Help! I've been writing for a wee while now and I end up with the same problem whatever it is I write - that is, I can never seem to get to the end.
I've so many started projects and can easily write the first few thousand words, but run out of steam at that point. This happens with short stories, novels and longer articles. It's beginning to do my head in and I was wondering if any of you had any tips for at least getting to the end of the first draft.
starla

I always have an ending in mind before I embark upon any writing project. I plan the whole thing, so I can work backwards and forwards appropriately to bring all my threads to a satisfactory close.

I find by setting up these parameters to your creativity, you generally come out with a better shape of story.

JB

Starla - a few disjointed thoughts while I keep an eye on the news. Apologies if they're not relevant or too simple.

A few thousand words is enough for a story or an article.

Have you thought about what you're unconsciously expect an 'ending' to be? Maybe you are trying to make things more resolved than they need to be. An ending which is just a moment of realisation, or a moment or a particular piece of dialogue which crystallises the situation is enough. It's often better than something tied up with ribbons and bows and labelled THE END. If you look back, you may see a moment in what you think of as the middle, where that happens. For example, if your story is of an adulterous couple, they don't have to check out of the hotel, or even get dressed, or even reach orgasm, necessarily. The end can be when one or both of them realise something that they hadn't realised before. The story could even all be as they arrive separately, and the end is when they catch sight of each other in the lobby, and realise... something about themselves or each other. I would imagine there'd be a non-fictional equivalent, too, with a scene or statement that sums up the stuff you're writing about, even if it doesn't provide a conclusion of what needs to be done.

Novels need a bigger, stronger motor, but the several strands of plot they also need can make it easier to keep going. But I would say, don't start one until you've filled the pot of ideas so full and had it on the stove so long that it's boiling over with the story you want to tell. Write some short stuff or do research meanwhile.

On a completely different tack to the practical one above, could something in your writing psyche be telling you the piece has run out of steam? For years I had bouts of failing to get down to it. Eventually I realised that there was a part of my mind whose job it was to stop me writing. It sounds incredibly cheesy and self-helpish, but I learned how to say to it, 'Thank you for telling me that I ought to stop because this first draft's running out of steam/because I'm a bad writer/because I'll be a bad mother if I don't play with the children/because I need to clean the loo. I understand you, and now I'm going to write.' That may not at all be what's going on with you, but I think most writers have a bit of themselves which self-sabotages in some way.

Emma

That's really interesting, Emma, what you say about self-sabotaging and how to deal with the sabotaging voice.

Frances

Frances, if you get me drunk enough, I'll admit the truth. I imagined that voice as a rather charming small blue-green demon with handsome scales. He was charmingly determined to protect me from lots of things, including failure, and the scariness of exposing my writing-soul to the world. Then I imagined a large terracotta pot with a heavy lid that lived in the corner of my study, and if he started saying things about how it would make my life much better if I went to the supermarket and I could always do the 1000 words another time - or alternatively that I was never going to make it as a writer, so why bother - I thanked him, and then imagined putting him in the pot and putting the lid on. After a few weeks, I moved the pot mentally out of the study to the foot of the stairs. A few weeks later, I realised that it had gone.

OK, I'm not drunk, except on personal success and the awfulness of the news.

Emma

I like the blue-green demon and the pot -congrats on your cunning psychological strategy!

Frances

I feel quite fondly towards him now, like the nostalgic memory of a mildly irritating school mate, but he used to be a real enemy! I don't know if other people have other ways of dealing with the anti-writing demon. I'm sure s/he exists, and I'd be interested to know.
Emma

Starla,

I know some would spit on me for suggesting this, but have you tried outlining your stories?

Grinder

What's outlining, in this context?
Emma

Emma,

I would define outlining as planning your story in detail before actually writing it. Some people swear by this technique others abhor it.

Grinder

Oh, I see. It sounds like one of those love-it-or-hate-it things. (I horrify some people by admitting that I write to music.) But what happens if you find the story wandering away from the outline? Or doesn't that happen?

Starla - I can see that having something really detailed would mean you didn't have that lost-at-sea feeling you can feel when you come up for air half-way through a section, That can sap your will to live, let alone write.

Emma

Hello starla
The first novel I started as an experiment, just to see if I could. It had some promising parts but came in 20,000words too short. I started a second one but this time I did do a chapter by chapter outline that gave me some idea of the ending. It also gave me a guide to how many pages I needed for each one. Unfortunately I am now in the process of hacking it to death in Novel l1.Can't have everything!
kat

Thanks everyone. Emma, I absolutely agree on the whole self sabotage think. That's a really big point in my life at the moment in lots of areas and I'm really working on it. (wow - I sound like a self help book now.)
In regards to actually creating an outline for stories, although I think that I've been doing it, maybe I've been rushing in a bit to early with all that enthusiasm. I got a bit bogged down in a novel about twenty thousand words in, last year and looking back on it, there were really good ideas there but I probably hadn't let it ferment enough in my mind. I'm hoping to go back to it at some point though.
You've all given me so much more to think about. I'll let you know when I finish the story I'm working on and if any of your techniques worked.
Thanks again.

