Posts Tagged ‘editing’

You Can Say a Lot in 500 Words

Posted: April 17, 2019 in Reflections, Writing
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As I said in a recent post, I’ve had to scale back on how much writing I attempt to get done each evening because I try to go to bed earlier. To be more specific, I used to aim for at least a thousand words a night, or about four pages. However, I get tired more easily and need more sleep, so I go to bed earlier. Thus instead of a thousand, I aim for at least five-hundred or two pages.

Which to us wordsmiths can seem like quite the downgrade. One of the ways we measure our progress with our stories is by word count. So when you have to aim for lower word counts every day, it means you make slower progress and possibly make people wait longer for new stories.

However, that disappointment quickly evaporates when you realize something: while getting a thousand words out is nice, five hundred words is also momentous in and of itself. And that’s because you can say a lot in five-hundred words as well (and I don’t mean in the sense that even a small paragraph is composed of thirty to fifty words).

Let’s flash back to last night. I’m working on a story I’ve been writing on and off for about a year now and which I’m barely halfway through. I could’ve let the amount of writing left to do with this story get to me and keep me from getting a single word down on the page. Instead, I started writing. And lo and behold, I got seven hundred words in. Of those, the first five-hundred are about the narrator’s evolving mental state. And even though it’s still only a first draft, it was actually pretty good. I mean yeah, it could use plenty of cleaning up, but it was still a good passage of story, diving deep into what the narrator has been feeling at that point in her life, and how it’s affecting her relationships with her loved ones. Those two pages or so felt really emotional, almost as if a reader would feel the same emotions as her just by reading about it.

And somehow, I doubt that if I was aiming for a thousand words, I could write such a good section. I think when  was aiming for a thousand words, a part of my brain was urging me to rush on, to get that huge number out of the way so I could claim significant progress. The work I did while aiming for that big number was still good work, or at least I like to think so, but it might still be rushed. With five-hundred words, I recognize on some level that I can take my time, there’s no goal to rush to, and that allows me to write better.

And if I somehow make it to a thousand words? Great, I’m just glad I wasn’t panicking internally about getting there in the first place.

Of course, I would like to get to a point in my life where I aim for a minimum of a thousand words a day, but I want it to be under circumstances where I don’t feel so pressed for time and I can really explore the story and the character while working to reach that word count. That might not be for a long time, seeing as how much time in the day I would need to devote to such a goal conflicts with how much time I actually have to write sometimes. But who knows what the future holds?

Anyway, my point is that you don’t need to go crazy trying to rack up a huge daily word count. What matters most is what is written down during that daily struggle to write. If it’s meaningful and tells the reader a lot and sticks in their heads and ignites all sorts of marvelous images, then wonderful. You’re making great progress on your WIP. If, however, you’re getting a lot down on the page but it’s just a lot of fluff…well, that’s what the editing process is for, after all. Get’s rid of that fluff and replaces it with words of substance.

Either way, it sounds like a win-win. And by the way, this blog post is 814 words. Did I manage to say anything of substance in that amount, do you think?

 

And while I still have your attention, I’m still looking for advanced readers for my upcoming fantasy-horror novel Rose, being released from Castrum Press. The story follows a young woman who starts turning into a plant creature (and that’s just the start of her problems). In exchange for an early electronic copy, all I ask is that you read the book and consider posting a review online once it’s released. If you’re interested, please send me an email at ramiungar@ramiungarthewriter.com. Thanks, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Queen Alice: First Draft Done

Posted: April 6, 2019 in Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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So do you remember the other day, when I posted about the character of Momo, who supposedly reaches out to kids and teens online, and tries to hurt them or make them hurt themselves? I outlined the myth and how the character took off in the public consciousness, before mentioning that I was working on my own story inspired by Momo and other terrifying figures that originate online and gain a life of their own in the real world.

