Category: the end

September 10, 2020 / 2 Comments

The End… Or Is It?

I don’t know if you can tell from that side but holy crap is the new Blogger a mess on this side.

I’ve been threatening to talk about endings for a while now. Shouldn’t be that big a deal, right? Easy topic.

One thing all of our books and stories and screenplays have in common is an ending. They’re going to be different for all of us, and for all of our different projects, but everyone of them has an end. Even if it’s part of a series, this discrete part of that overall story has concluded and another part will (hopefully) begin at some other time. Hopefully on the sooner side

Endings come in all shapes and sizes. They can be happy. They can be semi-positive. They can be ambiguous. They can be blunt. They can tease more potential story or be very, very clear this is the end. 

But one way or another… the story ends.

We don’t talk much about the fact that there are different types of endings. Not just in that happy-sad-ambiguous sense. In a structural, nuts and bolts sense. There’s also the type of ending where I think I might get to do another book someday, the ending where I know I’m going to get another book immediately, and the ending where I know that this is it, we’re done. Just to name a few.

Also, before I go much further, I’m going to toss around some terms here and I think some of them get used in very general, catch-all ways a lot of the time. Which I also think is what causes some of the issues I’m blathering on about. So some of my blathering may go against things you’ve been taught or picked up here and there.

That said, let’s lean into television for a moment. Yeah, I know most of you aren’t here for screenwriting, but I think this is a good, universal reference point. You should all understand what I’m talking about.

There’s a certain class of network show that tends to have what we might think of as a respawn point most of the time. No matter what’s happened, no matter what the characters have gone through, by the end of the episode they’re pretty much right back where they began—physically and emotionally. They’ve reset for new stories next week. We see this in a lot of sitcoms and even some one hour dramas.

There are also shows that have season arcs, with story elements that carry through from episode to episode. A lot of these end on dramatic revelations or beats that aren’t quite cliffhangers, but still compel the audience to think about what’s going to happen next.

What’s that? Why aren’t they cliffhangers? Good question. This is just my own musings, granted, but I think the big difference between a cliffhanger and a dramatic ending is where they compel us to pick things back up next time. What does the audience/reader need to see next? So it’s a structural, framing difference. If I’ve got a cliffhanger, the next chapter/episode/issue/book needs to begin right here, right at this moment where we left off. With a dramatic ending… the story can resume a little later. We’ve all seen this. “Three hours later, his mind was still reeling from this new information…”

Again, this is just my take, but I think it’s a take that hold up pretty well. And I’ve experienced the jarring results when someone sets up a cliffhanger, but then just treats it as a dramatic ending when the story resumes. Or doesn’t resume. Because if it doesn’t resume, that kinda kills the whole “needs to resume” aspect of it, doesn’t it?

I think it’s also worth noting that a lot of newer, bingeable content is created to be seen as one ongoing story. Each episode still has an ending, but they’re structured very deliberately to line right up with the next episode, more like act breaks than episode conclusions. These shows tend to have really powerful season finales, because that’s the ending that really matters—the one that makes us come back for next season.

And, as I mentioned above with books, there are the endings that imply the potential for more story if the opportunity arises (“hey, we don’t know if we’re renewed yet so just in case…”) and the ones that wrap everything up nice and tight. They all lived happily ever after.

Why am I blathering on about all of this?

Hopefully it’s clear that the type of ending I have—structurally–should give the reader a sense of what comes next. And what doesn’t come next. Again, this is an ending, which means… something should end.

That doesn’t mean I just stop typing. But I’ve seen that plenty of times in books and on some shows, and even a few movies. Things just… stop. The werewolves lunge down the street, our heroes raise their swords and shotguns to fight and wait why is the next page blank.

This is why I’ve been going back and forth with this for so many weeks. It’s tough to talk about endings because each one’s going to be unique to that story and that writer. I can’t say “Don’t do X” when X might be exactly what need to happen in your particular story. A lot of it is going to come down to each of us looking at our story with an honest, critical eye.

