Endings Are Hard – WN 152

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This is the Write Now podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 152: Endings are Hard.

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Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring, professional, and otherwise, to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m your host, Sarah Werner, and today <laugh>, we’re gonna be talking about endings.

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And I laugh there because there is this thing that I have found myself saying, not even just in regards to my own work, but regarding other work as well. And that is endings are hard. And this can be for me, both a complaint when it regards my own work and a sort of sympathetic gesture that I extend to things that maybe didn’t end the way that I really wanted them to. Specifically right now, I’m thinking of the final episode of the otherwise very excellent “Midnight Mass”, the final episode of the otherwise very excellent “Lovecraft Country”. Just so many things where I did not feel that the ending was earned or satisfying or all of the things which we expect endings to be.

(01:42):
Please note that any opinions regarding media expressed in this podcast are mine and mine alone. And it’s okay if you disagree with me. Art is subjective, and if you loved the endings of either of the shows I just referred to, that’s awesome and I’m really glad you enjoyed the endings to those shows. I did, not <laugh>, but the frequency with which I have found myself saying, Oh, endings are hard. It’s okay, endings are hard, or, Ugh, endings are hard, has grown enough so that I had a conversation with my friend Kate Brauning, who has appeared on the show before, and we talked about what makes a good ending because endings can be hard. They can be very difficult because we expect so much from the ending of a story or a piece of media that we’ve given our time and attention to. We want it to deliver something meaningful to us, but it can be really hard to craft a good ending to something again, at least in my experience, maybe you fantastic at endings and really terrible at beginnings.

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I feel like we all have our strengths. For me, I can start 700 projects a day and then never touch any of them again. For me, it feels like beginnings are full of really fun and limitless possibility, and endings are where you have to apply all the limits and it feels like a lot more work. Not that there’s anything wrong with work, it’s just more difficult than the fun beginnings. Again, at least for me, I know that I’m not supposed to use words like always or never to talk about myself or anyone else because we’re not supposed to ascribe permanent things to people, but I’m gonna say it anyway. I feel like I have always struggled with endings, and in my case, it’s been not only to craft a good ending or a satisfying ending, but to end a project at all. The first project that I ever publicly finished was season one of the audio drama “Girl In Space”.

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I wrote it, produced it, all of those things, and it has a season one finale. And so it’s like I wrote an ending, but if you look at the timeline and how I released those episodes, you’ll notice an increasing amount of time between each episode as the ending of the season draws near that final episode. That 13th episode of Girl in Space took me eight months to create as opposed to the couple weeks slash month that it took me for the other episodes. So yay, I finished that thing. It took me forever, but I finished it. But thinking back, there are so many other unfinished things in my life, largely creative projects, infamously, I have a drawer of unfinished novels, but I also have unfinished poetry collections, unfinished poems, and thinking back especially to high school, middle school, elementary school, whenever I would turn in a project, it was always hugely ambitious, yet unfinished.

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I remember vividly a project that I did in eighth grade about Duke Ellington, the jazz pianist where we had to write a report about the figure and then also create some kind of poster to go with it. So I got a big piece of poster board and I silhouetted a city skyline against it. And then I had these gloves that I stuffed with wire and maybe stuffing. It’s been a while. And I had them coming out of the poster board and playing a three dimensional keyboard that also stuck out from the city. It was like this huge grand art project. And while I finished the poster, I did not finish the report, one of many, many, many ambitious but unfinished projects. I remember a project in art class, it was a giant pencil drawing of, I don’t know, this really cool gothic looking mansion and around it was all sorts of crumbling graves.