Well, I just finished that story a few minutes ago. As you can tell by the title, I’m calling the story Queen Alice, and it follows an investigative reporter who delves into the burgeoning legend of a cult leader named Queen Alice who uses social media to bring harm to her targets. Or does she? Is she even real? The reporter is determined to make it to the bottom of this mystery, and what happens when he releases his report will change his world forever.

Writing this story was a lot of fun and I found it easy to write it, despite how much went on in my life (it’s gotten to the point where I’m going to bed earlier and setting lower writing goals so I can get more rest during the work week). The online world is as much a play and communal space as the campfires were for early humanity, when our first boogeymen were created. Today we’re creating boogeymen through the Internet, and people are taking them seriously in ways that would’ve been unimaginable even just ten years ago. Tapping into that fear, even though I sometimes have trouble understanding the most basic of human emotions and motivations, allowed the story to really flow for me and I was able to get it out much quicker than I thought I would.

It probably also helped that I pictured actor John Noble in the role of the reporter. Not sure why, he just fit the part in my head when I was visualing the character.

So what now? Well, I think I could get it published somewhere. At 27 pages and under 7,600 words, the story isn’t too long for many publications. I’ll get it looked at first and see if a beta reader can’t give me some good feedback before I edit it. With any luck, I can get it published somewhere very soon.

Well, that’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I have some stuff to take care of before the day is over, so I’ll see you all later. Until next time, pleasant nightmares!

 

And while I still have your attention, I’m still looking for advanced readers for my novel, Rose. The book is a fantasy-horror story about a young woman who starts turning into a plant creature (and that’s just the start of her problems). In exchange for an early electronic copy, all I ask is you read it and consider posting a review on or after the release date. If you’re interested, send me an email at ramiungar@ramiungarthewriter.com.

Conversations with KG Finfrock

Posted: April 2, 2019 in Author Interciew, Writing
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Hello, and welcome back to another interview. I’m so glad I’m able to spotlight so many different authors lately. Really livens things up a bit, and it’s a great way to connect with new friends and new readers. And today’s interview is with a new acquaintance whom I met through the Horror Writers Association. She’s a writer, editor, and she’s hear to talk about her work.

Please welcome KG Finfrock.

Rami Ungar: Welcome KG. Tell us about yourself and your novel House of Redemption.

KG Finfrock: I love to listen to people’s stories. I had a friend in high school who was a pathological liar and I didn’t care. I loved to hear the stories she would weave as truth. I love to get people to open up about what’s going in their lives and where they’ve gone. Being a homebody, I’m happy to live vicariously through their experiences and yes it’s true. Anything and everything you say to me may end up in a story.

House of Redemption is about eight strangers who come to Blackstone Resort, a large luxurious plantation house in the middle of nowhere. After a lovely evening of good food, drinks, and music, the guests discover they cannot leave the house. All the doors and windows are sealed shut. As they try to find an escape, they each meet the ghosts of the people they have harmed. There is no escape for the guests until they repent their evil ways.

RU: It sounds like an interesting idea. How did you come up with it and what was it like writing it?

KGF: One of my favorite films is Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians. I play the DVD repeatedly as my comfort background noise. I was attracted to the large house. The idea of the whole island to your self is heavenly and I realized, when I wrote Good Thoughts for Bubble Off-Plumb, I like the concept of people not being able to escape punishment for bringing harm to others.

There are eight characters in House of Redemption and I began by writing each person’s situation and how they ended up at Blackstone. I then realized one quarter of the book was all backstory and it was several pages in before the real story began. I had to cut it all out and, that was all right, as I had a firm grasp on who they and what kind of person they were. The story begins with the arrival of the guests, as it should. As a bonus, I included the characters stories at the end of the novel.

RU: You’ve also been involved as an editor for the collection Good Thoughts for Bubble Off-Plumb and put together The Daily Ten-Minute Writing Prompt (Volume I). How did those projects come about?

