Mary Rosenblum writes SF under her own name and mysteries as Mary Freeman.  Author of more than 50 short stories and seven novels to date, her newest novel, ‘Horizon’ will be released by Tor Books in the fall of 2006.  She is also a Long Ridge instructor and web editor of the Long Ridge website.  You can visit her website at:  www.maryrosenblum.com

 

 

Ending It

by Mary Rosenblum

 

            You have a great story idea and a wonderful start.  You hit the ground running, charge through that dynamic opening, make it to the middle and suddenly….where’s the end?  It was clear in your mind, but not any more.  Or you figured you’d recognize the end when you got there.  Only you aren’t getting there.  And the story grinds to a halt, or simply meanders on forever, growing longer and unsaleably longer. 

            So what happened?  How do you find that end when it seems to be hiding from you? 

            Ends aren’t really elusive.  They hide to hide in plain sight.  Like your car keys when you’re running late.  There are couple of common reasons that endings fail to fall into place. 

 

            Where does ‘the end’ come from?  It’s not just a matter of tying up all the loose ends or saying ‘they lived happily every after’.  The end, in order to satisfy the reader, needs to originate in the beginning of the story.  In other words, the end needs to satisfactorily resolve the central conflict of the story, either positively or negatively.   If the central conflict of the story is not resolved, the reader is left feeling unsatisfied.  Since that central conflict begins at the start of your story, so too, does the end.   You can trace a path from that initial conflict to the final climax and resolution of your story, even if that patch meanders all over an interesting landscape as you progress.

 

            Right Resolution, Wrong Conflict

          Stories are organic entities whether you are writing in short form or novel length.  That is, they tend to grow and change.  As your characters take on more reality, as you think up new plot twists or angles, the story changes subtly.  In novel form, subplots shift the story in unexpected directions and secondary characters take on power and substance.  Eventually, you may find yourself telling a slightly new story.  It’s not quite the story you thought you were telling when you began writing.  What often happens is that a secondary conflict in the story grows in the course of the story until it becomes more important than your original ‘central’ conflict.  So your end, which resolves that original conflict, no longer seems to work.  The story feels unfinished, the end unsatisfying.  You simply are not resolving the conflict that now carries more power for the reader, so the end doesn’t work. 

 

            One way to deal with a story where the end feels unsatisfying is to simply put the story aside and think about it for awhile.  What problems do each of your main characters have in this story?  What is the external conflict?  Which of these conflicts are resolved by your ending?  Which are not?  It is possible that a conflict which you initially thought of as a secondary conflict or even a subplot has grown powerful enough to replace your original central conflict.  And your end may not address it sufficiently.  Give yourself some time to think about what is really going on in the story.  If you are involved with a critique group or have a good reader or two, remove that final scene or two and give the body of the story to your readers.  Ask them how they think it needs to end.  Their responses may make you more aware of a conflict that has taken over your story. 

 

            What Conflict Where?

            But what about the story that seems to go endlessly on, getting longer and longer, surpassing market maximum word counts one after the other? 

            Again, an ending needs to resolve the central conflict.  But it is possible to write a story that has no central conflict. This is not good. It tends to result in a story that really does not engage readers.  Characters do things, but the story lacks drama….not action, per se, but a sense of an imbalance that needs to be fixed.  That tends to be what engages readers whether that imbalance is the disharmony between siblings that is driving them apart, or a knight who must slay a dragon in order to save the kingdom. 

            Frequently, a story that runs on and on and on incorporates lots of small conflicts…battles, arguments, close calls in traffic, narrow escapes, but lacks a central imbalance that drives the entire story.   This is a particularly common problem in novels that include a large number of Point of View characters.  Each character has his or her own conflicts, but often, the story lacks an overarching conflict that drives all the characters toward an end.  Therefore that end….one that brings the whole story to a close…may never reveal itself.  There is no central conflict to resolve.  One pitfall here is the end that simply ties up all the personal conflicts of those many POV characters so that the final chapters become something like a laundry list of individual resolutions. 

 

            Look to the Story For Your End

            If you’re having trouble coming up with the correct end, take a good look at your story.  What is the central conflict…the one in this draft, not the one you thought of when you first conceived the story?  Does your end resolve it?  Are you sure there isn’t a stronger conflict hiding in here?  Often, as you create a more realistic character, that character’s personal conflict may grow larger and stronger until it actually becomes more powerful than an external conflict that you originally intended as your central conflict.  Think about what needs to be resolved and for whom.  What ending will offer that resolution?  See if it works better than what you have.  This is a very common problem in short fiction, where the story can quickly morph into something slightly different as you begin to write the scenes.  

 

            If the story just meanders on, ask yourself if you actually have a central conflict, or are your characters all dealing with their own personal conflicts independently?   While multiple POV characters will have their own subplots and agendas in a novel, they should all be involved, in some way, with a central conflict.  That is what provides unity to a large, sprawling novel, and also provides an ultimate end point.  

 

            Remember…the end comes from the beginning, along with that central conflict.  If you know your central conflict, that ending should be waiting for you.