endings
Afternoon reading: Rubicon, A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, and From Eden to Exile.
Robin and Trevor stopped by last night; Trevor helped me move Kimmie's sewing machine and serger downstairs to the new sewing-room.
On Sunday I explored a bit further into the literary blogoverse, traveling via Grumpy Old Bookman (good reading) to a blog by Maud Newton. Her topic was "Ending Trouble", in which she mentions her dissatisfaction with the last quarter of most novels, and quotes James Wood in the Guardian on the same subject.
I agree (in my case, I also usually don't like the first three quarters either). The observation is not new; I remember reading E. M. Forster's discussion of it in Aspects of the Novel, published in 1927. The chapter or heading was "Worse Toward the End". I forget what his take on it was.
My own thought is this: the quality of the ending of a story--including a novel-length story--reveals the writer's command of storytelling. A story is about its ending; if you don't have an ending, you don't have a story.
In this I'm influenced by Robert McKee. He says that story design follows the age-old rule for dramatic presentations in general: save the best for last. Even James Joyce was trying to follow this rule by ending Ulysses with Molly Bloom's monologue. If a novel simply peters out, or suffers from a contrived, added-on ending, it's a sign that the writer did not know what his or her story was about. The novel was underworked, or the writer underskilled.
In my opinion there's a further problem: the 20th century saw the denigration of storytelling in the name of artistic fashions such as modernism, postmodernism, and so on. Forster, in the above-mentioned Aspects of the Novel, refers to story as the most primitive element of the novel--the thing that held the attention of shock-headed troglodytes gaping around the campfire. Regrettably, in his view, it must be there, but the novelist shouldn't soil his hands with it any more than necessary.
Joyce too, by the time Finnegans Wake rolled around, was fed up with the "go-ahead plot" and wanted to do something different. (He did--but when's the last time you read Finnegans Wake?) I remember reading things by writers like Alain Robbe-Grillet, Lawrence Durrell, Vladimir Nabokov, and many others who ripped up time and space to escape the drudgery of storytelling. One of France's New Wave filmmakers (probably Jean-Luc Godard) is reputed to have said, "A story should have a beginning, middle, and end--but not necessarily in that order." Clever--but is it good writing advice?
I think not. When I was younger I appreciated artsy, intellectual movies (and to a lesser extent novels), but now that I'm older I appreciate a good story, well told. When I was 20 I was mesmerized by watching Luchino Visconti's film version of Death in Venice. I still like that movie, but I think its achievement is much less than, say, Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. (Now there's an ending.)
In my opinion, the best stories of the past few decades are to be found in movies, because screenwriters are trained in storytelling. Novelists, by and large, aren't--and it shows. They tend to trust in talent and intuition, with mixed results. When I hear a novelist say that he or she doesn't know how to end a story, I hear a lost soul--one who hasn't begun to think about what his or her story means.
The best novels have strong endings. When I finished reading Crime and Punishment when I was 13, lying in bed down in my basement room, I remember having a deep, stirring feeling--a new feeling: something I'd never felt before. The ending gave a powerful new twist to a powerful story. Tears came to my eyes, and I marveled at the ability of a book, a printed thing, to evoke this response in me. How did he do it?
Likewise, when I first read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, I was 18 and it was a life-changing experience. The ending of that book too I found uniquely powerful and appropriate. It didn't involve surprise plot-twists or boy-getting-girl; it created the feeling of the launching of a freed soul into the sky of new possibilities, the joy of one who has burst the chains and is flying to his true life.
McKee estimates that of the total creative effort represented in a finished work, 75% or more of the writer's labor should go into designing the story. Of that 75%, 75% again should go into the climax (the ending). There it is: 9/16 of a writer's total effort should go into the ending of a story. Over half. How many writers put even 10% of that amount of effort into it?
I spent a year, maybe more, outlining my novel. I hope the effort was enough, and of the right type. I couldn't think of any way to improve it further. Now I'm committed.