KGF: I believe being offered the position of editor for Bubble Off-Plumb was the result of good networking and being in the right place at the right time.  And I would like to add, it was a blast working with the other authors. Some stories in the anthology still stick with me. I also learned something about my own writing in my story contribution Good Thoughts. I realized I write about the bad guys getting their comeuppance which is probably why I enjoy House of Redemption so much.

I host a monthly writer’s group with small selected membership. The Daily Ten-Minute Prompt came about when I saw how much fun the members in my writer’s group had when I set the timer and gave them a sentence. They had ten minutes to write and in some part of their story, the sentence had to be in the story. I saw what fantastic stories could be written in only ten minutes. Even as a first draft, they were great. There were moments of hysterical laughter (because the story was funny) and moments of stunned surprise.  Since I had been posting a daily writing prompt on my blog for three years, I figured I might as well put them all together and publish them in a few books.

RU: What are you working on now?

KGF: I’m working on a sequel to House of Redemption, I have two more volumes of the ten-minute writing prompts, and I have a ghost story on the back burner which is more on the side of a cozy murder mystery that happens to include a ghost living with the main character.

RU: When it comes to writing, do you have a routine or a process?

KGF: I need a routine, and I keep trying to stick to a routine, but life events constantly interrupt and thus I have not been as productive as I should be. I’m hoping that will change when the youngest child in my family starts school full time later this year.  As far as process goes, I’m off to a good start as soon as I put fingers on the keyboard and I just go with the flow.

RU: Is there any kind of story you’re particularly drawn to, as a reader and a writer?

KGF: I like mythical monsters, beasts, and a bit of the paranormal.  I like reading about large houses and places I’ve never been.  I admire Fredrik Bachman’s style of writing where he brings the community together and is able to show the faces behind the masks.

House of Redemption by KG Finfrock.

RU: What advice would you give other writers, no matter the background or experience?

KGF: Put your butt in the chair and just start to write. It can be done if you make it a priority, a must do, but it won’t be accomplished without you actually writing.

RU: And finally, if you had to go to a desert island for a while and could only bring three books with you, which would you bring?

KGF: I would pick the three that are on my table waiting to be read. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (a book my sister gave me) Kill Creek by Scott Thomas (May’s book-club selection) and Parasite Life by Victoria Dalpe, a book I chose supporting women horror writers (and the synopsis caught my attention).

RU: You’re going to love Kill Creek. It’s my current favorite. Thanks for joining us, KG. I hope you join us again soon.

If you’d be interested in reading House of Redemption, you can get it from Amazon. And if you’d like to find out more about our guest today, you can find her on her very own WordPress blog, as well as on Twitter and Instagram.

If you would like to see some more of the conversations I’ve had with various authors, head over to my Interviews page. And if you yourself are an author with something coming out you’d like to promote, then send me an email at ramiungar@ramiungarthewriter.com with the subject line “Author Interview” and we’ll see if we can’t make some magic happen.

That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. Until next time, pleasant nightmares!

Rose: One Year Since Acceptance

Posted: March 12, 2019 in Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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Well, I’m sick today, so I’m writing this a bit earlier than I normally might’ve. Either way, I would’ve written this post.

It was a year ago today, March 12th, 2018, that I signed the contract with my publisher, Castrum Press, to publish my novel Rose. I remember it being a Monday, and I’d received the contract on the preceding Friday after some back and forth with Castrum. I looked over the contract, signed it, scanned it in at my local library, and then emailed it to Castrum once I walked home. And then I broke out the celebratory beer. Or was it wine? Either way, I was drinking.

For those of you who don’t know, Rose is a novel I wrote as my senior thesis back in college. The story follows a young woman who turns into a plant creature (and that’s just the start of her problems). Since I first started writing the book back in 2014, the story has gone through numerous drafts and revisions. It’s still going through changes, if I’m honest. But I think every change has been for the better. And I feel every day we’re a bit closer to releasing the novel.

