The Last Fifty Pages Read online

  But a novel doesn’t come with that same design. It’s expected to make sense at the end, or at least offer a solution that doesn’t come from so far out in left field that it’s actually in the parking lot.

  The Talkative Villain

  How many times have we seen this in movies, TV shows, and thrillers: The villain finally has the good guy at his mercy. Death is inevitable. Yet the bad guy doesn’t pull the trigger. Or push the hero off the building. Or drop him into a pool of piranha.

  Instead, the villain decides to explain everything to the hero.

  Which gives the hero time to get a piece of broken glass with which to saw the rope his wrists are bound in.

  Or allows the hero’s ally to arrive to save him.

  Rule of thumb: don’t put the villain’s big explanation just before the means of rescue or escape. Instead, drop it in earlier when the urgency to kill the good guy is not so great. Or wait until after the villain is dispatched and give the explanation to another character. (Perhaps the most famous example of the latter is the speech given to the psychiatrist at the end of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.)

  Not doing the wrong thing is almost as important as doing the right thing. Avoid these mistakes so your novel’s resonant ending is not lost in fog of error.

  10

  SOME ENDINGS EXAMINED

  The Maltese Falcon

  Dashiell Hammett’s classic detective story, The Maltese Falcon, is about San Francisco private eye Sam Spade and a trio of thieves intent on getting their hands on a priceless statuette. At the beginning of the book Spade’s partner, Miles Archer, is murdered. A woman named Brigid O’Shaughnessy had hired the firm to follow a man named Thursby, who is also murdered. Soon a mysterious little man named Joel Cairo shows up, looking for a “black bird.” He is partners with the “fat man,” Casper Gutman. Things happen (that’s how you summarize a mystery plot). Eventually Spade ends up with the bird and puts it in storage. Spade then enters his apartment with Brigid, only to find Gutman, Cairo and Gutman’s young gunsel, Wilmer Cook, waiting for him. Gutman wants the black bird. Negotiations begin.

  The first order of business, for Spade, is electing a “fall-guy” for the three murders (Archer, Thursby, and a ship’s captain named Jacobi).

  The fat man frowned without comprehension, but before he could speak Spade was explaining: “The police have got to have a victim––somebody they can stick for those three murders. We––”

  Cairo, speaking in a brittle excited voice, interrupted Spade. “Two—only two—murders, Mr. Spade. Thursby undoubtedly killed your partner.”

  “All right, two,” Spade growled. “What difference does it make? The point is we’ve got to feed the police some—”

  Now Gutman broke in, smiling confidently, talking with good-natured assurance: “Well sir, from what we’ve seen and heard of you I don’t think we’ll have to bother ourselves about that. We can leave the handling of the police to you, all right. You won’t need any of our inexpert help.”

  “If that’s what you think,” Spade said, “you haven’t seen or heard enough.”

  After arguing about this for a couple of pages, Spade suggests to Gutman that they give the cops Wilmer, the young gunsel. This naturally does not sit well with Wilmer. He wants to shoot Spade right there, but Spade reminds everyone that if he dies, no one gets the falcon.

  Gutman orders Wilmer to calm down.

  Spade continues his plan to turn these thieves against each other. He suggests the fall guy be Joel Cairo.

  Cairo cried in a voice shrill with indignation: “Suppose we give them you, Mr. Spade, or Miss O’Shaughnessy? How about that if you’re so set on giving them somebody?”

  Spade smiled at the Levantine and answered him evenly. “You people want the falcon. I’ve got it. A fall-guy is part of the price I’m asking. As for Miss O’Shaughnessy”––his dispassionate glance moved to her white perplexed face and then back to Cairo and his shoulders rose and fell a fraction of an inch––“if you think she can be rigged for the part I’m perfectly willing to discuss it with you.”

  Eventually, Wilmer snaps and draws his gun, but Spade knocks him out. He then gives Gutman an ultimatum. Make Wilmer the fall-guy, or no bird. Gutman thinks it over, and says, “You can have him.” A deal is struck with money involved:

  “That will be excellent,” Gutman purred. “Then, sir, in exchange for the ten thousand dollars and Wilmer you will give us the falcon and an hour or two of grace––so we won’t be in the city when you surrender him to the authorities.”

  “You don’t have to duck,” Spade said. “It’ll be air-tight.”

  Spade calls his secretary, Effie Perine, and tells her where to find the package and to bring it by. She does.

  And now the moment they’ve all been waiting for:

  Gutman’s fat fingers made short work of cord and paper and excelsior, and he had the black bird in his hands. “Ah,” he said huskily, “now, after seventeen years!” His eyes were moist.

  Cario licked his red lips and worked his hands together. The girl’s lower lip was between her teeth. She and Cairo, like Gutman, and like Spade and the boy, were breathing heavily. The air in the room was chilly and stale, and thick with tobacco smoke.

