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To Any of the Fanfiction Writers I May Have Offended With My Last Entry: I am sorry.  I’m sorry that I overgeneralized, that I made sweeping, arrogant statements about the quality of your work.  I’m sorry I drove you to flaming and abuse.  I’m sorry that derivative appears to mean “carte blanche to regurgitate.”  I’m sorry that what others call Character Derailment you call Character Development.  I’m sorry that you’re forced to stuff parody and reimaginings under the fanfiction umbrella in an attempt to give your beloved genre a sense of legitimacy.  I’m sorry that tie-in novels are largely printed as mass market paperbacks.  (You know, the kind of pulp paper that yellows after three years, instead of the kind of stuff hardback releases are made out of.)  I’m sorry that Wicked by Gregory Maguire was not fostered in a fanfiction environment, but rather a literary academia that demanded original prose.  I’m really sorry that I misrepresented the Internet, that paragon of stern, mature reality, which in no way fosters disproportionate delusions of talent or lack thereof; and which certainly does not threaten the delicate ego of an emerging young writer by offering hyperbolic praise and/or vitriolic scorn in large doses.  Because, after all, fanfiction abides by those two incomparable, golden ideals: Don’t Deny, and All Ostracism Is Bad;  therefore, every fanfiction writer is an Ideal Reader for all fanfiction and can critique without bias of any sort.  (Because I sure know that when I’m writing my YA urban fantasy, I want a historical fiction Ideal Reader.)  I deeply, deeply apologize for expressing my opinion on my own blog.  Shame on me.

1.  The biggest dent a book will ever leave in a wall will be due to a Dues ex Machina. For those that don’t know, the term translates literally to “god out of the machine” and hearkens back to when Greek plays often rolled out mechanical contraptions from which Zeus or Hera would emerge to solve all the heroes’s problems.  This was an acceptable narrative device during that time.  It is not now.  A dues ex machina comes in many disguises, most often as something completely unrelated and never foreshadowed coming in to solve the hero’s problem for them. And if you don’t think they exist nowadays, that no one would be stupid or clumsy enough to use it, even by accident: you haven’t been reading any Dean Koontz lately.  The dictionary defines it as: a seemingly inextricable problem suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new character, ability, or object.  This happens in new writing so much it’s just kind of scary (and when you get crap like Darkest Evening of the Year and Breathless it just gets so much worse, especially when they’re hardbacks.)  Even Aristotle, who lived during the time when it was an accepted practice, complained that the resolution of the plot must come internally, from the character or the plot.  That means plot-driven novels can’t have a dues ex machina, either.  How to avoid a dues ex machina?  Knowing what foreshadowing is helps.  If you have a pegasus sweep in to save the hero, and you’ve at least mentioned it before, it’s not so bad.  But if the pegasus punches out Voldemort when the hero has spent 250 pages steeling himself for the confrontation, I can promise you that it won’t matter how often you foreshadowed that pegasus.  The hero solves his own problem, period.  The internal and the external problem.  I realize stories are made of contrived coincidences that never happen in real life, but if you want something that resonates with your reader, you’d at least better try to acknowledge that triumph comes from perseverance and strength of will, not winning the lottery. I’ve got a hell of an example from my favorite punching bag: in Paolini’s Eldest, Eragon’s crippling back problems are solved by a mysterious, unexplainable magical thing that no one had ever seen before or since.  I have a six-inch titanium rod in my spine and chronic back problems.  Imagine my reaction.  Go on.  I dare you. I had to get someone else to throw it for me ... because, you know, I have a bad back.

2. Do not have an anti-climax; you will get punched. Ah, Stephanie Meyer.  Where would I be without your magnificent example in Breaking Dawn?  Here’s the setup: the big bad authority/government vampires, the Volturi, have shown up to kill Bella’s sweet little halfbreed vampire babeh.  They are an unstoppable army of epic badasses.  Bella’s group has proven themselves to be quite the scrappers in the previous book: fighting off an army of newborn vampires with their werewolf allies.  “Awww, yeah”, right?  I mean, this setup is about to go all Scott Pilgrim on the reader: an epic epic of epicness, right?  No.  Wrong.  There’s a diplomatic discussion.  That’s right.  You came for vampire war and got formal debate.  This is the anti-climax.  Again, the anti-climax was a legitimate narrative tool in earlier times; not so much in contemporary times.  If it is present intentionally, it’s often played for humor (Monty Python and The Holy Grail.)  It is also possible for an anti-climax to be used effectively, usually in stories that involve a “sadder but wiser” message.  As Joseph Campbell put it, if the hero does not learn his lesson, he’s doomed to the journey all over again.  (And the audience is the one stuck learning the lesson.)  Not all anti-climaxes are accidents, though, which is what makes them so aggravating.  Killing major antagonists offscreen (Hey, Twilight, good to see you referenced again!) or resorting to a dues ex machina of some sort is a good way to get an anti-climax.

