How to Write a Good Story

Fixing Common Plot Problems (IIII)

8. MY ENDING MADE MY CRITIQUE GROUP GO, “SO WHAT?”
You’ve written your novel, you’re at the point of bravely hearing any and all criticism, and you’ve just found out that your ending leaves your writing buddies cold. You feel (understandably) frustrated, and maybe a little angry. Now what?

10-MINUTE SOLUTION: Add passion, violence or both.

A weak ending, of course, may signify major problems with the rest of the book. But not necessarily. If you’ve built convincing characters and worked out a believable, suspenseful story, but things still fall flat at the end, this could be because you haven’t gone far enough. Some authors simply take their foot off the accelerator toward the end, either from fatigue or from an unnecessary sense of restraint. Whatever the case, if you discover you’re one of them, you’ve got to ramp up the emotion.

Now, you don’t want to be cheap, but be advised that exploitation works. Readers expect to be knocked out of their socks, and it’s really OK to give them that.

So try heightening the ending you’ve already got. A good way to do it is to add passion or violence—or both.

Think of The Great Gatsby. It’s memorable not only because Jay Gatsby fails to attain the object of his obsession (see plot solution No. 3), but because he gets shot to death in his pool.

When trying to figure out how to amp up your ending, your genre can help you decide. Every romantic story fromPride and Prejudice to Sweet, Savage Love ends with love, love and more love, so if you’re writing a romance, adding passion is a no-brainer.

On the other hand, if you’ve got a thriller or mystery, or even a literary novel, violence goes a long way toward making readers feel excited and, ultimately, satisfied.

If the police come to arrest the bad guy, make it a shootout. If your tragic hero dies, make him die horribly. If your heroine is happy at the end, make her happy and rich. If your novel already ends with a bang, make it louder!

9. MY AGENT/EDITOR WANTS ME TO CUT 10,000 WORDS!
Many authors on the brink of getting published are told by a prospective agent or editor, “I love this novel, but it’s too long. If you can cut it by about 10,000 words (or whatever terrifyingly high number), I think I can sell (or publish) this.” They don’t want any specific cuts at this point; they just want the manuscript to better fit a common format.

10-MINUTE SOLUTION: Micro-edit your way to success.

You can spend lots of time rereading your manuscript and painfully strategizing what hunks to cut, but an excellent way to quickly trim it to size is to cut one word per sentence. This technique is pure magic. Or, you can divide the number of words you need to cut by the number of pages you have, and come up with an average words-to-cut per page. Of course you won’t be able to whittle down your whole manuscript in 10 minutes, but take it as a challenge: Time yourself, and I bet that once you get the hang of it, you can blow through 10 pages of a draft in 10 minutes. This is a job you can do in the interstices of your day; you don’t have to find large spans of time for it.

As a former newspaper reporter and editor, I got good at cutting excess verbiage early in my writing career. But every so often, for the heck of it, I challenge myself to cut one word per sentence. If I can do that too easily, I know I’ve gotten sloppy.

10. THE WHOLE THING STINKS.
Every author is stricken, at least once per book, by Creeping Rot Disease. CRD begins as a dark feeling that takes over your mind and heart when you least expect it. You look at your manuscript and the feeling creeps over you that all you’ve done is foul a perfectly good stack of paper. It’s lousy. It’s not original. It’s nothing any agent, let alone editor, would look at twice. I’m wasting my life, you think. I’m a fool.

10-MINUTE SOLUTION: Take a break!

Believe me, when CRD strikes, you are in plentiful, excellent company. Terrific authors have drunk themselves to death trying to self-medicate against CRD.

The better solution is to take a break. Turn off your computer, close your notebook, cap your pen (because the problem is not with your manuscript, it’s with you) and do something completely different, like:

    •    Walk outside. Pay attention to the first great-looking tree you see. Hang out with it for a while.
    •    Get some good coffee.
    •    Phone a friend and spill your guts.
    •    Prepare a mini picnic lunch and open the window.
    •    Make a sketch of a simple object, like a bowl or a bottle.

Or do anything else you can to break the stream of negative thoughts.

Can you become a great author in 10 minutes? No, but between careless abandon and paralyzing overanalysis, you can find a lot of solutions to help you move forward. The goal is to work past problems as they arise so you can keep writing. You can always go back and smooth over any rough edges later.