By: Alissa Lauzon,
on 11/6/2007
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
By: Bruce Black,
on 9/16/2007
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
By: Rebecca,
on 5/15/2007
Coordinates: 40 41 N 76 12 W
Population: 15,549 (2000 est.)
Responsible for the dismissal of a Harvard University president, enjoyed by the Founding Fathers (in all of their wisdom), and commercially available since 1612, beer has been an ever-present commodity in United States history. (more…)
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