The End of All Things: Getting from the middle to the end, and closing your story.

Over the past few weeks I’ve brought up the two of the three basic components of a story: The Beginning, and The Middle. Today we’re going to wrap up the storytelling trifecta discussing the words all writers are aiming for… The End.

There are two ways to look at endings. First would be the ending of a standalone story. Second is the dual ending that indicates a series. We’ll step into some detail about both of these types of writing.

Standalones

Whether it’s a novel, a short story, or even a flash fiction piece like those from last week’s competition. Standalone stories are those that are told from start to finish in a single book. They are stories that need to be wrapped up satisfactorily such that the reader feels like the story is indeed over. These stories may be part of a series, but can still be classed as standalones in that each book does not require a previous story be read to get to know the characters. Examples of basic standalone novels would be Stephen King’s or Sandra Brown’s books. Standalone series writers include folks like Lee Child, whose Reacher series or Ian Fleming’s Bond books. Those can be picked up at any point in the series and read as individual stories on their own merit, or read in any order without ruining the story line.

Having a good ending in paramount in any novel. Notice: Good Ending does not necessarily equal Happy Ending. This is an important distinction to remember depending upon the format, the audience, and the genre of the story.

Format is important because depending on the length of the story (novel, novella, short, flash, etc) you may or may not have room to build a happy ending. But an ending that leaves most of the closure to the imagination, preferably in an easy to imagine way, can be just as satisfying.  Not all genres demand a happy ending either. Quite often thrillers, horror and crime stories end with a good, but decidedly unhappy ending where the good guys are badly injured or perhaps even die, the town is destroyed, etc. The old Twilight Zone episodes were terrific for this type of satisfying but not very happy ending where the viewer was left with the knowledge that rather than things going nicely for the hero of the story he/she ends up going mad instead and being carted away in a straightjacket. The classic William Shatner Episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” is a perfect example of this.

One the other hand some books in those same genres are perfectly good with happy endings. It all depends on the preferences and style of the author, and what you want your audience to feel when then put the book down at the end. The point here is that you don’t have to end with everyone smiling and hugging and rainbows in the sky for it to be a satisfying ending. One of my favourite books of all time, and probably the closest thing to a romance I’ll ever admit to reading, is The Thorn Birds. No spoilers here, but that book had one of the least happy, yet most satisfying endings I’ve ever enjoyed.

Ongoing Series

Now, for series books the rules above apply, but there is the additional aspect that the story does not end at the end of the first book. The reader is left with that ever popular dilemma know as … Duh, Duh, Duuuhnnn … The Cliffhanger!

Ongoing series books are those that carry a single story, and usually multiple side stories, from one book to the next building on each preceding story usually with the characters growing or otherwise changing throughout the series. Great examples of this type of building series include writers like George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series, or Ken Follet’s Centuries Series where we watch the characters grow from young to old over the course of three, four, or more books. One of my favorite historical fiction writers, Bernard Cornwell, took twenty one books to lead Richard Sharpe from being an illiterate private in Wellington’s Army in India to retiring as a highly literate Colonel after the Napoleanic Wars. In each book Sharpe grew older, wiser and stronger. But each individual book in the series also had to have some sort of ending that closed that story satisfactorily.

The key with keeping an ongoing series running yet having that good ending to each book is to have multiple simultaneous endings for each title.  This also means having multiple plot lines for each book. One plot line would be the main theme that carries on throughout the entire series, in Sharpe’s case watching him grown from slum kid to famous soldier and wondering how he will survive each thing as he moves through, this will be the cliffhanger that makes the reader want to learn more about the character of your story.

In addition to that main theme there has to be a more urgent plot line that runs through only the one book and has all of the ups and down and twists of a standalone book. This theme, it could also be multiple themes, should have closure by the end of the book.  For example the first book of George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones has three minor theme endings:

1. Robb becomes King of the North

2. John ‘takes the black’ and joins The Wall

3.  Daenerys becomes The Mother of Dragons

Those minor endings each close out the book with a sense of satisfaction, while still allowing the cliffhanger that will introduce the next books…still in the making.

So, there you have it. Endings are uber-important.

Whether your books are individual episodes with no expectation of ever meeting those characters again, or if they are ongoing series that will pull readers back time and again, you have to end each book with a bang that signals the party is over.

Next week …. How to make your stories seem alive AKA… “Show Don’t Tell”.

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Winner of the Flash Fiction Contest is......

And the first place winner is: .... drum roll please .... .... .... .... ...

Susan Montgomery!!
Her story was very vivid from the get go, and before we got to the end I could easily picture the whole scene, even felt like I had been rained on.

Both of the others were very good as well and therefore tie for second place. Great job all of you. 

Send an email to me at basil (at) basilsands (dot) com and I will send you the information to download your choice of free audiobook or ebook.

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CONTEST - FLASH FICTION - Write a story in 100 words or less - Prizes

We've been discussing putting together the elements of a story, beginning, middle and end. This week I'd like to have a short practice session involving those three parts and winning prizes, or what some would call a CONTEST!!

