  Short Stories
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Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
--Emma Coats, Pixar storyboard artist, in her 22 Rules of Storytelling
Endings are what we read a story for - - or at least they should be, shouldn't they? Certainly the journey is part of the destination but what is it that keeps us reading? We want to find out how it ends, right? Which part is the most dissatisfying if it fails to gel with the rest of the tale? If the beginning falls flat, we may simply not finish a story. We might click away in frustration if a story does not click in a more metaphorical sense.
The necessity, then, is to craft a story where the ending satisfies the reader's efforts.
I have been, over the past few years, honing my craft to get better at actually finishing the things I start. It's hard for me in a sense, because the majority of my writing history has been "seat of pants" flash fiction where, eh, okay, if there's an ending, there's an ending, whatever. It's really been a recent development for me, the past two years or so of my writing, where I want to plan things out.
I think this is common for a lot of us as writers-- to simply want to see where the journey takes us. And that's fun and it has its place, but at the same time, knowing where a story is meant to end has a power for the writer.
There are a few possible ways this power might manifest. For example, having planned out where a story is meant to end, finding (and possibly subverting) the threads of plot action -- the necessary actions for the story to move forward toward the planned arc of execution-- becomes much easier when you know where that thread needs to go.
Knowing where the story is headed also means that even if your cart goes off course, a little careful charting can reroute it with minimal lost time-- and the story may even be better for the detour. Sometimes those detours can prove more interesting than the ending you've chosen; usually, that means the ending you've chosen might not necessarily be the endpoint that would work best, and that's okay, too. There's nothing carved in stone (yet).
Planning takes a little bit of prep work and I've found that when all else fails, a quick look at what could NOT possibly happen in the end of your story makes it easier to spell out what possibly could. (Another great tip from Emma Coats's list, below.) All it takes is the willingness to set out a plan of action where the end point is in sight.
The sky is the limit, so they say, but if we're going to be fair, you don't need to aim far to hit your target.
Until Next Month,
Take care and Write on!
~j
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Feedback from last week's NL: "Does Genre Matter?"
Jeff  writes:
Wonderful NL, J! As much as I love coming up with interesting twists and unique takes on familiar settings, stories, and genres, I think it's important to realize that the genre itself is popular for a reason. As often as we want something new and fresh (it's a western... IN SPACE!), there's just as often a market for something that's comfortably set within the confines of a familiar genre (like a western that's just a western).
Thank you, SoCal! You are in something of a unique position to comment on genre and storytelling, and how one might try to make it "unique" or edgy. There's room for both, near as I can see, and the best story to tell is the one you *can.*
Joy  writes:
Thanks, Jay.
I think the story's the thing, no matter the genre. If we have a story to tell, it will eventually find its genre.
I think this is generally true. There are a lot of stories which bridge the gap, but the important part is, it's a story that matters to the reader.
platinumbwords writes:
I love this NL's subject matter, because I feel I can identify with the way you feel. On the one hand, "conventional" genre that is well-written comes across as so eloquent and well-executed to me. On the other, the post-modern tendency to upend limitations, deconstruct and reconstruct and perhaps even eradicate the notion of "genre" to create something new just sounds so futuristic and even necessary, eventually.
Like you, I think I'm okay with that. Who says you have to settle for just one type of thinking and writing? One cannot expand possibilities by shutting out the present and looking only towards the future.
Exactly. We can't write what we haven't written yet, without knowing what we already have.
SeektheSnark  writes:
Interesting question. To me, originality usually comes from a change of perspective.
I'll explain - you've got a wealth of stories so I decided to write one from the point of view of a benevolent one. Aliens often invade, but rarely is 'why?' Is looked at.
True originality is out there, but there is always a narrator or a first person or third person perspective. It's always the story from a viewpoint.
So you have again a new way of looking at things. People don't want to read the same story twice because they don't want to see the world in the same way they've seen it before...
This is written quickly but hope it makes sense?
I think I get the cut of your jib. I don't know that I totally agree-- I am one of those "no story is new therefore all stories rely on what stories have come before them" types, but at the same time, I certainly don't want a mere reheat. I think it's possible to present something new that's still classic and something classic that has the potential to become something new without needing to be completely subverted in the quest for originality. It's a weird question with no 100% answer, and so it's fun to try and puzzle it out.
dwarf2012 writes:
Yes, Genre matters. I don't want to find an erotic story in a collection of humorous children's stories.I don't like to read stories written in a 'different', and sometimes, unreadable style, just because no one else did it before. I would like to read an intelligent modern story. To me, that would be innovative. Shades of Gray need not apply.
That seems like an incredibly close-minded view, in some regards. I don't think the topic of my newsletter is really adequate to address misclassified stories such as the erotica amid the children's stories as you describe, as that's not the intention of my newsletter or its question at all. The question my editorial is meant to ask doesn't really address "whether or not erotica is appropriate," at all, either, so I am sorry to disappoint you there. I haven't read 50 Shades of Anything, so I have no opinion on it, but, like it or not, it's damned hard to sneer at bestselling published work, no matter how poorly crafted it is. Obviously someone liked it well enough to print it.
Dawn Embers  writes:
While there are many that stay within the conventions of their given genre, I think there are still many that do innovate. And on some occasions, those innovations become genres themselves like say, Steampunk, for example. However, I think that many that are within their genre limits do have their own innovations even if they are subtle, in how they treat their story. Unless they are writing just to write another "insert genre here" I think that even if it falls within the confines of one, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a stagnation because of what the story does accomplish; the tale it tells.
I think this is the big question, or at least part of it; subverting what we expect of genre becomes part of the genre itself, eventually becoming a standard or a trope or a subgenre, and each of those things have their own rules and politics.
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Short Stories: October 17, 2012 Issue [#5319]
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