3.  A denouement ties up loose ends. That’s pronounced “day-noo-mah” for those who don’t know.  This is the last bit of the story that occurs after the climax.  The hero shakes hands with his companions or muses over the lessons he’s learned, rides off into the sunset, whatever.  The movie Lord of the Rings trilogy had a long denouement; I remember every time the screen faded to black people in the theater kept standing up because they thought it was over.  Most of the time, the subplots are tied up here, romantic tension is resolved, the hero finds his place and all is well with the world.  (Or to get all Campbell on the situation, the Hero dispenses his Elixir.)  I think since so many new writers can’t even conceive of finishing anything, the denouement is the last thing on their mind.  I’ve even seen some people try and resolve everything before the climax, which is okay if done right.  IF DONE RIGHT.  Take a guess how often that happens with new writers.  Or, ahem, with the old ones who should really know better, Mr. Koontz. Notice that an unhappy ending is not the same as a bad ending.  A bad ending it when you suck at showing us all the fallout from the hero’s journey and revelation.  An unhappy ending is when the hero doesn’t live happily ever after.  If you have things that you can’t resolve before the climax, leave them for the denouement.  Especially if Cindy’s confession of love is going to wreck your rising action.  Odds are your reader won’t care; they want to know of the bomb is going to go off and kill everybody or whatever.

4.  Begin with the ending. I wonder how many people do this.  I really do.  Especially the comic writers here on DA.  Until I know how things are going to end, I don’t start my story.  Of course, that’s me, and not everybody works that way.  But I think too many people don’t start with even the vaguest idea of how things end, and strike off into the unknown completely unprepared.  And then when they stuck in the snarls of writer’s block or plot knots, they complain.  You wouldn’t plan a hiking trip like this; why would you plan a writing project longer than a short story this way?  Even the writers that write with the “sit down at the keyboard and see what happens” approach probably have at the very least an inkling of their ending.  Having an ending in mind becomes your north star, a point by which you can navigate.  You can go all over the everywhere, tumble down wherever you want and do whatever you want, but that ending point is the place you can always turn for home.  There is something to be said for spontaneity.  I won’t deny that.  But when it becomes carte blanche for you to whatever you want without serving the story’s end result, you’re missing the point.

5. The ending that you don’t agree with is not a bad ending. There are lots of endings out there.  To me, a “bad ending” is not the same as an “unhappy ending.”  Now, I hate unhappy endings.  A lot.  They drive me up the wall.  I find myself wailing about how life sucks enough without having to be reminded of it in my literature.  Sometimes, like in the case of Animorphs or The Bartimaeus Trilogy, I will finish the series and never pick up to reread no matter how long they might sit on my shelves.  Beause I know that heart-ripping ending is just waiting for me.  (In the case of Animorphs, it was for about 5 years before I gave them away;  Bartimaeus is going on about two years.)  Other stories, like His Dark Materials, end on such a heartbreaking note that it actually improves the story, even though it still counts as an unhappy ending.  A “bad ending” is stuff like dues ex machina, or a shoot the shaggy dog scenario where the whole trip was pointless, an ending whose mood fails to fit with the rest of the tone of the story (super happy tale, gut-wrenchingly sad ending, etc.), or
feels tacked on, dropped, and generally forgotten about.  Endings are just as, if not more, important than beginning.  Recently, the fantastic Mockingjay of The Hunger Games received massive blowback from YA readers because it (brace yourself) shunted the romance storyline to the B plot.  Teenagers were outraged, because they wanted more romance.  (Apparently forgetting that the entire series was intended to be a sociopolitical commentary about violence in the first place.) Adult readers, on the other hand, didn’t have the same problem, and were in fact more likely to praise the series.  A good ending serves the story, even if it fails to serve the sensibilities and desires of the reader.  After all, it’s your story.  If they want
a better one, they can go write it themselves.  And probably will.  On the Internet.