Let me toss this out, and then I’ll ramble on a little more. Have I actually ended my story? Or have I just stopped telling it? They’re not the same thing, and if I don’t realize that… well, that’s probably a bit or a red flag right there.

I think one thing we need to do, as writers, is make sure we’ve finished our stories. If my book is about a chosen one accepting his destiny and fighting the manifestation of pure evil… well, by the end of my book he should’ve accepted his destiny and fought the manifestation of pure evil. If my story is all about the school valedictorian desperately wanting to ask out the head cheerleader… at the end of the story she should’ve asked out the cheerleader. This is basic, three-act structure stuff. Once I’ve set up conflict, I need to resolve that conflict. If I don’t… I’ve kinda failed as a  storyteller. You remember what Chekov said about that phaser rifle hanging over the fireplace in act one, right?

Ahh, I see some hands and at least one scoffing shake of the head. Yes you did. I saw you. Let me slap down two provisos on this, not so much exceptions as places for a little more thought and that honest, critical eye I mentioned up above.

First, it’s not unusual for my protagonist’s stated goals to be different from the actual goals of the story. The valedictorian may think this is about asking out the cheerleader, but the book is more about her accepting who she is and gaining self confidence. Plus, she’s clearly supposed to be with the goth girl who paints all the drama club’s backdrops. So, yes, in this sense the resolution may not be the one the character hoped for or originally set out, but my story’s (hopefully) structured in a way that still makes this a cohesive whole.

Also, it’s not unusual for a story to veer off and for characters to suddenly find themselves with all new goals. Maybe the valedictorian had worked up her nerve, was approaching the cheerleader out in front of the school and oh holy crap! Cyborg werewolf kidnappers! They’ve got the cheerleader! And they’re going to infect her with lycanthropic nanites at midnightif the valedictorian doesn’t stop them! This is going to take all her computer and science skills, plus maybe some help from that goth girl who paints all the drama club’s backdrops…

Again, though, there should’ve maybe been a few tiny hints so this kidnapping wasn’t coming out of nowhere. Or didn’t happen in the back third of the book after 200 pages of high school drama and musings. It’s a goal that’s carried through the narrative and eventually achieved.

Second, there’s the possibility there’s more to this. Maybe my book’s part of a trilogy or an ongoing series. Maybe it’s in a shared universe and questions here are going to be answered over there. If the story’s going to continue on and spill over into other places, isn’t it normal that things won’t end yet?That questions will be left unanswered?

Well, yes and no. Sure, there may be three or four more books, or another season’s worth of episodes, or maybe a new issue in just a month. But that doesn’t change that this, the book I’m holding (or season I’m watching or what have you), is a single thing. Yes, The Hunger Games is a story of a ruling elite being overthrown by a rising rebellion, but book one (and two) are really the story of Katniss training for the arena and then surviving in the Games (again). If book one had ended with five people still alive in the arena, will she make it out, pick up book two in just ten months… well, you’re already laughing, aren’t you? I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t’ve bothered with book two after an ending like that. I’d bet a few million other people wouldn’t’ve, either.

Y’see, Timmy, this one book still needs to stand on its own . It may have threads or whole subplots that continue on in other places, but this book still needs to be a self-contained thing. It has to hold some kind of story within itself. Yes, the series might be about finding the six, errr… seven… Eternity Crystals (copyright 2020, Peter Clines), but what’s happening in this part of that overall story? Are my heroes involved in a big heist to get the Chronos Crystal, even if they don’t fully realize what it is yet? Or has an old friend distracted them away from their quest to help rescue a cheerleader from cyborg werewolf kidnappers? What goals have I set for my characters to accomplish in this book?

Because if this book doesn’t have any goals for them… what are my characters accomplishing? They either don’t have goals, or they have goals that aren’t met. Either way… not an exiting read. And not likely to get a lot of folks to book two.

Again, every ending is going to be unique to every book by every author. But the one thing they should all have in common is that things need to be resolved. No resolution means my characters (and my readers) are just kind of left flailing and unfulfilled.

Ultimately, the thing I need to remember is that the end of my book is it. This is the last chance to amaze my reader. My final chance to shape their emotions, to lock down what they think about my book. Once they turn that last page, it’s all in their hands.

