Have you ever encountered the storytelling classic, so often a part of tales woven by young children but not by them exclusively, of “and then we all went home and went to bed”? If you were a deep sea diver and came up that fast, you could guarantee a case of the bends.
It’s an awesome wand to wave about as a kid when you’ve written the exciting stuff and you’ve got a little bored with tying up the loose ends. All you do is throw those words on the page and you’re done, knots be damned.
Now I mention this as an author who, despite no longer being a child, has to make sure not to undercook the end of the process when I’m working on a story. Not that I’m having to keep weapons raised against characters heading off for a snooze, it’s ensuring that there’s the correct, and appropriate conclusion for everyone and everything involved.
You’ve all read a story or watched a film or TV show where there’s an unintended cliff hanger because the arc of a character hasn’t been completed and it’s bloody annoying. It’s not that we don’t appreciate an open end, rather it’s the fact that it isn’t addressed as such. At the end of a book, being told that there’s more to come because the character in question is in the middle of something means that the author has been considering the onward story and that it wasn’t just forgotten about.
Going home and going to bed after an adventure of some kind is pretty much the life experience of a child though, so seeing that manifest in a story shouldn’t be overlooked as a sign of the person telling the tale. If you’re out playing with your friends as a kid then go home, landing back to reality, it can be seen as just mundanely dull so it’s understandable that in terms of story telling, a child would translate that to mean that as soon as the ‘action’ finishes, there’s nothing left to talk about. Maybe we cut them a tiny bit of slack in the early years?
All in all, a good beginning is vital to a story because it pulls the reader in, but a strong ending is just as important. You plan and plan and plan and as the story develops, you make amendments and adjustments to keep the ship sailing in the right direction but if you finish abruptly, without paying the attention required, either through laziness or oversight, the results can ultimately negate everything which has gone before.
A bit like rushing to reopen schools, businesses etc. before the full and correct controls are implemented, wouldn’t you say?
Owen Elgie 