Novel Writing Made Less Impossible - You Can't Start Without ...

For the last couple of weeks, this blog has covered the elevator pitch, something that will save you time and effort once you've mastered it.

However, something will make your elevator pitch complete once you add one more item ... THE ENDING.

I hear some of the less-than-hardy souls in the audience screaming, "But I don't really have a PLOT yet and I'm supposed to know how this story ENDS???"

Yeah, it would help. Without an ending, you're a weapon without a target. A vehicle without a destination.

Now DO NOT take the easy way out. Don't make the ending something like, "The protagonist defeats the challenge and finds true love, immense wealth, and a cure for acne." Think of something concrete.

Please don't let your characters off the hook easily. In comic books, some critics derived some plots as using "The Green Arrow Syndrome." Way back in the day, long before Oliver Queen grew a beard, a conscience, and a spine, he relied on trick arrows to get out of scrapes, like Boxing Glove Arrows, Bolo Arrows, Netting Arrows, etc. Well, many stories relied on the Emerald Archer carrying the precise bizarre arrow to save the day.

Too many stories were all about, "I need a left-handed, spent uranium toenail-clipping arrow ... fortunately, I JUST HAPPEN TO HAVE ONE!"

Spare yourself, and your readers, the pain. Come up with an ending that doesn't rely on a deus ex machina. Think of Star Wars IV: "Luke Skywalker sets a good enough example that pirate Han Solo joins the battle, giving Luke one shot to destroy the Death Star, using The Force to drive the critical shot home."

SPOILER WARNINGS ABOUND:

For instance, when I wrote Bloodshot: The Coldest Warrior, my ending was (I'm typing from memory here) along the lines of "Bloodshot cannot overcome his similarly-matched opponent so he uses his control of electronic devices to erase the programming tapes that give his enemy power."

Or for Vulcana: Rebirth of the Champion: "Vulcana keeps one step ahead of her foes until her Big Bad utters the true names of the Olders, something no human throat was meant to utter. The effort tears her vocal chords apart and she bleeds out, leaving the demonic gods in their limbo."

Now if you read the first Vulcana book, you're probably confused by this ending. Yeah, the novel didn't quite end this way and THAT'S OKAY!

You see, by the time you get to the end of your book, YOU WILL BE A BETTER WRITER than you were when you started. After all, look at all the practice you put in to get to the end.

Also, by the time you near the conclusion of your work, the characters should be firmly established in your head and THEIR reactions -- not yours -- should steer the story.

If you can surprise YOURSELF, imagine what you'll do to your readers.

So what was going to be my original endpoint for Vulcana's first adventure proved to be a plot element, a distraction that allowed our heroine to gain mastery over the situation. In fact, many of my stories, both novels and shorter forms, involved coming up with one ending, but allowing the characters to dictate the final course of action.

Yeah, I'll do a blog on When Characters Seize Control Of Your Story one day.

Anyway, while I'm telling you to create a non-generic, lazy BS ending to conclude your pitch, I'll give you a lifesaver here ... YOU DON'T HAVE TO KEEP YOUR ORIGINAL ENDING once you reach the time when it needs to be fleshed out.

Just as I changed the Vulcana ending a little, the Bloodshot book made me realize how fluid the ending could become. Because of the licensing arrangement between Kindle Worlds (a division of Amazon) and the Intellectual Property owners (in this case, Valiant Comics), any new characters I created would become the property of the IP licensors.

Well, I wasn't having any of that. As I wrote Bloodshot: The Coldest Warrior, I planned to kill off all four characters I'd created. Thus, I conjured up a firefight resulting from Bloodshot's tampering with the old computer in the basement that helped his opponent. I checked my outline -- yes, I was using one for this story, the first time I'd done so -- and wrote ... checked the outline, then wrote some more ... more outline, a lot more typing until the penultimate chapter was done.

As I started the final chapter, wrapping up all the loose plot threads in this book, I realized ... ONE OF THE CHARACTERS WAS STILL ALIVE! Somehow, he'd saved himself (and quite convincingly at that) and I had no idea how it happened. So I figured, what the heck! I allowed him to stay alive and chances are he'll pop up in a future book. He's a survivor like that, you know.

So plot that ending, boil it down to one sentence, and you've got a solid foundation for your story.

Now REVIEW your pitch. Do you have a character who propels the story? Do you have conflict, a challenge to be overcome? Do you have a twist that makes the story unique? Do you have a reasonable, if potentially temporary, resolution to the story? If your answer is YES, do something nice for yourself.

With this, you can tell if you have a story worth telling. You haven't squandered craploads of time that could end up with you writing yourself into a corner and wasting all manner of time.

We started out with a tiny seed of an idea. Now we have a bare-bones plot, a solid foundation for our literary endeavor. The next step is to flesh out the plot so that it more resembles a novel.

For that, we will turn to one of the most prolific writers of the pulp era. By the way, he created a superman before Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

We'll meet him next week.

NEXT WEEK: Doc Savage and Expanding the Elevator Pitch

LAST WEEKEND: Many, many thanks to Chris McQuillan for hosting me during his awesome ToyMan Toy & Comic Show (along with my creative pals novelist Amy Hale and artist Candice Comelieri). It was a great time catching up with friends I haven't seen in a couple of years. In fact, I had such a good time that (and here's a scoop) I will be attending the November 5th show too. For more information on times, dates, and location, go to www.toymanshow.com

THIS WEEKEND: I will be taking a weekend off but on October 6 & 7, I'll be a guest at Noble Con 2 at West Richland Elementary School, 320 East North Avenue, Noble, Illinois, on both days. Accompanying me will be Joseph Morris (no relation) of TORC Press and Ian Boothby, the host of the Cloverleaf Radio podcast on Blog Talk Radio (blogtalkradio.com). It's two days of the best gaming in Southern Illinois and only FIVE DOLLARS A DAY to attend. Your presence will be mandatory.

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See you next Wednesday, if not sooner!

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