{"id":10401,"date":"2023-04-18T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-18T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10401"},"modified":"2023-04-17T17:07:09","modified_gmt":"2023-04-17T21:07:09","slug":"youre-leaving-story-endings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10401","title":{"rendered":"You’re Leaving? Story Endings"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The First Line Monday facebook page is a painless education on what works and what doesn\u2019t as the first line\/lines in a novel. And, how much people\u2019s opinions about working\/not working vary! All writers are advised that the openings of their books, if that not one single line, are critical in finding agents, publishers, and readers. What about the ending? That\u2019s important too in a different way. It\u2019s the author\u2019s last chance to make a point or an impression. Or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve written about endings before\u2014endings and ambiguity<\/a>, book endings that disappoint<\/a>. Here I\u2019m going to do what the facebook page does and just provide the last lines as a standalone. The big difference is, of course, that by the time you get to the last line, you\u2019ve (most likely) read the rest of the book. So you interpret the words much differently than you would a first line. You have context. Still, some lines work better than others in planting a lasting seed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are a few:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe automonk carried the empty wicker basket up the beach. Eiko followed.\u201d (Ray Nayler\u2019s wonderful The Mountain Under the Sea<\/em>). This line conveys a since of \u201cok, life goes on here,\u201d in its quotidian way, which is a very hopeful place to end. Read the whole book and find out why!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s where we are. Well past the Christiansburg exit. Past Richmond, and still pointed east. Headed for the one big thing I know is not going to swallow me alive.\u201d (Barbara Kingsolver\u2019s Demon Copperhead<\/em>, Dickens\u2019s David Copperfield<\/em> adapted to today\u2019s also-not-very-kind-to-children-in-difficult-circumstances world\u2014a fantastic book). The reader knows the \u201cone big thing\u201d is the ocean (and so much more of life) and that Damon believes it \u201cwon\u2019t swallow me alive\u201d because he\u2019s protected against drowning, but also because, in other aspects of life, he\u2019s developed the skills and relationships to save himself. A perfect summation of the entire book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd I add my own love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them, and pulled them from the fire, and sought them when they were lost, and tried to preserve them and save them while passing them along literally from hand to hand, singing out brilliantly from the wreck of time to the next generation of lovers, and the next.\u201d (Donna Tartt\u2019s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Goldfinch<\/em>). Opinions about this book vary, and this last sentence is a good example of why I think the whole final quasi-philosophical section is just Too Much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing as exciting as a fresh new start when the page is blank and the future is all for the making!\u201d (Janice Hallett\u2019s clever The Appeal<\/em>). The last words are from Izzy, the clueless instigator of a lot of bad stuff, and the exclamation point represents her perfectly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe is far from England now, far from these islands, from the waters salt and fresh. He has vanished; he is the slippery stones underfoot, he is the last faint ripple in the wake of himself. He feels for an opening, blinded, looking for a door: tracking the light along the wall.\u201d (Hilary Mantel\u2019s The Mirror & the Light, third in her trilogy about Tudor England\u2019s Thomas Cromwell). I frankly don\u2019t know how she wrote this; I would have been weeping all over my typewriter, but to have to write the moment of Cromwell\u2019s death after so many intimate pages, I think this, with its poetic tone, really works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cKate found her seat. Never looked back.\u201d (Cara Black\u2019s Three Hours in Paris<\/em>). This ending certainly fits, because through the whole of this WWII thriller, Kate doesn\u2019t seem to think about consequences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you have some favorite endings? Ones you thought really worked well?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good writing deserves good readers. My quarterly newsletter contains tips for reading, writing, and viewing. Sign up here<\/a> and receive three prize-winning short stories!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The First Line Monday facebook page is a painless education on what works and what doesn\u2019t as the first line\/lines in a novel. And, how much people\u2019s opinions about working\/not working vary! All writers are advised that the openings of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"What message does a book leave its readers with? Does it fit, sum up beautifully, or just . . . end?","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[40,174,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-first-draft-blog","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2HL","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10401"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10403,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10401\/revisions\/10403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}