#15: Structurally Sound- The End
Let's create some comics! If you've been reading each week, you've been following my series on story structure. While some mediums lend themselves to more organic writing, where you plop down in your writer's chair with a clear head and a glass full of whiskey and just see what comes out on the page, comics is not one of them. In comics, you're working under too many constraints to just wing it. Usually you have 22 pages that bound each issue of your tale, and get 5 or 6 issues to collect in a trade. You can only fit so many panels to a page and need to make sure each page is both satisfying on its own and gives a reason to turn the page. With all of these constraints, putting in the work upfront to structure your story is necessary to tell a compelling story. And as I've said, you don't have a story unless you have a beginning, middle and end. We've covered beginnings and middles. Now, let's talk about ending your stories.
The End
Endings may be the toughest part of writing a story. In a lot of ways, the ending is how your work will be remembered. Solid endings turn good movies into great movies (The Sixth Sense.) Lousy endings can turn decent movies into bad movies (Signs.) Come on? Water? The aliens are allergic to water? And they decided to come to Earth? Is that all you got, M. Night?
But back to the endings. Yes, they are tough, mostly because, if you do your job right, your audience is going to be trying to anticipate how your story will play out prior to the ending. Make the ending too obvious and too easy and they'll feel cheated. Make the ending too surprising and unexpected and it will feel false. Yes, endings are difficult. Here are some tips to make writing them a bit easier.
- Know your ending before you start writing- Writer's want to write. Usually, our story ideas begin with just that, an idea. Be it a cool character, scene or line of dialog, our stories don't start out with a fully fleshed out beginning, middle and end. Hammering out all those details isn't exactly the fun part of writing. So some writer's just start writing, and say the characters will reveal the ending for them. Sorry. You're characters will not magically reveal to you what the ending will be as you write. That's not their job. To have a strong, conclusive, satisfying ending, you need to know it from the beginning of your story. Otherwise, you will not lay the groundwork throughout. You don't start a road trip without knowing your destination. You don't build a building without having a blueprint of exactly what the finished structure will look like. Why should writing be any different?
Now, this is not to say you can't change your ending. In fact, once you start out writing, things happen, ideas morph, and you get more wrapped up in the world to create, your ending may change and change dramatically. This happened to me while writing Over. The first draft had a mildly happy ending, but wasn't one that would be satisfying for fans of the genre in which I was writing. So, I changed it. And in changing the ending, it also meant going back and changing a number of scenes throughout the script to make the new ending work. However, I believe I would have never got to the new (hopefully better) ending, had I not bothered to come up with AN ending prior to starting writing.
Good Stories are Always Resolved - Don't get too cute with your endings. In the set-up, you should have established an interesting character with strong and clear internal needs and external goals. In the end, you need to clearly show whether or not they have addressed those needs and achieved those goals. It's okay if your hero loses. It's fine if he wins. It's not okay if it's a draw.
Here's an example. Sin City. What does Marv want? Well, he wants to find out who killed Goldie, and make him pay. By the end, he finds all the people involved, and kills every last rat bastard one of them. (Sorry, temporarily got possessed by Frank Miller.) Now, he is also arrested, tried, convicted, and put to death on the electric chair. But, he dies with a smile on his face. He died having resolved his goal.
- Leave no loose ends - Everything in your story should be wrapped up dramatically, and this goes not only for your main character but for your supporting characters. All the questions you've raised should be answered and all the predicaments you've placed your characters into should be resolved. Don't keep your audience guessing, unless there's a sequel coming soon. Cliffhangers do have their place in serialized storytelling, but when your story is done, you should be able to put a fork in it.
- Know Your Genre - Today's audiences are sophisticated. They've most likely read a bunch of comics, and will be reading yours because it has something in common with a story or style they've previously enjoyed. A major principle of marketing is that consumers buy benefits, not products. Likewise, comic book readers don't buy comics for comics' sake. They buy them because they're looking for the benefit of a particular kind of entertainment. Though you're certainly encouraged to produce unique and original work, most of us are going to write stories that will fit into a certain genre. Therefore, it's important to know the conventions of the genre you're writing for, and make sure your ending falls at least somewhat in line with those conventions.
Writing an action adventure? The ending scene should probably be the one with the biggest explosions or most kick ass fight scene yet. And your protagonist and antagonist should probably square off one last time with everything at stake. Writing a romantic comedy? You're probably going to want a happy ending, and usually that means your main couple ends up together in the end. Writing a murder mystery/whodunit? There better be a big final twist to close out the book and leave audiences shaking their heads wondering how they missed that. Study exemplary stories in the genre you are writing in, and figure out which conventions you can bend and which ones you don't want to break under any circumstances.
And there you have it. The basic three act structure. Every good story ever told has these three elements. It's just the way stories work. So before you start writing, you really need to think through the beginning, middle and end. Your work will be much better for it.
NEXT: Your First Con
Tyler James is a comics creator residing in Newburyport, Massachusetts. He writes and draws Over, a romantic comedy online graphic novel updating every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He also writes Tears of the Dragon, an epic fantasy webcomic that updates on Tuesdays. His work has been featured at Zuda Comics, and includes Interrogation Control Element, a political action thriller, and Super Seed, the story of the world's first super powered fertility clinic. When not making comics, Tyler works as a game designer and content producer for a software company.
Contact Tyler directly at tylerjamescomics@gmail.com, keep up with him at his blog, or follow him on Twitter.
Previous Columns
1: Big Goals
2: Resolutions
3: The Great Idea
4: Research Part I
5: Research Part II
6: The Killer Pitch Part I - The High Concept
7: The Killer Pitch Part II - The Synopsis
8: Pay Your Artists
9: Zuda Comics- A Tale of Five Submissions
10: Creating Great Characters Part I (Or Why Wolverine is Everywhere)
11: Creating Great Characters Part II (Or Why Wolverine is Everywhere)
12: Structurally Sound- The Beginning
13: Your Reputation
14: Structurally Sound- The Middle
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