Endings Part II:structure & turning points - by Rowena House

Last month I shared some notes I’d made for a writer friend who'd asked me about story endings. Here’s the link to that blog about the “what” of endings: what’s going to happen, and what that implies for the rest of the story.

https://awfullybigblogadventure.blogspot.com/2019/08/endings-part-i-where-to-start-by-rowena.html

This post is about another side of endings, the “how” part. It covers some of the tips I’ve picked up over the years from editing and writing courses, and also from a range of advice guides and writing blogs. I hope it might be useful for anyone struggling with their ending or wondering how to plot one.

Of all the structural guides I’ve studied, the most helpful terminology I’ve come across is in The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne. In it, he provides a helpful label for each of the three acts of classic “Aristotelian” storytelling.
  

Coyne calls Act 1 the Set Up, Act 2 the Progressive Build and Act 3 the Pay Off. 

These labels signpost the content for each act; they also flag up the all-important turning points which spin the story into the next act and, finally, The End.

For example, the main turning point of the Set Up is an Inciting Incident: the event or call to adventure which gets the central plot going.

The Progressive Build ends at a Worst Point for the protagonist, the turning point which precipitates the story into the final act. A midpoint epiphany is another great practical turning point for Act 2. I’ve blogged about epiphanies here. https://rowenahouse.com/2018/02/02/eureka-nailing-epiphanies-big-five-part-2/
 

The Pay Off brings to a head both the plot and main character arc. As the pace and tension accelerate, there are (typically) two major turning points in Act 3: a Crisis and a Climax. The story is then wrapped up with a final beat, usually called the Resolution. Each of these three scenes gives shape, direction and energy to a climatic ending.

For writers who follow this schema, the Crisis is the deepest dilemma the protagonist faces; the toughest choice s/he must make throughout the story. 

One tip I’ particularly like is to make this Crisis decision as horribly, gut-wrenchingly dramatic as possible by forcing the protagonist to choose between two highly prized, but mutually exclusive alternatives (AKA “irreconcilable goods”). Imagine a parent on a dangerous cliff path: their son is being dragged towards a 100-foot drop in one direction, their daughter is being kidnapped by a madman in the other. Which way do they turn? Deciding between two such irreconcilable goods is much more difficult and character-defining than a choice between the lesser of two evils, or between right and wrong. 

If the story is focused on character, then this Crisis decision can be the defining moment of the whole thing: the “obligatory scene” as some creative writing teachers and editors term it. It is the point in the story where the protagonist decides to transform from the person they were to the person they need to become in order to fulfil their role in the story, or (by failing to change) to become a tragic figure.

To give the reader the maximum insight into this pivotal moment, the Crisis decision needs to be fully developed and emotionally powerful, and can take quite a few pages. 

The Climax is the action initiated by the protagonist as a result of their crisis decision. Classically, it’s the scene where they confront their biggest force of antagonism: the top villain if there is one, or their worst nightmare if that’s what’s been holding them back. 

The Climax is the final turning pointing for the plot; in it, the actions of the protagonist reflect a deliberate choice to change or transform in order to achieve their story goal. The outcome of this climactic conflict is profoundly meaningful for the protagonist; it is also irreversible. 

For more plot-orientated stories, the Climax is widely considered to be the “obligatory” scene and can be the longest one in the book. Climaxes don’t have to be explosive or action-packed. In The Goose Road it’s a slow-burn, escalating scene stretching over three chapters. In the film, Ordinary People, Robert McKee in Story notes that the Climax is the wife packing a suitcase and walking out on her family: a brief, simple action but with enormous meaning within that story world.

The Resolution is a final chapter or scene which cements this character transformation in the reader’s mind. The action shows how the change-through-conflict of the story, which led to the Climax, has altered the protagonist’s underlying behaviour and attitudes for good (and/or how that change impacts on their community). 

Plot-wise, the Resolution might wrap up a subplot or dramatize a reconciliation. The way the protagonist achieves this scene’s goal manifests their new persona.

