Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: Kathleen Ernst, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 2 of 2
How to use this Page
You are viewing the most recent posts tagged with the words: Kathleen Ernst in the JacketFlap blog reader. What is a tag? Think of a tag as a keyword or category label. Tags can both help you find posts on JacketFlap.com as well as provide an easy way for you to "remember" and classify posts for later recall. Try adding a tag yourself by clicking "Add a tag" below a post's header. Scroll down through the list of Recent Posts in the left column and click on a post title that sounds interesting. You can view all posts from a specific blog by clicking the Blog name in the right column, or you can click a 'More Posts from this Blog' link in any individual post.
The Civil War has dramatically changed life for Hannah and her three siblings. Her father leaves home to fight for the Union, the family faces constant attacks from Bushwhackers, and politics has created an irreperable rift between herself and her best friend Ben. Hannah, Jasper, Mary and Maude are left orphans after their father is killed in the war and their mother dies suddenly. When
The other day Kathleen Bolton at Writer Unboxed, one of my favorite blogs on writing, described the difficulty of drafting the final chapter in her current work-in-progress.
She had reached the end... but wasn't sure exactly how the story should come to its conclusion:
I mean, I have a vague idea of how it should end (hopefully leaving the reader slavering for more), but I’m waffling between an
Awww, that's lovely, Bruce. The best endings do close the circle but leave a tiny question. Thanks for sharing.Kathleen Bolton (on my kid's Blogger account)
Lovely swimming in wonderful words.
I think the best endings don't seem to end the story; they just have it fading off into the distance. So you can't quite pinpoint the moment when the characters vanish, so you go on seeing them after they ought to be too far away. And you know they are still out there, somewhere.Those are the endings I like.
Nick,Thanks for the helpful description of the best kind of endings.Those endings, as you say, are the ones where the characters remain vivid and alive in our imagination long after we turn the last page.Maybe we go on seeing these characters because we've come to love them over the course of the story and have learned to "see" them with our hearts? That was certainly the case for me in Rules and
Ginger Cats and Kathleen,Thanks for the kind words... Glad you stopped by.
It's a good topic—what's the best sort of ending to hope for in writing; or even, what is the stamp of an acceptable ending? I know I've felt good, for a while, in reading what's often recognized as a 'Hollywood' ending, but it usually doesn't last. I took down a book I've often thought of as a favorite, for many reasons—"How Green Was My Valley," by Richard Llewellyn (1939), about a boy
Jack,Thanks for sharing the ending for How Green Was My Valley. It's a perfect example, I think, of what Nick's talking about--an ending in which you know the characters are "still out there, somewhere."How an author arrives at such an ending... well, maybe you've hit on a way by identifying two of the necessary emotional components that a long-lasting ending needs: sadness and hope?That an