“The Bigger The Issue, The Smaller You Write. Remember That. You Don’t Write About The Horrors Of

7 Ways End Your Novel

Figuring out the right way to end your novel can be difficult and it can make or break your story. If you’re stuck, try to understand that your ending should match the tone of your story. Here are a few common ways to end a novel to keep in mind:

Happy

There’s nothing wrong with a happy ending. If you want your novel to end on a joyful note with everyone getting what they want, that’s perfectly fine. Just make sure it’s in line with how your characters have behaved throughout your novel.

Sad

Writing a sad ending depends on how you built up your novel. A sudden, sad ending shouldn’t come out of nowhere. It should tie in with the tone of your story. If you want to write a sad ending, make sure it makes sense in the world you’ve created.

Open

Sometimes due to the nature of your story, your ending will remain open. Maybe your audience will have to come to conclusions themselves or maybe you’re leading into your next novel. If you’re writing a sequel, writers will often end with it open or a cliffhanger.

Complete

Happy or sad, some writers tend to complete their novel. These means they’ve tied up all loose ends, plots, and subplots, and created a solid ending. Usually this leaves no room for a follow-up and the novel can stand complete on its own. 

Twist

The twist ending can be hard to pull off, but if done correctly it can really blow your readers’ minds. This is when you lead up to one conclusion and then reveal that an assumed truth was false the whole time. Study up on twist endings if that’s something you want to do in your story.

Tie-back

This is when the ending ties back around to the clues in the beginning. Stories with a tie back ending sometimes have a full loop and give the story a feeling of completeness. They make readers feel as if everything is connected in some way.

Epilogue

An epilogue often gives readers details beyond the perceived ending. Writers will sometimes use epilogues if there’s a lot to sum up. Just make sure the epilogue fits your novel and it’s not something you can explain in the main sections of your story.

-Kris Noel

The Strength of a Symmetrical Plot

One of my favorite studies of Harry Potter is that of the ring composition found both in the individual novels and overall composition. That very composition is what makes Harry Potter such a satisfying story. It’s a large part of the reason Harry Potter is destined to become a classic. 

And it’s an integral part of the series many people are completely unaware of. 

So what is ring composition? 

It’s a well-worn, beautiful, and (frankly) very satisfying way of structuring a story. John Granger, known online as The Hogwarts Professor, has written extensively on it.

Ring Composition is also known as “chiastic structure.” Basically, it’s when writing is structured symmetrically, mirroring itself: ABBA or ABCBA. 

Poems can be structured this way. Sentences can be structured this way. (Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.) Stories of any length and of any form can be structured this way.

In a novel, the basic structure depends on three key scenes: the catalyst, the crux, and the closing. 

The catalyst sets the story into the motion. 

The crux is the moment when everything changes. (It is not the climax). 

The closing, is both the result of the crux and a return to the catalyst. 

In Harry Potter, you might recognise this structure: 

Voldemort casts a killing curse on Harry and doesn’t die. 

Voldemort attempts to come back to power

Voldemort comes back to power.

Harry learns what it will take to remove Voldemort from power.

Voldemort casts a killing curse on Harry and dies.

But all stories should have this structure. A book’s ending should always reference its beginning. It should always be the result of some major turning point along the way. Otherwise, it simply wouldn’t be a very good story.

What’s most satisfying about chiastic structure is not the basic ABA structure, but the mirroring that happens in between these three major story points. 

To illustrate what a more complicated ABCDEFGFEDCBA structure looks like, (but not as complicated as Harry Potter’s, which you can see here and here) Susan Raab has put together a fantastic visual of ring composition in Beauty and the Beast (1991), a movie which most agree is almost perfectly structured. 

source: x

What’s so wonderful about ring composition in this story is that it so clearly illustrates how that one crucial decision of Beast changes everything in the world of the story. Everything from the first half of the story comes back in the second half, effected by Beast’s decision. This gives every plot point more weight because it ties them all to the larger story arc. What’s more, because it’s so self-referential, everything feels tidy and complete. Because everything has some level of importance, the world feels more fully realized and fleshed out. No small detail is left unexplored.    

How great would Beauty and the Beast be if Gaston hadn’t proposed to Belle in the opening, but was introduced later on as a hunter who simply wanted to kill a big monster? Or if, after the magnificent opening song, the townspeople had nothing to do with the rest of the movie? Or if Maurice’s invention had never been mentioned again after he left the castle? 

Humans are nostalgic beings. We love returning to old things. We don’t want the things we love to be forgotten. 

This is true of readers, too. 

We love seeing story elements return to us. We love to know that no matter how the story is progressing, those events that occurred as we were falling in love with it are still as important to the story itself as they are to us. There is something inside us all that delights in seeing Harry leave Privet Dr. the same way he got there–in the sidecar of Hagrid’s motorbike. There’s a power to it that would make any other exit from Privet Dr. lesser. 