We talk about first impressions, but the last impression means something, too. It’s what people are going to walk away with. How many books or shows or movies have you enjoyed—maybe really enjoyed—and then the end just left you snarling in frustration?

And why are we usually frustrated? Because we didn’t get answers. Because ultimately nothing happened. Because we feel like we wasted our time.

Stick the landing. Nail your ending. Get that phaser rifle down from the fireplace and make sure it goes off.

Speaking of endings (shameless plug) if the end of the world is your kind of thing, my latest novel–Terminus –finally came out in ebook last week. If you haven’t checked it out yet, it’s kinda fun and fairly inexpensive. If you have checked it out and enjoyed it, reviews are always appreciated.

Next time… I’d like to talk about jargon a bit.

Until then, go write.

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May 7, 2020

A2Q Part Twelve—Completion

Well. Here we are. One last time.

This is the final part of the A2Q, and I think this last topic is the thing that gets overlooked the most when people give out writing tips. In fact, a lot of writing advice dances quickly around it. Because it’s not a pleasant thing to think about.

That thing—the last part—is this.

Eventually you have to stop.

A lot of you’ve probably had someone tell you“writing is rewriting.” It’s one of those maxims that gets tossed around a lot. And it’s true. Sort of.

But the part they probably didn’t tell you is that rewriting is also a trap. It’s a rabbit hole you can fall down, working on draft after draft after draft. It becomes constant revisions, always finding something else to tweak, a better word to use, a more dramatic place to break those paragraphs in. It can keep you stuck in place, doing lots of work for smaller and smaller returns.

If you’ve ever followed any sort of exercise routine, you know that a key part of it is that you have to keep challenging yourself. You have to increase the weight or the reps. You have to run an extra mile, or get your time down by two minutes. If I keep doing the same thing again and again, the benefits of it begin to drop off. Eventually I plateau and I’m just here at this level. Not advancing in any way.

Weird as it may sound, writing is a lot like this. We need to keep pushing ourselves. To make our mental muscles flex and stretch and try new things. If we fall into a rut, we’re never going to accomplish anything.

I say this from experience. During the A2Q—and a bunch of other times here on the ranty blog—I’ve mentioned my first completed novel, The Suffering Map. It was my “just moved to California” novel and there’s a fair argument to be made that I spent close to twelve years working on it. Hell, most of those years were just the first draft (although, in all fairness, for almost seven of them I gave up on it and focused on screenwriting). There are nine different versions of it currently in my computer.

In the end, it got me some mild interest from a few agents. And that was it. Nothing else.

So around late 2006 I put it aside and started working on something new.

And this can be scary. It’s borderline terrifying to think we’re going to take this werewolf manuscript that we’ve been pouring all our great thoughts and clever ideas into for months (or years)—that we’ve put all this energy and effort into—and forget about it. It seems like a huge waste, doesn’t it? What was the point of doing all this if I’m just going to put it aside and move on?

Which is why sometimes… we embrace the trap. We might not admit it out loud, but sticking with this manuscript feels safe. Because stopping means we either need to risk rejection or admit it needs to get put away. Either of these can be a huge punch in the gut. But if I keep working on it, if I keep telling myself it’s just not quite ready yet… I can put off that moment.  I mean, it’ll happen soon, absolutely. As soon as I can do one more draft

And again, I’m saying this from experience. When I set The Suffering Map aside, I think I spent a week wondering if I was making a mistake. Should I give it one more look before filing it away? Maybe try one more submission? Was I giving up too soon?

But I finally embraced the truth. I’d done all I could with this particular manuscript, and it  wasn’t going to get any better. And neither was I. I needed to work with new characters in new situations. I had to follow some different paths, not the ones I’d walked back and forth on a dozen times and beaten down so nothing could grow there any more.

That’s where we are now with this book we’ve been writing. My werewolf book, your whatever-it-may-be book. I can’t tell you exactly when you’re going to reach this point, but it’s important to realize this point exists. Reaching it is good. It’s a normal part of the book-writing process—moving on to the next book.

