Art of Storytelling: Beginnings

Where Should I Begin?

Okay this seems like a pretty basic concept but I’ve read too many stories where this just failed.

First off, I’m really talking about novels or novellas here, and not necessarily short stories, though you still need to know where to start those too.

So why should it matter where you start?  Well your number one job is… drum roll please…  getting people to read your book!  Surely you jest, sir!?  If you don’t hook your reader from the beginning of the story, you’re likely to lose them.  There’s tons of material out there on first paragraphs and every writer should look into it but there is a bigger picture here. 

A lot of times we think of our stories as having a beginning and end.  That’s wrong.  Your book must have a beginning and end of some sort but the story is like life.  Time passed before the point where the books starts and time will continue to pass after the book ends.  You’ve created a world and that world has both history and future even if you never think about it. 

If we can think of our books as sections of a timeline, that forces us to consider back story.  Maybe you write romance or literary fiction which is set in our day to day world.  That’s great!  But your characters have history.  They have parents and grandparents and ancestors.  Maybe that stuff will never make it into the book but, often, knowing that kind of history can really give you insight into their motivations, morals, or view of the world.

So the best place to start that characters story is where it becomes the most interesting.  Louis jokes about this at he beginning of Interview With the Vampire with a reference to David Copperfield, and his story does give some of his life history before meeting Lestat, but Rice’s book starts in the present, with the boy sitting down with his tape recorder at a moment in Louis’ life where he has finally decided to share his tragedies and the existence of vampires with the world.  The bulk of the book is about those tragedies but this is a critical point, not only in Louis’ life but the boy’s life and the Rice’s world.  And it’s just a cool hook.  If you could sit down with a real vampire, what would you ask him or her and would you be prepared for what they said?

A friend of mine, the one who inspired the Heart of Story series, messed around with writing a few times.  He never had the drive to write more than 5 or 10 pages but I so wanted him to because of the opening line below. 

Moonlight shining through the bullet hole in the wall painted a slow trail across the unconscious man’s face where he bleeding on the floor.

I read this and fireworks went off in my head.  Maybe the language could have been a little tighter but that sentence says so much.  It paints a picture.  It creates an air of mystery and intrigue.  Who is the man but, more importantly, why is there a bullet hole in the wall and why is he unconscious?  You get the feeling he’s been shot.  Why?  Where? By whom?

My dear friend Penelope Jones was recently reading my WIP and pointed out that I needed to start with action.  It surprised me because everything else I’ve ever written did start with action.  It made me rethink the whole scene but then I decided that I wrote that scene (3 years ago) to bring character setting and conflict together in one shot and it does end with tons of action.  When I finish I may need to revisit that and may decide she’s right in this case.

But, in most cases, she is absolutely right.  Action is dramatic.  Action is eye opening and creates an emotional response.  Fight Club starts with the protagonist being held with a gun in his mouth at the top of a skyscraper packed with high explosives about to be detonated.  This is just a promise of action, potential energy, a guarantee of violence, and it is so powerful.  Okay, Chuck Palahniuk, now that you’ve got my attention, please, take me back to the beginning and tell me how Jack got into this mess.

What happens if you start in the wrong place?  The worst possible thing could be your reader becomes a non-reader and puts your book down.  They get bored.  They decide that spending $.99 on a book is not too big of an investment to pull out early.  No that’s not a joke for my erotica fans!

Remember that there must be a hook of some sort and there are many ways to do that.  So here’s some pointers for beginnings. 

• Think of your story as a section of a much larger time line.
• Start at the most interesting part of the timeline for the world and, more importantly the character/s.
• For greater effect it must rely heavily on character and the major conflict while telling the reader something about the setting.  None of this has to be in great detail and it's not the time to info dumping.  There will be more on info dumping in another post but it’s basically back story vomit, or worse, diarrhea.
• Must have some or all of the below qualities
• Action
• Drama
• High emotional impact
• Memorability 
• Your writing must be perfect here.  No mistakes, grammatical errors or misspellings and it must be very clear.  This should be true of the whole book but if you’ve earned someone’s faith with a great beginning and characters they care about, they may forgive a misstep in the meat of the book.  If it’s in the beginning, you’re sunk.  You’re just another indie writer who can’t write, in the minds of many readers.

