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"How do I fix my ending?" It'a certainly a cry I have made! A short story I am working on right now, in fact, made me wail and scream about the ending. I wish I had read this article a week ago! Instead, I felt my way backwards, tap tap tapping my way to see where the fault lay, and then spacking the whole and rewriting the ending. In an unconscious way, I did what Nancy suggests. But golly I wish it had been conscious! Much less whining from me then!
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We must be doing 'synchronised writing'! I've been writing a short story which fizzled at about three-quarters of the way through. I went back to it a few times, and couldn't see how to end it, until a couple of days ago, when it struck me that the brother of the protagonist could come into play and have an about-turn on his previous behaviour. Eureka! And yes, 'consciously' being aware of this process, of utilizing a secondary character to swing the ending around to a differetn angle, will make life easier! Thanks for that. :-)
ReplyDeleteNeat idea, eh? Thanks for the link, Sarah!
ReplyDeleteEndings are the most difficult part of a story I think. I'm going to apply this advice to a story that I have had sitting in the "I don't know what's wrong with this" basket for over a year.
ReplyDeleteI did something similar recently. The ending of this particular story has been making me sick. It was soppy, "and they lived happily ever after' ending - yuk!.So I shelved it for a while and then decided to 'kill' a secondary character and ta-da! the whole story got a different angle, a nice ending and a new title. I simply went 'what if'. Now I only need to find some guts to send it out :).
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