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It's another writing post! Batten down the hatches!
So I have this story. It was previously submitted to Guardians of Order's second anthology, and I can say pretty safely it was my best short story to date. As it was, it came about a whisker away from making the cut. The editors had excellent reasons for this, which they were kind enough to sit down and actually give me. Not being sure what else to do with it, though, I sat the story aside and simply resolved to apply said knowledge next time. Most of it would have required entirely rewriting the story to more closely match their take on the IP, which is really neither here nor there if it's not being used for that market. Time passes. 2005's Norwescon comes up on the horizon, and I see they have a writing workshop. Lo, I have this story! Not having the time to write anything new before the deadline, I send it in. As it goes, despite the fact that they shredded it to tiny bits as happens to all good stories (and bad ones) they mostly liked it. They gave me one bit of criticism that puzzles me, though.
See, the protagonist of this story is a young girl. She falls in with a bad person (okay, low-key supervillian) and ends up having to make a choice that determines which path she'll follow. At the very end of the story, following her choice, she is left behind on the scene with people showing up. I end the story with her alone in an empty apartment hearing voices coming up the stair. Now, I thought this was a good ending. We've had the climax and a bit of wrap-up. Lingering too long after the climax seems as though it would ruin any momentum I'd built. You would not believe, however, how strongly some people wanted me to give it an ending that saw her settled somewhere. They wanted me to show who shows up, where she ends up, and what happens to her after all that. I can understand that kind of denoument in a novel, but in a short story? I find myself wondering if that desire to get some sort of closure with the character has to do with the fact that she was a young girl (that seemed to play heavily with some people), or if it's just something people like.
All this really just leads into this: how much resolution do you give at the end of a short story? As it was, when I wrote it the first time I found myself going on afterward for way too long in a conversation that shouldn't have taken place. It totally killed any momentum the story had right at the end -- a horrible place for it to happen. Is there a hard and fast rule (hah)? When you read, how much resolution do you like at the end of a short story? Is it sufficient for you to know the protagonist has dealt with the situation at hand, or do you want the story to give a sense of his or her direction from that point?
So I have this story. It was previously submitted to Guardians of Order's second anthology, and I can say pretty safely it was my best short story to date. As it was, it came about a whisker away from making the cut. The editors had excellent reasons for this, which they were kind enough to sit down and actually give me. Not being sure what else to do with it, though, I sat the story aside and simply resolved to apply said knowledge next time. Most of it would have required entirely rewriting the story to more closely match their take on the IP, which is really neither here nor there if it's not being used for that market. Time passes. 2005's Norwescon comes up on the horizon, and I see they have a writing workshop. Lo, I have this story! Not having the time to write anything new before the deadline, I send it in. As it goes, despite the fact that they shredded it to tiny bits as happens to all good stories (and bad ones) they mostly liked it. They gave me one bit of criticism that puzzles me, though.
See, the protagonist of this story is a young girl. She falls in with a bad person (okay, low-key supervillian) and ends up having to make a choice that determines which path she'll follow. At the very end of the story, following her choice, she is left behind on the scene with people showing up. I end the story with her alone in an empty apartment hearing voices coming up the stair. Now, I thought this was a good ending. We've had the climax and a bit of wrap-up. Lingering too long after the climax seems as though it would ruin any momentum I'd built. You would not believe, however, how strongly some people wanted me to give it an ending that saw her settled somewhere. They wanted me to show who shows up, where she ends up, and what happens to her after all that. I can understand that kind of denoument in a novel, but in a short story? I find myself wondering if that desire to get some sort of closure with the character has to do with the fact that she was a young girl (that seemed to play heavily with some people), or if it's just something people like.
All this really just leads into this: how much resolution do you give at the end of a short story? As it was, when I wrote it the first time I found myself going on afterward for way too long in a conversation that shouldn't have taken place. It totally killed any momentum the story had right at the end -- a horrible place for it to happen. Is there a hard and fast rule (hah)? When you read, how much resolution do you like at the end of a short story? Is it sufficient for you to know the protagonist has dealt with the situation at hand, or do you want the story to give a sense of his or her direction from that point?
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Date: 2006-06-15 02:03 pm (UTC)From:Hey, "The Lady or the Tiger" is a classic short story, and the fact that it didn't have resolution (IIRC--it's been many years since high school) was kind of the whole point.
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Date: 2006-06-16 01:01 am (UTC)From:But I suspect the age and gender of your protagonist was a factor for some of them as well, considering I /know/ I've read some short stories that have just that sort of ending. The action is completed, the choices have been made, and the reader is left to imagine how the protagonist wound up living with those choices. I think, personally, it's a great way to end a story - especially with a younger protagonist.
Too often stories (especially those with female protagonists, impo) give the feeling that the events of the story are the only exciting or interesting thing that have happened or will /ever/ happen to the protagonist. And I think that's a real shame, because it gives the sense that where male characters can be entitled to many various "adventures", female characters only get one before they're expected to settle down and become soccer moms (or whatever). Not only is it not true, but it's uninspired and uninspiring. Because then, whether it winds up on the page or not, all stories about women end more or less the same way. blegh.
Just my two pennies, though.