I am so terrible at ending my stories. If I could, I'd let them go on forever and ever, or end abruptly in the middle. In fact, I'm writing this blog post to avoid coming up with an ending for my NaNoWriMo novel's third story.
Can't I just scrawl "That's all, folks!" across the page and let Porky Pig stammer it to my audience? No, I can't. So I have to do something else.
I've discovered that Planning (as opposed to Pantsing, the NaNoWriMo name for flying by the seat of your pants and writing your novel with no outline or basic plan for where your story is going to go) helps me with this problem. In Epilogue last year, I had no idea where my characters were going to end up, so when I wrote the ending, it caused a lot of inconsistencies. (There's a wall around the city at the end, but earlier, one of the characters said he had walked across several states to get there... if he told the truth, that's a story hole; if he lied, I should have explored that and figured out why he did so.)
This year's novel is split into three separate stories. I think it's easier to end a short story because it gives me less time to trail away from the original plan of the story. I don't get distracted by what the gamer side of me thinks of as side quests, and I drive at the ending the whole time. I Pantsed the first story, Planned the second, and I'm Planning the hell out of the third... but I'm at the end of my outline and can't come up with an acceptable ending.
Unfortunately, I don't have some secret, awesome way to come up with my endings... do you? If so, let's make a deal...
Can't I just scrawl "That's all, folks!" across the page and let Porky Pig stammer it to my audience? No, I can't. So I have to do something else.
I've discovered that Planning (as opposed to Pantsing, the NaNoWriMo name for flying by the seat of your pants and writing your novel with no outline or basic plan for where your story is going to go) helps me with this problem. In Epilogue last year, I had no idea where my characters were going to end up, so when I wrote the ending, it caused a lot of inconsistencies. (There's a wall around the city at the end, but earlier, one of the characters said he had walked across several states to get there... if he told the truth, that's a story hole; if he lied, I should have explored that and figured out why he did so.)
This year's novel is split into three separate stories. I think it's easier to end a short story because it gives me less time to trail away from the original plan of the story. I don't get distracted by what the gamer side of me thinks of as side quests, and I drive at the ending the whole time. I Pantsed the first story, Planned the second, and I'm Planning the hell out of the third... but I'm at the end of my outline and can't come up with an acceptable ending.
Unfortunately, I don't have some secret, awesome way to come up with my endings... do you? If so, let's make a deal...
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