The best thing about beginnings, they can be written, rewritten and re-rewritten until you get them right.

Listening to: Billy Idol- White Wedding   How I miss those 80's videos.

Art of Storytelling: A new blog series

I've just randomly decided to talk about storytelling today.  I covered what I consider the key elements of good stories in the Heat of Story series but storytelling itself is an art form that is rarely taught.  Yes there are creative writing courses and even a BFA in Creative Writing offered in some universities and countless books on the craft but most of us learn through emulation. 

For me it started with Saturday morning cartoons in those distant pre-Cartoon Network days when getting up early on a Saturday was this exciting ritual.  Later it was those amazingly corny 80's TV series. Dukes of Hazard, Night Rider, Greatest American Hero.  And of course, I fell in love with movies from an early age.  I didn't really start reading much until I was 12 or 13.  Then it was The Destoyer series which was a serial that had something around 200-300 editions.  I ate these up.  Somehow that lead to comic books after novels.  I still love all these methods of storytelling and have gotten really heavy into anime in the last few years. 

The need to tell my own stories developed somewhere in the middle of that garbage stew and, just like my natural ear for grammar (I don't know the rules I just know what sounds right), I learned how to tell a story.  I learned where to start and how to not choke it with info-dumptruck loads of back story. I just started writing and when I was coming to the end of my first novel I decided I'd better figure out what to do with it once I finished.  What I found was that I knew nothing about writing a book which is probably why I had had been able to get so much done in so short a time frame.  Ignorance if bliss.  I soon found out that the end of my first novel was going to have to be the middle of it if I wanted to make it long enough to publish the traditional route, which was really the only option at the time.  I'm getting off topic here.

What I also realized at this point was that I needed to make sure I was doing it right.  A great deal of what I was doing was correct.  I had 3-dimensional, flawed characters.  Everything was based on conflict that moved the story.  My protagonist had the crucial moment of change in order to overcome the greatest conflict of the story.  Understanding the whys of storytelling was so empowering but it also robbed me of something.  You see, I was no longer blissfully adrift in the rivers of creation, but held fast in a vessel designed to navigate those waters. The muse hates structure.  But I grew as much in this time as a writer as I had in the first half of my novel.  And then it took me 3 more years to finish that novel and I grew even more.  That's when I really began to court my muse and understand what I needed to finish it.

And I've completed nothing since.  I've become hyper critical of myself and it's stifling.  I talked about this in the last blog.  But one thing that has come out of it is the ability to recognize good storytelling when I see it and to identify its major flaws.  I can see that makes it good when it works too.  I think we writer's forget that we are carrying on the ancient tradition of storytelling based in those fireside oral stories passed down over generations before writing was used.  

So, for the next few weeks I'll be talking about storytelling and some of the things I notice in new writers and this is really for my fellow indie writers because we dont get the benefit of an editor usually to point out these things.  We are all trapped in our own heads and the things we write sound great to us so we usually don't even recognize that we are making any mistakes.   I'd like to hit on some of the things that I think make readers put your book down and make a conscious decision to never pick it up again and those things that can hook them and keep them.

While doing this, an old, nearly forgotten novel crawled its way through my self doubt and depression to take up residence as my muse's favorite fucking thing in the world, so I'll be working on that as well.  I've posted an excerpt below just because I like to share more than my pompous ranting.

-From "Freaktown, VA" Urban fantasy set in the fictional city of Freetown, Virginia, known as Freaktown to many in the area. Vampire, Sorcerers and ghosts... Thought I was gonna say OH MY? Uh, no.

The old man, prostrate on the stone floor, continued his work as if Gray’s boot steps echoed only in his own ears.  He walked around the edge of the large circle, careful not to trespass on the countless runes carved into the stone.  Thousands of hours of work, all wrought by Darius’s hand.  

Gray kneeled at the far end of the circle opposite the entrance with is back to the old seer.
   
“One hundred years and more for you to learn patience, Nathaniel.  You had only to lose your humanity to gain discipline.  You honor me.”
   
