By T.K.
Thorne
If, like
me, you break out in hives at the word “outline,” plot dragons can lie in wait
before you get to the end of your book. But knowing the ending, even the first draft
of an ending, is critical to driving your story. Two things can help you shape an
ending—location and character.
Terrain
can be a constriction that limits your plot choices or it can suggest
opportunities. Your story may require a specific place or type of location. JRRTolkien (Lord of the Rings) had a
super-powerful ring that needed to be destroyed. That meant either a very hot
forge or nature’s forge—lava. Lava was definitely the more dramatic choice, so
he needed a volcano environment for his climax scene. The trip to Mount Doom
pushed the entire plot of the trilogy.
Using a
location that is already familiar territory requires less description at a
point when you need to focus on what is happening. For her climax scene,
Cinderella is home. No need to rehash the general layout or the characters. We
can focus on what decisions characters make and what happens physically and
emotionally. In Lord of the Rings,
the reader has never seen Mount Doom, but by the time Frodo and Sam get there,
it feels familiar from the previous references. We don’t need many clues to
imagine the bubbling lava, the smell of burning sulfur, and the stark rocky
terrain.
Another
way to approach the ending is to look at your character arc. How does she change and how can you show that?
Cinderella is a retiring, quiet, obedient girl, but she casts caution to the
wind to go to the ball. When the prince appears, she defies her sisters to put
her foot in the glass slipper. In Lord of
the Rings, Frodo faithfully bears the burden of the ring to the edge of the
cliff, but at the last moment, he can’t overcome the ring’s power. At the same
time, that power is the ring’s doom.
Tolkien made his ending work in a complex way that satisfies.
Make
sure the central character plays an integral part in the solution, either by
wits or bravery—or, like Frodo, by failing—but not by coincidence or employing
a contrived solution. Cinderella’s decision to attend the ball and be her true
self caused the prince to fall in love and search for her. Sure, the fairy
godmother could have poofed them
together, out of reach of the clutches of her conniving family, but the reader
would have felt cheated. Your ending needs to be surprising or, at least, not
completely foreseen by the reader and, at the same time, inevitable in the
sense that it needs to arise out of what has come before. The reader should
say, Oh yeah, I should have seen that
coming when Cindy lost her shoe. When Gollum appears at the end of Tolkien’s trilogy and grabs the ring,
we are surprised, but it is not contrived. Gollum’s actions are entirely in keeping with his character and previous
behavior.
Use
location and character to help shape your ending as soon as possible to outwit
the plot dragons, keep out of a writing lava pit, and
have a happily-ever-after writing your book.
T.K.Thorne’s
childhood passion for storytelling deepened when she became a police officer in
Birmingham, Alabama. “It was a crash course in life and what motivated and
mattered to people.” When she retired as a captain, she took on Birmingham’s
business improvement district as the executive director before retiring again
to write full time. T.K. speaks on life lessons--how she accidentally
became a police officer, didn't end up in a space capsule, and tackled
historical novels about unnamed women in two of the oldest and most famous
stories on earth, as well as writing a book from the case investigators'
perspectives about solving the most infamous church bombing in Civil Rights
history. Her
writing has garnered several awards, including ForeWord Review Magazine's 2009
"Book of the Year" for Historical Fiction for her debut novel, NOAH'S
WIFE. The New York Post’s “Books You Should Be Reading” list featured her first
non-fiction book, LAST CHANCE FOR JUSTICE which details the investigation of
the 1963 Sixteenth Street church bombing case. Rave reviews have followed her
newest novel about the unnamed wife of Lot, ANGELS AT THE GATE, which won the
IBPA's Benjamin Franklin Award for historical fiction and an IPPY award. Her
screenplay in the film "Six Blocks Wide" was a semi-finalist at the
international "A Film for Peace Festival" in Italy. Her website is TKThorne.com,
where you can read more about her books and sign up for a Newsletter with
inside info on her research and adventures. She blogs there, as well, and loves
to hear from readers. T.K. writes at her mountaintop home near Birmingham,
often with two dogs and a cat vying for her lap.
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