I have never written an ending I truly liked.
It turns out I am quite trash at finishing stories, as though I’m building a teaser trailer throughout the story and actually have no realistic way for the tale to ever end. This works out occasionally in short stories. Once I told a story about a man who found himself inadvertently involved in a major heist where the police were looking for him and he was deconstructing how he wound up in the situation. It ended much like it started, with the protagonist, who’d been thinking about running away, running away. I don’t explain what happens or if he gets very far. I don’t really know what happens. I never do. In my mind, the story is a glimpse at a moment of time from another reality, but I shut my eyes before the end, which is problematic for anyone wanting to know how it ends. Endings are extremely messy for me, in spite of the fact that in fiction they are supposed to be neat and tied up in a pretty bow. I can’t even wrap up Christmas gifts, let alone novels. It is a flaw.
Instead I find myself wandering back to the beginning of a story looking for what it was the protagonist was after in the first place and trying to discern if they found it. Every story I write is some variation of that hero/heroine’s journey. More often than not it turns out they haven’t completed their journey by the end, and instead have just taken a step (in some direction) in their lives.
This is to say that, for me, stories are not neat. Lives are not neat. Therefore, endings cannot be neat. I have long been forced to create endings that appear to be neat, which is why I never like them.
Some Thoughts:
- The Dungeon Crawler Carl series is an excellent example of how AI can be infused to make a fun, easy reading story. Of course this works best if you have a good audio reader, because reading these stories isn’t nearly as fun as listening to them. Some other similar examples include the Expeditionary Force series and anything allegedly recently outlined by the estate of Tom Clancy.
- That leads me to my second revelation. It took me until now to realize that most of what I read in commercial fiction is from the perspective of a middle aged white man with a very specific type of personality. They are usually present or ex-military with a penchant for clever ideas and making their own rules…
- The number one rule from Stephen King that has never left me is to write every single day. I wish I could sit down and focus for the number of hours the man puts into his craft. If I did, I’d likely be a much more developed and prolific writer than I am today. There is no substitute for butt in chair.