A small apology

I'm sorry to have left you sensitive types who relish a good ending out for now. But I feel what better way to start an analysis of literature's elements than with the last thing you'll read? The ending after all can make or break a book.

For the meantime, I'll offer you a little story instead. Let's imagine we're a few years in the future, in a country not at all unlike Russia...

Anyone who says this place has a “majestic” landscape is a liar. Those “wonderful” cliffs took out three men. And guess what? We can’t cross the “amazing” river. Oh, and don’t forget the weather. Rain, all the time. We get dry and then it’s raining again. It’s a wonder our kit doesn’t rust, it’s so wet. And then there’s the enemy. Who know this place. Our maps are wrong, out intelligence is days old, we have no cover and we’re alone. And we’re surrounded. There’s no chance of getting supplies unless we can steal some, and we can’t do that unless we can find a lone camp or patrol. And guess what? They haven’t got any lone units. They outnumber us ten to one, and yet we were told they were on the point of defeat. So, a recap of our situation. We’re in a cave, surrounded, they don’t know exactly where we are. We haven’t eaten for a week, there’s no supplies anyway and I’m watching a woman bleed to death in front of me. There was a sniper, you see. Well, I’d better tell you the whole story. Sofia was one of our newest, part of the great drive for manpower. And she was so hungry, you see. Hadn’t eaten for days and all that. So she thought she would foray out of our safe little cave. Hadn’t got a hundred yards and then – bang! – they shot her in the leg. And I know that was intentional. So, she’s pretty much immobilised, ‘cause the grounds so slippery and there’s this sniper, and we can’t raise a white flag ‘cause we haven’t got one. And the scum wouldn’t respect it anyway. I mean, they could have killed Sofia but no, she’s lying out there on the rocks crying. I can just about hear what she’s saying, and it goes like this. “Why does it hurt so? When will they help me? They will help me, won’t they?” She’s been repeating that for the two hours she’s been lying there. The water’s quite red around her, it’s a bad wound. No-one has the heart to tell her help won’t come, but it won’t, not ever. Oh, and she’s only gone and given away our position. God, she screamed loud. And the sniper must have seen where she came from. So, I’m in a cave waiting to die while I’m watching a woman bleed to death from a leg wound. War is great, isn’t it?

Let's Begin at the End (Part 1)

This is a Disclaimer to those picky types who I know will call me out on it - THESE NEXT FEW ARTICLES WILL CONTAIN ANALYSIS OF THE ENDINGS OF NOVELS. IF YOU FEEL THIS WOULD LESSEN YOUR ENJOYMENT OF THEM, THEN DO NOT READ ON.


Now I've got that out of the way, I'd like to turn our attention to the title. The ending of a novel should in some way provide a logical and natural conclusion to the plot. Therefore, the first criterion of a good ending must be:

1) To Logically Resolve What Has Gone Before.

While the Ancient Greeks were happy to introduce a Deus Ex Machina if they'd written themselves into a hole (God from the Machine - in essence, Zeus would come in and say something along the lines of "This isn't right - let's reassess the situation"), this doesn't hold as much weight nowadays. It's called lazy plotting, and it's generally a sign of bad sci-fi/horror/adventure. Unstoppable villain about to win? Here's a superweapon out of nowhere.

Logical resolution of a plot must therefore avoid the introduction of forces outside the characters' control, unless this can be rationalised. Take a war story for example. It's a nice ending if all of a sudden ten tanks arrive and destroy the five threatening your heroes, and it's not as bad as "Jesus comes along and destroys the tanks with JESUS LASERS" but it doesn't make for a good ending unless the heroes have in some way organised this (if it's part of the plan, then go ahead.)

Perhaps a better ending would therefore have the heroes win with cunning and skill? Possibly. But the "work a solution out of nowhere" doesn't always work. For example, if the "cunning and skill" simply involves getting the better of an incompetent enemy with traps et al, unless they're characterful they won't really work. Guerilla warfare may be an option, but having five men take on overwhelming odds with only a shoestring armoury and some sticky-back plastic is really quite weak and will ruin any suspension of disbelief that your readers may have had.

If our first rule of an ending is "Resolve the Plot" then does a book which doesn't do this fail as a work of fiction? Of course not. Life doesn't always resolve nicely, and if you're in a situation where you as an author cannot work out an ending which doesn't pass Rule One then leaving it open can work. It allows the reader to imagine the ending.

