literature

Writing 101: Find your Ending

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Writing may seem easy but if you intend to write entertainment in any form there are ancient rules to follow, the Greeks knew it thousands of years ago, about time you learn them too.

A linear story must have a beginning, a middle and an end. Pretty obvious, heh? Not really, smart ass... you see, in reality most people start writing without having an end, not even an idea where to take the story, no prior planning. You can't build a house without a blueprint, same goes for story telling.

Writers tend to get so carried away having so much fun, they lose themselves in the story in a way that what began as a twenty four page One-Shot becomes a Lord of the Rings masterpiece with a thousand pages. Writing twenty four pages is hard enough, writing a mythology is a herculean task. Most likely you will grow tired of your masterpiece and it will eventually be dropped ne'er to be seen again, or worse, you'll be writing it forever and ever, and heaven becomes your personal hell.

If you, the writer, loses yourself in your own story, what's to say about your audience? Story telling is meant to entertain and without an audience there's no entertainment, there's only self-indulgence.

GET YOURSELF A MAP

Venturing the infinite choices of writing a story is like getting lost in a vast blue sea, if you don't know where you're going, you will get lost.

Plan your beginning, your middle and your end ahead of time and stick it over your screen.

That will be your map. You will eventually beef it up with more and more details and it will grow to be an outline, but whenever you feel you're steering too much away from your planned ending, stop, retrace your steps and get back on track.

Beginning: The Goonies find a treasure map which can help them save their homes.

Middle: The treasure is buried beneath the Fratellis' hideout.

End: The Goonies get the Fratellis arrested and save their homes.

You can change the details in between and have a lot of fun going from point "A" to point "B", but it's important to know where you're going. Every first step in writing a comic book, a novel, film, etc is figuring out where to start and where to go, everything else just falls into place.

This is how I planned issue #1 of the Lost Kids Mini-Series:

Beginning: JJ loses her adoptive parents in a car crash and moves in with Tommy, who constantly draws grand adventures in his Notebook.

Middle: A mysterious package arrives to JJ and the Lost Kids gather around to see what is it.

End: A strange looking marble inside the package shoots rays of light everywhere engulfing the Lost Kids. When the light recedes, they are gone...

Tomorrow I'll get into the "Three Act Structure" and drafting an outline, how to fill in the missing pieces of your rough map.

IMPORTANT: Remember we're discussing only the main plot as of now, and there should never be more than one main plot, or the audience gets lost. Leave every thing else, such as character development, set pieces, relationships, etc to your sub-plots, unless you're writing a romance, then guy meets girl is the main plot ;)

Recommended reading: Be sure to check out Terry Rossio's column on creating a killer concept for your story, he's the writer behind the Pirates of the Caribbean films and definitely worth the read. He focus on writing screenplays but as comics and films blend more and more into one genre, most, if not everything, he says in his columns can be used for your own story.

I hope this was useful, comments, critiques, questions are most welcome!
Something I thought people might find useful, I know I did when I started writing.

Thanks for having the patience of reading it :)

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© 2010 - 2024 FelipeCagno
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Kizyoi's avatar
This is really helpful!  Thank you!  :heart: