Writing Right with Dmitri: Knowing When to Stop
Created | Updated Jun 8, 2014
Writing Right with Dmitri: Knowing When to Stop
'Begin at the beginning,' the King said, very gravely, 'and go on till you come to the end: then stop.' – Lewis Carroll.
That's all well and good, Your Majesty, but how do you know when to end a story, essay, or account? When you've fixed everything? RL doesn't fix very easily. It's messy. When the reader is satisfied that we know where all the characters are at ten pm? What about the future? Hm, it's a knottier problem than the king supposes, we think.
A few years ago, I was involved in one of those US History courses that starts with Pre-Columbian peoples and continues up to the present – which, as I recall, was shortly after the invasion of Afghanistan. When we got to the last page, I was told to 'wrap it up'. We needed one more page. Rejecting the temptation to refer to that scholar, you know the one, who spoke of 'the end of History', I took the easy way out.
'Tomorrow,' I solemnly informed the students, 'history will be written. And you will be writing it.'
Elektra made mock of me. She calls this my 'Roland Hedley' ending, after the Gary Trudeau cartoon journalist. Hedley always ended his newscasts with the summary, 'Life goes on.' Well, it does, presumably, unless the Zombie Apocalypse is well underway. But as they say, ars longa, vita brevis, and you've got to put a full stop in there somewhere, sooner or later.
So how do you know when you're finished?
Possible Endings
Where and when you end your story has a lot to do with the purpose of your particular writing. Consider these possibilities:
- It's an essay. Once you've covered the subject, if the next remark is off-topic, stop. In this case, the king is right: when you reach the end, shut up.
- Is this a joke? If you've hit the punchline, you're there. Stop stop stop, before you kill the fun.
- Are you writing to inform? You'll lose your readers if you natter on. Get to the point, and then quit, for gosh sakes. Save the next ten anecdotes for another day.
- Is it fiction? Ah….then you've got some thinking to do.
The Fictional Jumping-Off Place
Think of your favourite works of fiction. Yours, I said, your personal favourites. Stop and think about their endings. If you do, you have just done a self-test to see what kinds of endings you like.
- Do you like 19th-century endings? The ones where you know where every single character ended up ten years after the last page? Then you'll probably write like that.
- Do you like stories with a 'satisfying ending'? The kind where good triumphs, the heroine 'gets the guy', and deserving people win prizes and learn how to dress better? Then you're probably drawn to a particular set of genres.
- Do you enjoy 'ambiguous endings'? Did the movie The Usual Suspects fill you with glee? Then you have sussed that stories are not like the parcel post. You don't have to tie it all up neatly.
So, what kind of ending writer are you? Does it matter? Of course it does. For one thing, it determines what kind of writing you do. For another, your approach will speak to different audiences. And that's good – because there's no one right way to do it.
Most of all, though, knowing ahead of time what kind of ending you prefer – rock-solid, detailed, justificatory, tragic, or ambiguous – lets you know what you need to do to set up the reader. The reader needs at least to suspect that this sort of ending is coming.
Take last night's TV. (Please.) A certain high-profile horror series was airing its season finale. The audience had been waiting for this. They were primed for the epic showdown involving three main characters: the detective, his boss, and the suave serial killer. In fact, the audience was almost over-primed for it: the season's first episode had featured a flash-forward in which the boss and the serial killer had a knock-down-drag-out fight in the serial killer's world-class kitchen, involving deadly culinary utensils. So the audience had high expectations of just how the characters would end up there – and what would happen next.
The result was pretty spectacular, especially because the show's large team of writers managed to get everything in that season finale including the kitchen sink. And the ginzu knives, or whatever. One character turned out not to be dead, after all, and another turned out to be working for the Other Side, and there was blood and mayhem and philosophy and jus d'orange being served on the plane. Wow. But the audience expected no less. They equally expected that we would end this season not knowing exactly who survived the brouhaha. They're not called Fannibals for nothing: those audience members are tough.
Do not, however, spring anything of this sort onto a Marion Chesney reader. You will get kicked off the Manderley catalogue. The end of the book must contain at least one happy couple, complete with townhouse and country estate, and a minimum of three envious relatives who got What They Deserved. You can make it funny, but brother, you'd better tie up the loose ends.
Horror stories like to end on question marks, not full stops. That's their thing. Philosophically inclined writers might have their characters make leaps into the unknown. But a detective novel needs to end with somebody getting booked. It needs closure, just as humour needs a punchline.
Where do you find your stopping place? It depends on where you wanted to go. Let your conscience, and your audience's expectations, be your guide. But make it a very conscious process, because it's an important part of the structure you're building. Play fair with your characters, your readers, and yourself. Map out the nature of the journey.
And then begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop. Which I will now do.
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