Speaking of which, I’ve been corresponding a bit with Castrum today. They were just as surprised that a year has gone by, but they also suspect the publication date is on the horizon, especially with six or so drafts done on the story. We also talked some business details relating to PR and whatnot, so you know we’re getting further along in the process. Given the way the conversation is going, it makes me optimistic.

And of course, when we do set a publication date, I will let you all know when that is, as well as any other pieces of news that comes down the pipeline. With any luck, I’ll have some good news soon.

That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I’m going to try to stay healthy and get some rest. With any luck, tomorrow I’ll be feeling a whole lot better. Until next time, pleasant nightmares.

Voice vs. Writing Style: What’s the Difference?

Posted: February 27, 2019 in Reflections, Writing
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The other day, one of the YouTube channels I follow, Tale Foundry,* asked a question on their social media about the difference between an author’s writing style and voice. Since I saw it first on their Twitter, I answered their question there. It went something like this over the course of two tweets:

Writing style is the technical part of writing: the author’s word choice, how thoughts are written out, etc. Voice is that and more: what sort of stories the author likes to tell, their favorite characters, the elements they like to include to make the story exciting.

That was my answer at the time, but I wanted to make sure it was right and I wasn’t just pulling stuff out of my ass like most politicians. So I went to Google and took a look. To my surprise, I was pretty on the dot. According to that lovely resource none of my teachers or professors liked us using even when they used it themselves, Wikipedia, writing style “is the manner of expressing thought in language characteristic of an individual, period, school, or nation. Thus, style is a term that may refer, at one and the same time, to both conventions that go beyond the individual writer and to singular aspects of individual writing.” And according to TheBalanceCareers.com,** voice is “the author’s style, the quality that makes his or her writing unique, and which conveys the author’s attitude, personality, and character.”

For example, let’s look at HP Lovecraft’s writing style and voice, as they’re both so distinctive.*** His writing style is easy to pin down: an overly-wordy and stuffy Victorian patois filled with fancy words. Yeah, he liked to pretend he was a contemporary of Edgar Allen Poe. I think in his later works he tried to modernize his style, but he never got over using too many words and too many fancy ones.

As for his voice, that’s also easy to pin down: stories centering around terrors that give no care for mankind. Secrets and sights terrible enough to cause insanity. Entities so powerful they see humanity as nothing more than ants in the grand scheme of things. All with an unhealthy helping of xenophobia, racism, fear of women, fear of sex, fear of technology and progress, inability to grasp many sciences and maths, and an obsession with sophisticated upbringing and breeding.

Yeah, dude had his issues, and this was before getting help for your problems was effective and smiled upon by society. On the plus side, it had a lasting influence on the horror genre that’s still felt today. And the combination of the two makes it easy to point out an HP Lovecraft story when you come across one, even if his name is obscured.

As for my own style and voice, they’re still evolving. But I’ve noticed a few things for each. I prefer to write my characters blunt with their feelings, possibly because I have enough trouble understanding real humans and their confusing mix of emotions. And I love writing stories with unlikely heroines or nice-guy heroes, usually but not always in the their teens, supernatural enemies and horrors, plenty of either realistic or twisted love and romance, and more than a dash of weird to make it fun.

I think there are people out there who like that sort of thing. Not all of them are close relatives. I hope.

Writing style and voice are both very important aspects of writing, both for the writer using them and for the audience reading their work. It’s how we come to know the storytellers, how we identify them just from looking at a page, and it’s what allows them to stay relevant and immersive long after they’ve stopped typing on keyboards or holding pens.

That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I’ll have a review out this weekend, so if nothing else comes up in the meantime, I’ll see you then. Until then, pleasant nightmares!

Have you noticed anything about your writing style or voice? What about your favorite authors?

*Which you should check out if you’re interested in stories and looking past the surface to the mechanics and deeper meaning of storytelling, by the way. Here’s the link to their YouTube channel.

**They also mention voice can refer to a character or narrator’s voice. But since I think Tale Foundry was referring to the author’s voice, I’ll stick with that one.

