In this week’s episode, JP and Crys continue their Author’s Tarot Journey, this time using the Judgement card to guide their discussion. They discuss how they leave their characters at the end of a story to leave their readers with a sense of satisfaction.
Question of the week: How do you approach writing effective endings? Share your answer here.
Show Notes
Transcript
JP: Hello, friends. This is the Write Away Podcast, and it is August 24th, 2022, as we are recording. I’m JP Rindflesich, with my co-host…
Crys: Crys Cain.
JP: Hello, Crys. How has your writing week been?
Crys: It’s been okay. I’ve been trying to get to 2000 words a day, that’s been my goal. I’ve been managing that about three days a week as I looked over my records for this month, and the other two days either end up being like a physical health day or like an admin day. And that might make sense for a long-term goal. But if that’s so, then I do want to up my word count to 3000 words a day on those days where I am writing. So that’s what I’m reviewing. Still pushing for the 2000 words, five days a week, for another month. But considering that 3000 words a day, three times a week, might be more of a sustainable goal for me.
JP: Interesting. I like that potential approach. I like it. You should try it.
Crys: I’m gonna push myself for another month and just kind of see like what the pattern ends up being, which may get screwed up because I may need to like push myself real hard for a week to get like double words in to get the book done before it’s deadline, but we shall see. How about you?
JP: Yeah. Good. So I’ve been struggling with the Publish in Six drafting, but everything else has been good. And I feel like part of it is just trying to push stuff off my plate so I can focus more on it. So like this past weekend, I finally got the short story basically on book funnel, ready to go. And my next step for that is I wanted to do some narration on that, but like that whole process is done. And that was something that was in the back of my mind for a long time.
And then the project with Abe, like I’m on one of the last steps of edits for book three. And so both book two and book three are like almost entirely out of my hands, which is going to be fantastic. And then I think I’ll have more space for Publish in Six. I’m really hoping. I put in some words today, but it’s not enough. I’m not moving as fast as I wanted to.
Crys: Yeah, I understand that feeling. So what is our topic this week and our card?
JP: Our card this week is Judgment. And so judgment keywords are judgment, rebirth, inner calling, absolution. In reverse, it’s self-doubt, inner critic, ignoring the call. So the card shows men, women, and children rising from their graves, arms out spread, and looking up to the sky. Above, there’s an arc angel blowing his trumpet and people responding to that call.
So this is like the ready to be judged, seeing if they’ll be accepted into the heavens. And really this, if you think about in story structure, like we’ve come to a close where we’ve resolved almost everything, and now it’s like, what happens next? Kind of that like ending, the tying of the bow at the end, which leads into our question.
Crys: Yeah, the way you phrased the question I like is: how do we leave our characters at the end? So last month we talked about closing up all of our story arcs, or even opening new ones if you’re moving forward in a series. But there’s this other little part at the end of the story called the denouement, the feeling we leave at the end so that we’re just not like, okay, they succeeded, now we’re done. There’s a little bit more that needs to be handled.
Sometimes there are little story threads that are wrapped up in here, but most of the time right here, you’re wanting to hit an emotional note that clinches how the reader feels about the story. And gives them a moment to just sit with the characters in their success or failure, depending on whether it is a tragedy or not, and just kind of have a moment to come to terms with the fact that the story is ending.
JP: Yeah, it’s easier to see in movies when I reflect back, but it’s definitely that moment of like, how are you leaving the reader? Are you leaving them feeling hopeful? Ready for the next step? Dismal? Which happens a lot as well. But it’s really trying to hit an emotional beat that strings along your reader to either read more or to just sit in that feeling.
Crys: Yeah, in romance, this is always a moment, often a full scene, where the main characters finally get to have peace and joy without conflict. Sometimes that will be with friends and family members, there might be a big party where everybody’s celebrating them. But it’s just utter fluff for the most part in most romances, where they get this just pure unadulterated joy. My co-writer was excellent at like last lines where you nail the sap and the fluff element to the max, where like you get those really poignant lines of love and devotion. And then that’s what you leave the reader with.
And I was sitting here thinking about Lord the Rings and there’s kind of like nested denouement in Lord the Rings. And I’m sorry if you haven’t read or watched the movies and I’m spoiling this shit out of this for you, you are outta luck.
JP: Yeah. Too bad.
Crys: And they actually didn’t do all of this in the movies, which is sad, but anyways, it would’ve been a whole movie of its own. After they’ve succeeded, they’ve defeated Sauron, then in the books, particularly, then the hobbits go back to the Shire. Normally that would just be the denouement. They would return, they would see how things are, and they would settle into their lives.
But Tolkien took this a step further and he put chaos in the Shire. So then they had to fight again once they got to the Shire, they succeeded there, and then the last denouement is when Frodo like goes off on the boats into the west and says goodbye to his friends. And then there’s this little bit where we’re with Sam, where he finally gets that peace, love, and joy moment of returning to his family at the Shire, which is he never wanted to leave in the first place, but through love and devotion, he did. So there’s no one right way to do this, depending on your story structure.
