On Endings
Today's output put me just over the 4100 word mark, which is gratifying and really quite unexpected. This also puts me just below 5,000 words to hit my goal of 250,000 total. So, yeah. I'm definitely going to make the goal by my birthday in April. In fact, I might hit it this next writing session, depending on how everything goes. (Fingers crossed. Hitting my goal = eating out at a nice restaurant with the missus, which I love to do.)
Today's work was broken into an inversion of the typical process, which happens so often that I guess it's not really an inversion at all. I try to do the narratological present chapter first, advancing the main plot before filling in back story. This is done for two reasons: 1) It makes more sense to write in the order that people read the story; 2) if a main chapter is too short, I can use the flashback to pull the word count up. Admittedly, if I write a flashback later, it still can pull up the word count, but I dislike leaving any chapter under 2,200 words. Why? No idea. But I do know that keeping the chapters between 2,200 and 4,800 words feels right, so I go with it. Part of it is the idea of pacing. If they're all the same length, then you start to intuit when a dramatic moment will come. (Interestingly, one of the Harry Potter books does this--20 pages and then a chapter for, like, half the book. It's almost always 20 pages, making it somewhat predictable when the end of each chapter is coming.) With the range I have listed there, one chapter can be twice as long--or longer--than the one next to it, but there isn't the same expectation there. Anything longer seems to drag; anything shorter seems too abrupt.
With all that being said, I just wanted to point out that I don't know how I'm going to be able to end this book. I'm certain that many of my comments in the next few weeks as I hit the final phase of the book (I think it'll be between 260-280k words when we're all done) will reflect this concern. It isn't that I don't know how to write an ending, necessarily, but that I worry about getting antsy and botching the ending (which I did with Tales from the Flame).
Recently, my students and I had a conversation about whether a hero should die in his story. There were some good comments, but I don't know how that is necessarily going to work for this story. I have no problem having a main character die if that's what the plot needs. I don't necessarily like it when that happens, but there's definitely something to be said with avoiding a cliched or anticipated ending.
Because of that understanding, I'm unsure how I'm going to end the story. I write every book with the anticipation that, like life, the story can go on if it needs to. I'm not necessarily writing for sequels, though I'm always able to dream up new ways of exploring the world in a later book, if I feel the urge. I try, though, to resolve as much as possible so that there isn't a let down feeling that you've gone through 700 pages only to learn you aren't done with the journey yet. I feel like a book's promise is, in part, that it's contained within the pages you're buying. How that's going to affect the ending I don't entirely know, but I recognize that's something that I have to worry about.
I just finished chapter 67 in the first draft, and I put Nicomachus in a position that I didn't think I'd put him in. The way he responded was natural and, I felt, authentic, and it opened up a new part of him that had been tamped down before. With this new version of Nic on the page, I'm certain we'll see a lot of things resolve themselves more quickly, though how that comes about is murky to me. Well, that's why I love to write: I get to see a story that interests me end in a way that I want it to...and I can't skip to the last page to find out the ending, even if I had the desire.
Today's output put me just over the 4100 word mark, which is gratifying and really quite unexpected. This also puts me just below 5,000 words to hit my goal of 250,000 total. So, yeah. I'm definitely going to make the goal by my birthday in April. In fact, I might hit it this next writing session, depending on how everything goes. (Fingers crossed. Hitting my goal = eating out at a nice restaurant with the missus, which I love to do.)
Today's work was broken into an inversion of the typical process, which happens so often that I guess it's not really an inversion at all. I try to do the narratological present chapter first, advancing the main plot before filling in back story. This is done for two reasons: 1) It makes more sense to write in the order that people read the story; 2) if a main chapter is too short, I can use the flashback to pull the word count up. Admittedly, if I write a flashback later, it still can pull up the word count, but I dislike leaving any chapter under 2,200 words. Why? No idea. But I do know that keeping the chapters between 2,200 and 4,800 words feels right, so I go with it. Part of it is the idea of pacing. If they're all the same length, then you start to intuit when a dramatic moment will come. (Interestingly, one of the Harry Potter books does this--20 pages and then a chapter for, like, half the book. It's almost always 20 pages, making it somewhat predictable when the end of each chapter is coming.) With the range I have listed there, one chapter can be twice as long--or longer--than the one next to it, but there isn't the same expectation there. Anything longer seems to drag; anything shorter seems too abrupt.
With all that being said, I just wanted to point out that I don't know how I'm going to be able to end this book. I'm certain that many of my comments in the next few weeks as I hit the final phase of the book (I think it'll be between 260-280k words when we're all done) will reflect this concern. It isn't that I don't know how to write an ending, necessarily, but that I worry about getting antsy and botching the ending (which I did with Tales from the Flame).
Recently, my students and I had a conversation about whether a hero should die in his story. There were some good comments, but I don't know how that is necessarily going to work for this story. I have no problem having a main character die if that's what the plot needs. I don't necessarily like it when that happens, but there's definitely something to be said with avoiding a cliched or anticipated ending.
Because of that understanding, I'm unsure how I'm going to end the story. I write every book with the anticipation that, like life, the story can go on if it needs to. I'm not necessarily writing for sequels, though I'm always able to dream up new ways of exploring the world in a later book, if I feel the urge. I try, though, to resolve as much as possible so that there isn't a let down feeling that you've gone through 700 pages only to learn you aren't done with the journey yet. I feel like a book's promise is, in part, that it's contained within the pages you're buying. How that's going to affect the ending I don't entirely know, but I recognize that's something that I have to worry about.
I just finished chapter 67 in the first draft, and I put Nicomachus in a position that I didn't think I'd put him in. The way he responded was natural and, I felt, authentic, and it opened up a new part of him that had been tamped down before. With this new version of Nic on the page, I'm certain we'll see a lot of things resolve themselves more quickly, though how that comes about is murky to me. Well, that's why I love to write: I get to see a story that interests me end in a way that I want it to...and I can't skip to the last page to find out the ending, even if I had the desire.
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