This is How Your (Fictional) World Ends?

Do you need to know how your story ends before you begin?

At this beginning of the new year, I thought it appropriate to talk about endings. Specifically, the endings of stories.

In a previous post, I discussed the difference between pantsing vs. plotting (or gardeners vs. weeders), that is, those who write without needing to know the ending, and those who outline every detail before they begin.

Today, I want to talk about the Pantsing side of things and some techniques I use to propel me along a story without knowing exactly where things are going.

First off, I feel that some authors get stuck needing to know every detail of their story before they begin. “I have this idea,” Jane Author says to me, “but I’m not sure where it’s going. All I know is that it begins with Cool Thing #1 and Cool Thing #2. After that, I’m stuck.”

And because they don’t know where the story might lead, they never write it. Which is a shame, because I always think Cool Things Nos. 1 & 2 are pretty good ideas for a story.

So here’s the thing: You don’t need to know where a story is going in order to start writing it.

You don’t need to know where a story is going in order to start writing it

I put that in bold because it’s an important point. I don’t even think you need to know what your story is about. This isn’t to say you don’t need an idea. I like to think of a story as a tree grown from a seed. You start with a small packet of information: a setting, a character, a challenge — and you give it some water and soil and it grows (often slowly at first) into this huge living thing. It takes on a life of its own.

The next thing I do is practice “active imagination.” As a writer, you need to work your imagination every day. It’s a muscle, and like any other, it can atrophy if you don’t work it out. You imagine yourself as your character in your setting. What would your character see? Feel? Smell? Hear? Taste? Try to imagine every sense. You don’t need to necessarily list every sense on the page, but immersing yourself in your character’s experience will often tell you exactly what comes next.

As with stories, all writers are different, but I try to ground the reader in character and setting as quickly as possible. Readers like characters. And readers especially like characters that are doing and feeling things.

A lot of stories are rejected out of hand because the author did a poor job of grounding the reader in character and setting. If I’m two pages into your story and I still don’t know who the main character is, where they are, and what they want, well, for me that’s not such an interesting story, and I’m probably going to put it down. Of course, there are exceptions. Sometimes it’s fun to uncover the mystery of what’s going on. But character and place are almost always important.

Next, I give my characters a challenge, something to stir them to action. This can be as epic as saving the world from a great encroaching evil, or as personal as learning about the death of a loved one.

Action doesn’t necessarily mean laser battles and derring-do. It might mean your protagonist has to face an emotional challenge. Some of my favorite stories have almost no external action at all. The main challenge is internal, emotional, personal.

A good technique is to force your characters to make a choice. Not something mundane, like to put milk or cream in their coffee. But something with high personal stakes. Do they take their dream job across the country, or do they turn down the job to stay home with an ailing parent? Do they take up arms and go to war to save their country, even though they might die? Do they give into the lust of an extramarital affair, even though it might ruin their loving marriage?

Usually, by starting with these two things — character and choice — is enough to propel your story into motion. This is the water and soil that will help your story grow.

The next thing I do is encourage flow. By this I mean, I try to get myself into a flow state. Lots of people will tell you all sorts of mystical crap about flow states. It’s really just focused concentration.

You want to tread water in the boundary layer between your conscious, active imagination, and your subconscious, or dream state. You want to constantly be imagining, What comes next? If you do this often enough, you will find that stuff will just appear in your head. This is your subconscious working for you. It’s doing the hard work of collating and organizing your life experience so you don’t have to.

If you listen to your subconscious, it will tell you what comes next. And you should listen to it. No, it’s not always going to work. Oftentimes, it’ll spit out cliches or nonsensical and stupid things. But you can edit those out later. You should actively encourage taking the guardrails off your imagination. Let ideas come into your head and use them, no matter how absurd. You’ll find gold there, I promise.

The other thing I do is work to keep the reader in the so-called “fictive dream,” as John Gardner called it. This is the familiar feeling of being lost in a story. We’ve all experienced getting lost in a book, show, or movie. We can do this through several methods:

(1) We keep the story moving forward. This is sometimes known as “narrative tension.” Your protagonist wants something, but is continually frustrated. Nevertheless, they are slowly getting closer to their goal. Or the reader senses that the current events will soon come to a head, and the protagonist will have to make a difficult choice. Think of narrative tension like a roller coaster ride. Once you let the cars go at the top of the initial ascent, the rest is all gravity. Your story couldn’t stop if it wanted to, because there are unresolved tensions. The reader keeps reading because she wants to know what happens next, and important stuff keeps happening.

(2) We immerse the reader in sense details. We describe colors, smells, tastes, feelings. Don’t inundate, but sprinkle with spice. Don’t overwhelm the reader with too many details. Give space to let the reader create the story in their mind. But give enough touchstones to let them grab onto your narrative. Remember: the reader is the author of the story as much as you.

The reader is the author of the story as much as you

(3) We keep the sentences smooth and flowing. This is perhaps the hardest of all three techniques. It’s the one that’s taken me longest to learn. Jeff Ford once said to me something that Lucius Shepard told him: “If you can make shit flow, you can get away with anything.” What he means is that if your sentences flow into each other, if they propel the story smoothly forward, the reader will forgive gaps in logic or details. Words have meter and rhythm. One technique I’ve used to improve my sentence flow is to read them aloud. Awkward sentences and stilted prose become immediately apparent when you read things aloud to yourself. I read all my stories aloud, and it’s improved my writing immensely.

Okay, so now we have a good story setup, and our words are flowing. What next? How do we know where to go next?

So I lied a little. When I said you don’t need to know where your story ends before you begin, that’s true. But somewhere in this process you do need to find an ending.

Somewhere in this process you do need to find an ending

Usually, this should be some kind of resolution of the challenges presented in your beginning. This doesn’t mean that everything is solved, or is happily ever after. But something needs to change. Oftentimes, this is your character herself, and their relationship to the world. The questions you asked in the beginning should be answered. The tension should be (mostly) resolved. Otherwise, the reader will feel cheated, or that your story is incomplete. You don’t have to answer everything — getting your readers to wonder a bit is always good — but most questions should be answered.

Your ending should be emotionally satisfying. This doesn’t necessarily mean happy, but complete. A good metaphor is music. Great songs don’t always end on a happy notes. They could just as easily end on sad ones. But great songs end on an emotionally satisfying tone, not halfway through a chord progression or arpeggio. Use your own emotional judgment to sense where that place is. The worst thing you can do is leave your readers frustrated.

Finally, be wary of the never-ending story. Brandon Sanderson and Alan Moore can write 500,000 word doorstoppers and they’ll get published, but the ugly truth is that there are too many distractions today, too many things that can steal our time. I’m not trying to rob you of the experience of writing your twelve-book epic fantasy. But most readers like coming to an ending sooner, rather than later. If you’re asking more questions than you are answering, adding more threads than Egyptian silk sheets, it might be time to consider narrowing your focus. A good technique that I like to use is to focus on one specific moment or event, and build my story around that.

OK, standard disclaimer: these are techniques that I’ve used but may not necessarily work for you. And they may represent a type of storytelling that may be different from what you’re trying to accomplish. The one rule of writing is there are no rules. If my ideas resonate, use them. If not, feel free to ignore them.

I only hope that these suggestions might help you start that story you’ve been dreading to write because you didn’t yet know the ending!

Anyway, please let me know your thoughts in the comments.

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