I love the way you have turned this on its head. I have done a conventional version of this tag for next Tuesday but wish I had seen this first as I really appreciate your analysis of the challenges of endings for writers. Funnily enough i pick a Jennifer Egan too. My good book elevated by its ending would be From A Low And Quiet Sea by Donald Ryan. He brings the three characters together without it being neat and predictable m
Hello Marc, this was an absolutely fascinating discussion. I don't read literary fiction exclusively, so I have different thoughts about endings but I was really fascinated by your explanation of why an ending is not an ending. I read a lot of mysteries and in that genre you have to nail the ending period at least for me. I write autobiography and that's the place where I agree with your idea that there is no ending. I'm writing my second memoir, actually autobiography. I have a lot of thoughts about the differences between Memoir and autobiography , and they're not what other people usually say. What they say is that a memoir is a slice of your life, concentrated on a certain topic. Yes my life has a theme but how do I know if that will be true and authentic by the time I am ready to end the book. I belong to a critique group and they're always saying after each of my chapters, when is she going to show growth? When does she learn her lesson? Life doesn't always have neat tidy endings. Sometimes it takes a whole life to learn a small lesson. So in certain ways I agree with you. But still, I want a satisfying ending in fiction. I agree with you though that good writing doesn't always have a beginning middle and an end that must adhere to writing Workshop standards. I always learn a lot from your videos. Aloha
Hey Marilyn, hanks for your response. Firstly I can see that yes in genre fiction endings are much more critical to the overall book. And I agree with you 100% about writing out lives when we don' know the ending - this is my main beef with much of fiction, that people just don't live life that way, as a story, as a narrative. Any storifying of ur lives is always retrospective, a pattern stamped on it only after reflection, afer that aspect of the life has already been lived. Thanks again.
Hemingway rewrote the ending of _A Farewell to Arms_ 40+ times (thank you Ken Burns). Endings are a real advantage to writing history. Yep, the end of _Manhattan Beach_ was bad.
But any ending applied to a work of history depends on what dates you decide the end to be. In the UK, 1688 to 1832 could be declared the triumph of reactionaryism and conservatism. Shift the dates a bit, say 1715-1900 and you can say it represents the triumph of progressivism. Like a human life, history is ongoing
For me, a novel should not strive to tie up all the loose ends or give a sense of finality to the ending (like ending with the death of a major character or the title character). I agree with you that a book should make you continue to think after you've finished it, so I feel like an 'in medias res' style ending has the best chance of achieving that.
Very interesting discussion. I've never quite thought about whether or not bad endings spoil a book per se, but then again I can rarely remember endings too well, so I assume they're mediocre at best more often than not. Every so often I do read one where the ending is either appalling or brilliant, but they're far and few in between.
I love the way you have turned this on its head. I have done a conventional version of this tag for next Tuesday but wish I had seen this first as I really appreciate your analysis of the challenges of endings for writers. Funnily enough i pick a Jennifer Egan too.
My good book elevated by its ending would be From A Low And Quiet Sea by Donald Ryan. He brings the three characters together without it being neat and predictable m
Thanks Ros!
Hello Marc, this was an absolutely fascinating discussion. I don't read literary fiction exclusively, so I have different thoughts about endings but I was really fascinated by your explanation of why an ending is not an ending. I read a lot of mysteries and in that genre you have to nail the ending period at least for me. I write autobiography and that's the place where I agree with your idea that there is no ending. I'm writing my second memoir, actually autobiography. I have a lot of thoughts about the differences between Memoir and autobiography , and they're not what other people usually say. What they say is that a memoir is a slice of your life, concentrated on a certain topic. Yes my life has a theme but how do I know if that will be true and authentic by the time I am ready to end the book. I belong to a critique group and they're always saying after each of my chapters, when is she going to show growth? When does she learn her lesson? Life doesn't always have neat tidy endings. Sometimes it takes a whole life to learn a small lesson. So in certain ways I agree with you. But still, I want a satisfying ending in fiction. I agree with you though that good writing doesn't always have a beginning middle and an end that must adhere to writing Workshop standards. I always learn a lot from your videos. Aloha
Hey Marilyn, hanks for your response. Firstly I can see that yes in genre fiction endings are much more critical to the overall book. And I agree with you 100% about writing out lives when we don' know the ending - this is my main beef with much of fiction, that people just don't live life that way, as a story, as a narrative. Any storifying of ur lives is always retrospective, a pattern stamped on it only after reflection, afer that aspect of the life has already been lived. Thanks again.
Hemingway rewrote the ending of _A Farewell to Arms_ 40+ times (thank you Ken Burns). Endings are a real advantage to writing history.
Yep, the end of _Manhattan Beach_ was bad.
But any ending applied to a work of history depends on what dates you decide the end to be. In the UK, 1688 to 1832 could be declared the triumph of reactionaryism and conservatism. Shift the dates a bit, say 1715-1900 and you can say it represents the triumph of progressivism. Like a human life, history is ongoing
For me, a novel should not strive to tie up all the loose ends or give a sense of finality to the ending (like ending with the death of a major character or the title character). I agree with you that a book should make you continue to think after you've finished it, so I feel like an 'in medias res' style ending has the best chance of achieving that.
Very interesting discussion. I've never quite thought about whether or not bad endings spoil a book per se, but then again I can rarely remember endings too well, so I assume they're mediocre at best more often than not. Every so often I do read one where the ending is either appalling or brilliant, but they're far and few in between.
So would I be right in saying, a bit like me endings aren' all that significant for you?
@@MarcNash Yes, you probably are, I've just never given it much thought before.
Big thumbs up to this 👍
Thanks Trish :-)
@@MarcNash Most welcome!❤