The Element of Surprise

Confession: This is not the confession that was originally posted here. I forgot to do it yesterday, and now I'm revising it.

Reading:

• "L. DeBard and Aliette: A Love Story," by Lauren Groff
  
• The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
  

Writing:

• "Ferian Fetlock Hitches a Ride" - 1,520 words (Estimated completion 17%)
• "Ferian Fetlock Catches a Cold" - Outline 100%
  

Revising:

• "The Revenant"
  
• "Cora and the Sea" - Third draft 50%

Still no word from the Tea lady. Maybe she suddenly decided that tea wasn't worth dedicating her life to, and she ran off to join the circus.

Today I started considering what it meant for there to be a "surprise" ending. The obvious starting place is the literal meaning of the words, for there to be a climax which the reader does not expect.

The natural opposite would be the cliched ending, often called the "Hollywood" ending. Of course the hero is going to survive, because he has to survive. Of course he's going to get the girl, because he has to get the girl. Not only is there no surprise, but the ending fits a mold. It's more of a ceremony than a plot.

I think that there can be good surprise endings and good Hollywood endings, if each is done correctly. I also think that most stories, including the great stories, fall somewhere in between.

Let's take The Lord of the Rings for instance. The Hollywood ending is for Frodo to achieve his journey and, after a great struggle, throw in the ring, then return home and live happily ever after.

The surprise ending, on the other hand, would be for Frodo to declare that his allegiance was to Sauron all along, to bend down on one knee, and present it to the dark lord. Or maybe he and Gollum were working together. Or maybe Sam had been given instructions by Gandalf to push Frodo in.

What a twist! But none of it would be genuine. Perhaps that's the word I'm looking for. A genuine ending is one that the reader cannot fully predict, but remains fully justified in retrospect.

Frodo could not throw in the ring, and it was only by chance, the same type of random chance by which the ring was found, that it could be destroyed. And when Frodo returned home, he found not the idyllic land he had left, but a place to which war had come nonetheless. And even when it was restored to some semblance of its former nature, he could find no rest there, and accepted exile, a type of death, in place of long life and happiness. It's a genuine ending, and truly, the only one that worked, because it was truly justified by everything that came before it.

Movies are a type of short story. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but sometimes, the pictures take longer to show. I think only movies and short stories can get away with the Hollywood ending or the surprise ending. There is not a lot of time to establish good characterization in either, and as a result, neither the surprise nor the cliche feel like a cheat.

On the other hand, novels are long and (should) have more than adequate characterization. They need a genuine ending.

Of course, if you can write a short story with a genuine ending, well, then you've done something special.

Publication Status:

• Submitted: 5
  
• Accepted: 1.25?
• Rejected: 2
• Pending: 1.75?

How should it have ended?

Confession: I love learning languages, but I'm often too embarrassed to try to use them.

Reading:

• Someplace to be Flying, by Charles de Lint

Writing:

• "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse"

Revising:

• "Dolly Hobbles"

I finished reading The Van late last night, and I was left with a profound feeling of sadness. It wasn't just that the book was over, although I always tend to feel a little let down after finishing a book I enjoy. The longer the series, the stronger the feeling. In fact, it takes a particularly satisfying ending to avoid that sensation. The most recent time that has happened was with Harry Potter.

But there was a bit more than that. The Van ended on a sad note. I'll go more into the story itself later, but so much was left open. A friendship was damaged and not yet healed. The motivation one character had to continue was gone. It was an ending filled with destruction, not creation; with loss rather than gain.

Oh, it was well written. That's part of why it hurt so much, because I related to those characters. And for a comic novel to have such a sad ending, well, I just wished the series had gone on, that's all. The previous two had ended on a happy note.

But perhaps that has to do more with the main characters of those novels. In The Commitments and The Snapper, the main characters were Jimmy Jr. and Sharon, young people whose lives were ahead of them. The Van focused on their father, Jimmy Sr., and his was at an end.

Not that he was about to die. But he had been laid off his job, and the book dealt with his depression and purposelessness in the face of forced retirement and poverty. He faced his own inadequacies and did not conquer them. He faced his own humanity and flinched.

By the end, perhaps, he had learned from his mistakes, but to what purpose? Where did he have yet to go?

I don't know, and perhaps Doyle didn't either, else he might have continued the story. We always assume that characters stay the same when their story is done, that they continue on with their same momentum perpetually until the window opens and we see them once more. If they were real people, that wouldn't be true, and there's no reason it has to be true with fiction, either. The thought that sometime down the road, Jimmy Sr. finds a purpose... well, that's the ending I want.

But it wasn't the one I got.