Robin and Trevor stopped by last night; Trevor helped me move Kimmie's sewing machine and serger downstairs to the new sewing-room.
On Sunday I explored a bit further into the literary blogoverse, traveling via Grumpy Old Bookman (good reading) to a blog by Maud Newton. Her topic was "Ending Trouble", in which she mentions her dissatisfaction with the last quarter of most novels, and quotes James Wood in the Guardian on the same subject.
I agree (in my case, I also usually don't like the first three quarters either). The observation is not new; I remember reading E. M. Forster's discussion of it in Aspects of the Novel, published in 1927. The chapter or heading was "Worse Toward the End". I forget what his take on it was.
My own thought is this: the quality of the ending of a story--including a novel-length story--reveals the writer's command of storytelling. A story is about its ending; if you don't have an ending, you don't have a story.
In this I'm influenced by Robert McKee. He says that story design follows the age-old rule for dramatic presentations in general: save the best for last. Even James Joyce was trying to follow this rule by ending Ulysses with Molly Bloom's monologue. If a novel simply peters out, or suffers from a contrived, added-on ending, it's a sign that the writer did not know what his or her story was about. The novel was underworked, or the writer underskilled.
In my opinion there's a further problem: the 20th century saw the denigration of storytelling in the name of artistic fashions such as modernism, postmodernism, and so on. Forster, in the above-mentioned Aspects of the Novel, refers to story as the most primitive element of the novel--the thing that held the attention of shock-headed troglodytes gaping around the campfire. Regrettably, in his view, it must be there, but the novelist shouldn't soil his hands with it any more than necessary.
Joyce too, by the time Finnegans Wake rolled around, was fed up with the "go-ahead plot" and wanted to do something different. (He did--but when's the last time you read Finnegans Wake?) I remember reading things by writers like Alain Robbe-Grillet, Lawrence Durrell, Vladimir Nabokov, and many others who ripped up time and space to escape the drudgery of storytelling. One of France's New Wave filmmakers (probably Jean-Luc Godard) is reputed to have said, "A story should have a beginning, middle, and end--but not necessarily in that order." Clever--but is it good writing advice?
I think not. When I was younger I appreciated artsy, intellectual movies (and to a lesser extent novels), but now that I'm older I appreciate a good story, well told. When I was 20 I was mesmerized by watching Luchino Visconti's film version of Death in Venice. I still like that movie, but I think its achievement is much less than, say, Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. (Now there's an ending.)
In my opinion, the best stories of the past few decades are to be found in movies, because screenwriters are trained in storytelling. Novelists, by and large, aren't--and it shows. They tend to trust in talent and intuition, with mixed results. When I hear a novelist say that he or she doesn't know how to end a story, I hear a lost soul--one who hasn't begun to think about what his or her story means.
The best novels have strong endings. When I finished reading Crime and Punishment when I was 13, lying in bed down in my basement room, I remember having a deep, stirring feeling--a new feeling: something I'd never felt before. The ending gave a powerful new twist to a powerful story. Tears came to my eyes, and I marveled at the ability of a book, a printed thing, to evoke this response in me. How did he do it?
Likewise, when I first read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, I was 18 and it was a life-changing experience. The ending of that book too I found uniquely powerful and appropriate. It didn't involve surprise plot-twists or boy-getting-girl; it created the feeling of the launching of a freed soul into the sky of new possibilities, the joy of one who has burst the chains and is flying to his true life.
McKee estimates that of the total creative effort represented in a finished work, 75% or more of the writer's labor should go into designing the story. Of that 75%, 75% again should go into the climax (the ending). There it is: 9/16 of a writer's total effort should go into the ending of a story. Over half. How many writers put even 10% of that amount of effort into it?
I spent a year, maybe more, outlining my novel. I hope the effort was enough, and of the right type. I couldn't think of any way to improve it further. Now I'm committed.
Labels: Crime and Punishment
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