On a less poetic note, readers don’t like to feel as though they’ve wasted their time reading about something, investing in something, that doesn’t feel very important to the story. If Gaston proposed to Belle in Act 1 and did nothing in Act 3, readers might ask “Why was he even in the movie then? Why couldn’t we have spent more time talking about x instead?” Many people do ask similar questions of plot points and characters that are important in one half of a movie or book, but don’t feature in the rest of it. 

Now, ring composition is odiously difficult to write, but even if you can’t make your story a perfect mirror of itself, don’t let story elements leave quietly. Let things echo where you can–small moments, big moments, decisions, characters, places, jokes. 

It’s the simplest way of building a story structure that will satisfy its readers.

If there’s no place for something to echo, if an element drops out of the story half-way through, or appears in the last act, and you simply can’t see any other way around it, you may want to ask yourself if it’s truly important enough to earn its place in your story. 

Further reading:

If you’d like to learn more about ring theory, I’d recommend listening to the Mugglenet Academia episode on it: x

You can also read more about symmetry in HP here: x

And more about ring structure in Lolita and Star Wars here: x and x

And about why story endings and beginnings should be linked here: x

This is a great idea and it looks so pretty!

What have I been up to, you ask?

Oh, I've started a bullet journal for what else my WIP, Forsaken Gods. It's the first time I've tried it since I'm not very artsy or crafty and my color coordination sucks,

If you have the time and resources, I encourage you to try it!

Pros:

Fun and relaxing!

Helps you keep track of your WIP

And keeping it organized!

Gets your creative juices flowing

Passes time while you're trying to get your writing mojo back

challenges your artistic skills especially if you're someone like me who badly needs improvement

Doesn't have to be expensive unless you want fancy stuff

Cons:

you're still gonna need a couple of things so a budget might be required.

Time consuming esp if you want to make it pretty

Messy. So messy.

Right now I'm making character spreads for the Main Squad, which I might also post here or a second tumblr idk yet.

Death never brought itself onto her, but she noted how it always felt like a distant memory.

Maybe she had died once before—death at the hands of an executioner for her vile felonies that she was lucky to have only been imprisoned for, or at the hands of her own, the rich heiress with a family heirloom using her breast as a sheath she had buried there. Maybe, once, she’d seen death, seen his skeletal hands and his shrouded face and the infamous scythe to steal her soul and escort her onto the next host body as if she were a parasite. The baby she’d inhabit until death, when she was reunited with what would feel like her one and only true love, the only love she’d ever really know as she continued to cycle back to him and be in his arms once again.

Or maybe she was a new soul. A soul fresh from the womb of her mother, a fire forged and made to burn hot until the day she fizzled out into the cold hands of the being she’d like to envision as friendly and be forever trapped in the abyss of nothing, wandering in a place that certainly wasn’t Hell but did not match the stories of Heaven with the gates or whatever God or gods there were or the familiar faces of family and friends long since passed.

‘where lucia died’ tagslist: @theforgottencoolkid @vandorens @whorizcn @alicekaiba @evergrcen @goldbonne @babeineauxs @the-writers-blocks @suswriting @lucamused @noloumna @shezadis @semblanche @emdrabbles @sapphospouse @waterfallofinkandpages @calfromzeroday @andinbetweenwegarden @aphteavanawrites @bbabyapollo @hillelf @milkyway-writes @the-introvert-cafe | ask to be added/removed

Light Up the Forge!

WorldAnvil.com!

WorldAnvil is a suite of worldbuilding and rpg tools. We help authors, GMs, hobbyists, and creators of all sorts write and keep track of their worlds!

WorldAnvil introduces templates for writing about every aspect of your world, from characters to nations. They act as a guide, allowing you to have all the things you need at your fingertips when your memory fails you on what to describe!

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The system will connect the articles and provide a link. If your article doesn’t exist yet, it is as easy as clicking on it to create a new article and start writing!

Our timeline system lets you keep track of everything that has ever happened in your world.

Use it to keep track of worldbuilding, party encounters, character’s lives and more. Attach a timeline to an article, or keep it as an independent summary of world history!

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How to Add Dimension to Your Story's Theme

A lot of writers believe you cannot intentional write to a theme. I completely disagree. And I’m suspicious that those who say that, just don’t understand how to write to theme intentionally. They claim that if you do, you’ll just become preachy. Sure, that can absolutely happen, but it only happens when you don’t understand how theme actually works in a story.

You see, for a theme statement to be powerful, it needs to have opposition. Who cares if the tortoise in “The Tortoise and the Hare” wins, if he isn’t racing the hare to begin with? No one. The thematic statement (“It’s better to move forward at a steady pace than go so fast we burn ourselves out”) is only powerful because we see it paired up with its opposite (the hare).