What happens with this one? That’s going to be up to you. Maybe you’ll acknowledge it’s not quite ready yet, stash it away on a jump drive or in the cloud (maybe both, just to be safe) and move on. Maybe you’ll send it out to a dozen agents or publishers. Perhaps you’ll decide to publish it yourself. Again, it’s up to you to decide what’s right for you and your book.

Whatever the decision is, though, it’s time to say goodbye to this thing we’ve been working on and move on to something else. To let our brains shift into new patterns. Get them working on some different concepts, something new and exciting.

Because if we don’t, we’re just going to stall out.

And that, m’friends, is all I’ve got for you as far as how to write a book. How to take that tale out of your head and put it down on the page in the best way possible. Even at 110 pages on this end, I know it could’ve been a little denser in a few places. But I tried to keep this to easy-to-digest chunks and included links wherever I could. Plus, y’know… pandemic. And I was trying to finish an actual book of my own.

Anyway, I hope it was semi-educational and at least partially useful for some of you.

Next time… well, we’ll see what we’re all up for.

Until then, go write.

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August 15, 2019

The Body on Page One

Welllllll… guess there’s no putting this off, is there? In the end, this is where every story leads in the long run. I’ve crafted a fantastic character with some wonderful nuances and habits, and a detailed backstory.  It’s a character every reader can picture in their minds and relate to on a personal level.

And it’s time to slit their throat. Or watch them die from an awful disease. Maybe even have a zombie horde devour them.
Killing characters in a story is a delicate thing.  I don’t mean this in some artsy, poetic way.  I mean it more in a “stitch up that major artery up before he bleeds out” way. It’s something that has to be done just right for it to work. And just like stitching up an artery, if I’m only going to do a quick, half-assed job with it… I mean, why even bother?

Here’s a couple of loose guidelines for killing someone…
First off, if I’m going to kill a character… well, I need a character, right?  A real character.  I can’t expect there to be a lot of emotional impact from the death of a paper-thin stereotype.  I mean, killing paper-thin stereotypes is cool if I just want to drive a body count, but it’s not going to drive a plot and it’s not going to motivate anyone on a personal level.  It’s not going to affect the reader, either.  I can’t create Phoebe on page fifty, kill her on page fifty-one, and think it’s going to have any emotional weight—with the other characters or my readers.
Second, this death needs to drive my  plot forward.  That’s what good story elements do, right?  They keep the narrative moving—not necessarily upward or into positive place, but forward.  Killing a character who’s well-developed but has no connection at all to the plot doesn’t really do anything.
We’ve probably all seen storytellers who create unconnected charactersjust to kill them off a few pages later.  The plot’s heading into act two and we pause to meet Phoebe.  She’s thirty-three, blond, likes to wear combat boots with everything from jeans to her little black dress to her bikini on the way to the beach.  She’s been seeing a great guy for a couple of months now and she really think there’s a good chance she’s going to get a promotion (and a raise) at her job with OH, she’s dead.  The zombies got her.  Now let’s go back to the plot for a few chapters before I take a moment to introduce you to Wakko.  He’s a college dropout who went to work for the park service.  He’s also been seeing a great guy for a couple of months now (not the same one as Phoebe) and he’s been thinking it may be time to give him a key so they OH, the zombies got Wakko, too.

This kind of thing works once.  Maybe twice.  But it gets old fast because we all understand these people, as columnist Rob Bricken once put it, are just collateral damage. The characters don’t really do much and their deaths don’t actually accomplish anything in the story. They’re just narrative window dressing to make things look more serious instead of… y’know, actually making things more serious.

