May when I first saw the bruises on my wife’s body.
The last line of this story is
When spring
came, would my wife sprout again? Would her flowers bloom red? I
just didn’t know.
So even with the surprise of the ending, we were told from the very
first line that something wasn't quite right with the wife's body.
You can go back through the text and find so many 'seeds' leading
up to the ultimate transformation.
Her cheeks,
the colour of unripe apples ... The waist that had been as soft and
pliant as a sweet potato seedling... like large taro
leaves...they were the dull colour of a weeping willow’s branches
By constantly weaving in plant imagery into description of the
wife, we are already unconsciously prepared for what's to
come.
This story is an extreme, and fairly literal, example of my tree
hypothesis, but it serves as a good reminder when checking my work-
If I want
XYZ to happen at the end, have I planted xyz throughout the text up
to that point?
|
|
|
|
So, let's move away from specific stories and
consider some more general advice about endings.
I once asked my friend Adam Lock to look over a story for
me as I was struggling with the ending and he said he would, but he
also said 'In my experience,
if there's something wrong with the ending, then there's something
wrong with the story.' Which I thought was terribly
harsh, and unfortunately for me, also terribly true! So if you're
struggling with an ending, it's always worth going back through the
whole story before sending ages on fiddling and tweaking those last
few lines.
In total contradiction to what I just said up there (sorry!) it can
also be helpful to start your editing at the end of your piece, and
work backwards. In fact, I sometimes print my stories out and cut
the paragraphs up when editing, so that instead of really
overworking the beginning then thinking 'ah, I'm sure that bit is
grand' because it's taken me so long to get there that I'm tired
and a bit bored and just want it over and done with...I give the
end the tight editing focus it deserves.
Read over your story and double check - is that really your ending?
Are you sure about that? When
I critique short fiction for people, I would say 95% of the time my
advice is to chop the last line, sometimes the last paragraph. So
often the writer has just put too much of themselves and their
authorial voice in those last crucial sentences, when the story
really ended just a few lines before.
Really be sure that your ending matches your genre, and also think
about how you want the reader to feel. What emotional
impact do you want your story to have, and what do you want them to
take away from reading it?
Consider the closing lines of these two stories:
I Love Our Voices When We Sing Off-Key by
Timothy Boudreau
We All Know About Margo by Megan Pillow Davis
(content warning for sexual assault)
The first is a warm story, and the love seeps off the page right to
the final line, with the use of pet names which could have been
sickly but I think works so well here. It carries the glow of the
relationship over once I've finished reading it, I feel invited
into this glimpse of intimacy. The latter story is harsh, cruel,
almost dismissive, and this is reflected in the staccato,
repetitive, painful echo of the last lines and that awful last word
that says so much in three letters.
Something else to consider - how does your ending relate to the
beginning or even the title of your story? The call back to going in the
Oates story above really helps it land for me. I get the feeling
some people think it's kind of cheesy when the ending of a story
relates to a title, but honestly I think that's a bit sniffy - I
love it. I have a dystopian story in my own collection called And
So We Will Remember Our Daughters. There is no daughter explicitly
mentioned in the story, until I use the word in the final line - in
fact it is the final word. It's quite a tricky tale to read in some
ways, with split timelines and narratives, so I wanted to ensure
the central theme came across clearly in the end. Maybe you'll get
to read it some day and I see if I pulled it off!
|
|
|
|
Start with the end in mind ... literally. Here's a
little ending-focused task to finish up with. Have a look at the
photos I've found here on Unsplash. I
often browse Unsplash or google images to look for story
inspiration, but I use them as a starting point, never as an
ending. Choose one image to be the ending of your next story -
perhaps a micro or a piece of flash fiction. Now write three
different versions of events that led up to that point. Play around
with genre, character, dialogue - experiment away but try and keep
the same end for each story. I would love to know if you write
something you love, or if this just isn't your cup of tea and
you're more of a winger, like me!
Let me know if you have any tips for writing great or interesting
endings, or any stories you think I should check out on gaynor@retreatwest.co.uk
Happy writing,
Gaynor
|
|
|
|
|
|
Flash Focus
No comments:
Post a Comment