The Last Fifty Pages Read online

  PRAISE FOR JAMES SCOTT BELL

  "I needed advice before I tried to write a novel. The usual axiom — write what you know — wasn't helpful. So I turned to James Scott Bell. He taught me how to structure a great entrance — the equivalent of gliding down a spiral staircase in a wedding gown — and how to keep the next 400 pages from becoming as hopelessly tangled as the crumpled papers and wads of gum in my old desk. My novel sold."

  SARAH PEKKANEN, AUTHOR OF THE OPPOSITE OF ME

  "James Scott Bell is a master of writing craft with the rare ability to teach others, through his books and workshops. Rather than framing writing ability as gift bestowed upon a chosen few, Jim makes it accessible to anyone who is willing to dig deep and put in the time to learn the craft. I have learned more from Jim’s books than any writing course, and this book is no exception. As a former teacher turned novelist, I know how to spot a talented teacher when I see one. James Scott Bell doesn't just make the cut, he sets the standard."

  KAMI GARCIA, #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR

  "Time well spent. I expect Jim's teaching to inform my writing for years."

  JERRY B. JENKINS, #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR

  “James Scott Bell is my go-to writing guru!”

  TERRI BLACKSTOCK, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR

  "I am inspired by Bell's enthusiastic approach, and impressed with his numerous, helpful insights into the craft of storytelling."

  BILL MARSILII, SCREENWRITER

  THE LAST FIFTY PAGES

  The Art and Craft of Unforgettable Endings

  JAMES SCOTT BELL

  Copyright © 2019 by James Scott Bell

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Print version:

  ISBN 10: 0-910355-43-6

  ISBN 13: 978-0-910355-43-8

  Cover design by Josh Kenfield.

  Published by

  Compendium Press

  Woodland Hills, CA

  CONTENTS

  1. Endings Are Hard

  2. What Should an Ending Do?

  3. Should You Know Your Ending Before You Write?

  4. About Act 3

  5. The Shape of Your Ending

  6. The Meaning of Your Ending

  7. Brainstorming Endings

  8. Resonant Endings

  9. Avoiding Common Ending Problems

  10. Some Endings Examined

  11. The Ending of This Book on Endings

  Author’s Note

  Writing Books by James Scott Bell

  Thrillers by James Scott Bell

  About the Author

  “The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book.”

  — Mickey Spillane

  1

  ENDINGS ARE HARD

  There’s an old golf saying: “It’s not how you drive, it’s how you arrive.” In other words, no matter how long you hit the ball off the tee, it will make no difference to your overall score unless you can sink some dang putts! Three, four, five tries to get it into the cup? That way lies madness, broken clubs, and too many martinis in the clubhouse.

  In the same way, you can write a killer opening scene with dynamic characters and lots of action. You might even sustain that through most of the book.

  But if don’t sink the putt—if your ending is a letdown—it tarnishes all the good stuff that came before.

  And supremely frustrates your readers.

  As Exhibit A, I give you the television series Lost.

  I recall watching most of the first season. It became clear to me how the writers were compelling viewers to tune in each week. They would come up with an inexplicable cliffhanger at the end of an episode, something so surprising it would knock your figurative socks off.

  The country was littered with figurative socks as Lost became a smash hit.

  But I was thinking this: Do the writers know how this is going to end? Are they going to be able to wrap up all these earth-shattering mysteries?

  After six seasons, the day of reckoning came.

  I tracked Twitter on the night of the last episode. The response was mostly negative, running the gamut from confusion to outrage.

  Then the blogs began. Some purported to explain what was inexplicable. Others gave vent to the frustration of having watched for six seasons, only to be disappointed at the end. A lot of heat was expended in comments and across platforms, with no settled answers.

  Now, I do not entirely blame the writers for what happened. They were writing from episode to episode and putting in fantastic twists, as ordered by the producers. This delighted viewers, network execs, and advertisers alike.

  But (he says with italicized emphasis) coming up with twisty cliffhangers is the easy part! It’s not difficult at all to come up with a shocking twist at the end of an episode (or scene in your book) if you don’t worry about having to justify it.

  Which the Lost writers found out the hard way.

  (Side note: Some time after the series ended, leaked documents and private conversations with the writers revealed this is exactly how Lost went down. One of the writers was asked by his friend Nick Santora, a writer on the television series Prison Break, “How are you going to pay all this stuff off?” And the writer reportedly answered, “We’re not. We literally just think of the weirdest most f****** up thing and write it and we’re never going to pay it off.” Santora replied in rather colorful language that such a stratagem was, well, let’s just say, not good.)

