Endings are such a problem

No matter how many times I go over a piece of writing, I can always find something to alter, to improve, make clearer than it was. It would save so much time if I could see those things right off, but no, it’s always at the second, third, fourth etc draft stage. They say the brain sees what it expects to see and hides the mistakes – or doesn’t even register them. I’m tempted to start going through Victorian Beauty again, but I haven’t finished it yet. I still have the final couple of chapters to write, and this is where I stalled the last time I worked on this story.

Melodrama, they say, is the result of under motivation rather than over expression, so maybe I’d better start checking the motivation of my characters. Perhaps their lack of motivation is what's stalling me. Goldman says of endings: ‘Give the audience what it wants but not the way it expects.’ Ha! Easier said than done. McKee says ‘The climax of the last act is the great imaginative leap. Without it, you have no story. Until you have it, your characters simply wait.’

My poor characters have been waiting more than a year for this resolution, so I’d better get on with it. But then, as Hemingway once said, ‘The first draft of anything is shit.’

I can study famous quotes and read about endings, climaxes, resolutions and the like, but when it comes right down to it, I’m going to have to finish the thing, or else admit I’ve wasted my time writing the first 80 thousand words. I don't want to give up; I like these characters. A piece of advice remembered from long ago - if you can't decide on the ending, write several endings and see which you prefer. I may very well try it. I'll let you know if it works.

The qualities an author needs

According to McKee, a writer needs certain qualities.

First of all comes a love of story and the dramatic, with all its sudden surprises, and revelations.

Close behind it comes the love of truth and the belief that lies cripple everything, for every truth must be questioned down to one's own secret motives.
The list goes on ~ a love of humanity, an ability to empathise, to crawl inside the skins of others and see with their eyes
A love of sensation - recognition of the physical and inner senses
A love of dreaming - where imagination takes you
A love of humour - life's saving grace, the one that restores balances
A love of language - the sound and sense it creates, an understanding of syntax and semantics
A love of duality - that feel for life's hidden contradictions, and a healthy suspicion that things are not what they seem
A love of perfection - to write and write in pursuit of the perfect moment, the perfect sentence
A love of uniqueness, the thrill of audacity and a stone-faced calm when met by ridicule
A love of beauty, that innate sense that treasures good writing, hates bad and knows the difference
And finally a love of self - a strength that never doubts, loves to write and bears the lonliness

Ouseburn and pacing

More bridges, this time where the Ouseburn runs into the Tyne, less than a mile and a half from the Tyne bridge, but tucked away out of sight. Although the pub looks as if it is sitting on the bridge, I assure you is not. The strange ovoid shaped piece of white metal is part of the barrage they are busy putting into place to keep the water level constant upstream. At low tide the banks of the burn are an unsightly mess of mud. Once the barrage is in place, it will look much better.
Before I forget - I have an excerpt on Unusual Historicals today - or maybe yesterday now! Do have a look. It's a bit from Dark Pool, my story set in Viking Dublin.

The weather has been so good this week that I've been out gardening every day, but now it is time to get back to work. I've been having doubts about the opening chpaters of KT so whilst gardening I've been simmering about what to do. I've had the old notebooks out, checking the words of masters like McKee, Bransford and Maas on things like pacing and conflict. I've pickedup some lovely quotes along the way. "Pacing is the rhythm of a novel." Well, yes, but it doesn't tell you how to achieve good pacing, does it? "Pacing is the length of time between moments of conflict." That gives me a clue. "The rate the reader reads." "The speed at which the novel events occur and unfold." What speeds up pace? Dialogue. Now we're getting somewhere.

Bradbury says: "Start where things start to go wrong." So, I'm rethinking the opening pages. Much as I love them, there is no real hook there to grab the reader, no hint of plot. Of course, this book started out as a romance, pure and simple. Now it has morphed into something else. Since I'm a start-at-the-beginning-and-work-through-to-the-end sort of writer, then those first pages are the oldest bits of writing.

Bransford says "without conflict the book is DOA." His way of putting things is sharp and dead on the money, and I must now go back and look at my beginning.