“I have a strange problem, Master.”
   
Darius continued his work, undeterred.  The hammer and chisel chipped away at the rock, inscribing the markings that would serve whatever great work the old seer had pursued these many decades. 
   
“You only call strange that which you already understand but resist accepting as truth.  You come to me to confirm truth or to relieve fears?
   
“Both.  There’s a killer loose in Freetown.
   
“Many, I would assume.”
   
“This one is different.  He is like Priest.”
   
The hammer taps ceased.  Darius was motionless for several moments.  “This isn’t a conclusion you would come to lightly.  Are you certain?”
   
Gray stood up and turned.  “Germaine Litchfield is dead.  He’s the second bloodletter this week.  The first was a fang near Tremble Park.  Holes in their chests, no heart, almost no blood.”
   
“You have a collector then, a warlock.  Priest was not the first, you know.”
   
“But he was the last.  That black art was dead when he found it.  I’ve traveled the world destroying the tomes of that evil sect.  How is this possible?”
   
Darius struggled to his feet.  The hems of his robes were dirty and tattered from so often dragging the rough stone floor.  He was skeletally thin, his eyes rheumy with age but still saw far more than any other could.  A bald pate, crowned with long gray hair that blended into an even longer beard, shown with a mixture of sweat and dust from his labors.
   
“You must consider the strength of one able to commit such horrors and decide how best to handle the situation.  If he grows as powerful as Priest there may be no stopping him.”
   
“You have envisioned this?”
   
“I have.  I have seen this and what will become of the city.  This one brings war with him and death for practitioner, bloodletter and human alike.”
   
“What should I do?”
   
Darius hobbled over to stand before the enforcer.  Gray knelt before him, still able to dwarf the old man even on his knees.  Darius laid a dust coated hand on the other’s shoulder.  “You will do what you have always done my friend.”
   
“Will I prevail?”
   
“Many will die before this one is stopped.”  He took a deep breath.  “I see no future for Nathanial Gray.”  The old man’s twisted fingers squeezed Gray’s shoulder with a trembling strength that belied a strange harmony of frailty and power.
   
Darius turned and sought his hammer and chisel again.
   
The tunnel was darker when Gray left.  




Listening to: Amanda Palmer- Polly  I love Amanda Palmer as I did the Dresden Dolls. This Nirvana cover is unique and haunting.  The video tells a very interesting and disturbing story and it worth the watch.

  

Self Doubt - Muse Repellant

Self Doubt - Muse Repellant

I’m so busy and always tired.  I know it’s mostly stress.  I work a fulltime job, like so many of us.  I raise three kids, mostly by myself.  I’m working on multiple projects and advance marketing and I really only get an hour, maybe two, a day to myself.  When I sit down and put on the headphones, sometimes there’s just no gas left in the tank or I have just enough fumes to stumble to the bed and start it all over again.

It’s these times, when I’m just too tired to write, the muse grows silent.  I feel her sadness from afar but it’s just not enough to guilt me into fulfilling our contract.  And when I’m alone, doubt creeps in.  How can I call myself a writer when I can’t even make myself sit down to pound out a 1000 words?  I’m no artist.  I have no ambition.  Winners never quit and it feels like quitting when I crawl off to sleep without having written a word.

I’ve been in a real funk lately.  I mocked the muse by attempted to describe her here in these pages.  Now my goddess is making me pay, I think. 

We creatives are tested over and over.  If I just wrote for my own pleasure there would be no pressure, but I don’t.  I want to do something with it.  I want to achieve something.  And so I created this blog, and my public persona, in order to announce to the universe that I will fucking do something with this cursed talent and I will find some measure of success, if only to rub the noses of everyone who said I couldn’t do it in the stank of accomplishment.  These public declarations are a way to keep me accountable to my destiny.

So how do you deal with self doubt?  Well there’s something I’ve found that works for me but it’s a gamble.  I read my older stuff.  Something I wrote and maybe didn’t finish usually.  I always seem to find something that actually surprises me.  I typically walk away feeling good about my writing. 