Often it’s helpful to breakdown how theme functions, like I did in this article. But here is a quick recap.

Every story has a thematic statement.

A thematic statement is essentially the teaching of a story. So for the Good Samaritan, the thematic statement is, “We should love, be kind to, and serve everyone.”

The Little Red Hen: If you don’t contribute or work, you don’t get the rewards of those efforts.

The Ant and the Grasshopper: If all we do is have fun and entertain ourselves, we won’t be prepared for difficult times.

Harry Potter: Love is the most powerful force in the world

On a broader scope, we have a theme topic. The subject or topic about which something is taught. It’s the concept, without the teaching attached. It’s what the theme or story is “about,” in an abstract sense.

Here are the theme topics of those stories:

The Little Red Hen: Contribution and work

The Ant and the Grasshopper: Preparation

Harry Potter: Love

In a strong story, the theme topic will be explored during the narrative, through plot or character or both. The story will ask (directly or indirectly) questions about the theme topic. This can happen through main characters and main plots, or side characters and subplots, or all of the above.

Often, in most stories, the protagonist’s character arc starts an a false or inaccurate idea about the theme topic and ends on the true thematic statement. Example: Harry starts unloved and powerless, living in a cupboard. By the end, he’s surrounded by supporters, and he’s willing to sacrifice himself (the ultimate manifestation of love) to pave the way for Voldemort’s defeat.  

Between the false thematic statement and the true thematic statement is the struggle that leads to transformation, or at least, demonstrates a point.

Sounds great, right? But what do we put there? After all, that transition part of the story will take up most of the story, and so far, we only have black and white: false thematic statement vs. true thematic statement. I mentioned that the theme topic needs to be questioned and explored. And by the climax, it needs to be proven. Do we just reiterate the same false statement and true statement over and over?

Life is rarely so black and white. It’s more complex.

To get ideas, it’s helpful to give your theme topic more dimension.

Luckily, Robert McKee (who I’ve been re-studying, as you may have noticed) has a method that will help you do just that. He doesn’t technically relate this to the term “theme,” but he relates it to what he calls a story’s “value,” but I consider that concept nearly the same thing as “theme topic.” (He’s just coming at it from a different angle.) So, I’m going to show how it applies to theme.

I’ll be honest, this was hard for me to wrap my head around, at first. But over time, the idea has become clearer to me.

So here is how this goes, from my perspective, in relation to theme (I’ve altered it slightly).

First, identify the theme topic of your story.

Then identify its opposite. Its contradiction. 

From there, you have what he calls the “contrary.” It’s not really the theme topic’s exact opposite, but it’s not the theme topic either. It’s contrary to the theme topic. It’s not the thing, but it’s not the direct contradiction of the thing. It’s different, in some way. 

Then we take it a step further. We look for something more negative than the negative. What is worse than the opposite? What is a step more extreme? McKee calls this the “negation of the negation." 

Let’s fill this in with the theme topic of love, so you can see how this works.

The opposite of love is hate. Simple. But then it gets more complex. What is contrary to love? It’s not the same, but it is not a direct opposite either. Indifference isn’t love, but it’s not really hate either. It’s in between.

What is worse than hate? What is a step more negative? Or more extreme? What is the negation of the negation?

As McKee explains, it’s one thing to be hated and to know it. But to actually be hated by those who you think love you? People who want to pretend they care about you, but actually wish and do you ill? Now that gives me shivers.

Lees verder

Hey I love your blog, it helps me a lot and now I've a question myself. How can you write about older people while you're still young yourself? The main character of my story is 43 years old but I'm 17... I try to pay attention to how her life experience has shaped her personality but sometimes I feel like she seems too much like a teenager. Have you ever written about characters older than you? And what helped you the best to make them realistic? Do you have any general tips on writing adults?

Thanks for asking, this is a good question, and I like that your MC is much older than you. You'll learn a lot by writing them.

I've written for a number of ages, and aside from some extremely minimal research online, I just started paying attention to other people. I watched films about X age group, read books by/about X age group, listened to interviews of adults with certain fields and backstories, listened to people older than me at work, listened to customers, neighbors, relatives, my own parents. Kids are tougher since I don't know many little kids, but just asking questions of teachers and family friends gave me insight into the lives of people older than me.

Once you know what a person is like on the inside and why, writing their dialogue and behavior is a piece of cake. Surely you know some adults or can look up some public figures and study their lives, dialogue, and behavior. Base your character off several real people and they will come across as more authentic.

2 Tips for Adding Emotional Weight to Your Story

As writers, we want our work to hold weight — for our characters’ actions, emotions, and desires to resonate with and impact our readers. But how do we make that happen?

The most helpful advice, in my experience, has been to:

Make the internal become external, and

Make the external become internal.

Let’s talk about what that means and how these tips can help you add emotional weight to your story.