If I’m going to kill a character and have it mean something, it needs to have an actual affect on my story.  It should up the stakes, or be a new challenge for my characters as far as succeeding at one of their goals. If the big goal is to distribute the zombie cure that Dr. Carmichael designed, and we’re just waiting for her to arrive because she’s the only one who knows the formula, well suddenly it’s a big “oh CRAP” moment when we realize she’s Dr. Phoebe Carmichael who wears combat boots with everything. What are we going to do now??
Now, this leads into a Second-Point-One or maybe a little outline sub-A. It’s a very specific version of this we all want to watch out for. You may have heard of fridging. On the off chance you haven’t, it comes from an awful Green Lantern comic twenty-five years back where GL’s girlfriend was killed and stuffed in a refrigerator for him to find later. When we talk about someone getting fridged, it’s usually a woman, often a less-developed supporting character, who suffer a violent, horrific, and sometimes abusive end for no purpose except to be an inciting incident for the hero.  And maybe to let said hero get in some grief-filled, character-building monologues. Her death is all about him.
Don’t freak out. Not every female death is automatically a fridging. But it’s a good term to know and keep in mind if I’m going to fall back on the whole describe-and-die device, because it can slip into fridging very easily.

Third is that this death needs to fit in my story structurally.  I’ve mentioned before, the dramatic structure of a story needs to be a series of ups and downs.  There need to be slowly increasing challenges, which require greater efforts for my characters to overcome, and help build tension.  If I’m going to kill someone off, their death needs to fit within this general structure.

To go back to the example I just gave, if Phoebe’s the only one who knows the formula for the zombie cure, this could be horrible. In a good way. I’ve just dropped a huge, last-minute challenge between my characters and saving the day.

But if we got Phoebe to the bio-lab on page fifteen and the zombies pounced on page sixteen… that’s not going to come across as much of a challenge. We’ve got the whole book to figure it out, after all.  It’s definitely not going to have the same impact as her dying on page 300, because tension rises as my story progresses. I need to think about how much impact I want this death to have and where that means it needs to happen in my plot. Which is going to affect how I structure things. And why, yes, it is a juggling act, thanks for noticing.

Now, all of that being said…

Some writers claim killing characters is no big deal.  They almost brag about randomly ending lives in their stories. These folks have no qualms about killing characters because it tells their readers that nobody’s safe! Anything could happen! This is how real life works, which means it’s how art works!

I personally find this to be a really counterproductive and stupid approach. 

For a couple of reasons.

One is that we’re not talking about real life, we’re talking about fiction. Real life is chaotic and structureless and, yeah, people often die for no reasons at extremely inconvenient times. But in the stories I’m writing… I’m God. Every single thing that happens in my story is my choice.  My decision.  It’s part of my divine plan.  And if it isn’t part of my divine plan… well, why’s it in my story?

Which brings me to point two.  I just mentioned the juggling act a minute ago. If my characters are dying at random, that means their death isn’t advance any element of the story, which means my story doesn’t have any sort of dramatic structure to it. I mean, how can it have a structure if I’m just doing things randomly?

Plus, if I’m ninety pages in and Phoebe, my main character, is randomly tackled by zombies and maybe joins the hungry dead… well, what happens now?  Seriously. Did the story just end? Is Dot the main character now? If Dot’s the main character for pages 90 through 445… well, why did I spend those first ninety pages with Phoebe? Maybe I should’ve just started with Dot?

And that’s my third point.  Odds are a random, unstructured death just means failure.  One way or another, Phoebe’s blown it big time—even if it’s not her fault.  She died with her boots on but failed to reach her goals (she had goals because she was a real character, right…). Which means my readers just spent a hundred pages investing in someone who didn’t win.  On any level.  We’ve been identifying with a loser with crap luck (she must have crap luck—she just got randomly killed by zombies, right?). 

I don’t know about any of you, but that isn’t going to make me happy.
A good death (if there is such a thing) is going to have real characters. Their death is going to help drive the plot and create challenges.  And it’s going to happen at a point in the narrative that makes structural sense.  If I’ve got two out of three of those, I’m probably in good shape.  One out of three… maybe not so much.
And if I honestly don’t know if I’ve hit two or three of those points… well, maybe I should hold off on setting those zombies loose.

Next time, I’d like to talk about the next book.

