All Good Things

                   There’s nothing like having a goal, something to achieve – and knowing what you want to achieve as well. It gives you purpose, a dream, a drive! It lets you plan your journey to it, predict obstacles and prepare for everything that might come your way while you quest after it. You set yourself targets or goals in nearly every aspect of your life, or have them set for you – so why shouldn’t you do it with your writing?

                Today I’ll be talking about endings; very specifically about how to reach them and why they’re important. My last post talked about having a story board prepared for when you wrote short stories. Logically there must be a final panel; this is your goal. The others lead up to it – a charge or a creep towards an incredible crescendo (or a credible one, if you prefer) – and you might find you can almost write the story backwards. 

                I don’t mean to be awkward with that statement – I have always found it difficult to write a short story if I didn’t know where I wanted it to go, so much so that I’ve often abandoned pieces I’ve started or let the fall by the desk-side until I have more inspiration for them. My normal technique is to envision how I want something to progress – usually in the form of a story board – and then connect the panels I created in my mind. I usually do this backwards, working from the last panel back to the one before and figuring out how that journey forms before going back to the step before and doing the same again.

               Some people call this a ‘bad way to write’. Maybe for them it is; it works for me. Sometimes I just make a few notes to describe how these panels link – the tendons that bind the skeleton together, if I continue using last post’s analogy – before moving back. I can then build one these notes to literally flesh out the story, adding the characters in and around the rest of it to give it life and power it through its own story line. This is not to say, of course, things cannot be edited and changed later – this is always, always, always and option, as is a total rewrite or even abandonment if you actually think you can’t finish a piece. 

                As you can tell for me to make this process work the ending is very important to keep in my mind, to know where and what everything is building up to. It means I can drop in hints and twists that stay consistent with the rest of the story, or sometimes it’s vital I include them to maintain that consistency. Imagine a story where there can be next to zero risk of inconsistency, or risk of it, in the early chapters; this is achievable for me (or perhaps just in my mind) because you’ve already written the ending and you can tie in the beginning and middle straight away because you know what will happen. You can plan the twists and their results, you can choose ahead of time which characters will die/betray the heroes, and you can embroil the reader in mysteries knowing full well how they are resolved all with the confidence of knowing how it ends. 

                A story is certainly all about the journey, but without a target or goal it’s not journeying too anywhere – this will come across in your writing. If people finish it and say things like, “It’s good, I like it, but I don’t know where it’s going,” take a step back and ask yourself, “Do I know where it’s going?” Stories need to be going somewhere, they need to have a point they’re driving at or towards, otherwise they wander and meander and lose focus (much like some of my blog entries). So make sure where you’re going somewhere with your story, else you might find it goes nowhere.

                This doesn’t mean you have to know everything about the story to begin with, not by a long way. Imagine you’re making a puzzle; it has irregular sides and it’s got a lot of repeating patterns. Not having an ending in mind is the same as not having a picture to refer to while making a puzzle – you don’t know what your building up to, it’s difficult to make a start and even if you do you are not always sure what you’re doing is going to make sense later on. You might even have to start again and after doing that several times the idea of giving up seems like a really good one.

                Giving up will not get your piece finished. Just think about that for a little bit; it might be easier, but what does it achieve if you take the ‘easier’ route? It will not finish your short story. It will not finish your play or script. It will not finish your novel. Is it really the easier route to your goal or is it just less effort for you in the immediate future? Less effort, by its very nature as a practice, is unlikely to be more efficient in achieving your goal than putting more effort in – I think it is in fact a more difficult endeavour to finish a piece by not writing it than by actually getting on with it. By that token, the easier route or method to finishing your script/story/novel/masterpiece is definitely to sit down and write it. Not all in one sitting, but bit by bit, and never forgetting where you want it to end up.

                This doesn’t mean you have to know everything about the story from the start. It doesn’t mean the ending is set in stone. You can change the ending, sculpt it as your story evolves, make it the most perfect and dramatically appropriate ending you can as you find out more and more about your characters. But have an ending in mind. Remember, you can’t complete a quest without being told where to go and what to do. So set your goal and bring on The End.

