An excellent story going nowhere

[TarnishedPenny]

There's a story of a book signing party at which a distinguished author was asked by a young woman how long a novel should be. He thought and replied, "Generally, at least 100,000 words."

"Oh, wonderful!" she replied. "Mine's done!"

With that in mind, I have a work in progress. It has a decent theme, solid characters, a reasonable plot and, yup, no end. Every time it gets to the point where I could reasonably hammer out -30-, it wriggles out of my hands and slips forward into another scene. It just doesn't lend itself to being split up into chapters and it keeps lurching forward every few months, then falls silent again.

I'm wondering if anybody else is in the same boat?

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Might I ask what is the plot? What are the characters engaged in that has no end?

 

[ElectricBlue]

There's a story of a book signing party at which a distinguished author was asked by a young woman how long a novel should be. He thought and replied, "Generally, at least 100,000 words."

"Oh, wonderful!" she replied. "Mine's done!"

With that in mind, I have a work in progress. It has a decent theme, solid characters, a reasonable plot and, yup, no end. Every time it gets to the point where I could reasonably hammer out -30-, it wriggles out of my hands and slips forward into another scene. It just doesn't lend itself to being split up into chapters and it keeps lurching forward every few months, then falls silent again.

I'm wondering if anybody else is in the same boat?

Frequently. Just keep on following the flow. The story will tell you when it's done. Don't try to force it, and whatever you do, don't outline it to an ending - that'll kill it forever.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Might I ask what is the plot? What are the characters engaged in that has no end?

Post-singularity. The computer wants to learn about love, using captives. The MFC is faced with a very masculine blue-collar type and a really appealing but shy boy.

 

[Yarglenurp]

It has no end because there’s not really a conflict. You’ve given the computer an illusory goal, because love is a continuous journey, not a destination.

I would end it at either a wedding or the birth of a child. How would that work with a hyper-intelligent computer? That’s your call.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Post-singularity. The computer wants to learn about love, using captives. The MFC is faced with a very masculine blue-collar type and a really appealing but shy boy.

I've got a computer doing that, in the first Geek Anthology, using a female astronaut as its subject. I went the whole geek, with tributes to Project Apollo, Kubrick, Vonnegut, Ballard. The angel alien is from Blake.

The sequel is my slowest ever follow-on - I started writing it for the second Geek Anthology, which must have been before Covid. Some call it distraction, I call everything else "side projects". It's all a matter of perspective.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Frequently. Just keep on following the flow. The story will tell you when it's done. Don't try to force it, and whatever you do, don't outline it to an ending - that'll kill it forever.

Righteous pantser. : P

 

[THBGato]

Just keep on following the flow. The story will tell you when it's done. Don't try to force it, and whatever you do, don't outline it to an ending - that'll kill it forever.

Hmmm. Disagree with that. I always know the end before I start anything, whether it's a 750 word story or an 84 thousand one (my longest to date.... though actually, all but one of my stories are connected and I know the plot and ending for the final story in the sequence. So that will make the whole series around 250 thousand by the time I get to that one.)

I'm not saying that you can't just write with no clear ending in sight. Of course you can. However, outlining the ending isn't going to kill a story. Far from it.

You've surely all heard the story about Harry Potter, but just in case you haven't... JK Rowling wrote the final chapter of the final book before she started on the second, then locked it away. She knew precisely where she was going.

 

[Devinter]

You've surely all heard the story about Harry Potter, but just in case you haven't... JK Rowling wrote the final chapter of the final book before she started on the second, then locked it away. She knew precisely where she was going.

That's probably why the ending sucked.

 

[TheLobster]

That's probably why the ending sucked.

And it's just a rather generic "20 years later, the main characters are still fine and remain friends" kind of ending. It certainly doesn't constrain the possible plots very much, nor does it prevent the many deaths of auxiliary characters along the way (RIP Hedwig).

