Endings...?

[Bane]

I have a problem ending stories before they get boing. Like on "The Love of the Blind". I don't know how to end it where it is and go to the next installment, which is much after that. Or the first one, which explains the fever that blinded Minoa. How do you end a story without a total cliffhanger that can't be answered?

[Kath]

I guess it may help to look at the aspects of your characters lives which appear in the story. Your characters have lives which begin and end outside the small segment which you write about, so you wouldn't expect everything to be tied up neatly. But, you have written a story about them - why? You're showing us something special happening in their lives, but there's no real need to leave us with either of the options of (a) nothing of interest happens to them ever again, or (b) Something exciting happens next, but you're not going to write about it. For all the reader knows, anything can happen after the story ends, and if you've written about the characters/setting well, we should be able to extrapolate into likely futures. The main thing is, we'll have learned something over the course of the story, maybe about the protagonist, or maybe just about their world/society - regardless of what it is, we expect to see some development in a story. Character development, resolution of a specific plot point, the passage of time healing physcial/emotional wounds... all that kind of thing.

In your recent story, you introduce a young blind woman, who is searched and eventually impresses. Clearly, she has a past, which has been rather eventfull! Also, although she's making the best of things, you show what she's lost (i.e. drawing ability and an un-structured lifestyle). Then, you give her back those things via search & impression. As it stands, it's a happy ending, almost too good to be true. You could continue to show her life in the weyr, but that in itself doesn't add very much, unless some form of conflict is thrown in as well... but you can easily go overboard here, and that's the risk of a big cliff-hanger - the oh-look, the story's still going on, big event.... which comes across resoundingly hollow. It's not the events themselves that are interesting - it's how your characters deal with them. How does Minoa change? How has she become better equipped to deal with what life throws at her? How many more problems does she have? Will the dragons simply be a crutch for her, rather than leading to full independence? How does the opinion of her peer group change? If you're trying to get an ending for this section of her story, I'd be inclined to find some closure on what you've shown us to date, i.e. her life changing utterly. The story doesn't need to simply stop, but you can have characters do a bit of summing-up/re-evaluating their lives. As it is, I'd expect that Minoa would struggle both to regain certain skills (drawing) and learn new ones (caring for her dragonet)... but so long as we see that she's determined to keep at it, we don't need to see her actually attain those goals.

I don't know if this is really helpful or not... bit too tired to get my thoughts out clearly!

[TamTam]

Yeah, Bane, I have a bit of a problem with endings, too. How do you end a story (chapter, installment, etc.) before it gets boring? I don't. I just keep writing until I run out of ideas. Sure, it gets a little further than it needs to, but that's what editing is for. I pick it up again after a few days, re-read it, and can usually pick out where the ending is supposed to be.

Yeah, it's more work than I need to put in, but better to write too much than too little.

[Ghyle]

One thing I find helpful to me is remembering that short stories demand a unity of effect, and a tighter focus. That is, everything should be working to the one goal, and I cut away anything that doesn't work towards that one goal, irrespective of its effect or efficaciousness.

[Anareth]

I like to have a climax (not necessarily the end of the book in terms of pages) in mind that I'm working for. If that changes a little bit, well and good, or if I change how I'm planning to get there, fine, but it helps to have an idea of what the big point is. In my case I usually have a visual tableaux in mind, but I think visually. You may have a sentence or something in mind. But it definitely needs a goal. As Kath says, you're probably not wrapping up a person's entire life, but you should have a point you're aiming for.

[Bane]

I ask because I've never actually had this particular problem before. I've written short stories for contests that summed up a great deal of events in 9 (the first, about a natural disaster. I blew up a world) and 12 (the second, about Mars 2099. Aliens and humans fell in love. Written in 3 hours) pages. Both got first place. I had no problem with the ending.

My problem here is that there is more to this story that I will write later as a separate post/thread. This was actually a series of three, my hands just started writing the middle part :irked: first. I have started the first part, and will begin the third later. My problem is I don't know how to end the segment. I want to get the animosity of the WW, and Minoa's feelings of being (fixed or fulfilled, hopefully you get what I mean here) after the Impression with Minoth. Then, it will go into the third piece that is 3-4 Turns after the first. I've never written in this style before, so that's probably my problem right there.

I an write some pretty good stuff in hours when I am under pressure. It has a good beginning (the natural disaster showed a great picture of the doomed planet), a strong middle/climax - which I put there because it fit - (the romance between the diver studying the volcano that would eventually play a part in the death of the planet and the geographer trying to get everyone off the planet in time), and an ending (a description of the planet exploding, expanding, and the eventual catching up of the pieces of the planet with the ship that the geographer was on).

Maybe, I should not write like this anymore. I should get an idea and give myself a deadline several hours after I start, and just work. I had some breaks through the day, but the second story took me a cummulative 3 hours to write throughout the day at school. I think I work better that way. I didn't even have time to proofread before I sent it in to the contest. I think maybe the judges looked at it and said, "This thing is at least eight pages longer than any other one. We don't have time to read this. Give the writer first." I know there had to be mistakes in it. I'm not the most organized writer, which is why I can't do an ending very well. I'll figure it out eventually, but this one may go unended for a while. I may just leave it as it is. What I have so far is good...:erm:

[Brenda]

Since you know already that it's only part of the whole story, you really don't need a climax. Trilogies often have a cliffhanger in the middle. You could try writing it all as one instead of posting it in three different threads.

[Vyon]

Or put it aside and come back to it later. Not too much later or you'll have lost the thread of where you were going to.