I hear a lyrical, tittering laugh.  She stands back watching me fondly.  She’s proud of me in those moments and, after I’ve closed the old file, I turn to see her smiling.  She beams, then waggles a finger at me.  The gesture says, “Silly child.  You shouldn’t have doubted either of us.” 

My muse embraces me then, her lips on mine, my heart falling into a symbiotic rhythm with hers.  All my doubt seems silly now.  This is what I’m meant for.  This is where I belong.

Listening to: The Dresden Dolls – Good Day Live

Chosen by the Muse

Her voice a song.  Her smile the rays of the rising sun.  Chosen her charge from my early days, she has shaped and guided my life.  Chosen.  Exalted by her grace.  Gifted.  Granted command over a thousand worlds and a trillion lives.  I am her servant and her master.

My dad was an artist.  I say was because he shunned the muse, or she he, long ago.  My earliest memories of are of watching my dad paint.  I never had a reason to doubt that the hand of man could create wondrous things.  I grew up in the presence of artistic genius and, even though my dad left all that behind to lament the limits of his reach in this world, I was introduced to my Muse before I could even walk.

How strange is our relationship.  She was mother and teacher.  Friend and lover as I grew older.  Ally, adversary, enemy.  Wanton, wicked, willing, witch.  Stubborn, still, stagnant, stygian.  Fertile, fantastic, fabulous, fruitful.  Unnecessary and vital at once.

How are we artists different from others?  You feel it, don’t you?  You are set apart from so many others by your talents.  You sometimes stand above them because of your ambition.  Some will love you for this.  Others will hate you.  So many want to see you fail.  There are those who have flirted with the muse though.  There are those who haven’t the talent to create but they are inspired by the worlds and works of the creative.

Life is hard, harsh and cruel.  We have so many responsibilities and obligations and so rarely is life what we hoped it would be.  Humans need diversion.  We need the things that speak to the soul, to uplift, to allow us to relate to one another.  Music, literature, art--those things that make use passionate.  Sports, holidays, festivals.  The muse is at the heart of all these things. 

And we?  The creatives?  We are chosen to continually create those things that help people to keep on living.  Is it that dramatic?  Yes, I think so.  People talk about politics and religion with stress and fear.  They talk about a new movie with smiles and a light heart.  Songs bring people together without a word spoken just to move their bodies in celebration of that shared experience that touches and connects their souls.  They talk about the book that changed their life forever and when they find someone else that fell in love with that character, as they did, they are thrilled on a level that few things could touch.

We are chosen by the muse, gifted with talent and the ability to acquire skills that will change the lives of others.  Be proud of what you are and wear that like a badge of honor.  And never forget, my friend, my brother or sister of the pen, that with your talent comes a responsibility to use it.  It might take you years to complete that novel.  It may seem like an uphill struggle but some day, your words will impact someone in a way that you’ve yet to imagine.  And perhaps they will hear the voice of the Muse through your work and awaken to this amazing world in which we chosen walk and breathe.

Listening to: Eva Cassidy- Time After Time

Language of the Muse

Language of the Muse

My muse, a creature of lilting tongue and sinuous body, speaks to me in many ways.  The chief among them is through music.  Through song I send her my request which is based on emotion and tone, via the music I select. 

Currently my go to source for music is Spotify Internet Radio  where I can listen to just about any band I can think of, all or most of their albums and I don’t have to rely on it to pic “similar song and artists” like Pandora.   If I want to listen to Billy freakin Idol and nothing else for days and weeks at a time, I can do that. Though I only like 3 songs of his.  The only downside to Spotify is having to listen to 1 commercial every 20 minutes or so.  Not bad considering, and no they aren’t paying me for this.  On mobile you do have to pay for the playlists, and that’s really the only reason to have it.

Music does several things for me.  First and foremost, it allows me to created a wall between me and the world around me.  I have 3 kids between 4 and 14.  When you walk into my house it’s sorta like when Eddie Valiant goes back into Toon Town in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. 

