The Last Fifty Pages Page 5

  But as the novel progresses, other ideas surface. That can’t be helped, and is in fact a good thing. It’s your manuscript taking on real life and generating stuff you could not anticipate until you started writing.

  So as I go into the home stretch, I’ve modified my ending with notes I’ve jotted during the writing itself.

  The last signposts of my novels are: Q Factor, Final Battle, Transformation, Resonance. (The signpost method for writing a novel I cover in the book Super Structure.)

  I begin to stew about it. That means just thinking. When I’m not at the keyboard I’m walking around visualizing the scene in my mind and just letting it be up there playing around.

  When it comes time to begin writing those pages, I will do an intense stew. I’ll sit down and for an hour or more and think intensely about the final scenes. I will think about all the things that need to be accomplished, like tying up loose ends, thematic images, showing the Lead’s transformation. I will make notes, usually handwritten notes because that gets another part of my brain involved.

  At the end of that session there are a lot of ingredients in my stew, being cooked. I want to let them simmer.

  Brew

  What I do then is put aside all thought on the project, plug in the earbuds and iTunes, and take a nice long walk. This walk is the opportunity for the boys in the basement to get to work while I relax.

  The walk is not random. It is headed toward a local coffee house. If you are not within walking distance of such a place, drive your car near the location and take a walk around several blocks before coming back for the Brew aspect of the process.

  I order a double espresso. Now I realize there are those for whom caffeine is not an agreeable part of their diet, or who think that the stimulation of the coffee bean is in some way unhelpful or unhealthful. Certainly you can overdo it, like poor old Balzac, who died of caffeine poisoning at the age of 51 because of the thick mud he used to down throughout the day and night.

  But I like a little caffeinated stimulation from time to time. I believe the current wisdom is that the moderate intake of caffeine has health benefits. I’ll go with that until further notice.

  I sit down at a table and sip my brew for a few minutes. Then I take out a physical notebook and pen.

  Accrue

  Now I collect all of the thoughts, images, bits of dialogue, and whatever else has been bubbling down there in the basement. I like using paper for this, because I can doodle, do mind maps. As I jot down ideas some will connect with others and I can draw a line from a note to another note.

  Let me give you an example. Here is a bit of the paper I used when I was writing the ending for my zombie legal thriller, I Ate The Sheriff.

  Note the numbers I added. This was at the end of the process and gave me the order of the scenes. It was my final outline for the last fifty pages.

  Do

  Now back at my keyboard I am ready to write, to work on those last pages with all the fervor that I can. All of the stew, all of the ideas, all of the mind maps, have come together for me. I simply do the best job I can until I reach that satisfying moment when I can place the final punctuation mark of the entire manuscript.

  It may take me a day or several to get the final pages done, but I try to do them in as timely a fashion as possible.

  * * *

  PERHAPS I SHOULD ADD one final stage, and call it Woohoo. This is the celebration moment when I finish a manuscript, and I know I won’t have to think about it for at least six weeks. That’s the usual amount of time I give myself to set aside a first draft before beginning the revision process. That starts with a first read-through of a hard copy, taking minimal notes.

  I then give the manuscript to some beta readers. After that it’s second draft time, and then a final polish.

  I mention the polish because there is one final step in the crafting of an ending that I leave until the very end of the revision process.

  It’s the all-important element of resonance, which is the subject of our next chapter.

  8

  RESONANT ENDINGS

  Resonance is that last, perfect note in a great piece of music, leaving the audience not just satisfied, but moved. Perhaps even changed.

  Just like a novel with the perfect last lines, which can take a novel that is good and move it to unforgettable.

  The Woman in the Window is the mega-bestselling thriller by A. J. Finn. The lead character is Dr. Anna Fox, who was a prominent child psychologist. Now she lives alone, suffering from a bad case of agoraphobia—the fear of going outside—due to a trauma she suffered a year earlier. In a plot reminiscent of the great Hitchcock movie, Rear Window, Anna sees something disturbing in a neighbor’s window, and the suspense builds from there. I won’t give away the plot twists here, but I do want you to have a look at the last lines. Because after everything that happens, and it’s all wrapped up, we’re still left wondering if Anna is ever going to get over her current condition. At the very end her friend and physical therapist, Bina, is trying to coax Anna to step outside.

  She releases my hand and walks into the garden, tracking footprints in the snow. She turns, beckons me.

  “Come on.”

  I close my eyes.

  And open them.

  And step into the light.

  You see here how often in a thriller the last line resonance is, most of the time, something to do with the inner life of the character. As it should be. There is a transformation here, a gaining of strength. And notice the word light. It’s a word that carries significance, like soul.

  In The Godfather, after the chapter where Michael proves his transformation into a cold-hearted mafia don who can look at his wife’s eyes and lie, we have an epilogue.

  It’s a year later. Kay has left Michael, taking their two children, because she found out he lied to her about Carlo Rizzi’s murder. The family lawyer, Tom Hagen, visits her and explains why Michael did what he did, that he had been betrayed by one of the trusted inner circle, Tessio, and that Carlo had helped to set up Sonny’s assassination, and that they were both a threat to the family, to the children.