Contest details are below, but make sure to read the rest of the post first.

Flash Fiction is a type of writing that puts an entire story together in a very short format. Flash Fiction can be classed as ranging from less than 1000 words total to as few as, well...very few indeed.

Hemingway was once challenged to write a complete story in the fewest words possible. His response was:

"For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn"

In six words he was able to convey a complete picture. To the imaginative reader we can see the loss and tragedy of the parent who is writing this advertisement. We can picture the entire scene and fill in the blanks with the rest of the story from our imaginations.

One great way to start is to get a mental image of something either physical or a memory. Perhaps using a prompt like the image outside your window or a picture you see.

Here is an example of Flash Fiction I wrote a while back based on a picture I liked:

Sir William Longs For Home

I left my house of stone and cold to fight for glory in a land of sand and fire.

My skin is blistered and raw, Saracen scars now mar my face and arms and I’ll be damned if I ever think of the sun as an honest friend.

This cursed sun that bakes us in the day, and vanishes at night to let us freeze near to death.
God, I cannot wait to stand on cool grey stone, and be warmed at will by the fire in my hearth, and my wife’s soft skin.

*****

The Gate

The old man looked him and pointed a bony finger to the massive round gate atop the hill.

"None who've climbed all the way have ever returned"

The young man stared in awe and said, "It must be like heaven on the other side, that they’d never return."

The old man nodded.

"That," he said, "or a slippery steep drop."

*****

The trick of course is to make sure the story works without the reader seeing the picture.

So, without further adieu... THE CONTEST.

For the sake of this challenge we're going to make the word count goal very short, closer to Hemingway's story than the other end of the spectrum.

Contest rules:

Topic/Theme: Any
Rating: PG-13 or lower (no erotica or f-bombs or excessive profanity...my judgement rules)
Length: 100 words or fewer (yes that's one hundred words or less). 
Challenge Ends: September 20th, 2013
Who: English Speaking World

And there are PRIZES as well.

Best Flash Fiction as voted on by me will receive a $10 Amazon gift card and your choice of either one (1) signed paperback, or two (2) ebooks, or two (2) audiobooks from any of my works. Second place receives choice of one (1) ebook or one (1) audiobook from any of my works.  If military thrillers aren't your preference, you are free to give them as gifts to someone else.

1st and 2nd place entries get posted on my Facebook and Website with credits to the winners. Who knows what agents, publishers, or other interested parties may see it there???

So...Ready....Steady....GO!!

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In the Midst of the Middle: The part that makes the story a story

Okay, so after last week’s post on starting with a bang on that first line you carried on and your first few pages are done right? If not, you need to get going. While the story juice is flowing keep that momentum. That is one of the keys to writing a novel, momentum. Once the story starts the reader needs to be kept interested throughout the rest of the book. Many writers start off with a strong picture of the beginning and the ending of their book, but have no clue about what to do with the other two or three hundred pages between that first and last chapter.

It doesn’t matter if you have a great beginning and a spectacular ending, if you don’t have a middle that people want to travel all the way through, you don’t have a story. So just how do you go about building the middle of the story without muddling through a wasteland of description and unnecessary fluff?

Some writer’s guides extol the virtues of a three-act play, some prefer a five-act set up. Either are basically the same thing done in different manners. Chiefly you need the following elements in your story:

1.       The setup or Act 1

This is the part we talked about last week, those first lines and that first chapter that gets your audience interested in the characters and wanting to find out what is going to happening to them next. This part of the story includes those first lines and the first chapter or two in which you take the reader out of their everyday world and make them see some cool new world in which they can live in their imaginations for twelve to twenty hours or more of reading. Once you’ve hooked them on this part of the story and they delve deeper you need to make sure it stays interesting.

2.       The Middle, aka Act 2 thru however many acts you use before the end

Keep the action going like a rollercoaster. A key to keeping your readers interested as you develop your characters is to build tension throughout the story. Whether you are building a taut psychological thriller, an action packed anti-terrorist thriller, a dark crime noir novel, a sci-fi / fantasy epic or a cozy mystery you need to keep some level of tension moving through each and every chapter. And all of that tension must lead toward the ending you as the writer can already see.

3.       The Ending, Final Acts

This is your wrap up. This is where you pull it all together, make the big fight scene / discovery moment / nabbing the bad guys. This is where it all comes together. And this is another blog post, because we’ve got to get that middle built first.

On the Middle

There’s a lot of debate on how to get from 1 to 3. Do you build an outline that details out the steps you need to take to get from the beginning through the middle to the end? Do you just write by the seat of your pants and hope it all comes together in the end? To be honest there are a lot of big name authors on both sides of the debate. The choice you make as to how you will get from Point A to Point C all depends on your personal style.