Over the years, I’ve read quite a few variants on this theme of crisis-climax-resolution. In Into the Woods, John Yorke talks about “mastery” being the final beat within his five-act structure. In stories with deliberately “open” endings, the Climax and Resolution might be implied, rather than shown.

For Christopher Vogler, the “return with the elixir” is the last, and potentially extended stage of the hero’s quest, as detailed in The Writer’s Journey. 

With this style of ending, the protagonist brings back to their troubled home community some sort of boon (a life lesson learnt or an actual physical elixir). In the archetypal quest ending, this boon helps the protagonist to win one final battle.

While some writers follow Vogler’s road map in its entirety (or Yorke’s Five Acts or Coyne’s Story Grid etc.), I prefer to cherry-pick, keeping an eye out for recommended structural beats as I plot or going back over a first draft to identify missing elements.

After a draft of The Goose Road was rejected by Andersen Press, for example, fellow Bath Spa MAer Chris Vick (whose new book Girl. Boy. Sea looks fantastic, by the way) pointed out that Angelique’s journey contained many elements of a quest. In light of his insight, I re-read The Writer’s Journey and found a host of structural beats I could add, which in turn helped me to deepen Angelique’s character arc during a full development edit for Walker.

There are, hopefully, an almost infinite number of ways to end a story. Structurally, however, the advice I’ve read and heard supports one underlying tenet: at the end, change must be demonstrated by a “character-in-action” (to borrow a phrase from Emma Darwin’s brilliant This Itch of Writing blog.) 

The protagonist must do something to show the reader they’ve become a different person due to the events of the story. In the end, they’ve got to walk the walk.

PS In case anyone’s free on the evening of Oct 2, Tracey Matthais, Matt Killeen, Liz McWhirter and I are talking about our protagonists’ “Interesting Times” at Waterstones, Uxbridge. See our social media feeds for details. I’m @HouseRowena on Twitter

  

Endings Part I: where to start? By Rowena House

My favourite writing guru, Robert McKee, explains in Story the great benefit to the writer of knowing our endings: once we have one, we can reverse the process of cause and effect to build a better story.

Whether you retrofit that better story after finishing a first draft or plot it from the outset is a personal choice, or maybe a function of our psychology. Me, I plot because I can’t help it, but I try not to over-plot as that hampers writing with passion and honesty.

But sooner or later we all have to look at the story from a reader’s point of view. And that, I think, is when we really need to decide on an outline for the ending at least.

Not convinced? Then how about this: the ending contains the “obligatory scene”, the one the entire story has been building towards (more in Part II next month about which scene this is, the Crisis decision or Climax action).

If the obligatory scene doesn’t resolve the problem set up in Act 1, the overall plot (and major character arc) will almost certainly need a wholesale rethink to tie the two together and create a unified whole.

The problem (as every writer, editor and guru worth their salt points out) is that original endings are getting harder to write; there are just so many stories about these days, readers have seen it all before.

The solution? To expend a great deal of imaginative time and effort devising the most satisfying ending possible within our story worlds.

That way, fingers crossed, readers (and editors) will ask for more.

Okay, fine, said a writer friend with whom I was having this conversation last week. But what does all that mean in practice? These two ABBA blogs are my attempt to answer his question as far as I can.

Plotting endings

Scouring the literature, I’d say there’s a broad consensus about four main endings for archetypal plots in any genre, i.e. those with one or more lead character with a defined story goal.

These four are: positive, negative, ambiguous/open and ironic endings.

For more on each, do have a look at James Scott Bell’s The Last Fifty Pages: the Art & Craft of Unforgettable Endings. I got it for a bargain £3.oo on Kindle. In Write your Novel from the Middle, Bell describes an alternative, holistic plotting method which unifies the ending with the start and middle, rounding out his advice in Plot & Structure. I thoroughly recommend all three books. Meanwhile…

A positive ending is one where the protagonist achieves their goal and is happy about it. This is a staple for romances, enlivened by the obstacles strewn in the way of the couple’s happily-ever-after.

For other genres, positive endings tend to be enriched by sacrifices made along the way, with their attendant psychological wounds, and/or crucial life lessons learned.