  Kay takes it all in, and makes the difficult decision to return to Michael.

  At the very end, she has entered a Catholic church to receive Holy Communion:

  Washed clean of sin, a favored supplicant, she bowed her head and folded her hands over the altar rail. She shifted her body to make her weight less punishing to her knees. She emptied her mind of all thought of herself, of her children, of all anger, of all rebellion, of all questions. Then with a profound and deeply willed desire to believe, to be heard, as she had done every day since the murder of Carlo Rizzi, she said the necessary prayers for the soul of Michael Corleone.

  The resonance here is built upon the word soul, and prayers. They are perfect final notes.

  This is the ending of To Kill A Mockingbird:

  He turned out the light and went into Jem’s room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.

  To gain resonance like this, it’s helpful to think of certain forms of final scenes that have worked well over time. Here are some of the most popular forms:

  “Into the Sunset”

  Casablanca resonates with a walk “into the sunset” (thought it’s actually into the fog at night). This is a metaphor for a type of ending where a character, after all the trouble has been resolved, “rides off” like the old Western hero, into the setting sun. It gives us a feeling of completion, which can be hopeful or bittersweet.

  It can be a feeling of hope, or a feeling of sadness.

  In Casablanca, we have hope. There’s been a resurrection. Rick was a dead man walking. Then Ilsa came back and the past was hashed out, as was Rick’s moral deadness. As he and Louis walk off together, the effect is going up to heaven—the foggy airport is like clouds, and the airfield lights like stars.

  Bittersweet is the feeling one gets from the sunset ending of My Name is Asher L
ev by Chiam Potok. The setting is a Hasidic community in 1950s Brooklyn. At the end, the community—including Asher’s parents—have coldly reacted to Asher’s art. So much so that the local Rebbe tells Asher he can no longer live among them. He is hurting too many people.

  Asher’s parents are crushed, but know also that it must be so. As does Asher. He has to choose between his background and his future. The novel ends:

  I came out of the apartment house. It was cold and dark. I looked up. My parents stood framed in the living-room window. I hailed a cab and climbed inside. It pulled slowly away from the curb. I turned in the seat and looked out the rear window of the cab. My parents were still watching me through our living-room window.

  What’s beautiful and heartbreaking here is one word—our. Asher still sees that apartment as home, but he cannot live there anymore.

  This is why just the right words are crucial for the resonant ending.

  Potok’s ending has the same feel—the uncertain future but a past that must be left behind—as Charles Webb’s The Graduate. The ending image in the film is the same as in the book: a bus driving off “into the sunset.” Inside the bus sit Benjamin Braddock and the newly married Elaine Robinson, wearing her wedding dress.

  Wait, what?

  Elaine had just married Carl Smith. But Benjamin had burst into the church and ran up to the balcony where he shouted, “Elaine!”

  Elaine responds by running out of the church with Ben. They get to a bus that is just pulling away. Ben pounds on the door. The driver lets them in. They go to the back of the bus as everyone, including the driver, stares at them.

  “Get it moving!” Benjamin said, beginning to rise up again from the seat. “Get this bus moving!”

  The driver waited a moment, then turned around and climbed back into his seat. He pulled a handle and the doors of the bus closed. Benjamin sat back down.

  Elaine was still trying to catch her breath. She turned her face to look at him. For several moments she sat looking at him, then she reached over and took his hand.

  “Benjamin,” she said.

  “What.”

  The bus began to move.

  That is the perfect ending for this bittersweet novel. The lovers are off “into the sunset,” but without any certainty about what the future holds.

  Completing the Circle

  This is applicable to the frame story. A frame story is a novel that begins in the present, with a narrator recounting the story that happened in the past. It finishes with a final scene or moment in the present, giving the impression that we’ve come full circle.

  Stephen King’s novel The Green Mile is such a novel. It begins in the present, in a nursing home, where the narrator, Paul Edgecombe reflects back to 1932, when he was working as the supervising guard on Death Row of a penitentiary. It is the story of some of the condemned men, but most specifically John Coffey, a huge black man convicted of killing two white girls. After the extraordinary events, the book returns to the present, to a final scene with the elderly Edgecombe.

  A satisfying ending to a frame story can come via straight narration, as in The Green Mile:

  I look back over these pages, leafing through them with my trembling, spotted hands, and I wonder if there is some meaning here, as in those books which are supposed to be uplifting and ennobling… Sometimes I doze and see that underpass in the rain, with John Coffey standing beneath it in the shadows. It’s never just a trick of the eye, in these little dreams; it’s always him for sure, my big boy, just standing there and watching. I lie here and wait. I think about Janice, how I lost her, how she ran away red through my fingers in the rain, and I wait. We each owe a death, there are no exceptions, I know that, but sometimes, oh God, the Green Mile is so long.