The author Iain M. Banks is very good at this. Take, for example, his work "Feersum Endjinn." The essential plot is that the protagonists seek an object which will avert an impending crisis. However, the ending doesn't make completely clear a) what they found, b) if it worked and c) what happened next. Surely this fails Rule One - we don't know if the crisis was averted? However, Banks has evidently taken the decision to leave it to the reader since he did not feel capable of resolving events in print in a satisfactory way. We are given some hints, but the ultimate decision is left to us.

In fact, even a logical resolution of the plot can be weaker than an open ending. A technique prevalent in the Victorian era was to end with a wedding, either of your protagonist (Esther marrying Mr. Jarndyce in "Bleak House") or where your protagonist is involved (Clym's pensive fate at the end of "The Return of the Native.") While this is fine most of the time, it can seem a bit twee and overdone (a wedding is a new beginning, marking the end of the plot &c &c). Either end strongly in a way that will reassure your audience that the adventure is over (while avoiding a cliche or Deus Ex Machina) have an open ending (but only if it's necessary - I'll come on the downsides of this next!)

My word, ending your novel is looking hard! You shouldn't end on a cliche, you should know when to stop (the wholly unnecessary ending of the film adaptation of "The Return of the King" is testament to that) and when to carry on! But I'm no expert. These rules are merely observations and guidelines.

So an open ending helps you avoid all the cliches of a concrete one. Result! But not so fast. Take the ending of "The Dark Tower" by Stephen King. He in fact provided two endings. An open one, then a disclaimer saying "IF YOU DON'T WANT YOUR EXPERIENCE SPOILED, DO NOT READ ON!" and then a curious twist ending. Interesting, to be sure. But a sign that he himself had doubts about how to end his magnum opus (if seven long novels don't count as one, I don't know what does). It would have been better to either write a good conclusion (not a twist ending) or a good open ending rather than making a half-hearted attempt at both.

The temptation was always there for me to read on, whereas if the option for closure had not been there, I would have been happy (and thought that King had real cojones for ending an epic tale of a journey with no description of what was at it's end.)

Dystopic novels like open endings. In "1984" we are left with Winston "loving Big Brother" while in "Brave New World" the Savage is dead but from there, what next? These seem fairly concrete. The plot is resolved, after all. But the open-endedness still exists. Will things change? This device is, however, swiftly becoming the new lazy writing. Far easier, after all, to leave them hanging on your last word! It's my opinion, therefore that an open ending in fact obey Rule One. It logically resolves the plot. As to what happens next? Well, that's a whole new story.

I'll call it a day now, but join me later for more exciting endings.

Including:

-What if it never happened?
-And that's how I got here!

And...

-The killer is INSIDE THE HOUSE!

Day One

It's a little cliche to include a "hi I'm new!" post in a blog, I suppose, but as I have found, taking pains to avoid a cliche can in turn become a new cliche.

Take for example the anti-hero. There was a time when the "paragon of virtue" hero (cf. King Arthur, Robin Hood etc.) was a little passe. So authors and storytellers create the "anti-hero," notable examples including Batman, the protagonist of "The Catcher in the Rye" and Macbeth. There characters, while being more interesting than your average protagonist due to moral ambiguity (Salinger's "hero" is an antisocial and arrogant slacker, Batman constantly wrangles with angst about his parents and Macbeth is the quintessential Greek Tragedy hero) and an often less than heroic outlook, can in turn become a cliche. How many adventure stories have you read with a "silent, square-jawed hero" who bravely lays down the law only to spurn the advances of the fair maiden and stick two fingers at the grateful public? I feel this concept of "hero with character flaws" may in turn become as passe as the "knight in shining armour" archetype was prior to it.

Where then lies the solution to avoiding cliches? Admittedly, I feel literature would suffer if time-worn howlers like "Once upon a time" and "And they all lived happily ever after" returned in force. But to have a purely virtuous character in a depraved world? A far more interesting proposition, and one which creates a strong dramatic contrast. Take the Savage in Huxley's "Brave New World" - he accepts the evils of the world because they make him free, yet he is ostracised because of his non-conformity. The inconstant and amoral societies of fiction (especially dystopias) often create good foils for virtuous people, and they need not be Salinger-esque dropouts or Orwellian rebels to create an interesting plot.

So where does this leave us? Ah! I haven't introduced myself. In Inconstant Reader, you may well find reviews of books in an irreverant fashion, short fiction and general musings on the world of fiction as a whole.

Happy reading!