  Most loyal viewers of Lost that I’ve personally talked to said they loved watching the series but had to admit disappointment at the end.

  So here is my wish for you: I want your readers to be so blown away by your endings that they immediately go shopping for more of your books.

  A high bar?

  Indeed. And it should be. Because people who spend money to buy stories are taking a risk. They want to be swept away in a fictive dream and dropped back into reality only after an ending that leaves them, in some fashion, emotionally satisfied and supremely happy that they gave your novel the time it took to read it.

  There’s an old acting quote that’s been variously attributed, usually to the English actor Edmund Kean (1787 - 1833). He was on his deathbed when a friend remarked how hard this must be. Kean supposedly answered, “Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.”

  Well, beginnings are easy. Endings are hard.

  But when they work—magic.

  2

  WHAT SHOULD AN ENDING DO?

  If there’s one word that sums up the feeling readers crave in an ending, it’s satisfaction. The word is broad enough to include any type of ending, so long as it is one that leaves the reader in a positive emotional state about the reading experience as a whole. Note: this positivity does not only refer to the feeling one gets after a “happy” ending. It also means that the ending feels right for that story.

  A novel with a downbeat ending—e.g., where the Lead dies, as in a tragedy—can feel right even though you wanted the guy to make it. Like in Hamlet.

  On the other hand, a happy ending does not always satisfy. There’s got to be a sense that the happiness was earned by the characters, not dropped in their laps out of the blue (the deus ex machina trap, which we’ll discuss in a later chapter).

  Why do readers want a satisfying ending?

  First, because they often don’t get satisfaction in life. They get fired, rear-ended on the highway, have a lousy steak at an expensive restaurant. Then there are the greater tragedies, like the loss of
a loved one. The list goes on. Life is relentless.

  So when they read a book and get lost in a story, they are hoping that the ending will, in some way, make them glad they held on right through to the finish.

  Books, theater, movies, music, dance. When these have a feeling of completeness, they impart a degree of comfort.

  The other reason readers want a satisfying ending is less psychological and more practical—they paid money! If the ending isn’t up to snuff (as my grandfather used to say), then the reader feels a bit cheated. Or, in the case of a $35 hardcover, a lot cheated.

  Here is my friend and blogmate, the bestselling thriller writer John Gilstrap, writing at our group blog Kill Zone (May 24, 2017):

  I just finished a book that was sent to me in search of a blurb. It was one of the most thrilling thrillers I’ve read in a long time, and because the publisher was on tight time constraints, I gave the book a rave blurb when I was only about three-quarters of the way through. I mean, this was a pulse-pounder.

  Until the last 30 pages.

  “Before you kill me, you’ve got to tell me why you did it, and how all of your compatriots fit into the puzzle.” Okay, it wasn’t that on-the-nose, but it was close. Such a disappointment. I don’t regret the blurb, and I would read the author again because of the exciting 9/10 of the storytelling, but I really felt let down. And no, I won’t share the book title or the author because I don’t think that would be fair.

  Folks, this show-don’t-tell trope holds from the beginning of a story all the way through to the last page. I think that writers sometimes get tired of their own stories, or they’re leaning face-first into the fan blades of a submission deadline and they sort of eject from the plot and characters, settling for, “Well, it’s good enough.”

  And you know what? I get that. I’ll readily forgive that of an author I’ve followed and whose works I enjoy, provided it’s a one-off. I’ll write it off as their Mulligan book, their bye. But at that point, they’re on notice. The next book better be up to standard, or they lose their spot on the TBR pile.

  This is why the bar is set especially high for new writers. Rookies don’t get a Mulligan on their first swing. They’ve got to slam that baby three hundred yards straight down the fairway.

  And, I would add, sink the putt.

  Enough with the sports analogies!

  No, wait. One more.

  The golfer always knows where the green is when he tees off. It would make no sense to hit the ball any which way, now would it?

  Thus, the question: should a writer know the ending before setting off to write?

  We’ll answer that not via the sporting life. We’ll go right to the top. We’ll ask God.

  3

  SHOULD YOU KNOW YOUR ENDING BEFORE YOU WRITE?

  God was not pleased.

  The special creation he had lovingly shaped, and into which he breathed the breath of life, had gone off the rails. God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

  Things went south from the very start. He placed man and woman in this beautiful garden with plants and animals and a Starbucks, and said there was only one rule: Do not eat the fruit of this certain tree, okay? Is there any part of Do not eat you don’t understand? No? That is very good.

