Apparently many writers have trouble with endings. It seems to me, this comes from a misunderstanding of what a STORY is -- after all, the entire point of telling a story IS the ending!
Of course, considerable fun, entertainment, enlightenment, can happen along the way -- but what is the point of a story if there is no ending? A story is magic: the ending is the trick, the point, toward which everything that came before is arranged and presented.
Perhaps training as a playwright helps an understanding of endings because on stage, the ending is formal: A CURTAIN. An ending is a curtain line, a moment. If you screw that up, you screw up everything. After the ending, the lights come up and the audience either applauds or it doesn't. The curtain call is the measure of the ending. Fiction writers need to imagine this same scenario with a reader.
The widespread lack of understanding of STORY, which is to say, of dramatic structure, is a failure of creative writing education. In fact, in my own education, I never was introduced to the concept of beginning-middle-end storytelling -- and when I was assigned to read Aristotle's Poetics, it was in a philosophy class, not a writing or literature class.
Screenwriting today provides the best education for story structure, and I've had many fiction writers in my classes who benefit immensely from what they learn about STORY in a screenwriting class, even though they have no interest in screenwriting per se. Screenplays put rhetorical issues in the background and bring story issues forward. All writers can benefit from this.
I think writers who have trouble with endings should do more pre-writing, giving thought to where they are going, why they are telling this story in the first place. A story without an ending is like sex without orgasm. Fun for a while maybe, but frustrating in the end.
David Mamet has put down the elements of story perfectly and powerfully:
Perhaps writers who have trouble with endings miss the "when at the last minute..." dramatic beat, which leads into the final conflict that resolves as an ending, What is curious about stories in our culture, what fascinates me, is the flirtation with failure that happens first ("and just when everything was going so well..."). We like the tease of failure before the happy resolution. This happens in story after story, in all forms of storytelling.
Literary stories do not break the cultural pattern but present it with much more subtlety and disguise. After all, we actually do not respond to the STRUCTURE of a story -- we respond to the FLESH of a story. But structure is what makes flesh keep its form.
Story structure is like a skeleton. Picture a room full of people. A huge variety of folks! Large, small, handsome or not so, different clothing. Now zap them all with a Martian ray gun and you are left with a room full of skeletons -- and everyone looks alike! These skeletons are dramatic structure, are beginning-middle-end storytelling. Peel off the flesh, and you're left with the essence of story.
Of course, considerable fun, entertainment, enlightenment, can happen along the way -- but what is the point of a story if there is no ending? A story is magic: the ending is the trick, the point, toward which everything that came before is arranged and presented.
Perhaps training as a playwright helps an understanding of endings because on stage, the ending is formal: A CURTAIN. An ending is a curtain line, a moment. If you screw that up, you screw up everything. After the ending, the lights come up and the audience either applauds or it doesn't. The curtain call is the measure of the ending. Fiction writers need to imagine this same scenario with a reader.
The widespread lack of understanding of STORY, which is to say, of dramatic structure, is a failure of creative writing education. In fact, in my own education, I never was introduced to the concept of beginning-middle-end storytelling -- and when I was assigned to read Aristotle's Poetics, it was in a philosophy class, not a writing or literature class.
Screenwriting today provides the best education for story structure, and I've had many fiction writers in my classes who benefit immensely from what they learn about STORY in a screenwriting class, even though they have no interest in screenwriting per se. Screenplays put rhetorical issues in the background and bring story issues forward. All writers can benefit from this.
I think writers who have trouble with endings should do more pre-writing, giving thought to where they are going, why they are telling this story in the first place. A story without an ending is like sex without orgasm. Fun for a while maybe, but frustrating in the end.
David Mamet has put down the elements of story perfectly and powerfully:
- Once upon a time...
- And then one day...
- And just when everything was going so well...
- When at the last minute...
- And everybody lived happily ever after (or alternative).
Perhaps writers who have trouble with endings miss the "when at the last minute..." dramatic beat, which leads into the final conflict that resolves as an ending, What is curious about stories in our culture, what fascinates me, is the flirtation with failure that happens first ("and just when everything was going so well..."). We like the tease of failure before the happy resolution. This happens in story after story, in all forms of storytelling.
Literary stories do not break the cultural pattern but present it with much more subtlety and disguise. After all, we actually do not respond to the STRUCTURE of a story -- we respond to the FLESH of a story. But structure is what makes flesh keep its form.
Story structure is like a skeleton. Picture a room full of people. A huge variety of folks! Large, small, handsome or not so, different clothing. Now zap them all with a Martian ray gun and you are left with a room full of skeletons -- and everyone looks alike! These skeletons are dramatic structure, are beginning-middle-end storytelling. Peel off the flesh, and you're left with the essence of story.
 clipped from nursefusion.blogspot.com
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