Until then, go write.
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December 27, 2018 / 2 Comments

The End Times

            Joyous Kwanzaato all of you celebrating it.  If you’re more the Christmas type, I hope the day was happy and peaceful and Santa got you that one thing that’s been on your mind.  And I hope all of you are looking forward to the upcoming New Year.
            Speaking of which… as this year’s winding down I thought it’d be worth going over what got done this year.  I’ve mentioned before, I think, that sometimes people get a really disheartening idea of how much some authors produce on a weekly/monthly/yearly basis because they’ll catch somebody like Chuck Wendig or Victoria Schwab posting about a particularly productive day they had (or Jonathan Maberry posting about, y’know, a day that ends in Y…).  When you’re struggling to squeeze in a few hours a week, it can be kinda soul-crushing to see people who are writing five or six thousand words a day.
            So I thought I’d go over all my writing-related activities for the year.  Break down what got done and how long it took.  Keeping in mind, again, that this is my full-time job, so there’s some stuff I consider part of the writing job that might not actually involve writing a specific book.  As we shall see.
            Anyway…
            I wrote—and rewrote—a good chunk of a book called Dead Moon.  I started it seven years ago and it’s finally coming out in February through Audible.  I think it’s a much better, stronger book than it would’ve been if I’d written it back in 2011.  Partly because I’m a better writer (I like to think so, anyway), partly because I’m gotten to work with a lot of good editors over those seven years and they each pushed me to be a little sharper, a little better.
            As you’re reading this, I’m a little over 45,000 words into another book, one that ties together two previous ones I wrote.  Overall, it’s going smoothly so far, although I’ve lost about a week to the flu which led right into the holidays, and also a pulled back early this fall.  I’d wanted to be another 20-25,000 words along at this point, but I’m still happy where things are at.  I’m probably going to do a whole post on this one sometime in the spring, because it’s the first time I’ve really done a book start to finish from a full outline.
            Plus I’ve been working on an outline for my next book, too.  Still in the early days, fleshing out a few things, but I’m very excited about it.
            I wrote about fifty-five posts here at the ranty blog.  Yeah, the number down on the side bar is a little higher, but a couple of those posts were cartoons or memes or different con schedules.  I’m not sure how many, but enough that I should probably knock at least a dozen off that final number.
            Probably worth mentioning that this year I shut down another blog I’d had for a few years. It was mostly about my geeky toy soldier hobby and ways to save money with it.  Truth is, though, I just haven’t had time to put into those paperhammer projects that I used to.  Closing it down took a lot of stress and guilt off my shoulders for… well, not coming up with content for that blog.  So that’s probably something to remember, too.  There are times it’s worth it to stopwriting.
            Also worth mentioning that this was a pretty appearance-heavy year for me.  I appeared at five different cons, if memory serves, plus a few speaking engagements.  Plus the Writers Coffeehouse, and now the Dystopian/Apocalyptic bookclub at The Last Bookstore.
            Finally, a ton of reading.  I didn’t get to read as much as I would’ve liked these past few years, so in 2018 I made it a point that I wanted to read a lot of novels from a variety of authors, and try to read at least one a week.  It was energizing and enlightening and I can’t recommend it enough.  Expand your horizons.  I’m currently in the middle of book 51 for the year, and might even get into 52 this weekend.
            (there was a pile of comics in there, too)
            And there’s that.  How this professional writer spent his time this year.  And keep in mind I still had time to binge Lost in Space, Sabrina, and 3Belowwhile also keeping up with my CW shows and The Good Place.
            Oh, and move to another city.
            Almost forgot that part.
            What have you gotten done this year, writing-wise?  Did you hit your goals?  Get close?  Hopefully, if nothing else, it gave you a good sense of where your goals should be.  Did you push yourself too hard, or not hard enough?
            There is no right or wrong answer here.  The right speed for you is going to depend on what you want to get out of this and where you’re hoping to go with it.  There’s no reason for me–or for you– to compare myself to anyone else. It just matters that I’m getting something done.
            Maybe think about that a bit as 2019 rolls closer.
            On which note, I’m going to try to get some work done before we lunge into 2019.  Hope the holiday shave been good to you and continue to be so.
            Next time, I’ll probably be giving my start of the year spiel.
            Until then… go write.    

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