The First Word on the Page

                   Over New Year we all have little epiphanies and revelations about things we should do more, or less, or better, or worse. Mine came when I heard someone make the comment, “A writer who doesn’t write anything isn’t really a writer.” I am a writer who writes very little and my initial reaction was to go and defend myself, but a little voice in my head said very, very quietly that he had a point.

                This understandably troubled me; it challenged my assertions about who and what I am. Part of why I agreed with him was because I’ve been troubled by how little writing I am doing at the moment. I use the excuse that I’m pretty busy and don’t have a lot of time, but I’ve also recently been telling people that we make time for things we want to do, and how we spend our time defines what we want. By that precedent I am at best an occasional writer, which saddens me. Since I don’t like being in this emotional state I have decided upon the resolution to make more time for writing!

                Before we go any further, I have to highlight the fact I am not a published author. I am not a famous, successful hero of fiction or literature and neither have I made my fortune spinning tales (yet). This blog is about the struggle to achieve that goal, the journey to get there and the joy of what you discover on the way (and, sometimes, the pain found therein as well). So hold your snide remarks and instead aid that cause - post your opinions, experiences and questions below so everyone can benefit. That's right - COMMUNIST IDEALISM! I'm sure that's something we should strive for and, if science-fiction has taught me anything, be wary of giving to machines.

                So what am I doing writing a blog? Why spend time writing this rather spending it writing fiction? I have found that scheduling is actually really good for time management – shocking, right? – so I’ve started using a journal. This allows me to plan ahead a little and I’ve found that to be rather empowering. My aim with this blog is similar; by writing this regularly I will be thinking about writing regularly and, hopefully, writing more regularly too as a result.

                One of the things I’ll be doing is addressing elements and aspects of writing that can be or have been problematic for either myself of friends who write. The first of these is the most obvious, as it is where everyone starts; titles and beginnings. Some people say the hardest step is the first one – I personally don’t agree with this analogy, as I don’t think writing is always an uphill struggle, but even if I did I would argue it is only difficult to conquer this as a first obstacle because you make it one. 

                How can you avoid getting stuck in the mire of mentally-sapping mind-mud? Step one; don’t give it a title. By all means note down ideas but don’t get hung up on it. The issue with titles is that they are supposed to embody and encapsulate the entire book – or play, or manuscript, or whatever you are writing. How can you choose a title without having written most, if not all, of your work? How do you know what your book is about without going through the creative process? Any book evolves as it is written and if your book was written in a day it probably needs some work. So don’t limit yourself by calling your book something gripping or edgy like ‘Dead Clay’ and then stressing about how to make the sixteen chapters that seem to have no relevance to your title have relevance. Note ideas down but don’t fixate on them. Which is easier to change; several thousand words or your title which is made of maybe half a dozen?

                The next problem is another obvious one; starting your piece. The biggest shift in effort between any two points in an endeavour is between ready and running, having nothing on the page to beginning to fill it, going from thought to action. Like everything, writing is subject to inertia and entropy; it’s difficult to start because you haven’t started and it’s easy to stop because it takes less effort and time. There are also your subconscious fears to consider – what if I change my mind? What if what I write doesn’t make sense later? What if it is just poor quality? These questions seem reasonable but are fairly unimportant in reality; you are not carving the words in stone. You will be able to change, alter or scrap them entirely at a later date if you so please. If you’re not happy with what you write you can change it – you can unmake its imperfection and re-forge it into something golden.

                So just out pen to paper; let ink spill forth across the page as a mighty flood of creative invention. Not sure what to write about? It doesn’t matter. First person? Third? Narrative, descriptive, or biographical? It doesn’t matter. I find I rarely know exactly where a story is going but as a result of just adding words to it the story writes itself and grows. Of course I edit, of course I rewrite and yes, of course I scrap projects occasionally. You are a writer, not an architect or construction manager; the things you create are far easy to alter or even abandon. The chance of failure or abandoning your piece should not be a reason to abstain from or avoid writing. On the contrary; through finding the faults in a piece, and in yourself as a writer, by writing without a rigidly set plan you can improve thereby letting both your work and your writing ability grow.