The only way I can block that madness out is to put in my headphones and summon the muse.  I do this when I’m alone as well and it has to be head phones.  It’s like I’m pouring the music directly into my brain.  It washes over my soul as tribute to my pagan goddess; my Muse.  A door opens and she dances through it, undulating and slithering, part veiled dancer for the Sultan and part serpent.  She entrances me.  He beguiles me.  She beckons me into her arms.  We move with the spirit of the music and, through the melody, tone, lyrics and beat, I am transported.

I must cycle my music ever couple months though.  She constantly requires a new influx of great tunage.  I have to discover new bands or rediscover bands I had left behind long ago.

My muse is my own.  For others the muse may be contacted in other ways.  Sometimes I can be inspired by reading a really great novel or watching a surprisingly good movie (most movies and television shows are utter failures with me though some make the grade).  Just talking to other writers about their process, their stories, their ambitions, I often hear her jealous sigh and she begins to beckon me away with her, into the chilly night where I belong to her alone. 

The language of the muse is different for all of us but it is important for any creative, writer or other, to learn how to communicate with their muse.  Because the muse is fickle.  She comes and goes at will and cares not for our suffering.  Knowing how to contact her is one of the best cures for writer’s block that I know.  We’ve all been there.  We know we need to write but the ideas aren’t coming, we get stuck on some ridiculous part of the story that we know we should be able to get past or, worst of all for me, we simply lose the motivation and forward momentum. 

This is why I keep playlists by mood.  Most of the time, when I write its upbeat, rock or metal with some pop thrown in here and there.  Sometimes I need something emotionally colored for sad and emotionally charged parts.  Other times I need something even faster for fight and battle scenes.  And there are times that I need to pull out the song or album I was listening to when I first had the idea for the story. 

So here’s how I use music.

I need to be comfortable, usually in my recliner, my desk chair or sitting on my bed, almost always with my laptop in front of me.  Sometimes I will lay down if I’m really digging for something or really needing to open my mind wider. 

Next, I tilt my head back and close my eyes.  For some reason my face must be upturned.  I hate to say this but it’s almost like I’m praying but that’s really not what I’m doing.  I like to have my face toward the sky because in all my best childhood fantasies I was able to fly and that’s part of what I do. 

With my eyes closed I then allow the music to drift into me, to fill me and to stir emotions.  I’m going first for emotions.  The emotions will then work with the music to conjure images.  Maybe they have nothing to do with the story I’m working on, or I may be doing this because I have no story at all.  The purpose is to set my mind free. 

The first time I remember doing this was when I was listening to so a song by Kansas called

Magnum Opus (below).  There is a bit of a carnival sound going on in the middle of this thing but for the first half, I was transported to a battle field on a desolate alien world.  Two sides squaring off for battle as wind blew dust across a bone strewn land where countless thousands had lost their lives with violent ends.  I could see the villain and his army topping a mound of ashen earth, his red eyes glowing in the clouds of powdered bone kicked up by his armored footfalls.  I saw through his eyes as the hero and his men became visible on the field of ruin as the dust momentarily cleared.  I saw from above as they charged, their battle cries not unlike those of their slaughtered predecessors or the wraiths that even then stalked the battle ground ready to prey upon the newly dislodged souls of the fallen.

How do you contact your muse?  How do you summon the power to create and destroy worlds?  Every artist must learn this and I don’t think any of us will have created anything of worth if we hadn’t stumbled upon this at one time.  When you’re stuck or need motivation, retrace those steps.  What brought you to the key board the first time?  Maybe it was all pen and paper.  Go back to that, even if its just to free write and get the wheels turning.

Listening to lots of things. Right now: Filter: Hey Man Nice Shot  The urban legend is that this song was written about Kurt Cobain committing suicide.  It’s really about Budd Dwyer who committed suicide during a live press conference in 1987.  Though the connection to Cobain probably added to the popularity of the song (Filter never did anything else worth spitting on), the song is a true masterpiece of dark industrial rock that still maintains its musical relevance 13 years later.  The baseline alone is enough to get my Muse humping my leg like a puppy on Viagra.

Bucking the Muse: Introduction

Bucking the Muse: Introduction

I can’t speak for other creatives but I can speak to the problems that face me as a storyteller and artist.  I am a slave to inspiration, to the muses that pull the strings of my creative outlets.  I think that’s how it is for so many of us.  Be your artistry writing, poetry, music, dance or fine art, the muse is the embodiment of that which inspires creation and for so many of us, she walks away when we need her the most.