1. Make the internal become external

To “make the internal become external” is to take the interior aspects of your character (their fears, desires, pains, and epiphanies) and find ways to express them with external actions. For example:

If Marcos realizes his girlfriend doesn’t truly love him, don’t just make him mope; have him throw the engagement ring he purchased into the river.

If Amelia feels overworked and stressed at her new job, don’t just show her exhausted in bed; show her bailing on plans with the people she cares about or giving up her favorite pastimes.

If Kara is afraid to get onstage and perform as Lady Macbeth, don’t just have her wait in fear; make her run out on the show on opening night.

By expressing your character’s emotions and realizations through clear external actions, you add weight to what they’re going through.

2. Make the external become internal

The goal here is similar, but reversed. Where before you were taking an internal emotion and accentuating it with action, now you’re taking the external elements of your story (plot, character actions, external conflicts, etc.) and making them have internal ramifications for your characters. For example:

If Thomas gets slapped by his older sister during a disagreement, don’t just move on like it never happened; make it change the dynamic of their relationship for the rest of the story.

If Davy’s new boyfriend excessively dotes upon him, don’t just have him awkwardly brush him off; make Davy tentative and uncertain because he’s never been in a healthy relationship before.

If Anna loses the championship match of a tennis tournament, don’t just have her grudgingly accept defeat; make her feel crushed because of her impossibly high expectations for herself.

By taking external actions or events and tying them to your character’s deepfelt emotions and, when possible, their core struggle, you add weight to what happens in your story. Everything starts to matter, and that makes for captivating storytelling.

A Final Word

I want to clarify that I’m not telling you to make your characters act and react in ways that don’t make sense for them. Always stay true to your characters. 

But I do encourage you to always look for opportunities to merge the internal and external aspects of your story — because that’s the key to telling stories with true emotional weight.

Good luck, and good writing, everybody. :)

— — —

Everyone has stories worth telling, including you. For helpful writing tips and advice, check out the rest of my blog.

Welcome to the first in a very long series of posts in which I talk about my writing process from conception to the end of my first draft. I wanted to do this series for a few reasons: 

I think that learning about others’ writing processes is really interesting. I get to see other ways of going about my work, thinking either wow, that’s really insightful, and I should implement that or I definitely won’t be using that, but now I know that about myself. 

I also think it’s important to understand others’ processes is important, because it allows you to see other views of writing besides your own. You will learn very quickly that I am a planner (or, as George RR Martin says, an Architect, which I prefer). I sit down and plan everything. Some people can’t fathom that, but I hope those people will come to understand why I do it this way, rather than the Gardening way. 

Before we start, I want to add a little disclaimer: what works for me might not work for you. I’m not presenting this, or any of the subsequent posts in this series, as fact, but just my own way of going about our shared profession. 

Also, finally, I will be discussing all of these steps in greater detail. Don’t worry. 

Let’s go!

THE STEPS

1. GENRE. Before I start with anything, I start with genre. Genre is the flavor, it’s the broad idea of a story. It colors everything that comes after.  

2. CHARACTERS. Characters are the next thing on my list. I can’t develop my plot until I have my characters, because I want to tie my plot to my characters and their backstories and motivations. 

3. WORLDBUILDING. Not everything I write needs a lot of worldbuilding, but worldbuilding comes right around here. It’s often combined with steps 2 and 4, but a large bit of it gets done after character creation. 

4. PLOT AND OUTLINE. This is the part of the process when I start coming up with the plot and working on my outline. This part takes a while! My outline is essentially my first draft, so I need a lot of time to work on the pacing and flow.

5. FIRST DRAFT. The first draft is definitely the hardest, I think for anyone. I don’t have a lot to say here, other than just get through it. It doesn’t matter how long it takes - I’m definitely not one of those people who can slam out a draft in a month - just do it. Start, and keep working on it until it’s done. 

And that’s about it! I’m planning on talking about my drafting and editing process at some point, but I need to finish My Heart is a Concert first. Let me know if you found this helpful or insightful, and look forward to my upcoming articles!

So You Want To Write A Book..

Where Do Writers Find Their Ideas?

On Inspiration

How To Write A Novel

Getting Started With A Book

Hints About Writing A Story

Novel Outlining 101

From Notes To Novel

Plotting A Novel

Why Don’t I Have A Plot, And Where Do I Get One?

How To Create A Character

Creating Characters

Character Creation

Name That Character! (2)

You And Your Characters

How To Write Backstory Without Putting Your Reader To Sleep

How To Use Foreshadowing

How To Write Dialogue (2)

How To Make Your Writing More Interesting 

Writing Block

How To Get Unstuck

Advice For Young Writers (2)

On Word Counts And Novel Length

Top 4 Ways to Know Your Idea is Novel-Worthy

How A Book Gets Published

How Do You Go About Getting Published

And remember: Google is your best friend.