@writeworld-blog / writeworld-blog.tumblr.com
by Liz Bureman
For those who might not be familiar with the term, a Pyrrhic victory is technically a win, but the results of the victory or the casualties incurred in the process of achieving the victory are absolutely devastating to the victor, either physically or emotionally, to the point where calling the campaign a victory is arguable depending on the observer's perspective.
Endings define stories. A great ending can make everything that’s come before seem retroactively great. A weak ending can ruin everything. But why do they have to be so impossible to write? And is there any trick for crafting a strong ending that doesn’t involve endless misery?
As some of you already know, I just finished a book a few days ago titled The Glorious In-Between that contains two asexual, aromantic characters. It took me almost a week to write the ending. This has been true for every book I’ve ever written, from When Stars Die to The Stars Are Infinite.
I don’t know why endings are so difficult for me to write. It isn’t that I’m getting to the end of the book and I don’t want it to end, because I do want it to end! I desperately want to finish the dang draft! I just tend to slow down, and I can’t even explain why this is so.
Endings are hard, regardless of whether or not you can blow through one in a day or drag yourself through the next couple of days trying to get that ending down.
The book has to end, though. It has to tie up all loose threads (an exception can be made for books in a series) and end in a way that is both satisfying and unpredictable.
First, let me present the five types of endings:
If you know these five types of endings, you’ll at least be able to choose how you’d like to end your book, depending on the progression of your book. You don’t want to do an unhappy ending for the sake of an unhappy ending. The ending you choose has to make sense with everything that has occurred in your book.
One thing that used to happen to me in the past is that I would write the draft of the book but not write the ending and let the draft cool. I’d write the ending in the revisions. That has worked for me, but it’s something I’m not interested in doing anymore. I just want to get the ending over with.
You can outline your ending in detail. I did not do that. I just wrote the ending by the seat of my pants. I binge wrote The Glorious In-Between, so it was exhausting having to outline it, too, at the same time. I’m not sure if this is going to happen with All Stars Align, which will be the title of the third book in The Stars Trilogy. I already know exactly how I want to end the third book, but that doesn’t mean the ending won’t be any less difficult for me to write. After all, I already knew how I wanted to end The Glorious In-Between before I even began outlining it.
In any case, the best endings for any book are endings that leave the readers remembering that book. After all, everything can be great and fantastic, until you get to the ending. It doesn’t matter how much your reader loved your book before the ending. If the ending is poor, readers are going to finish your book with a bad taste in their mouths—and then most likely forget they ever read that book.
You don’t want that to happen.
Resonance with endings can occur through narration, dialogue, and description.
Here are some final tips for your ending:
Anonymous asked: i have to write a end to my romance, and a want a non-everyone lives happily ever after-ending. but i dont know how to make it! help please! p.s.: im brazilian and my english is not very good. forgive my mistakes
Here are a few options for you to consider. You’ll have to decide which if any of these would work for your story: 1) Break-up
Break-ups are a great way to end a fictional romance. It could be a mutual decision, a one person decision, or perhaps an outside factor (parents, politics, job offer in another city) forces them apart. 2) Death You could always have one of them die, as heartbreaking as that would be. However, if you go that route, you really want to make sure you have a good reason for it. You never want to kill a character for the sake of having an unhappy ending. 3) Uncertain Future Another possibility would be to tie-up the story, but establish that the couple has an uncertain future together. Whichever direction you go, try to let your story naturally guide you to the right ending. You might be surprised which direction it takes you. :)
by Gladstone for Cracked.com
As readers of a site that welcomes and encourages submissions, there's a decent chance some of you want to be writers. Several months ago, I wrote an advice column on how to go aboutfreelancing for the Internet and magazines, but some readers have their sights set on short fiction or even novels. And right now, some are contemplating education choices like picking a major or attending graduate school to get that MFA.
Let me be clear: Education is wonderful. There is nothing you will ever learn that you will not ultimately use. Conceptually, I am fully in support of a liberal arts education, even when there is no obvious and immediate application of that knowledge to daily life. However, with rising costs in an appalling economy, racking up that debt seems harder to justify, and I find myself agreeing more and more with a column Robert Brockway wrote years ago questioning the need for college. I'm not going quite that far yet, but I have soured on graduate programs -- particularly MFAs. (Brock's still wrong about Nirvana's cover of Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World" being superior, by the way.)
It's a very personal choice, but consider this: Every important thing I've learned about writing I learned from a writer. Yes, one of those writers was a college professor (not grad school), but for the most part, I got all my best storytelling lessons from interviews I saw on TV or read in books. That makes sense, right? Who better to explain writing than writers? And yes, of course many MFA programs employ distinguished writers who can impart these lessons to you directly, and that's great if you can afford it, but the knowledge is out there. Writers are showoffs who like to talk and give advice, and they like talking about writing most of all. Every one of these tips below can be learned for free, and I promise you, I could never have written my forthcoming novel, Notes from the Internet Apocalypse, without them.