  A frame story can also end with a resonant line of dialogue. In his novel The Princess Bride, William Goldman uses a framing device—a fictionalized account of his life in the present day and his history with the S. Morgenstern tale of “true love and high adventure.” A more illustrative frame story is in Goldman’s movie script. It begins with a grandfather (Peter Falk) summoned to read to his ailing grandson (Fred Savage). The boy is not excited about this prospect, but promises to try to stay awake.

  “Thank you very much,” the grandfather says. “Your vote of confidence is overwhelming.”

  And so he begins to read, and the story unfolds before us. Every now and then it’s interrupted by the boy and we get a short scene in the present. Then back to the story of Princess Buttercup and Westley and Fezzik and Inigo.

  In the story, of course, Westley the farm boy only answers “As you wish” to Buttercup when they initially meet.

  The story ends with the famous kiss. As the grandfather explains, “Since the invention of the kiss, there have been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind. The end.”

  We are back to the opening scene now, for the closing of the frame. The grandfather tells the boy it’s time to sleep, and is about to leave the room when the boy calls out to him. “Grandpa, maybe you could come over and read it again to me tomorrow.”

  With a twinkle in his eye, Grandpa replies, “As you wish.”

  The Ah and the Uh-Oh!

  Another way to think of a resonant ending is by way of the Ah or the Uh-oh! These describe the feeling that a reader is left with. The story satisfies in a happy fashion, or leaves open the distinct possibility that something just as bad, or worse, may soon take place!

  The Ah

  The Ah ending is a combination of both the last scene and the perfect last line (as in Casablanca.)

  At the end of Michael Connelly’s Lost Light (my favorite of the Harry Bosch series), Bosch discovers that he has a daughter. She is presented to him by the mother, Eleanor, Bosch’s ex-wife. It’s obviously a stunning revelation. Which leads to this paragraph:

  Twin skyrockets were going off inside me. One left a trail of red, the other green. They were going different ways. One anger, one warmth. One led to the heart’s dark abyss, a devil’s punchbowl filled with recriminations and revenge I could dip my cup fully into. The other led away from all of that. To Paradise Road. To bright, blessed days and dark, sacred nights. It led to the place where lost light came from. My lost light.

  Conflicting emotions are always a good move in fiction. They create emotional cross-currents in the reader, and tell us that the moment is about high personal stakes.

  There couldn’t be any higher than this for Harry Bosch.

  I knew I could choose one path but not both. I looked up from the girl to Eleanor. She had tears on her face and yet a smile. I knew then what path to choose and that there is no end to things of the heart. I stepped forward and squatted down in front of the girl. I knew from dealing with young witnesses that it was best to approach them on their level.

  “Hello, Maddie,” I said to my daughter.

  She turned her face and pushed it into her mother’s leg.

  “I’m too shy,” she said.

  “That’s okay, Maddie. I’m pretty shy myself. Can I just hold your hand?”

  She let go of her mother’s hand and extended hers to me. I took it and she wrapped her tiny fingers around my index finger. I shifted forward until my knees were on the floor and I was sitting back on my heels. She peeked her eyes out at me. She didn’t seem scared. Just cautious. I raised my other hand and she gave me her other hand, the fingers wrapping the same way around my one.

  I leaned forward and raised her tiny fists and held them against my closed eyes. In that moment I knew all the mysteries were solved. That I was home. That I was saved.

  This is a prime example of the personal ending in a thriller or crime novel. When the main action is over, a subplot dealing with the Lead’s personal life is brought to a resolution.

  When done well, as Connelly does so often, the feeling created is supremely satisfying. It’s as if the author is saying no matter how bad, dark, evil the world is, there is the possibili
ty of safety, of closure, of peace.

  The Uh-Oh!

  With the Uh-oh, the feeling is left that there is more trouble to come. Maybe a lot more. And we get to fill in the blanks ourselves.

  In Louis L’Amour’s bestseller Last of the Breed, Joe Mack, a half-Sioux-American Air Force pilot, is captured by Soviets during the Cold War and imprisoned in Siberia. It’s the task of Soviet Col. Arkady Zamatev to squeeze information out of Mack.

  But he escapes the prison, which is deemed a stupid thing to do, for the winter is coming in Siberia. How can Mack expect to survive?

  Because he is the last of the warrior breed, and his Indian skills come into play for survival.

  Zamatev dispatches the Russian analogue of Mack—a Yakut named Alekhin—to do the tracking. The heart of the book is their back and forth, the narrow escapes, the body count.

  Finally, at the end of the book, Alekhin and Mack are face to face. It’s time for the fight to the finish.

  At this point L’Amour cuts to the last scene, in Col. Zamatev’s point of view. He has received a package—something wrapped up in cloth.

  It is a scalp.

  There is a note inside also, written on birchbark. It says:

  This was once a custom of my people. In my lifetime I shall take two. This is the first.

  Uh-oh!

  A genre which is a natural for the Uh-oh ending is horror. And who better to illustrate its use than Mr. Stephen King? At the end of Pet Sematary, summarized earlier in this book, Louis Creed is alone, playing solitaire, when the back door opens. Louis doesn’t even turn around. “Slow, gritting footsteps” approach. The steps end behind him.