I spend a lot of time storyboarding, plotting and making notes about the endings of my stories. One of the reasons why Rosemirror is taking so long is because my roadmap towards its ending does not feel sufficiently justified or as is said in writing workshop parlance, “earned”. But at the end of the day, I feel the idea of “sticking the landing” is entirely subjective.
I’ve been thinking about endings a lot lately.
Mostly, I think about my favourite books and television series, wondering if they did indeed stick the landing. My reading is extremely eclectic; they range from Malay hikayats to James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake. In fact, when I was thinking about the sheer entitled behaviour displayed by some fan critics of television series and books, I wondered if they would argue that Joyce did not “stick the landing”. Would they say the same of Virginia Woolf’s novels or of Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children? Or do we come to the conclusion that maybe endings aren’t as significant as people like to pretend they are? Does an ending that feels subjectively “unearned” by some negate the entire journey of the narrative?
Perhaps this an interesting place to begin a post after my last post on Derrida’s Aporias but this is about a different sort of ending that connects to my ongoing thoughts about life and what is deemed a life worth living. Would we say that a life that is well-lived if ended tragically short or in some banal manner is deemed worthless? And would we say a book is less worth reading if the ending did not suit the parameters of what is considered an earned ending according to any given reader? Because I’ve seen people howling that endings are “too happy” and others howl when things are “too ambiguous”. If all (most!) loose ends are tied, the person who wants an ambiguous or tragic ending is unhappy. If things are left ambiguous or with two endings aka The French Lieutenant’s Woman, some other person (or persons) would be up in arms.*
My thought is that an ending can be technically perfect, following upon the previous beats with precision, having ticked all the boxes of how an ending should be earned but it could still leave you cold. This is because the author or show-runner was ticking boxes. I posit that when the soul as well as the heft of the narrative has left the building, people are going to be unsatisfied anyway. But who can reach that happy apex of both soul/heft and technical perfection? Not many. Definitely not this author even though she tries, again and again.
This is not an admission of failure. This is the admission of the fallibility with which every author contends. I’d rather have an ending that is true to the heart of the story than one that has a textbook ending and somehow “sticks the landing”. These are the kinds of endings that resonate with me. These endings are the ones that have me closing a book with a satisfied sigh. Sometimes, this perfect ending could be vague and unearned. Sometimes, it is ambiguous (as is the case with most modern/post-modern literary fiction). But something about it resonates. Something about it feels simply right. And that is the alchemy of the ending that you cannot plot to every minutiae. That is the thing you can only discover in your own journey through the process of weaving and executing a narrative. As for readers, one can also train oneself into having better literacy about what a good novel ending should be. Ditto for other forms of media.
*I know you know which television show I’m talking about. And incidentally, I adored that closure and thought they stuck the landing.