Nanowrimo Wrap up
So I made 30,000 words. It wasn't easy and
I had to use my Crystal Sword of Badwriting, but I did it.
And, just as I have every year, I learned something I didn't expect. I thought I had a problem with endings, but I've discovered that's not quite right.
For a long time I've been writing these killer openings; the tension builds, the stakes rise, the plot thickens and then and then ...
Nothing. Threads unspool, characters mutter apologies to me and wander off.
So for this Nanowrimo story I said “okay, I'm not 100% sure how this all comes out so I'll write a few possible endings to figure out where I'm headed.“
So I wrote one. I wrote two. I wrote a dozen. It was great. I figured a lot out about who these people where and what they were doing. I had several options for what might become of them. And it felt easy - familiarly easy. I've done this before.
And I realized that I don't have any special problem with the last pages of my story. They are tough but no tougher than anything else. Bringing a story in for a landing is not the hardest thing.
It's the zenith of my story is where I feel things fall down. Instead of rising to a roaring apex they just sort of shlumph over.
In the story I was working on I had the nebulous idea of a conflict involving characters at extreme odds - there was a pistol, a shotgun and a race against time to rescues (or steal) a dieing doll while fixing generator and preserving selves from worm-like deadly clouds.
Excitement and conflict! Death everywhere!
But my previously forward-moving characters wanted to stop and chat about their backgrounds, motivations and the socio-political problems.
This would be fine for speed- writing a first draft if I could get them to the shooting and the fighting eventually. Taking the conflict to whatever ultimate level the story needs.
I think that many of these faults come from my writing strengths. I'm good at hooking in tension - making simple scenes seem dramatic. I'm good at making all the characters have some reader sympathy. They're real - and their realness gives them the possibility to be reasonable. Reasonable and shootouts don't mix.
Fortunately for me, the more well drawn a character the more reason they have to be irrational. I just need to hone that to an edge.
It's not that I've never written a work that cuts like this, but most are rounded things. I want the power to write stories that stab into the sky. That come to satisfying sharp icy Everest heights. I want my readers to bring an oxygen tank and to cut their gloves on the stones at the top. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna get good at this.