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And because that’s what I was into in high school, <laugh> very normal. But I outlined the house and then I got really fixated on the gardens outside of the house. And so I started in the lower right hand corner and I was just designing this graveyard with these intricate trailing leaves and strange flowers and shadows with eyes in the background. And then the project came due and I had a lower right hand corner of extremely intricate gardening detail, but the project was supposed to be about the perspective of a building, and I had not actually finished drawing the building. Now, some people might say that I have a problem with time management, and those people would be absolutely correct <laugh>, other people might say hyper fixation with details and an inability to get things done on time that sounds like adhd, and you would also be correct. But really, I think that there was something larger at work here and that was for whatever reason, an avoidance of endings. And maybe you’ve experienced this too, it feels good to get caught up in a project in the minutiae, in the details. And often I think we can draw those things out because perhaps the ending feels so final, which it is, or maybe it feels intimidating because you have to do it well, which you do.

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Or maybe it just seems impossible, which it’s not. But it sure as heck can feel that way. Back in 2019, I recorded an episode of the Write Now podcast called “Finishing What You Start”. It’s episode number 72, and it sort of looks at why we start projects without finishing them. At the time, I had read a really wonderful book by John Acuff called “Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done”. And in it, he looks at the mindset that we have behind finishing large projects such as writing a book and there’s a lot of fear and uncertainty at play, but he encourages creatives like you know, and me to give less weight to the fear and uncertainty and more weight to the wonderful feeling that you will experience when you write the end at the end of your manuscript. He breaks it down very logically. It’s a great book, and I definitely recommend it if you like me, have difficulty finishing projects.

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But what John Acuff doesn’t talk about, and what I didn’t talk about in episode 72 of the Write Now podcast called “Finishing What You Start” is how to craft an ending, how to actually make a good and satisfying ending to a story, to a piece of creative work. So I was sitting at the dining room table with my clipboard and my binders and all of my writing stuff <laugh>. And I remember looking down at the draft, I had been handwriting and thinking, huh, I’m at the end of episode 11. There are only supposed to be 13 episodes of season two, just as there were 13 episodes of season one of Girl in Space. And I am nowhere near even beginning to wrap this up. Those of you who thrive by creating outlines for your projects, you may not deal with this a whole lot and also don’t judge me, but if you’re not a huge fan of outlines, you may have experienced something like this before.

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So I was sitting there at the dining room table and I picked up my pile of index cards, and on each index card I had a plot point written. That’s generally how I’ve been outlining these days. I write down things that I want to happen on index cards and then I can reshuffle the index cards if I need to put them in different order, create new index cards, crumple up old index cards. It’s been working pretty well for me, but I realized that I was at the end of episode 11, so I had two episodes or 60 pages left to right of season two of Girl in Space and my remaining index cards, it was over an inch thick. And I was like, Oh, I have a lot of stuff to fit in to 60 pages. And then I was like, Well, the finale for season one was like an hour long, and so maybe I’ll do episode 12 and 13, will each be an hour long and then I can fit everything in, or maybe I need go out to episode 14 or 15 or 16.

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And then that’s when I started to panic. Those of you who do this for a living or our project managers, you might be familiar with the term scope creep. This is when a project begins to sprawl way outside of what you had intentionally planned for it. So for instance, your nice tidy 12 or 13 episode audio drama suddenly looks like it’s gonna be 22 and a half episodes, or the simple three page website you were making suddenly turns into a thousand page website with full directories and a shopping integration. I don’t know why I gave you the actual example first and then the metaphorical one afterwards, but that’s how I do things around here I guess. So I texted my friend Kate, who is not only a fantastic writer and editor, but really specializes in story structure, which is not one of my stronger points.

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This is why it’s important to have other friends who are creative people because inevitably you’re not gonna be great at everything. So I texted Kate what amounted to a series of screaming emoji faces and the word endings in all caps. And I started babbling about my stack of index cards and how one of the index cards simply said ending goes here, and another one that said simply final confrontation. So we jumped on a call. I do monthly calls with Kate as part of her Breakthrough Writer’s Bootcamp program, which I definitely recommend you check out. There will be a link to that in the show notes for today’s episode. And I proceeded to just <laugh> pour out my heart and soul about the impossibility of an ending. Kate said, Well, do you know what’s going to happen in the end of your story? And I said, I mean kind of <laugh>, but I feel like I need to figure it out as I go, because if I plan something ahead of time, I do so much creation during the writing that it will inevitably veer off track and then my final point or showdown will not match linearly with where the story has decided it’s going.