Starla, I sympathise with your situation - a while ago I could have copied your post and put my name at the bottom

I've found that it wasn't one particular thing but a combination of factors varying from story to story. My first completed novel also ended up woefully short and I spent a long time looking at my writing and the writing of others to find out why. Unfortunately there was no simple answer to this; some works 'needed' more business around the central thread, others need more thread in the first place. For example, if a character drives from one place to another, do you simply have him arriving or do you take the time to describe the journey and the environment he's in, perhaps having a related event during it (a news item on the radio, a person seen on a street, etc.). Of course, this gets dangerously close to simple padding so then you need to see whether there is enough actually going on in the story to give it length. I often criticise Clive Cussler for his writing style but one thing you can say is that there's never a dull moment. This is where you need to look at the story as a whole and where outlines can help. In the case of Cussler and other better authors of the same genre their stories tend to be location based - a long journey where each town or city adds something to the overall puzzle. Writing in this way allows the puzzle to expand and contract to fit a comfortable length. Too long? Cut a step or two out of the puzzle. Too short? Add an additional step to reach the next stage. Again, you have to look at whether this is simply padding but in fairness with some genres you could argue that the whole thing is padding. For example, a friend of mine recently pointed out that Gandalf could apparently summon Gwyhir (?) the giant eagle in Lord of the Rings. If he could do this, why didn't he just fly Frodo to Mordor?

As for the other situation where there doesn't seem to be enough actually happening then there's a good case for thinking that the story may not support novel length. An idea crammed into a short story will almost certainly make better reading than one stretched thinly into something barely novel length.

In terms of actually reaching an ending, my most common problem is that I lose interest in the story. I get some short way into it and it no longer seems original or captivating. In my case, if I feel this I just stop there and then. I'm fortunate enough to have had plots come to me that do work and hold my interest so I know there's a different feeling with these.

I tend to do a lot of my story creation in the pub, surrounded by my hyper-critical (but well read) friends. Concepts and ideas in this environment tend to come and go quickly but every now and then one hangs on and seems to gather a momentum of its own. I've found that for those that have legs, the ending is usually apparent fairly early on and the work is in designing the journey to that point. It may simply be that the ideas you've had to date aren't the right ones.

Hope some of this helps.

Jon

Dear Starla,
I'm writing this to find out what I think about your topic ... this seems to be how it works for me - find out what I think through writing, read it back as if somebody else wrote it, edit it or leave it alone for a while and, hopefully, leave something readable behind ...

So, mercifully, you'll never see the long ramble it has taken to get here.

Try reading Raymond Carver. "Elephant" was my epiphany. His endings will perhaps influence your thinking. At first I thought the stories just stopped. Now I see different.

It's tempting to leave this reply at that. One point, make it, and leave.

BUT

No it's not enough. What if you don't like Carver?

Chekov has some relief to offer on the matter of beginnings as well as endings: cutting the first and last paragraph, needed to get the writer into and out of a story but not the reader - like the launch rocket and parachute you can
jettison later. (OK not a 19th C simile but ...) Doesn't work every time of course.

The Paul Powell interview in WW recently(talking about TV drama)"going in late, coming out early" says much the same thing.

Sometimes I purposely overwrite to get the characters to the jumping in point I'm going to cut to. It makes one sure you're not imposing impossible situations on characters they couldn't have got to by themselves (if you see what I mean). I'm writing stuff I know I'm going to cut.

But is this what you're geting at? I don't think so really. Endings. Endings.

Personally I like scaring myself that I don't know what the ending is when I start. It's galling therefore when the producer or editor says the ending was predictable and want you to change it ... especially when you didn't see it coming and you wrote it.

But ah! Here's a thing ... endings can change. (The French Lieutenant's Woman or Fowles's other maddening book the Magus which a friend of mind flung in the canal she was so annoyed at its ending.) Yes they can change and sometimes you'll be asked to do that. What then?

I'm coming to a standstill now.

There's never an easy answer - didn't we know that already?

Well what else then?

Well here's a thing - I'm reworking some stories I abandoned for dead years ago. My reasons for abandoning them sound similar to what you're going through right now. I'm finding WriteWords an invaluable resource, learning as much from giving feedback as receiving it and a few of the stories have made it through this re-appraisal now they're getting the benefit of a more detached eye.

So, keep them, maybe they're in hibernation. Nothing is lost until you set fire to it ...

The short summary was a good indicator that one of those stories wasn't really dead, just resting. When I finally found out how to summarise it, I was able to tighten it and finish it. I had to ask just what AM I saying in this story? Who'd me moved to read it, judging by the summary alone?

If it's a story in which nothing much happens maybe it's quite simply an exposition of writing style - sometimes what it is, is what it is ... or it's an unfinished piece. If you can describe a thing as exactly what it is you're a long way to knowing you're not kidding yourself about it.

I offer this in the hope that it might help. Most of all I hope you're getting a lot of joy and fulfillment out of the process of writing and somewhere in amongst all of this there's a great deal of pleasure coming through it.
All the best,
eliza