Writing the End of a Story

Blog Post No. 409

I started the new novella, Break/Interrupt, on August first. The day after I finished the first draft of the Invasion Novel. I had hoped to be done within a month and have a tight 30 000 word story to show for it. Now it’s the end of September and I’m at 60 000 words. I’m not sure exactly where things fell off the rails, but I’m finally starting to wrap things up.

Ending a story is tough. Through most of it, I have fun wandering around, playing with the ideas, figuring out the character and their place in the world. Since it’s a new perspective on an existing universe, I have some connecting tissue to write, but most of it is an exploration. It can be fast and exciting with no limitations. At the end, everything slows down. There’s no room left to do anything other than wrap things up. Just coming up with an ending can be hard. They have to make sense and be satisfying for the reader. Trying to write them gets to be a slog.

The Second Time is never the same

Blog No. 142

I am a big fan of the book Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline. I wouldn’t call it my favourite, but I do like it enough to have given it two reviews on this blog in the past. It’s a fun ride that swerves sharply down memory lane. Highly praised and being adapted into a Stephen Spielberg film, I don’t really need to go into too much detail about it. The second offering from the author is called Armada. It has been out for a couple of weeks and even before it was finished, the movie rights were snatched up. Excitement has been rising since the book’s announcement shortly after the publication of Ready Player One. Everything was pointing to Armada being another fun, reference laden sci-fi story. I expected to love it, ordered it as a hard cover, and waited eagerly for it to arrive.