I think positive endings are very useful for children’s, teen and Young Adult fiction, since (in my worldview) hope for the future ought to be their birth-right. We can give our characters hell along the way, but…

A negative ending is one where the protagonist does NOT get what they want and is sad/angry/devastated about it. Or dead - and not in a nice, self-sacrificing way, either. Shakespeare was big on negative ending; see Hamlet, Macbeth etc. It’s the come-uppance, tragic pay off; a punishment for making an anti-social or immoral life choice. So probably not a great ending for Picture Books through to lower MG!

Ambiguous endings (did they or didn’t they damn well get what they wanted?) or, more kindly, open endings tend to be found at the more literary end of the spectrum, also in short stories.

Open endings leave it up to the reader to imagine life after the story, and wonder about the ramifications for the characters of its events. Personally, I love a good open ending, but I know they bug some readers, a minority of whom might well write you a rude Amazon review.

For young people’s fiction, I guess it’s a matter of degree: the more sophisticated the story (and the older the reader) the more nuance and uncertainty they can handle. But for me nuance is best handled through...

Irony

Irony is, imho, the richest hunting ground for original material for endings. I can’t comment on fiction for readers younger than 11 as I’ve not been in contact with those markets for years, but I reckon irony can work in any story aimed at 11 to 101 years-old readers.

If you read Kelly McCaughrain’s excellent ABBA post last week, you’ll have seen her favourite character arc (inspired by KM Weiland) which - to simplify for the sake of brevity - pits a protagonist’s desire against their subconscious or unknown need, culminating in the discovery of a truth which demonstrates that what they needed was, all along, more important than what they wanted. That’s a tried and trusted form of irony with lots of positive overtones. Here’s the link for more details:

https://awfullybigblogadventure.blogspot.com/2019/08/quick-character-quiz-kelly-mccaughrain.html

Irony is also the backbone of Shakespeare’s Othello, the Moorish warrior who learns he had what he wanted all along, a loyal wife in Desdemona, but only after he’s killed her in his unwarranted jealous rage.

There is deep irony in the title of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (spoiler alert), home of Jane Seymour who will supplant Anne Boleyn in King Henry VIII’s affections in the following book, leading to Anne’s execution. After 650 pages about Cromwell helping Henry to get what he wants (Anne), Wolf Hall are the last two words of this epic novel.

Other classic examples of irony include a protagonist who:

·       gets what they want, only to find it wasn’t worth the getting (a variant on the positive ending);

·       doesn’t get what they want, but is glad about it due their transformation wrought by the story’s events (riffing on the negative ending);

·       realises they’ve thrown away the very thing/person that could have made them happy (see Othello above); a variant of which is,

·       realising they’ve rejected the person who could have been their friend/ally/true love in favour of someone who isn’t.

·       Being destroyed by the person/thing they’ve set out to destroy is perhaps best left to YA horror and adult fiction.

·       Discovering a deeply-held belief is in fact a lie is probably one for mature readers as well.

·       Discovering an ally is an enemy and vice versa is a well-recognised ironic twist for just about any genre, if perhaps a tad clichéd.

Natch, there are more, but I won’t try to list them all.

For upbeat endings, negative ironic twists can also be used to set up the ending, e.g. after coming face-to-face with a cruel irony at the close of Act 2, the shock of finding out the truth precipitates the final Crisis decision and Climax in Act 3.

All of which might sound rather formulaic, but if irony worked for Shakespeare and Hilary Mantel…

For me, discovering a story’s ending - imagining it, reimagining it, sleeping on it, plotting it or weaving back and forth from it during an edit (thinking all the while about how it will resonate with a reader, and how it might resonate more) - is one of the hardest parts of the storyteller’s craft, but - ultimately - the most satisfying.

Next month I’ll look at another side of the process: the structure of endings and how that links with character arcs, including the interwoven roles of the Crisis decision, Climax action and the Resolution.

See you then, I hope!