 

[ElectricBlue]

Hmmm. Disagree with that. I always know the end before I start anything, whether it's a 750 word story or an 84 thousand one (my longest to date.... though actually, all but one of my stories are connected and I know the plot and ending for the final story in the sequence. So that will make the whole series around 250 thousand by the time I get to that one.)

I'm not saying that you can't just write with no clear ending in sight. Of course you can. However, outlining the ending isn't going to kill a story. Far from it.

You've surely all heard the story about Harry Potter, but just in case you haven't... JK Rowling wrote the final chapter of the final book before she started on the second, then locked it away. She knew precisely where she was going.

Of course you disagree. You're a plotter. I'm offering TP liberation from a fixed idea .

 

[Bramblethorn]

You've surely all heard the story about Harry Potter, but just in case you haven't... JK Rowling wrote the final chapter of the final book before she started on the second, then locked it away. She knew precisely where she was going.

She may well have written a draft for that final chapter early in the series, but it can't have been completely locked in. For years she told everybody that the last word of that chapter was "scar", and then when the book came out...it wasn't. So at the very least there was some revision going on behind the scenes.

 

[lovecraft68]

I had this happen a few years back. I was sitting at 156k words-450 print pages in a paperback-going by my original ideas, it should have been finished, but like you, it turned into 'but wait, there's more!"

I spent a month struggling with what I could remove, did I really need the additional idea, the infamous, 'this whole thing sucks, why bother' then it occurred to me I had a great breaking point around the 130k mark, so I ended the novel there, and the rest, as well as all the new ideas, went into a second book.

No reason a story has to be a standalone, so don't put yourself n that type of box.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Thanks for the thoughts, all.

Like Columbus, I know where I’m going. It’s just that the voyage is taking far longer than expected.

 

[Bamagan]

Thanks for the thoughts, all.

Like Columbus, I know where I’m going. It’s just that the voyage is taking far longer than expected.

Considering he thought he was headed to India, his journey was rather shorter than anticipated.

 

[TheLobster]

Considering he thought he was headed to India, his journey was rather shorter than anticipated.

That’s not entirely correct. The whole reason Columbus even dared to go on his first voyage was an erroneous estimation of the circumference of the Earth. There was no way for a ship and a crew in those times to survive the actual length of the hypothetical journey from Spain to India if Americas didn’t exist.

He also thought that at least parts of East Asia, namely “Cipango,” i.e. Japan, were closer to Spain than his eventual landfall in the Caribbean would turn out to be. Indeed, he had to quell a crew’s rebellion shortly before sighting land, because the trip took longer than anticipated.

All in all, Columbus first journey took about as long as he thought it would, or maybe even longer; his original plan would never have worked; and he was generally incredibly lucky (also because he didn’t run into any tropical storm that would be expected at this time of the year).

 

[Bamagan]

That’s not entirely correct. The whole reason Columbus even dared to go on his first voyage was an erroneous estimation of the circumference of the Earth. There was no way for a ship and a crew in those times to survive the actual length of the hypothetical journey from Spain to India if Americas didn’t exist.

He also thought that at least parts of East Asia, namely “Cipango,” i.e. Japan, were closer to Spain than his eventual landfall in the Caribbean would turn out to be. Indeed, he had to quell a crew’s rebellion shortly before sighting land, because the trip took longer than anticipated.

All in all, Columbus first journey took about as long as he thought it would, or maybe even longer; his original plan would never have worked; and he was generally incredibly lucky (also because he didn’t run into any tropical storm that would be expected at this time of the year).

For the purposes of a joke, it was entirely sufficient.

 

[SimonDoom]

I think "pantsing"/making it up as you go is an effective way for some authors to write, though not for me, but in this case setting the meat of the story and just focusing on the ending might be the way to go. I never write a story without having a good idea where it will end, and in many cases I write the ending before I finish the rest. If you know the ending, you know where it's going to go, and it becomes a matter of just getting there. For me, personally, the ending should be the point of the story, and I have a hard time writing a story without a point.