***Speaking of which, yesterday was the 91st anniversary of the publication of The Call of Cthulhu, the first appearance of the titular character and the namesake of the Mythos. Happy Birthday, Cthulhu. May you someday rise out of the sea to irrevocably change the world (preferably before the 2020 election becomes super depressing/annoying).

Rose: Sixth Draft Done!

Posted: February 23, 2019 in Novel, Progress Report, Scary Stuff, Writing
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Good morning, everyone! It’s about one in the morning, but I can’t sleep yet. Not until I update you on the latest with Rose!

Now for those of you who’ve joined the Followers of Fear since my last update (Hi, by the way. Pleasure to have you), Rose is a novel that I started in college as my thesis project and which is being published by Castrum Press. The story follows a young woman who turns into a plant creature (and that’s just the start of her problems). Yes, I wrote a horror novel around that bonkers concept, an it’s just bonkers enough to work.

Honestly, I worried it was too bonkers. But based on this latest edit, I think it’s just bonkers enough to work.

So if you read my last update on the novel, you know Castrum wanted me to take a look at word choice and do some touch-ups with the text. Thanks to a couple of thesauruses and plenty of motivation, I was able to go through the entire novel within the space of a couple of weeks and get rid of the unnecessary and repetitive words. The result is that the novel is a few thousand words shorter, but still a decent length of 57,051 words (for context, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was about twenty-thousand words longer). And I think it may be the best version of the novel yet.

Of course, that’s my bias. But given that with every draft of this novel I’ve had to change major aspects of the story every time–characters, plot points, locations, etc.–it’s nice to see Rose is finally getting into a shape worth publishing. Perhaps this might be the draft that goes to press. We’ll see. We may have more work to do before all is said and done.

Done. You know, my high school English teacher once said something that’s stuck with me through the years. He said that a story is never “perfect.” You can only get it “done,” i.e. edited and polished up to the point where doing anything else to it would be a disservice to the story. You’re done with it, and that’s that. And I think Rose has taken a few more steps to being done.

I hope, anyway.

So what’s next? Well, I’ve already sent the new draft off to Castrum. I’m way ahead of the scheduled deadline of March 31st, so that means they’ll either get through it that much quicker or it’ll wait for a little bit until the end of March, when they carved out time in the calendar to review the manuscript. Either way, I think after this draft things should speed along.

Well, in the meantime, I think it’s time I hit the hay. Tomorrow’s another day to write and edit and come up with concepts to scare people down to their cores. Good night, Followers of Fear. Thanks for your continued support as I work hard to get this novel out.

Until next time, pleasant nightmares!

Review: Happy Death Day 2U

Posted: February 16, 2019 in Review, Scary Stuff
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Today I went to the movies for a double feature. The first film was the new Alita: Battle Angel (for my thoughts on that, check my Twitter feed). The other was the sequel to 2017’s hit horror film Happy Death Day (see my review of that here). Plenty of people who liked the first film, including myself, wondered if the sequel could live up to the fun and batshit insanity of the original. And I think they did a decent job.

Happy Death Day 2U picks up almost immediately after the end of the first film, with protagonist Tree and boyfriend Carter finding out Carter’s roommate Ryan is now in a murder-filled time loop of his own. They discover the source of the time loop, but in the process of trying to fix it, Tree is sent into an alternate timeline where things are quite different, and where she’s stuck in the loop again. And if she doesn’t solve this loop and find a way back to her timeline, things will get really messy.

As one would expect, this film does take a lot of cues from the first film, which takes a lot of cues from Groundhog Day and other time-loop stories. So people who were expecting something different will be disappointed (though how they could expect something different is beyond me). The stakes are raised this time though, because Tree has to protect not just her own life, but has to save other lives along with other tasks in order to get back to her life as she knows it. There’s also the added dilemma of whether Tree wants to go back to her original timeline, as the new one has some perks along with some downsides (you’ll see what I mean if you decide to see the film). The sequel is also more comedic than the original, which I was able to deal with even though I prefer more horror in my films. And if you wanted an explanation of why the time loops are occurring, this film does provide it.

