When the End is Not Near

 I (Donis) have been fascinated by my blog mates' thoughts on ending a novel. (Sybil's fabulous information on the saggy middle is great, too) I agree that the end of a novel is easily as important as the beginning, and boy, it isn't easy to pull off a great one, at least in my experience. Every time I approach what I think is the end of a new novel, I end up having an existential crisis. I'm coming down to the end of a novel. I can see the finish line. Every day I come closer to the day that I write "The End". It's been a slog, but that doesn't surprise me. It's usually a slog for me. Sometimes it almost takes more sheer will to sit down and write than I can muster. Almost. I do it anyway. Norman Mailer says, "there is always fear in trying to write a good book ... I’m always a little uneasy when my work comes to me without much effort. It seems better to have to forge the will to write on a given day. I find that on such occasions, if I do succeed in making progress against resistance in myself, the result is often good. As I only discover days or weeks later."

So I keep writing and try not to think about it too much. Trust my muses. I observe that sometimes too much thinking gets in the way. If I try too hard to figure it out, I become Hamlet in drag, unable to take action. When I do enjoy myself, when I read what I’ve written and find it good, I have a strange feeling of dislocation, as though the words came from someone else. 

So the new book is going right along as expected and I see that the end is near. Until suddenly for some reason known only to the gods, it comes to me like a lightning flash in the dark--I should go about it in a totally different way.

Something like: "If I had a particular major event happen much earlier in the book, the whole story would be much better. The ending would hang together, create a more satisfying experience for the reader. It would make better sense, it would move much faster, it create more suspense. All in all an absolutely brilliant and instantaneous insight. I have to do it."

The only problem is that this brilliant alteration calls for a major rewrite. Suddenly the finish line is no longer in sight. Yes, I am excited to pursue the interesting twist that came to me out of the blue, I am also in a Dostoyevskian mood, all dark and Russian. The end is not near.

Double Brain

By the time this post comes up, I will have launched my ninth Alafair Tucker Mystery, The Return of the Raven Mocker, on Tuesday the 24th at the fabulous Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale Arizona. I will have also appeared at three other venues and am looking forward to another two months of talk and travel. Yes, this is the merry-go-round of publishing. I'll be writing guest blogs and speaking to group after group about how I researched and wrote a book about murder during the great influenza pandemic of 1918.

The irony behind all this is that in my head is currently occupied by the tenth Alafair Tucker Mystery, and sometimes I forget which book I'm supposed to be talking about. I call this "double brain".

Raven Mocker is a good book, even if I do say so myself. The next book is going to be even better. (How optimistic we writers are) It is going to have a bang-up ending, if I can pull it off as well as I envision it. A really good ending is wildly important to me, for as I've said many a time, a good beginning will make a reader want to read your current book but a good ending will make her want to
buy your next book.

I learned about the importance of a great end by reading Ellis Peters. She is the woman who inspired me to write the type of historical mystery that I do. She was very good at moral ambiguity, which is one reason I love her books, especially the Brother Cadfael series. The resolutions of those novels are usually very clever and perhaps not what you might have suspected. One of my favorite resolutions was in her novel Monk’s Hood. The victim wasn’t a pleasant man, but he wasn’t evil and didn’t deserve to die the way he did. The killer shouldn’t have taken the action he did. Cadfael figures out who did it and why, and confronts the killer, but in the end … well, let me just say, I was taken aback by what happened. Was it justice? I think yes, and mercy, too.

And that’s the mark of a truly successful mystery. We don’t just find out who did it. We are given a just resolution that satisfies us right down to our toes.

And if the author can pull off a big surprise, that's even better.

Am I Done? Finishing a Novel at Last.

I have finally finished my ninth Alafair Tucker mystery. Well, "finished" may be a bit premature. The manuscript is with my first reader, now. (Also known as Beloved Spouse). As fellow Type M-er  Charlotte Hinger pointed out so truly, most authors have no idea if what they have just produced is any good or not. In that respect, I am very much like most authors. The new book took me a long time to write. I am not a fast writer, but this book was particularly time-consuming, mainly because I changed the beginning at least five times. I ended up at one point with three beginnings in one manuscript, and as any reader will tell you, it's a much more satisfying read if a story only begins once.

I wrote one version of the story with an ending so grim that I feared readers would be suicidal after they read it and never pick up another book of mine. Believe me, it was a very clever plot twist, but sometimes you just have to kill your darlings before your editor kills you. I have to admit that even if I do have the ability to write dark...and I do mean inky black...this traditional mystery series just does not call for that sort of book. So, I ended up rewriting the entire second half of the novel so that everything turns out all right. More or less.

So this is the conundrum faced by any author of a long series. What would happen if you went off the rails for one installment? Suppose a long-standing and popular character dies? Suppose a character who has been a good guy for eight books suddenly does something unforgivable? Suppose a spouse who has been faithful for a literary decade decides to cheat on his/her spouse? Suppose a formerly innocent and naive character starts cursing like a sailor? Will your readers forgive you if you shake up their expectations too much? Or is it a good thing to shake up expectations? It seems to work for Game of Thrones. Somehow I think if I want to write a novel that is wildly different in mood and tone from all my previous books in this series, I'd be better served to write a stand-alone or start an entirely new series.

Any thoughts on the subject, Dear Readers and Writers?

However...by taking out much of the shock and horror of the situation, did I water the tale down too much? Is it now a pale imitation of its former gut-wrenching self? Or is it now an infinitely more satisfying resolution. Beloved Spouse will give me the first clue. Do I have something or not?