JP: Yeah. If you think about it through the eyes of the Lord of the Rings, the MICE quotient of the very first one was basically this leaving of the Shire or this leaving of the home and the familiar. And then we’re closing that out by returning, but then there’s this piece that’s left over.
This is that judgment. This is the moment where you realize that even though you’ve closed out this MICE quotient, there’s an action that needs to be taken now. Now for Samwise, that action was to remain in the Shire. It was to continue and to be a part of something bigger. He wanted to basically exist within his community and kind of flourish that way.
But for Frodo, he returned to the Shire and then he realized that this wasn’t the place he needed to be anymore. He made that judgment call to that he no longer fit. And that’s really like the piece that’s after the MICE quotient closes is really like, how do you, as the character, sit with whatever reality it is that is now different from the beginning of that book.
Crys: And in the quite literal concept of judgment and judgment day, each of those characters received what was due to them. So Samwise got his peace and joy. Merry and Pippin who like always wanted to be the center of attention because they were literal giants among hobbits because they drank the stuff. Like they were like five foot something instead of four foot. They became heroes and got all attention and Frodo had to pay the cost of bearing the ring, which is that he no longer fit and he needed to leave to find somewhere where he could actually find rest and peace. so like when I take that to the romance, like they’re finally earning their final reward, which is the peace and joy of each other.
JP: Yeah. And I definitely think that the endings are some of the most genre specific. Because like, when I think about magical academy being so specific to that, if you have it in a series, end of the book is usually, you know, it could be the summer term. But basically, you’re leaving this character knowing that they’ve gone through a term. And now the next step is they’ll probably have a pleasant break, they might have a moment of respite, but there’s gonna be another term coming up soon. And then the whole series is gonna end basically when they graduate. And then it’s like, now we have this life from all these lessons we’ve learned.
Thinking about post apoc, there’s two endings. There’s hope ending and the non-hope ending. But both are pretty resounding and very strong ending. So you either have hope for humanity, that things are going to turn the tide and things are gonna be okay or the acceptance that everything’s about to end and that for these characters this is the end of their tail and that’s it.
But those are kind of the things that I’m thinking about as like all of these endings almost fit into these buckets of like very specific genre emotional beats.
Crys: Yeah, like I adore bittersweet endings, which do not fit into romance for the most part because you are always ending on joy and happiness. There are a few like sub genres where you can get away with that, or in between books in a series about the same couple you can end on a happily for now, but not a happily forever.
But as I was thinking, Lord of the Rings has a bittersweet ending with Frodo not being able to stay. Mercedes Lackey is a queen of bittersweet endings where the negative cost is always paid, but the positive reward is also always given. Not always to the same people, but like you often see both of those happen in the ending.
And like in kids’ books as well, like you’re always going to have the reward of learning the lesson. There’s one that I love, it’s called Mustache Baby. And it’s a baby who’s born with a mustache that changes depending on what his personality is, as he like is a baby and is chaotic. And so he has like a bank robber mustache when he gets in trouble and he gets put in jail, which is the crib, for like stealing cookies or something. I can’t remember. And then at the end he has a normal mustache because he learns his lesson and he is good.
But like this is something that is quintessential to Western storytelling. Like I don’t know if it is quintessential to Eastern storytelling or other structures, but this is one of the things that is solid about Western storytelling is that the characters need to get what they deserve, whether that is reward or consequence.
JP: Yeah. Yeah. I definitely think in Western storytelling that the ending is one of the really important things. Your beginning’s very important to hook in your reader to get them to start reading, but your endings are like, how do you want your readers to review your work? Because that ending, if it does not hit well, if you are trying something super brand new and you don’t want to actually take that risk but for some reason you did, I don’t feel like the ending is the right place to make those risks because that’s what you’re leaving your reader with.
So if you are alienating your reader from the genre that you promised them throughout the whole story, and then you surprise them with something that, let’s say it’s romance, you surprise them with something that’s not so happy at the end, that could really impact how a reader views your work.
Crys: Yeah. I remember one book I read that I loved up until the denouement because one of the main characters was like struggling against gender expectations and was like making their own path. They fell in love with someone who seemed like they were going to help make that path, but in the denouement, they locked them in to, oh, now that I’ve found the right person, now I can follow the expected gender path for me. And it destroyed the whole book for me. It was like, you did not deliver on expectations here.
JP: Yeah. I would say, really think about how you are ending. Really think about–
Crys: What do your characters deserve?
JP: Yes. What do your characters deserve? And yeah. Because you don’t wanna alienate those readers. I would feel so bad if I hit the wrong ending and then I didn’t even think about it, and voila I’ve ruined a story.
Crys: An entire story that was excellent up until that point.
All right. What questions shall we ask our listeners?
JP: How do you approach writing effective endings?
Crys: Excellent. Thank you so much for joining us each and every week. We are about to go record our Patreon exclusive episode focused on business, also inspired by the judgment. And this week, our question is about evaluating the success of a series. How do we judge how well we did after we wrap up a series? If you’d like to hear that episode and many more, you can join us over on www.patreon.com/writeawaypodcast.
JP: See you later.
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