Monthly Archives: August 2013

What Makes a Good Ending?

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How long is a piece of string? Does my bum look big in this? The answer to the question, ‘What makes a good ending?’ is as nebulous and subjective as they come. For some, an ending is only ‘good’ if the heroes win. For others, such an ending will always be trite and formulaic. Some writers will even avoid the question altogether, writing an ‘ending’ that is either so open or ambivalent that a reader has no hope of closure. Well, after five months of drafting, it’s now my turn to decide which ending will best suit this story.

‘There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.’

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Twain, Disraeli, Anon, take your pick, but the quote is true nonetheless. I hereby state, for the record, that I have committed that most heinous of crimes and told infernal untruths about statistics. Can my backers ever forgive me? Will readers ever trust an author who can’t keep his numbers straight?

Re-Imagining the Flashback: Letting Go and Trusting Your Creativity

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I’m back from holiday and writing has started again. Was it a week wasted (from a writing point of view)? Not at all. Stephen King refers, in a famous quote, to his ‘boys in the basement’. His boys are his muses, that play amongst themselves in the darkness of his subconscious. Their games become his stories. What lurks in my subconscious, I have no idea, but I do know it is/they are a lot better at writing stories than I am. Before I left on holiday I was facing the prospect of writing one of those infamous scenes: the flashback.