  But then the first politician the serpent whispered a sweet lie, and Eve took a bite. Then Adam chomped, and it was bye-bye Eden.

  In the outside world Adam and Eve scraped up enough to buy a little starter cave, had kids, started mowing the lawn.

  But tragedy ensued. Cain murdered his brother, Abel.

  Things only got worse.

  After several generations, God decided it was time to clear the table, wrap it all up. But there was this one man, Noah, who was perfect in his generations, and ... walked with God.

  You know the story. God tells Noah that judgment is coming, so he is to build an ark according to certain specs. Then he must bring in pairs of animals for the repopulation project. Noah obeys, gets the animals and his family on board. The flood arrives.

  And Noah becomes the greatest financial planner in the Bible. He floated his stock while everyone else was liquidated.

  Ba-dump-bump.

  So there is Noah, inside a stinky animal pen for over a year, and what is he thinking? We have a clue. The ancient Hebrew style of writing is minimalist and leaves a lot “between the lines.” At one point we read this: And God remembered Noah.

  This tells us that sometime during his voyage Noah began to wonder if God had forgotten him. Was he a sap for listening? Was this all a cosmic joke? Was he going to die out here in this watery wasteland?

  What Noah experienced was his “Mirror Moment” (which I explain below).

  Yet he keeps the faith, does not curse God. The flood subsides. Noah and his family and the animals step out into the new world.

  And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the LORD smelled a sweet savour ...

  Noah is the same righteous man he was before the flood, but now his faith has been tested, and he has become stronger.

  This is Noah’s arc.

  Thank you. I’ll be here all week.

  Arc as Ending Indicator

  Some time ago Pixar story artist Emma Coats tweeted a series of “story basics” that guide the team. Their #7 was intriguing: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.

  This philosophy is 180 degrees from the practice of one Stephen King, as described in his bestselling book On Writing. “The situation comes first,” he writes. “The characters––always flat and unfeatured, to begin with––come next. Once these things are fixed in my mind, I begin to narrate.”

  King wants his characters to surprise him, which means he often doesn’t know where he’s headed. “And why worry about the ending anyway? Why be such a control freak? Sooner or later every story comes out somewhere.”

  To which a writer might answer, “But suppose, Mr. King, there is no there there in the somewhere?”

  “Then rewrite the thing,” he might say.

  “But maybe I could have saved a lot of grief doing it the Pixar way.”

  “If you wanted to avoid grief, why on earth did you become a writer?”

  And so it goes.

  There are plotters and pantsers. There are outliners and wingers. There are those who want to know the ending they’re writing toward, and those who want it open-ended so the story can guide them (these types will often say, in the whispered assurances of the spiritually enlightened, “Listen to the story. The story always knows.”)

  Well, I’m not sure anyone or anything, including story, knows everything. Sometimes a story can lead you to the edge of a cliff and say, “Well, are you going to jump, or do I have to push you?”

  Ray Bradbury famously described writing that way. You jump off a cliff and grow your wings on the way down.

  Sometimes that may work.

  Sometimes, though, you land like Wile E. Coyote, in a puff of dirt.

  My first piece of advice to you is this: have an ending in mind to write toward. You can always change it along the way, or when you revise. And the way you come up with an ending is to start in the middle.

  Because this is where you discover what your story is really all about.

  I wrote an entire book on this subject called Write Your Novel From The Middle. Here, in brief, is what it’s about.

  Every story must have a character arc—or as I prefer to call it, a transformation—because, wait for it, you can’t have a story without one. You can have writing. You can have style. You can have quirks. You can have an experiment. But, writer friend, you will not have a story, and that’s what 99.9% of readers are looking for.

  Which means you can’t write a good ending without the arc.

  In the very m
iddle of the story, then, the Lead character should have a moment when he is forced to look at himself, as if in a mirror. I call this the Mirror Moment.

  There are two types.

  The first is where a character is forced to look inside, at himself, and what sort of human being he is at this point in the story. He sees “reflected” back at him a self that is morally flawed.

  The other kind of Mirror Moment is one where the character does not look at his moral failings. In fact, he remains basically the same person. It’s just that in the middle of the plot he realizes he’s probably going to die! The odds (be they physical or professional or psychological) are just too great against him.

  So what I say to writers is that your Mirror Moment tells you what kind of transformation you have. It also will be one of two types:

  1. The Lead character changes inside, becoming a different person at the end than at the beginning. In this type of Mirror Moment, the character is forced to look at himself and “ask” if this is who he really is, and wonder if he’s going to stay that way. The story question then is: will he actually transform into a different person at the end?