@HouseRowena on Twitter

Rowena House Author on Facebook

Website: rowenahouse.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

The End! by Tracy Darnton

Like many of us, I’ve been talking about writing as part of WBD school visits. One of the tips I gave to students entering the short story competition I’m judging, was not to neglect their ending. We hear so much about the importance of a killer first line, that elusive hook to grab attention. But what readers take away from the ending affects how they feel about the story as a whole. 

What do you like? Neatly-tied up resolution? Ambiguity? A warm glow? Shock? A twist? A perfect or imperfect cadence?

You probably don’t like feeling confused or short-changed that the story promised something it didn’t deliver, or that the story has petered out.

I’ve just re-read The Go-Between by L.P.Hartley which has one of the most famous opening lines of all: 

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

So far so good, but how I go away at the end of the process feeling about The Go-Between is more determined by how L.P.Hartley winds up his story. I’m busy; I’ve invested my time and effort into reading the devilishly small print of the whole book. Does it deliver for me in exploring memory, the boundaries of adulthood and class? Does it leave me still thinking about the characters and themes? Did the hint of some terrible life event in the prologue pay off? Was I satisfied?

A common tip on a short story is to cover the last paragraph or two and see if the story is improved. Finishing a novel is inevitably more complex. Where to end it? If you’re finishing on a big action moment, it’s tough to tie everything up without it seeming contrived and interrupting the pace and tone of a big reveal. A time jump, or epilogue, may provide that resolution - One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus or Sunflowers in February by Phyllida Shrimpton are good examples.

Epilogues certainly seem to be enjoying a revival though I confess sometimes I’d rather leave the characters exactly where we left them and not know what came to pass. Another balancing act for the author to navigate – and something I had mixed feelings about in The Go-Between. (Spoiler alert – did I really want to see Marion as an old lady and know the fate of every character?)

And if you can tie up your story beautifully, and have a killer last line too, then you really have nailed it. The Great Gatsby provides a masterclass in both concluding with: 

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Consider books you’ve read recently. Did they end at the right place? Did they have a killer last line?

Or did they just fi

The End

Tracy Darnton is the author of The Truth About Lies, shortlisted for The Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2019. She has an MA in Writing for Young People. You can follow her on Twitter @TracyDarnton

Atropos too is a Weaver - Catherine Butler

It’s no doubt a common reverie amongst those of a melancholy disposition to wonder what their own epitaph should be, but given that I mean to have my ashes scattered in a bluebell wood in my case it’s especially idle. Still, were I to go down the monumental route I like to think that these words would be carved above my mortal remains in letters as deep as a Bic biro is long: “ATROPOS TOO IS A WEAVER.”

Now imagine a latter-day Thomas Gray who happens to be wandering the boneyard, musing on the futility of human endeavour. Seeing my grave he whips out his iPhone 42, curious to find out just who Atropos might be. ABBA readers of course require no such prop, but in case it’s slipped your mind let me remind you that Atropos is one of the three Fates of Greek mythology. There’s Clotho, who spins the thread of life, Lachesis, who measures it – and finally Atropos with her shears, ready to cut it to length. Of the three, I feel that Atropos gets the most unfair press. Killing people is never going to be a popular profession, but if we think of our lives as stories then we should acknowledge that a well-executed ending is a very desirable feature, and that to write “Finis” can be an intensely creative act. Without it, how can we appreciate the shape of the narrative? Arguably it would have no shape.

As with the stories of our own lives, so with the stories we write. C. S. Lewis replied to a correspondent who had asked whether he would consider continuing the Narnia series: “There are only two times to stop a series – before everyone is sick of it, or after.” It’s hard to argue with that. There can be an element of grateful release involved for the writer, too, as Stevie Smith noted:

I am hungry to be interrupted
For ever and ever amen
O Person from Porlock come quickly
And bring my thoughts to an end.

Atropos is helpful in matters of quality as well as of length. By nature I’m a rather obsessive self-editor, which is to say that I tend to fiddle, prink, and generally muck about with my writing, sometimes to its detriment, and am reluctant to let it out in in public. At one time I was secretly rather proud of this perfectionism, believing that it proved me a True Artist rather than a mere hack; but Atropos too is a weaver, and there comes a point when a piece of writing (if it is not to be trashed completely) must be loosed upon the world or lost to it. It will have flaws, of course, but only then will you be freed for the all-important task of failing better next time.

