Thursday, January 13, 2011

Writing the End

How do you feel when coming to the end of your story. Right now I'm having a hard time coming to the end of a fantasy series. Not really because I don't want to wave characters goodbye. Well, there is a bit of that since I've lived with these people in my head for about five years. I've also lived with them in reality for longer than that. Six of the characters in the Henge Betrayed series are based on my grandchildren. Now I haven't met one on these grandchildren yet since she's on her way from China, expected to arrive in March or April. Thus she's a sort of shadow character in the story. But Ash, Bran, Jay, Ky and Sydli are based rather loosely on my grandchildren.

Why is writing the end difficult? Tying up all the loose ends is the main problem. I feel like I have all these balloons on strings that I must weave together so they'll lift me from the ground. Since this is the fourth book in the series and with each one there have been surprises and new problems entered. What started as a single book grew and grew. Rather like Alice when she ate the cookie.

How do you feel about writing the end when you've written a series? Do you regret leaving these people who have become real to you between the pages of a book? Are you able to write the end with no feeling of loss? Let me know.

5 comments:

  1. My characters don't leave me when I get to the end of the book, so writing THE END feels joyful to me rather than sad. These folks remain friends, as crazy as that may sound to non-writers.

    Malcolm

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  2. I have a hard time with endings. As I get closer, I procrastinate more in writing the story. It's like I don't want my characters to leave me.

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  3. I haven't written a series, but my characters tend to linger with me for a while after The End. One of them has even enticed me to write a second story for her. We'll see how it goes. I'm about halfway through now.

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  4. I hear you loud and clear, Janet. I've written 26 books in my series. Never intended that many but it is what it is. I have a lot of balloon strings to capture, tho, and I'm not sure I've done that yet. But how do you? I mean really? It's like life - there is always something more around the corner. I don't think that catching all of those strings is really possible.

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  5. I'm having a hard time finishing my sequel! I've been getting requests right and left for it too! I had to put it aside for a few and work on something else. Next month I'm going back to it. One thing I found is writing sequels are harder than I thought. You have to be careful with doing the backstory dump but still have new readers not get lost.

    Personally Stephanie has been nudging me to get back to her story. When I left her she'd just stumbled on a secret that even surprised me!

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