  Gutman set the bird down on the table again and fumbled at a pocket. “It’s it,” he said, “but we’ll make sure.” Sweat glistened on his round cheeks. His fingers twitched as he took out a gold pocket-knife and opened it.

  Cairo and the girl stood close to him, one on either side. Spade stood back a little where he could watch the boy as well as the group at the table.

  Gutman turned the bird upside-down and scraped an edge of its base with his knife. Black enamel came off in tiny curls, exposing blackened metal beneath. Gutman’s knife-blade bit into the metal, turning back a thick curved shaving. The inside of the shaving, and the narrow plane its removal had left, had the soft grey sheen of lead.

  Gutman’s breath hissed between his teeth. His face became turgid with hot blood. He twisted the bird around and hacked at its head. There too the edge of his knife bared lead. He let knife and bird bang down on the table while he wheeled to confront Spade. “It’s a fake,” he said hoarsely.

  After this stunning discovery, a lot of noise is made among the thieves, until Gutman announces his desire to continue the search, by way of Constantinople. Joel Cairo agrees to go with him.

  That leaves Sam Spade with Brigid O’Shaughnessy, for whom he is attracted (like a fly to a spider). She, however, killed his partner, Miles Archer, and someone has to “take the fall.”

  Like her! He tries to explain:

  “When a man’s partner is killed he’s supposed to do something about it. It doesn’t make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you’re supposed to do something about it. Then it happens we were in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed it’s bad business to let the killer get away with it. It’s bad all around—bad for that one organization, bad for every detective everywhere.”

  So Spade turns her in to the police.

  The movie ends with a line that is not in the book, but is the perfect resonance. When Detective Polhaus (played by Ward Bond) asks about the bird, “What is it?” Spade says, “The stuff that dreams are made of.”

  (Bonus trivia question you can use on your friends. Ask them what the last line of the movie is. Most will say The stuff that dreams are made of, but they’d be wrong. Ward Bond says, “Huh?”)

  So here we have a twist: it’s not the real bird! And another: Spade is going to turn the woman he loves over to the cops for the noose, or at least a long stretch in the joint. And all the loose ends are wrapped up.

  By the way, the novel ends with Spade back in his office, with Effie, ready for another day.

  But this is a Lead Loses ending. Spade has lost his chance at a nice payoff, and also the woman he loves. While he has managed to solve the murder of Miles Archer, that was a subplot goal. He
has at least proven his worth as a professional. As he remarks to Effie, “Your Sam’s a detective.”

  Try this:

  Give your Lead character a speech at the very end. You don’t have to use it in the book. The primary reason is to have your Lead explain himself, justify his actions, and give closure to the story. If it reveals something surprising to you, find a way, in revision, to weave that theme into your text.

  Huckleberry Finn

  HEMINGWAY FAMOUSLY DECLARED that all of modern American literature comes from one book, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. The novel, however, was controversial from the jump. In 1885 the Concord Public Library banned it from their shelves for being “the veriest trash, suitable only for the slums.”

  Ahem.

  Let’s focus on Twain’s use of the Mirror Moment, the transformation of Huck, and the resonant ending.

  In the middle of the novel Huck has the opportunity to turn the runaway slave, Jim, over to some slave trackers, and receive a reward. In the culture Huck is part of this is the “right” thing to do. A slave is someone else’s “property.” Thus, helping Jim escape is stealing. And since stealing is agin’ the Good Book, Huck is in danger of hellfire. So he’s been taught.

  But something makes Huck hesitate. He tells the trackers that he and the fellow on the raft (Jim in hiding) have small pox. The trackers make a quick exit.

  All this causes Huck to reflect:

  They went off and I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because I knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn’t no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don’t get started right when he’s little ain’t got no show—when the pinch comes there ain’t nothing to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat. Then I thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on; s’pose you’d a done right and give Jim up, would you felt better than what you do now? No, says I, I’d feel bad—I’d feel just the same way I do now. Well, then, says I, what’s the use you learning to do right when it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same? I was stuck. I couldn’t answer that. So I reckoned I wouldn’t bother no more about it, but after this always do whichever come handiest at the time.

  So here is Huck asking himself who he is, who he is supposed to be, and deciding for the moment that the best thing is to just not think about it. But he’s teetering toward a transformation of some kind. He doesn’t have the capacity (yet) to completely understand what’s happening inside him. But we know whatever it is it’s at the heart level.

  Here is Huck’s transformation late in Act 3. His inner struggle is too much to bear. He wants to feel cleansed, once and for all, so he won’t go to hell. He writes a note to Miss Watson—Jim’s “owner”—and says he’s got her slave and to send the reward money. He feels good for a moment because he’s not going to go to hell now. But then he starts thinking about all that he and Jim had been through:

  I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, ‘stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.

  Huck takes up the letter and suddenly freezes,

  because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: ‘All right, then, I’ll go to hell’—and tore it up.

