Thinking about the changes I made to my own story, and my comments (and other's) on the competing stories, it seems to me that formulating a story ending is trickier than it might first appear. Based on only a feeling, I changed the focus of my ending, but looking back I'm glad I did because it was a clearer resolution of the 'conflict' established at the beginning of the story – it meant I had ended the story I began. On the other hand, I thought (rightly or wrongly) that the ending of the (deservedly) winning story was not in fact supported by the demonstrated events of the body of the story, and therefore didn’t seem ‘believable’ to me within the context of the story as told.
So, my lesson from this week is to pay conscious attention to your story’s ending, in two respects: (1) that it resolves (in whatever manner) the conflict you actually posed earlier, and not some other that you've absently wandered into, and (2) that it is congruous with the story elaboration between beginning and end, so that it is not seen as arbitrary or seemingly a perfectly nice ending but to some other story, not the one just read.
The overall point is to tell the story you actually began, and to end the story you actually told.
3 comments:
Author's Note:
The characters and events depicted in this story are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Wondermentful. And very funny.
This post was submitted for The Friday Challenge named "Silent Night, Story Night...":
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Thinking about the changes I made to my own story, and my comments (and other's) on the competing stories, it seems to me that formulating a story ending is trickier than it might first appear. Based on only a feeling, I changed the focus of my ending, but looking back I'm glad I did because it was a clearer resolution of the 'conflict' established at the beginning of the story – it meant I had ended the story I began. On the other hand, I thought (rightly or wrongly) that the ending of the (deservedly) winning story was not in fact supported by the demonstrated events of the body of the story, and therefore didn’t seem ‘believable’ to me within the context of the story as told.
So, my lesson from this week is to pay conscious attention to your story’s ending, in two respects: (1) that it resolves (in whatever manner) the conflict you actually posed earlier, and not some other that you've absently wandered into, and (2) that it is congruous with the story elaboration between beginning and end, so that it is not seen as arbitrary or seemingly a perfectly nice ending but to some other story, not the one just read.
The overall point is to tell the story you actually began, and to end the story you actually told.
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