That being said, the decreased amount of horror may turn off some viewers. And the sci-fi explanations for why the time loops are occurring may confuse some people, especially those who barely passed high school physics. Hell, even I was confused by the explanations, and I’m usually good with this stuff. I understood Inception and Donnie Darko on the first go-rounds, so you know they must’ve really made it confusing here!

But if you look at the whole package, Happy Death Day 2U is, while not as good as the original, a good successor. On a scale of 1 to 5, I’ll give it a 4.2. It’s a funny, crazy, bloody movie and if they made a third film (which, based on a mid-credits sequence, I think they will), I’d check it out.

That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. If you need me, I’ll be editing. Until next time, pleasant nightmares!

Rose: Getting Rid of Unnecessary Words

Posted: February 12, 2019 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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In my last post, I said that I’d heard back from my publisher, Castrum Press, and that they’d given some feedback to help me with the next draft of my novel Rose. Well, I woke up sick today, so I spent my day working on it. As of this afternoon, I’m one-fourth of the way through the sixth draft. If I keep going at this rate, I could be done well before the end of March (God willing).

I also said in my last post that the main issue Castrum pointed out for me was word choice. I’d like to go a bit more into that, as it’s been pretty eye-opening for me.

First issue: adverbs. I’ve heard this before from beta readers before, but I tend to rely on them too much. You know, “really,” “seriously,” “suddenly,” etc. And I thought I’d gotten better at that, but Castrum gave me graphs of my use of adverbs in Rose‘s fifth draft. Whoo-boy. Looking at the draft now, I’ve a lot of work ahead of me. There are adverbs littered all over the place! In future stories, I’m going to have to work on that. Because seriously, how madly, negligently, horribly a writer must I be to readily sprinkle these adverbs all over the draft so willy-nilly?

See the problem?

Second issue: overuse of unnecessary words. Another one of those graphs showed me that I tend to overuse certain words in a story. “That,” “just,” “even,” etc. Technically the sentences still work when I use those words, but they work just as well when they’re absent. Therefore, by the rules of editing, I should excise them. I’m still wrapping my head around the idea of getting rid of them, as when I wrote those sentences, they sounded so necessary. But I’m adjusting. It’s a process, but I’m doing it. Hopefully this is another habit I can kick as a writer. If anything, this draft is a good start.

And third issue: repeating words. I kid you not, I had over 360 instances of the word “look” or its variants. And while it does the job, literature is built on a variation of words that say the same thing. Instead of “look,” I switch it out with words “gaze,” “stare,” “gawk,” “observe,” “survey,” “scrutinize,” etc. I’ve been learning to do that when I encounter words like this, as well as others I’ve repeated one too many times.

If anything, all this has taught me how much farther I’ve to go as a writer. A lot of people know me as the “resident writer,” which sometimes they equate with “expert writer.” And occasionally, when I have successes in my career or when I’m expounding on the art of writing or the craft of horror from behind my keyboard, I can feel like an expert. But the truth is, I’ve only made some progress. It’ll be a long time till I’m able to call myself a real expert writer. If ever.

If there’s such a thing to begin with.

Still, I’m glad I don’t know it all. I have room to grow and improve as a writer. That’s never a bad thing, in my opinion. And if I knew it all, who knows? Things might get boring.

Anyway, I hope to have more news on Rose soon. I’ll keep working steadily on the sixth draft and give you another update as soon as I have one. In the meantime, I’m getting ready for bed. I don’t want to be sick tomorrow as well. Goodnight, my Followers of Fear, and pleasant nightmares!

Rose: An Update on the Publishing Process

Posted: February 4, 2019 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Scary Stuff, Writing
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I know some of you have been waiting for an update on Rose. And I’m happy to say that I received word today from my publisher, Castrum Press, regarding the last draft I sent to them.

