Why endings are sometimes not as well written as beginnings
Posted on | January 31, 2005 | 2 Comments
This may be pure and utter B.S., so feel free to disregard.
While I was in the shower this morning, where I do some of my best thinking, I developed a theory that the reason why story endings are sometimes a disappointment to readers is that they may not be as well edited as the beginnings and middles.
Stick with me, here. I do think this makes sense!
Case in point: the story I’m working on now is about 6500 words long, and I’ve been writing it for a week. Finished the first draft yesterday. I didn’t know the complete story when I started, uncovering it a bit at time as I went along. At certain points, I printed the manuscript out and went back over what I’d written so far, editing, changing, revising. I probably did three or four big revision passes (including the one that got lost–see earlier journal entry) before I got to the ending. I wrote the final 900 words yesterday morning.
So, parts of the first 5400 words have been revised and rewritten as many as four times already. No matter how many times I go over the manuscript from this point on, the first quarter, half, three-quarters, will always have had that editorial head start.
Oh, never mind. Maybe it doesn’t make any sense after all. I said I do some of my best thinking in the shower; not all of it.
I received the page proofs for the Cemetery Dance limited edition of The Road to the Dark Tower today, so I’ll be spending the next several days pouring over them with a fine-toothed comb, making comparisons to the trade edition and taking the opportunity to correct some of the goof-ups I made that have been so graciously conveyed to me by eagle-eyed readers thus far. This isn’t going to be as easy a task as signing 1000 limitation pages, that’s for sure.
The Road to the Dark Tower made Locus magazine’s 2004 Recommended Reading List, which will appear in the February 2005 issue and is on the web site.
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About
Bev Vincent is the author of The Road to the Dark Tower, the Bram Stoker Award nominated companion to Stephen King's Dark Tower series, and The Stephen King Illustrated Companion, which was nominated for a 2010 Edgar® Award and a 2009 Bram Stoker Award.
His short fiction has appeared in places like Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, From the Borderlands and The Blue Religion. He is a contributing editor with Cemetery Dance magazine and a member of the Storytellers Unplugged blogging community. He also writes book reviews for Onyx Reviews.
January 31st, 2005 @ 8:30 am
Actually, I think that’s a pretty good theory. Endings never get as much polishing as the rest of the story, perhaps because so many story ideas seem to come with an ending already attached.
February 2nd, 2005 @ 12:48 am
I think you really may have latched onto something here, but I’m not sure how it could be fixed. I can’t imagine people editing a story backwards (although some small press books looked like they did).