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Which brief tangents. If you saw Mike Flanigan’s generally wonderful show “Midnight Mass”. I think this was why I found the final episode to be so disappointing. The story took on a life of its own for the first several episodes and characters grew and relationships developed and plot points developed beautifully and richly done. And then for the finale, it felt like, and again, just my opinion, it felt like someone had pressed a factory reset button and all of the characters were pulled violently from their paths that they had been treading the whole season and forced into an ending that didn’t fit where the story was naturally progressing. So it felt like they planned the ending, and during the middle of the story, they got off track. And then for that final episode, they just shunted everything back on track. But the story had grown in a different way.

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And so for me, it felt like the ending did not match the rest of the season, and it ended up being very unsatisfying because characters weren’t acting like we had expected them to act. This person wouldn’t do this. I remember myself saying multiple times, but okay, end of tangent, back to my call with Kate. So she said, Okay, I understand that you want to flow toward the ending, but she said, Have you thought about how hard it is to shoot an arrow and have it land successfully if you are not aiming at a target? And I was like, Oh, no. This is the exact same stuff that I used to tell people in marketing. You can’t aim properly if you don’t have a target. And then Kate said something that really stuck with me. She said, A good ending should be inevitable. A good ending should hit the target that you’ve been aiming at throughout the whole story.

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A good ending should satisfy the premise. And I had heard that phrase before, satisfy the premise, but everything in that phrase felt so abstract, satisfy the premise, What does that even mean? So Kate said, Sarah, does your story have a premise? And I said, Oh, absolutely. There’s a girl and she’s in space. And Kate said, Go on. And I said, Well, that’s my premise. And she said, No, it’s not. It’s weird. I took English and literature classes all through school, all through high school, and then I went to college where I majored in literature and writing, and not one of the writing classes that I ever took explained to me what a premise was. My college courses were much more focused on finding and dissecting metaphors and symbols and understanding authorial intent. They were all about literary criticism. And my creative classes were just sit down and write.

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We’d write in different forms like, Oh, today we’re writing a sonnet and here’s what a sonnet is. But sort of like calculus. I have never needed to know how to write a sonnet since then, and I wish that I would’ve been able to learn things that had a direct impact on my career As a writer today, I was recently talking with a friend who regretted not going to college for an English degree or a writing degree. And I said, You did not miss anything. Not to be mean, not to be disrespectful. I learned a lot in college, but it was more on the problem solving side of things and the criticism, understanding side of things than it was actual craft. The best teacher that I had was in other books, reading other books. But when you read other books, you get a feel, an innate feel for structure and dialogue, but you’re still not really in a place where you can say, Oh, I know how to construct a premise.

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Here are the elements of a premise. And so bless her heart, Kate walked me through this and she said, Okay, Sarah, your premise needs to have most of the following. Is there a compelling setting? And I said, Yes, space. And she said, Is this necessary for the story? And I said, Yes. And she said, Good. Okay, next, you need some kind of inherent conflict. Again, it needs to be part of the premise and it needs to be high stakes. And I said, Yes, yes, I have conflict. And she said, Great. And then she said, What about gut emotional appeal? And I was like, Yes. And I kind of explained in season two what was going to happen and why that would be appealing to readers or listeners in my case. And she said, Great. Does it have originality? And I said, I think so. And then she said, Is it plausible?

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And I said yes and explained each of these components to her. And when we were done, she said, Okay, Sarah, you do have a premise. You just didn’t know what it was. And because you weren’t clear on the premise, how are you supposed to satisfy that premise at the end of the season? All of these elements in the premise, she said, Work together to define your target. This thing that you’re aiming at with the ending. This is what’s going on the back of the book in addition to the main character’s goal. This is what is going to entice readers. This is what they’re going to be following. Therefore, this is what you need to satisfy with the ending of your book. Or in my case, audio drama season. She said, You may not need to reveal everything from page one, but that premise needs to be in place, may be hinted at or just in the back of your mind from the very beginning of the story.