Greek and Roman tradition would have us see the muse as the source of all creation and knowledge.  The origin and evolution of the muses is pretty interesting stuff if you ever research it.  Here, I’ll refer to “The Muse” as a singular entity that embodies inspiration and the spark of genius that is the writer’s source of power. 

Communing with the daughters of Zeus

There are many ways that the Muse affects us.  She gifts us with creative energy, which is that feeling you get when you MUST create something.  Without a germ or seed of something to plant in this perfect time, for me this creative energy can turn into something painfully disruptive and manic, like an addiction that cannot be salved, an itch in the bone where I cannot scratch.  

Sometimes she gives us the very creative seed that we need.  For me it is something that springs from another idea that catches in my spongy gray matter like a burr in a wool sweater.  It digs in its barbs and refuses to budge and so I must examine it more closely.  And as I look at it, it germinates and produces a shoot or various shoots.  If the Creative Energy is there, one or two shoots take root and then blossom into my brain, instead of without.  

If my mind is clear and my thoughts are flowing the Muse allows me to access a cocktail of knowledge and talent with which to cultivate these blossoms which are the beginning of a story.  The Muse allows me to travel inside my head where I find that the strongest of the blossoms has consumed its weaker brothers and sisters to become a story. Here it is now developing into a new Garden of Eden in which a world is born and its inhabitants are taking their first shaky steps.

The Muse takes me into this world where we fly high above it seeing the lands being born through the cataclysms where thoughts and feeling clash.  She shows me eons in minutes and epochs in seconds.  And so we fly lower to see the flora and fauna.  We find creatures living here and we already understand how their existence will affect the future as time has no meaning, we only order it to better understand and alter it where needed.

We land in a small tribal community to observe primitive people and walk among them as unseen gods.  We affect their lives with the blink of an eye.  By sharing of the air that we breathe we set them above all other inhabitants of this world.  And we step back to see this primitive camp turn into a settlement, a town, a city, a sprawling metropolis.  We look at the things the decedents of those primitive men and women have made as we directed and are thrilled to see that they have somehow even managed to surpass our original ideas.

And then, she takes me to a door, like so many others but I feel that behind this door something important exists and so I knock, hesitantly at first and then throw it open with reckless abandon as my Muse fills me with giddy, childlike excitement and there I find that person.  The one.  The hero or heroin and I fall instantly in love. 

Now the story begins…

This is my Muse and I love her for all that she does for me.  And then she’s gone.  My goddess disappears.  She’s given me all this great responsibility for a world that I created with my own hands and these people that I know and love and then she forsakes me.  I know the story of this world and the great destiny of my hero and suddenly it feels like too much.  Without her I feel the back bending weight of it all which causes my knees to ache and my weariness to overwhelm.

But I’m and artist and I soldier on.  I try despite my weariness.  I find another source of strength and I find a way to keep going without her.  I don’t need her.  She’s abandoned me and I can create my own inspiration!

And then she comes back.  Despite my blustering, in spite of my anger and hurt, I’m so happy to see her, to hold her in my arms and to feel that creative energy again.  And as we embrace, she whispers into my ear, her sultry lips caressing that sensitive flesh.  She says, “I did not come back for this world in which you slave.  I bring you a new gift.  Come with me.”

And this is the idea behind Bucking the Muse.  She is willful and untamable.  She is a force of nature but she can also be a siren, a sultry vixen that tempts and taunts.  We creatives must learn to make her work for us and how to buck her off when she would climb on our backs like a demonic imp pulling us away from our labors of love.

More to come on Bucking the Muse.

Listening to Muse: Uprising  Anyone ever notice that the synthesizer bit in the beginning of this is the Dr. Who theme? 