My first four novels were all written via the “seat of my pants” method. In this style of writing you start off with a premise and just go forward with little or no pre-planning and let the story unfold on the page as it happens in your head. This can be a very exciting way to write, because even as the author you don’t know what’s happening next. Characters suddenly pop into the story out of nowhere, and events unfold before your very eyes surprising you, even though they’re coming out of your own head. The plus side of ‘seat of your pants’ writing is that the story is fresh and exciting as you put it on the paper. Basically, the story tells itself. Most new writers start with this method and quickly discover the down side to being a ‘pantser’. If you are not a naturally image centric person with a very sharp sense of improvisational imagination that can change directions on a dime without losing the focus on the end goal you will likely get lost in the story and find yourself unable to wrap up the ending in any form that makes sense.

Outlining on the other hand is a much more scientific path to take, and while it may seem like a lot of work…okay…it is a lot of work…it can make the story very strong and coherent. It is easy to feel overwhelmed at the thought of outlining the entire novel in advance. But as I have gained experience in writing I can honestly say it is a much better way if you can do it. Sadly not all of us can do a straight outline before writing the parts of the story that are popping out to us. If like me you are easily distracted by shiny things and your muses are a constant source of brain chatter (click here learn what I mean about my muses), trying to get the whole book outlined before writing the cool parts is daunting indeed. Therefore I mix it up a bit.

My latest novella, Blade of Hearts, and my current work in progress (aka WIP), working title “ICE HAMMER”, I used a combined outline / seat of the pants styles. In other words, after agreeing on the beginning and end points of the story I did an outline of the first fifty percent of the story before writing anything else. Then as it got going I put any changes I saw coming into the outline before I reached that point. Kind of like that 80s episode of the Twilight Zone ‘Matter of Minutes’ where a couple discovers that all the events of time are set up by a bunch of blue men just an hour or so ahead of them actually occurring.

In doing a running outline ahead of time you can keep track of where your characters need to be heading from one scene to the next and keep them moving to the fixed end point. You don’t have to outline every detail of every scene. The outline can be as simple as a general path toward the end. On the other hand, it can be as complex as you like if you are a more detail oriented planner. The key is not to get muddled in the middle of the story, to keep flowing, and keep the tension ratcheting up gradually so as to hold the reader in the story until the big ending.

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Fresh beginnings: Starting your story

So, you've got a story you want to tell. You can see the characters in your head and sense the story starting to roll around your imagination. You get out pen and paper, or fire up the computer and open your word processor, stare and that blank white space in front of you and...nothing.

A few ideas of opening lines pop out, you write them down, read them over, then erase them. You just can't seem to get this thing moving. Well, here are a few hints, tips and tricks I've learned after pounding away at four novels, a novella, and over a dozen short stories.

1. Hook your reader with the first lines.

That's right, get them started right away into the action of your story. Pull them in from the very start and don't let them go. Here are a few pretty good first lines:

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. —George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. —Paul Auster, City of Glass (1985)

Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu. —Ha Jin, Waiting (1999)

The moment one learns English, complications set in. —Felipe Alfau, Chromos (1990)

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. —C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)

Do you see what those first lines do? They grab your attention and make you think, "What?" And once you've thought that, you have to read on to find out just what the author is talking about.

2. Starting with that first line be active from the very beginning.

Don't start your book with descriptions or explanations to set the scene. Instead, write as if the reader has just stepped into the scene and carry on as if they can see it for themselves. This may, to a new writer, sound like hogwash.

"But don't I have to explain what is going on first so the reader knows where they're at?"

No, you don't because you are going to show them where they're at by the way the scene plays out. 

Basically the idea here is that they just turned a corner and BAM! they walked into your scene. Their imaginations can fill in a surprisingly large amount of information.

In my own novels I have started with a spaceship crashing to the earth (Karl's Last Flight), a terrorist slicing a betrayer's throat (65 Below), a POW being dragged from a prison cell (Faithful Warrior), and a CIA hit man witnessing his wife killed before his eyes (Midnight Sun). These are grabbers that make the reader go "Whoa what?" And then they want to know what happens next.

3. Introduce your main characters or set up that introduction early on.

You don't have to introduce the main good guy necessarily. You could introduce the main bad guy, but the first chapter should introduce at least one or two characters that are going to be with the reader for the entire story.

4. Try to avoid cliche starts

"It was a dark and stormy night" worked a couple centuries ago...not so much today. Most writers recommend avoiding starting your book with weather in general. But my opinion is that if the weather is part of the action, then why not. In some books, like my best selling novel 65 Below, weather is practically a character in itself. But do be careful, you don't want someone picking up a book and going "Oh, another one of those stories."

5. Hook the reader with the first lines.

What? That sounds repetitive? Well, that's because it is. The concept of hooking the reader with the first lines is of crucial importance to any story. So much so, that it bears repeating in a list like this.

So, there you go. A handful of tools and tips that might help you get started.

And now, an exercise.

For all you aspiring writers out there in the comments section below give us a few starting lines and I will critique them. How are you going to start your story?

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