Now if you’re new here and haven’t heard me mention Rose a billion times by now, this is a novel I wrote as my senior thesis in college. It follows a young woman named Rose Taggert who starts turning into a plant creature. Yes, that’s what it’s about. I wrote that novel, and it’s being published. And believe me, what I just described is only the beginning of Rose’s troubles.

Anyway, Castrum Press accepted the novel back in March 2018, and I’ve been doing a lot of work on it since. Actually, I’ve been doing work on it and changing things up since the first attempts to write it. This story’s been written and rewritten more times than I care to mention. I was telling my dad earlier today, every draft has featured almost alchemical changes to the story. Trust me, that amount of change every draft is exhausting!

But based on Castrum’s latest feedback, I have reason to hope the story’s nearing its final stage. The suggestions I got were mainly of the word choice and grammar type. These are mainly problems I’ve been told about before in the past: using words like “that,” “which” or “just” too often, or too many adverbs. At least they were able to give me some visual aids that I can use to help me during the next draft (number 6, if you can believe it). I’ll take some notes, and then get to work.

I won’t say this is the last draft before publication. It depends on what Castrum says, and they have a lot more experience than I do and the suggestions they’ve given so far has worked out for me so far, so I’m willing to listen to their advice. I will say that we are nearing that stage, and both Castrum Press and I are looking forward to getting this story out there for all of you to read. We’re just taking our time to make sure it’s the best product it can be before it’s released.

I mean, it would really suck if we released a sub-standard novel, wouldn’t it?

Well anyway, it’s getting late and I was feeling really tired for most of today, even with caffeine, so I’ll call it a night and start on the work after I get home tomorrow.

That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I’ll keep you guys updated as news comes in. Until next time, pleasant nightmares!

Getting the Ending Just Right

Posted: February 3, 2019 in Reflections, Writing
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Writing any part of a story is difficult. Starting it, the long slog through the middle, trying to wrap it up in a satisfactory way. Any part of it has its own challenges. But lately for me, trying to write the ending–those last paragraph or couple of paragraphs–difficult. I’m not talking about how the story ends, for me that’s usually already in my mind when I start writing the story. I’m talking about the actual words. What I use in the story to finish it out.

Those of us who read regularly think of how stories end, and it’s the most perfect ending, like “and they all lived happily ever after,” only not so cliched and unlikely to happen. More like, “All was well,” or “He turned over and went back to sleep,” or “He reached out to him with a single, terrible, slimy claw.” The words close up the story so well, and it feels perfect. Replace one word or one sentence with something else, and it ruins the whole story, or at least the ending.

It’s those words that close the story out that are so important.

And I’ll admit, with some of the last few stories I’ve worked on, I struggle with finding the right words for those stories. I start to feel too wordy, or that I’m not giving an eloquent closing to the story. Consequently when I end the story, I feel a little unsatisfied. This may be in part due to the fact that I see a movie in my head when I’m reading and writing, so translating something from a mental visual to words is somewhat difficult. Or it could just be finding the right words are difficult. Especially when my brain decides to forget a word or two (kid you not, I forgot the word “agenda” for a week, which sucks because I needed it for something).

Luckily, on a few stories, I think I enjoy the endings of my stories a bit better on the second draft. And those that I don’t, I can change them a bit and that usually helps. But I think–and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only author to feel this way–I would like to not feel so dissatisfied when I finish a story. That the words I use to finish the story ring true to me and feel right. That they’re as close to perfect as “All is well” or “He turned over and went back to sleep,” or “He reached out to him with a single, terrible, slimy claw.”

Well, the good news is that with more practice, I can get more stories done and perhaps figure out what it is that makes those near-perfect endings. Fingers crossed, at any rate.

But tell me, How do you write the best ending for your stories? Is there a trick to doing it? Please let me know, I’m dying to know. Okay, not actually dying, but it would be nice to know.

Until next time Followers of Fear, pleasant nightmares!

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