'As Good as Soon as Possible'

why endings are so hard to write, plus some story news

One of the benchmarks I had as an aspiring short story writer was to get published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine…and twenty-some-odd years later, my story “The Barguzin Sable” is in the March/April issue.

It’s a Wakeland story about a home invasion and a missing fur coat—I’m no Edward D Hoch, but I think it’s good. You can read an excerpt on the EQMM website…

But you could also just buy it and support one of the coolest mystery publications out there.

(hand pictured not mine but pal Naben Ruthnum, whose YA horror novel The Grimmer is excellent)

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(I feel like there’s a glut of writing advice out there, so I don’t want to contribute too much to the pile. But if you (the reader) want more of that here, let me know with a reply.)

One of the toughest aspects of a mystery is the ending, because there’s a need for both logical and emotional closure.

You’ve got a puzzle which has been teased out over two or three hundred pages. Clues, alibis, red herrings and suspicious behavior. All of which has to be explained and fit together in a logical sequence both surprising and inevitable.

Almost impossible to do.

You’ve also got the emotional trip the characters are on, people who might have begun new romances or ended old ones, found themselves in danger, endured the loss of loved ones, fallen out with bosses and sidekicks, etc. A book brings them to crisis and resolves it.

Also impossible.

The Golden Age locked room crowd didn’t have much danger befall their characters (other than the dead ones). The intellectual resolution was enough. Hence the drawing room, the summary of the case and clues, the thrilling solution, and the hint to the guilty party that an overdose of sleeping pills will resolve things more gracefully than prison.

In contrast, in the film version of L.A. Confidential, we find out whodunit half an hour from the end, and the rest is about character and danger: the detectives learning to work together, the bad guy catching on and laying a trap, and the bloody shootout and its aftermath.

To pile on even more headaches is the need for speed. In Adventures in the Screen Trade, William Goldman cites North by Northwest as a perfect ending. In Ernest Lehman’s script, as filmed by Alfred Hitchcock, the resolution lasts less than a minute—from the two main characters dangling off Mount Rushmore with a villain stomping their hands, to everything wrapped up and the two on their honeymoon.

A lot of stories stumble near the end. Or make the middle laborious in setting up an ending that no longer feels earned.

I wrote my first novel knowing the ending in advance, only to find when I got there, it no longer rang true.

As far as balancing logic and character, I think Sunset and Jericho is the best ending I’ve done so far. Without spoilers, it resolves with a major character shift, plus a (hopefully) surprising solution. And the two are tied together.

I’m revising the ending to Ocean Drive this week, trimming the last pages to make it as good as possible as soon as possible. All I need is a logically unassailable solution which rings true for every character, and also satisfies some major conflict in the protagonist’s life, and to do all this in as few pages as possible.

A cinch.

North By Northwest

You can pre-order Ocean Drive now.
Also available: A Lonesome Place for Dying by Nolan Chase

You can pre-order A Lonesome Place for Dying from your favorite bookshop.

You can also pre-order Ocean Drive from your favorite bookshop, too.