In the last century the paediatrician D. W. Winnicot coined the idea of the “good-enough mother” – by which he meant (as I understand it) not only that women shouldn’t have to beat themselves up about not being perfect, but that realising its mother isn’t perpetually and exclusively focused on its needs is actually an essential part of a child’s development. Perhaps we might speak of the “good-enough writer” too, writers being in a quasi-parental relationship with their books. We bring them up, we teach them to walk and talk, we dress and feed them, and eventually we say, “Go, little book,” and push them out of the front door. Hopefully they’ll be okay; but in any case, without that final step the rest would be wasted.

Atropos too is a weaver.

Fairy Tale v Hollywood v Bollywood v Hopeless by Savita Kalhan

For both the reader and the writer, endings are extremely powerful things. I know I feel like celebrating when I’ve typed the words THE END on a manuscript, even though I’m fully aware that in the life of a finished manuscript the hard work has only just begun. Which type of ending did I go for? Fairy Tale, Hollywood, Bollywood or Hopeless?

Fairy tale endings represent the typical ‘happily ever after’ ending, as in the Hansel and Gretel variety.

Hollywood endings are much more sugary, (sometimes sickly) sweet happily ever after endings with everyone riding off into the sunset.

Bollywood endings are happy endings too, but tempered by the extreme tragedies that have taken place; and they’re happy because everyone, who hasn’t died, is reunited at the end.

Hopeless endings are few and far between, and rarely have a place in children’s literature.

I don’t tend to write light humorous stories, oh, okay, I’ll be honest – my writing is actually quite dark. The Long Weekend was a story of two boys who are abducted after school. It’s labelled by the publishers as ‘not suitable for younger readers’ without stating a specific age on the back of the book. The boys are eleven years old, so you might think it was suitable for perhaps ten year olds to read. Well, it might be for a few. It’s the kind of book that cannot have a hopeless ending because it is for kids and because of what happens in the book. My agent actually asked me to write an epilogue because she was of the opinion that you could not end a children’s book, particularly a book like The Long Weekend, without some element of hope for the reader to take away at the end. I think she was right.

When I read books as a child ...and they lived happily ever after, was an ending I expected. I read lots of fairy tales from all across the world and they always ended like this too, no matter what terrible things had befallen the main characters. Years later when I read books to my young son, little had changed. They nearly all had happy endings. I remember once finding a book in the library that didn’t end happily and reading it to him. When we reached the end, he was really angry at the writer for not writing a proper ending. He’s a teenager now and although he still reads teen/YA fiction, he also reads adult books. I asked him about a book he read recently – Aravind Adiga’s Last Man in Tower, and he said, “It’s full of broken dreams,” but it’s really good. I haven’t read it yet, but I guess its ending must not be so dark, or maybe because he’s a little older he’s more ready for the occasional ‘hopeless’ ending.

I guess we’re generally conditioned to expect the happy ending. I suspect it’s what most children want, and perhaps what most adults want too. Imagine reading lots of books where the whole book is dark and grim and the ending no less so, the outcome so hopeless that you wonder what frame of mind the writer was in, or what he or she had gone through in their life, to end a book in that way.

Numerous studies have shown that a person’s reaction to a traumatic event can be significantly leavened by an ending that is positive – as long as the peak pain felt during the experience is less than the pain experienced at the end.

Recently, debate has intensified with regards to the darkness in teenage literature, specifically the supposed rise in ‘Sick Lit’. Alongside the waves of paranormal romances and dark dystopian thrillers, are readers looking for escapism or to be protected from dark issues and themes? Is it time for a return to ‘lighter’ teen/YA fiction? Or should we be encouraging authors to continue to explore the dark themes that teenagers need help coping with?

I’ll be interested in hearing what other authors and industry professionals have to say, but regarding endings specifically, I think most people would want an All’s Well That Ends Well ending.



www.savitakalhan.com

The Long Weekend book trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14TfYyHgD6Y

@savitakalhan