Ok, the topic was a bit of a lie, there will be no Booyah included in this post…possibly. I need to stop saying and writing it along with ‘AWESOME!’ which I say waaaaay too much.
More on what I learned on the writing course I went on (not much unfortunately, I think it was aimed at people who haven’t even started their books!) I was sat next to a lady called…I think Helen…who was proudly telling me she had written 8,000 in six months. I smiled, nodded and congratulated her. She asked how many words I had managed in the last six months. I told her that in two weeks I managed 100,000. I wasn’t trying to boast (though I am slightly proud) but I don’t like lying. Her mouth dropped. Everyone then spent the rest of the session teasing me for each exercise that we did as I was scribbling away madly, churning out four hundred words in 10 minutes or less. My point to them was, that doesn’t mean it’s any good. One woman had been going to writing courses and groups for 55 years and STILL hadn’t started her work. What?!? She must have spent a small fortune on classes in her life, and they obviously weren’t doing her any good because she was yet to put pen to paper- or fingers to keyboard.
Anyway, we did a small bit about Endings. Some authors struggle with endings. An example the tutor gave was with ‘The Lovely Bones’ (I haven’t read it) which is apparently an amazing book that should end a long time before it actually does. Some people are intuitive of when it is time to end the work, others struggle.
1. Closed – Self explanitory, the ending happens and that’s it. There isn’t much room for interpretation because we have been made aware of what has happend.
2. Open – The ending is left unanswered in the sense that we are given some details, but we decide what we think has happened to the characters.
3. Cliff Hanger – Often used for the first in a series of books, or sometimes just used in single volume. This can often be unsatisfactory though in the case of the single book.
5. Deus ex Machina (God of the Machine) – Having done Classics at school, I can tell you this was frequently used in Greek theatre as a way of coming to a conclusion, often in a way that’s a bit too convieniant. In the case of one play, gods come down and fix everything, the end. It can be used well in comedy though, especially if it is mocking others works that have tried to use this seriously.