Heart of Story: part IV Resolution

Resolution

Now we come to what I consider the true art of storytelling and writing.  Resolution is not just the end of the story.  A true resolution does several things.  First, and foremost, it resolves the conflicts, or most of them.  It ties everything together: character arcs, foreshadowing, the major conflicts and any promises made to the reader.  It wows the reader with a surprising, yet inevitable plot twist that makes the book memorable and buzzworthy (makes readers talk to other readers which is free advertising and drives sales).  It leaves the reader wanting more.  Even if you don’t plan a sequel or series, if the reader turns the last page and feels a pang of loss, then you’ve hooked them for life.

I’m not sure that anyone can teach you how to do this.  It’s part intuition, part talent, lots of trial and error, learned writing skill, practice and the ability to anticipate what your reader expects so that you can surprise them.

I’m primarily a discovery writer but I rarely have to go back and add foreshadowing to make my plot twists work.  Usually I throw out bits and pieces throughout the story, which is told to me by my characters who shape and guide it towards the events that I know need to happen.  These things usually come to me as ways to add color and interest to the story initially but serve as road maps along the journey.  Towards the ending I find ways to make them tie together that aren’t predictable or cliché.  This is a gamble because I might not be able to pull it off when the time comes.  All writing is a gamble, just like anything else where success isn’t certain.  I’ve tried to go to the bathroom before, and failed.  Nothing is certain.

When I succeed in wrapping everything together in the end, the road signs I made for myself throughout the story to lead me here now serve as foreshadowing for the reader.  Of course, anything that doesn’t work with the ending can be cut out in the editing process or changed to fit.  This is called retroactive foreshadowing and I’ve learned that a lot of writers do this.  Of course, they would never tell their fans this while being hailed as a storytelling genius, which they might be but not nearly so impressive were the real truth known.  We damned magicians and our fancy tricks.

A true resolution has to be a satisfying end to the book.  Even if the hero dies, it has to feel right.  It has to be dramatic.  Above all, it must make sense.  If the end sucks, no matter how good the rest of the story was, the book sucks.  There are books I wish I would have stopped reading half way through.  If the last thing I feel is disappointment then that will color the entire book and that's all I will walk away with.

So just some tips on Resolution

• It must solve the major conflict of the book. 
• If writing a series of books with an over all meta-plot, the each book must have a major conflict for the characters to solve that move him closer to overcoming the conflict/s that the entire series revolves around.  Your hero can’t defeat the big baddy in the first book but he can overcome his acrophobia as he fights a major minion on a rooftop.
• The Resolution needs to relate to something that happened earlier in the story.  It could be something that seemed innocuous at the time but turns out to be very important later.  This is foreshadowing and it can be placed in the story once you figure out the end, if that helps.
• Leave the reader wanting more:
• By leaving the book open for a sequel.  Maybe you’ll never get to that book.  For example: the villain is defeated and we see the hero trying to get back to his normal life and, just when he feels like there’s hope of putting the pieces back together, he hears someone in the dark, wet streets casually whistling the villian’s favorite song.  The End.  
• By wrapping up every loose thread so well that you leave them breathless and amazed.  Easier said than done. 
• One way to do this is take notes while you read your story for events, major or minor, that cause the reader to ask questions.  Why does he see a cat that no one else can see?  Why did his ex girl friend call him at 4 am and not leave a message?  Who is the man that pulled him from the burning wreckage? 
• You now need to decide if you can answer these questions within the events of your ending. 
• Do these events drive the story? 
• Do you want to even deal with them and, if not, take them out!  Never invite your reader to ask a question that you can’t, won’t or don’t answer.  The question is interest in your story and you must pay it off.  If not in this book then in the next but you then need to reassure your reader that you will pay it off in the next book.  That’s back to sequels, though I guess.
• Make it surprising yet inevitable.  If you look back through the story from the ending, it must seem like it couldn’t have ending any other way but, until then, it was a complete surprise when it came.

This ends the Heart of Story series.  This was from a guide on writing a friend asked me to put together for him years ago.  Though the friend never wrote a single word nor did anything with his life, it really helped me to order my thoughts and those I’ve collected from the experts in genre fiction that I look up to.  I hope it helps others.

I’m not sure where this blog will go next but I promise to keep it relevant.  Any suggestions or questions are welcome here or through email. 

TheCR.rowe@gmail.com

Listening to: The Police- Every Little Thing She Does is Magic