  One of the most powerful transformations in all of literature. Indeed, the esteemed Prof. Arnold Weinstein of Brown University calls it “[a]rguably the greatest moment in American fiction.” By ripping up the letter Huck proves his transformation, his breaking free from a false moral prison into nascent humanity. It finds completion in the famous last lines:

  But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.

  That’s how you make a classic. A moral dilemma, a Mirror Moment, a crisis of conscience, a final decision, proof of transformation, and a resonant last line.

  This is a “Lead Sacrifices” ending. Huck has sacrificed his soul (in his own mind) for a greater moral good. The reward he gets is his freedom—from the “sivilization” of his culture.

  Try this:

  Create a real moral dilemma for your Lead character. A true dilemma is a choice between two paths, both of which carry a major cost. The decision that is made can form the heart of your story, as well as the resonance at the end.

  The Hunger Games

  SUZANNE COLLINS’ thriller is the story of 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen and her fight to survive the deadly game of hunting and killing put on by the Capitol in the land of Panem. Katniss is a classic anti-hero, wanting only to take care of her family through illegal hunting and other such schemes. But then she becomes a default hero and rebellion leader through the course of the trilogy.

  The signpost scenes are all there, such as the obvious Care Package (in which the character has a caring relationship in place; here it is Katniss’ mother and sister and even a scruffy cat), and a literal Doorway of No Return:

  The moment the anthem ends, we are taken into custody. I don’t mean we’re handcuffed or anything, but a group of Peacekeepers marches us through the front door of the Justice Building. Maybe tributes have tried to escape in the past. I’ve never seen that happen though.

  Once the games are underway, there’s a Pet the Dog segment where Katniss helps the littlest tribute, Rue.

  And then there’s the romantic subplot involving Peeta Mellark. He’s the boy who was kind to her once, giving her bread. Now they are supposed to kill each other. Instead, they form an alliance.

  When we get to the last fifty pages, Peeta has been wounded and is slowly recovering. There is only one other tribute left, the skilled and deadly Cato.

  In Chapter 24, Katniss and Peeta have some time to reflect and plan.

  When the food’s cooked, I pack most of it up, leaving us each a rabbit’s leg to eat as we walk. I want to move higher into the woods, climb a good tree, and make camp for the night, but Peeta resists. “I can’t climb like you, Katniss, especially with my leg, and I don’t think I could ever fall asleep fifty feet above the ground.”

  “It’s not safe to stay in the open, Peeta,” I say.

  “Can’t we go back to the cave?” he asks. “It’s near water and easy to defend.”

  I sigh. Several more hours of walking—or should I say crashing—through the woods to reach an area we’ll just have to leave in the morning to hunt. But Peeta doesn’t ask for much.

  Their peace is shattered at the end of the chapter when Cato comes running at them!

  We’re on our feet, Peeta wielding his knife, me poised to shoot, when Cato smashes through the trees and bears down on us. He has no spear. In fact, his hands are empty, yet he runs straight for us. My first arrow hits his chest and inexplicably falls aside.

  “He’s got some kind of body armor!” I shout to Peeta.

  Just in time, too, because Cato is upon us. I brace myself, but he rockets right between us with no attempt to check his speed. I can tell from his panting, the sweat pouring off his purplish face, that he’s been running hard a long time. Not toward us. From something. But what?

  What indeed? We find out at the start of the next chapter: Muttations! Those horrific beasts created from the genetic material of the dead tributes. To paraphrase Warren Zevon, “They’ll rip your lungs out, Jim.”

  This is the Lights Out beat signpost scene. The worst of the worse. The muttations force Cato, Peeta, and Katniss to jump on the Cornuco
pia for safety—and also force the Final Battle between Cato and the Katniss/Peeta team. Cato gets Peeta in a headlock, but Katniss shoots an arrow into Cato’s hand. Cato falls to the muttations but is wearing body armor supplied by the Capitol. His end is long and terrible. Katniss shoots him dead “out of pity.”

  Now a Twist in the Tail. The Games are not over! A rule change had allowed two victors. Now it has been revoked! Only one victor will be allowed.

  Bringing us to a moral dilemma.

  “Then you shoot me,” I say furiously, shoving the weapons back at him. “You shoot me and go home and live with it!” And as I say it, I know death right here, right now would be the easier of the two.

  “You know I can’t,” Peeta says, discarding the weapons.

  “Fine, I’ll go first anyway.” He leans down and rips the bandage off his leg, eliminating the final barrier between his blood and the earth.

  “No, you can’t kill yourself,” I say. I’m on my knees, desperately plastering the bandage back onto his wound.

  “Katniss,” he says. “It’s what I want.”

  “You’re not leaving me here alone,” I say. Because if he dies, I’ll never go home, not really. I’ll spend the rest of my life in this arena trying to think my way out.