What is it you MOST want to say in this story? You have an interesting concept, but what's the point you want to make with this concept? Who is the REAL main character?

How about a twist? What if the FMC falls in love with the computer, not any of the male captives the computer has selected for her? A Cyrano de Bergerac thing, where it turns out the computer, in presenting men to seduce her so he can learn, actually wants to seduce her himself?

I'm working on my own story based on computer-human love so I hope yours doesn't come too close!

An addendum: Truncate. Once you've established your premise and figured out your ending, don't feel it's got to be a long and winding road to get there. Maybe this is just me, but I think some stories (not yours) seem a bit padded.

 

[intim8]

outlining the ending isn't going to kill a story. Far from it.

It might. For a pantser, a discovery writer, that is a huge constraint that works against discovery. Even knowing the main conflict up front might be.

But, to the OP, if you're pantsing, and you haven't discovered the main conflict, you're going to have a lot of trouble getting to an ending. That's generally what an ending is, resolving the conflict. And, as @SimonDoom said, if you haven't discovered and defined the theme, the nature of the ending is going to be hard to come to.

 

[Britva415]

And it's just a rather generic "20 years later, the main characters are still fine and remain friends" kind of ending. It certainly doesn't constrain the possible plots very much, nor does it prevent the many deaths of auxiliary characters along the way (RIP Hedwig).

I don't consider that the ending, I consider that an epilogue.

Is this what people are talking about when they say she wrote the last chapter first? I find it hard to believe that that wasn't tacked on after resolving the plot.

But you're right, it's not much of a constraint, if that really was what she had in mind for "this is how it ends."

Maybe she had it so firmly internalized that she didn't have to bother to write down "Voldemort gets defeated."

 

[Britva415]

Post-singularity. The computer wants to learn about love, using captives. The MFC is faced with a very masculine blue-collar type and a really appealing but shy boy.

What would leap out at someone who were to read it now, in its present unfinished state? What theme is it trying to convey? Not you, the author, but the story as presently written? What life-of-its-own does it have, beyond what you intended to put into it as you wrote >100,000 words so far?

What character is it really about? The computer? The guy? The girl? What is their story, in the present manuscript? What is their story's beginning and middle, so far, and what end is that character's story moving toward?

Are the answers to these questions different from what you anticipated when you began writing?

Questions like these, from a detached point of view, could help you zero in on the denouement. And on your revision process, once you have the ending.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

It might. For a pantser, a discovery writer, that is a huge constraint that works against discovery. Even knowing the main conflict up front might be.

But you don't feel that labelling and pigeon-holing yourself as a 'discovery writer' actually limits your freedom to tell a story in some way?

 

[SimonDoom]

Maybe she had it so firmly internalized that she didn't have to bother to write down "Voldemort gets defeated."

I imagine she had something more specific than that in mind, like "The end of the story is that Harry defeats Voldemort in a personal duel."

That's an organizing principle for a story. The first four novels explain how Harry learns to be a wizard, and also how Voldemort returns in physical form to the real world. The last novels explain what Harry must do to defeat Voldemort, a seemingly impossible task.

I suspect most pantsers have at least some sort of ending in mind like this one as they are writing, even if they don't write it down. Maybe I'm wrong. I'm not advising other writers to change the way they write. But if pantsers get stuck, they might want, as a possible solution, to think more about the ending as a means to focus their energies and bring their story home.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Just to be clear, I definitely have an ending. It's the connect-the-dots thing I'm caught by, like trying to build a bridge across a river that keeps widening. Meh. It'll get done sometime.

 

[SimonDoom]

like trying to build a bridge across a river that keeps widening.

You don't want it to be a "Bridge on the River Kwai" kind of deal. "My God, what have I done?" Best to avoid that. Keep explosive charges on hand just in case.