Six Weeks of Favorite Writing Prompts: Week #5, Beginnings and Endings
This week’s prompt is a kind of checklist (do you love lists? I obsess over them!).
Basically, you’ll be looking at the essential signposts in your story’s bookends, what the beginning offers to keep your reader moving forward and what the ending offers as a question or completion.
When we’re drafting, we don’t think about this. The freedom of an early draft is what brings all those surprising ideas to the surface in our creative imagination. Freedom's great, but not at revision—that demands a closer look at the organization of the story. Which includes what it promises in the beginning and what it answers in the end.
So a beginning and ending is like a call and response.
We’ll use this week’s prompt to check how that call-and-response is working. Or not.
Your weekly writing exercise
Run your revision through these questions. Take an honest look at what you’ve promised the reader and if you deliver.
The call (your opening)—does it . . .
Introduce someone we readers can care about (a narrator, main character, villain)?
Introduce a conflict we want to see evolved or resolved?
Introduce a place that echoes the two above elements?
A few more notes on beginnings:
The goal of a story opening or a book’s first chapter is to start a tension cord that’s tight enough to pull the reader along. We don't give everything away but we must create a triggering event that triggers the reason for the rest of the story. The opening does this through one or all of the three elements above.
Usually, the beginning offers a longing. Something unresolved. A quest, perhaps. An unsolved question.
The response (your ending)—does it . . .
Some evolution of the person introduced in the first scene or chapter.
Some evolution or conclusion of the dilemma introduced in the first scene or chapter.
The meaning of the place is clear.
A few more notes on endings:
Feel the freedom to leave unanswered questions. By all means! But solve something. Be wary of introducing new dilemmas or main conflicts. To the reader, it’s too late. Yes, hint at one, if you're writing a sequel. Yes, leave a call to action, if that’s the mission of your book. But tie off threads you unraveled in the beginning of the story.
What really needs attention in the last chapter are the main relationships.
How did the narrator change? How did the method you're teaching shift your way of approaching life? How did the character realize something?
Show us how the primary players changed, how something new was realized or achieved or lost. Demonstrate a new state of being and you'll have the reader hooked, hungry, and happy.
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