Not-So-Minor-Changes, Part Two

(Part Two in a series of tips about how to make major changes to your novel while editing. You can read Part One here.)

Two: “My beginning/ending is a letdown, and I don’t know what’s wrong.”

For some reason, the first and last thing we write tends not to be our best work. (Maybe you’re one of those people who write brilliant opening lines and climaxes in the very first draft. Congratulations. Also, I hate you.)

Honestly, with this one, there’s only one solution: try things. Open with a flashback from the narrator’s childhood. Open right in the middle of a scene when the readers don’t know what’s going on. Open with dialogue between the two main characters. Open with the perspective of the murderer. Open with anything but an alarm clock going off or a dream sequence (both clichés that have to be done really well to be original).

You know what I love about this picture? The fact that "Keep Calm" posters have become just as cliche as the story device listed on this one.

Try an ending that explains what happens to every single character, as well as one that leaves several subplots dangling. Try an ending right after the climax, and one that rambles gently through a scene of reconciliation and repair afterward. Try letting the narrator address the reader directly, try a final exchange between the main character and someone important in his or her life, try a graveside goodbye, a letter, an introspective assessment of what happened, a bystander’s observation on the whole affair. Try anything and everything, and go with what you like best.

(Note: this is not the same thing as "go with what your friend likes best"or "go with what feels safest" or even "go with what's marketable." It is also, however, not the same as, "go with what you like best even if several editors said it didn't work for them.")

Most of all, try an ending with hope. That doesn’t mean your last few pages have to be happy. Actually, if you like, nearly everyone on your cast list can be dead, but the reader has to feel that they died with purpose, or that tomorrow will be better, or that we learned something very important about people and life and love. As Anne Lamott advised writers in Bird by Bird: “In general…there’s no point in writing hopeless novels. We all know we’re going to die; what’s important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.”

Sabbath Reflections: A Way to Look at Death

Before you wonder, I love the people in my major. I really do. But if you were to listen to conversations between professional writing majors, you’d probably be slightly confused almost all the time. We care about strange things that no one else does, like the Oxford comma, whether it’s legitimate for Ted Dekker to make a trilogy with four books, and the fact that a stained glass window can be a metaphor for anything.

Happens to wonder what that means? If so, try a little exercise to stretch your creativity. Picture a stained glass window. Now go through a list of abstract concepts and try to use the window as a metaphor. It will almost always work. We’ve come up with ways that it could symbolize suffering, the Trinity, deception, stress, and the Biblical canon. But there’s one picture that especially sticks in my mind, which I’ll be talking about tonight.

(Please bear with me for a second. Eventually, it will all make sense to what this has to do with death and dying. I didn’t misname the blog post – the connection just takes a little time to find.)

 The picture I get when I think of a stained glass window is a mosaic of colorful glass squares put together to form a beautiful scene. Each individual shard contributes to a greater whole. Each is unique in shape and color. Some have a more significant part than others, either because of how large they are or where they have been placed in the overall picture.

Sabbath Reflections: The Most Boring Story of All Time

Once upon a time, there was a girl who met a guy.

And they lived happily ever after.

Lamest story ever. (And, no, cynics in the back, this does not describe every chick flick ever made. I literally mean a story that’s made of only those two sentences.)

No one would be interested in a story like this? Why? As a writer, I should give a technical, jargon-filled explanation. But, let’s face it, it’s just boring. For us to think that something actually happened in a story, there must be some opposition. We have to be afraid for the main character and wonder if he’ll ever achieve his goal, or we won’t really feel like cheering at the end. We need conflict.

Except when it’s our story.

Sabbath Reflections: Writing in a Minor Key

Thanksgiving is over. This means I can officially write blog posts about Christmas.

If you weren’t aware of this deadline, it’s probably because you are either surrounded by happy-go-lucky elves who started playing carols after Labor Day or Grinches who might work up a tiny scrap of holiday cheer by Christmas Eve. Maybe.

However, let me assure any doubters out there that this is a legitimate, if somewhat arbitrary measurement. So here we go.

One of my favorite Christmas carols is “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.” You know why?

Because it’s in a minor key.