Sunday, May 06, 2012
The
Art of Writing No 31
I have written about how the first
paragraph of you novel can seduce the reader in the bookshop or on a website. The opening
paragraph of a novel should really be returned to, time and again. It is
probably the most refined piece of writing in the whole book. Almost equal to
it is the final paragraph. Why it comes second is that usually it is not a
factor in someone actually buying the book though I do know people who read the
end first to see whether they are going to like it!
The worst that can happen in writing is
finding too late that your novel is a cul de sac, that the end just
will not come or cannot be satisfactorily resolved. The second worst problem is
finding a perfectly adequate ending that leaves the reader feeling
underwhelmed. The third worst finale is disbelief and anger at being led up the
garden path to no purpose. The fourth is an artificial tying up of all the
loose ends – even though people love closure and have done so since the time of Dickens.
Modern audiences, however, want resolution tinged with a little uncertainty. Realism
should prevail and life is never that tidy.
Best endings tend to be the reverse. As I
was outlining above about opening paragraphs, repeated returns to the end game
help you, consciously or unconsciously, to find a path to the conclusion which
sits naturally in your narrative.
Since I write organically and have no idea of
the ending, I use my growing reminder sheet at the bottom of my draft to
suggest possible endings. Over time, these get scrubbed out, leaving the one
that will go live and even that will be modified at the very end. In Azimuth there are two stories, like
entwined DNA, both being long and complex and each ending falls, only two or
three pages from the other, at the very culmination of the book. You can read the reviews
of Azimuth on the Kindle site or on my Azimuth site (see below) to check out
the effect the endings have on readers.
In Misery
by Stephen King, the story hinges on a female fan of a novelist who kidnaps him
to try to stop him killing off the main character in a series of successful
books. An ending she could not condone after all the endings she has read in
the series. It is the perfect illustration that endings must satisfy. We
understand her fiendish fanaticism and identify with it. Thus, King provides us
with a great ending about the nature of endings!
After reading Azimuth, a friend said she felt bereft. “But what is happening to
those wonderful part-humans, now? she asked, “I miss them and worry about
them.”
Azimuth by Jack Sanger in paperback and PDF
at www.azimuthtrilogy.com
Azimuth by Jack Sanger in separate volumes on Kindle Amazon
Labels: Writing: endings
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