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And I said, Oh, no, because I realized the reason that season two of Girl in Space had become so unmanageable and sprawling and scope creepy was because I had wandered away from the initial premise of the story. I had gone off on weird tangents and things that I thought would be cool. And I mean, yeah, there’s still cool and I can still fit them in. But thanks to Kate and her reminding me of what my story was about in the first place, I am going to be able to write an ending for season two of Girl in Space that satisfies the premise and hopefully the listener. There’s a cliche in the world of creativity and projects and entrepreneurship, and that is always remember your why. That’s w h y or the reason that you’re doing this in the first place. The reason, the why, the premise when you create that, you are establishing the target down the road that you’re firing the arrow of plot at.

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I don’t know if that’s correct, but I hope you get what I’m saying. So basically, today’s episode is just a giant thank you note to Kate who in a 45 minute call taught me more about the craft of storytelling than I learned in my college career. Is that an exaggeration? Maybe. I don’t know. College was a long time ago. Maybe I learned a lot more there than I give it credit for, but regardless, thank you, Kate. So if you are struggling with an ending to your project, I encourage you to go back and look at the beginning. What does your main character want? What makes your setting compelling and immersive? What is the inherent conflict of the story? What is the gut emotional appeal of what’s going on? How plausible is it? And what original elements do you need to keep in mind? I wrote down the answers to those questions, and from that, I crafted a premise for Girl in Space season two. And because of that, I now have the clarity that I need to get rid of most of the index cards in my pile <laugh> to craft an ending that satisfies the premise to craft an ending that makes sense and gives resolution to the story and its characters.

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I would love to hear your thoughts about endings, whether that is how you tend to end your own projects. If you struggle with endings like I do, if you have a favorite piece of work that either has a fantastic ending or a really disappointing ending, and if you have other tools that are helpful for you in crafting the end of a story, you can let me know the answer to these questions out on my website, sarah warner.com. That’s S A R A H W E R N E R dot com, where you will find the show notes for today’s episode, episode 152. And if you scroll to the very bottom of the episode beneath the transcript, you’ll see that I have a nifty little comment box there where you can share your thoughts with me. I would love to hear them. Again, that’s sarah werner dot com and this is episode 152.

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Also out at my website, you’ll find ways that you can support the show. The show while it is free for everyone to enjoy as they like. It’s not free for me to make. And so if you would like to help me defray the costs of that, I accept donations. I don’t know if I could have said that in a more awkward way, but if you are interested in becoming a patron of the Write Now podcast, I use a service called Patreon. It’s a secure third party donation platform that allows you to donate a dollar per episode, $2 per episode, $6,000 per episode. Whatever you <laugh> you feel is right for you if you are not able to spare money financially, I totally get that. The best way that you can help the show without spending money is to just tell someone else about it. Let people know about the Write Now podcast.

(26:19):
If they’re not familiar with podcasts, show them how to download an episode, show them where the Write Now podcast is on their podcaster or podcast app. But back to the Patreon thing, if you would like to support the show financially please do so. You can go out to my website, sarah wener.com, and go to the button that says, Support the show. Or you can go out to patreon.com. That’s P A T R O N dot com slash Sarah Rhea Werner. That’s S A R A H R H E A W E R N E R, all one word.

(26:52):
Special thanks to all patrons who supported this week’s episode of the Write Now podcast, including Tamara K. Sellman, Amanda King, Laurie, Regina Calabrese, Amber S., Charmaine Ferreira, Dennis Martin, Michael Beckwith, Mike Tefft, Sarah Banham, Summer, That Guy, Tiffany Joyner and Whitney MacGruder. Thank you all so much for your kind, thoughtful, and generous support of this show. It means the world to me and to all of the folks who listen. So thank you.

(27:32):
And with that, this has been episode 152 of the Write Now podcast, The podcast that helps all writers, aspiring professional, and otherwise, to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m Sarah Werner, and I’m gonna get to work on the ending of Season two of Girl in Space.