So--do you HAVE to suprise with an ending?

Re: So--do you HAVE to suprise with an ending?

feeds@yuku.com (Savage Steve King) — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 01:27:37 GMT

The novel I recently finished reading had both the suprise ending and an ending that was telegraphed from a mile away. It was a literary whodunnit and they built up a certain character to be the villian, leading you in that direction the whole time and then throwing in a curve at the end. The villian did kill someone, but not the someone the story was about and then a chapter later you got the "shocker" ending.

Both endings were set up from about the mid point in the story...

Re: So--do you HAVE to suprise with an ending?

feeds@yuku.com (nebuly) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:05:38 GMT

Yes, White Mischief is very good indeed; I'd forgotten Fleetwood was in it. Her character in Persuasion wears a sort of turban affair throughout, which is in keeping with the character and period, but I suspect was used to cover up the effects of chemotherapy.

Re: So--do you HAVE to suprise with an ending?

feeds@yuku.com (Douglas Clegg) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:05:37 GMT

Barbara -

I knew nothing about her, and I'm sorry to hear she's gone. She had a small part in White Mischief, a movie that is fairly unforgettable and horrific in a whole other way -- and quite good.

I just read her bio in IMDB.com, and I'm sorry to hear that she died far too young -- at 51.

Re: So--do you HAVE to suprise with an ending?

feeds@yuku.com (Douglas Clegg) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:02:10 GMT

"Another novel that comes to mind in the "perfect" category for me, by the way, would be Bellow's Seize the Day. (But that's practically a novella.) "

I'll read that one next. I've only read a couple of Bellow novels. I need to expand my horizons a bit. Lately, I've been reading Victor Hugo and Balzac because I wanted to get to the origins of the big novels of cities and towns to see what some of the masters have done.

I...

Re: So--do you HAVE to suprise with an ending?

feeds@yuku.com (nebuly) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:45:17 GMT

Doug: Glad to know someone else out there likes the TV version of The Good Soldier as much as I do! Susan Fleetwood is amazing. She's the sister of Mick, and she died of cancer several years ago, relatively young. I'd love to have seen her in As You Like It; she was excellent in her final film, the lovely TV version of Persuasion starring Amanda Root and Ciarin Hinds.

Chris: Thank heavens for Netflix! Please do let me know, either on the board or...

Re: So--do you HAVE to suprise with an ending?

feeds@yuku.com (Chris Conlon) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:11:48 GMT

You've sold me on Rosemary's Baby, Doug. I'll read it soon.

As for perfect novels, I think it's no coincidence that every one we've discussed--Gatsby, The Good Soldier, A Single Man, Rosemary's Baby--is short. I'm not sure there could ever be such a thing as a perfect long novel--there are simply too many things that can go wrong, the longer the piece runs. I love Remembrance of Things Past above all novels, but Lord knows...

Re: So--do you HAVE to suprise with an ending?

feeds@yuku.com (Douglas Clegg) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:14:23 GMT

Chris -

I agree that Mia Farrow pretty much nailed it. But I don't think that was enough to make the movie work, with Redford there. He just wasn't right for the story or the character. He actually looks like he was born into that life (whether or not he was, doesn't matter.)

And Barbara, good to know it was Granada TV. I loved that production, and I had just seen Susan Fleetwood in a production of -- I believe -- As You Like It in London, and then saw that TV...

Re: So--do you HAVE to suprise with an ending?

feeds@yuku.com (Douglas Clegg) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:09:09 GMT

"Speaking of Mia Farrow (horror transition alert!), I've seen the film of Rosemary's Baby--a darn fine film it is, too--but I have never read the novel. "Perfect," Doug? Really? Like, Fitzgerald-perfect? Ford-perfect"

Yes. And as good as the movie is, the novel is better. Not a word out of place, not a scene without a reason. A perfectly written novel. Not a word spoken that doesn't have meaning to the whole. There are very few of those that...

Re: So--do you HAVE to suprise with an ending?

feeds@yuku.com (Chris Conlon) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:58:04 GMT

Nebuly, thanks for the recommendation on the film of The Good Soldier. I ran...not to my nearest video store, but to my Netflix queue, and added it.

Re: So--do you HAVE to suprise with an ending?

feeds@yuku.com (dogpoet) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:07:46 GMT

Finn and Simon are on the money here. If an ending doesn't feel inevitable when the reader reaches it, it won't feel right, either. Trying to do a twist ending that makes no sense purely for the sake of a twist ending (or pretending to be Roald Dahl) is pointless.

Re: So--do you HAVE to suprise with an ending?

feeds@yuku.com (FinnboyHauty) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 06:39:37 GMT

A story must be two things: 1) surprising and 2) inevitable ...

Do that, and you've got a winner ... But it ain't easy--consider stories that are too much of one or the other ... 1) confusing and 2) predictable ...

--Rick H

Re: So--do you HAVE to suprise with an ending?

feeds@yuku.com (nebuly) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 06:27:00 GMT

I never knew there had been any filmed version of The Good Soldier, but, like Gatsby (and A Single Man, come to that), it has always struck me as basically unfilmable. (There's another possible thread..."Unfilmable novels.") But don't you think the title of the book is wrong? It always seemed to me that it should have been called The Good People, not The Good Soldier. After all, it's a story of all those...

Re: So--do you HAVE to suprise with an ending?

feeds@yuku.com (Chris Conlon) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 05:08:34 GMT

Doug, we're far from horror here, but I'm going to wind this back to horror at the end. (Really. I have a plan, complete with a smooth transition. Wait and see.)

I never knew there had been any filmed version of The Good Soldier, but, like Gatsby (and A Single Man, come to that), it has always struck me as basically unfilmable. (There's another possible thread..."Unfilmable novels.") But don't you think the title of the book is...

Re: So--do you HAVE to suprise with an ending?

feeds@yuku.com (Douglas Clegg) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:43:42 GMT

T.M. -

Thanks. I suspect I got a bit long-winded because I've been suffering through a short story's creation for the past three weeks, and I wish this were easier. Yet, I always enjoy it -- once it's all done and I know it's got its life.

So, reflecting here on Shakespeare, Sunset Boulevard and The Great Gatsby has been a relief.

Re: So--do you HAVE to suprise with an ending?

feeds@yuku.com (Douglas Clegg) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:28:07 GMT

Chris,

Nick may be the protagonist, or he may simply be the most empathatic to the reader.

But given that Daisy herself has some of the most dramatic action and reaction (the car, the shirts, etc.) she still has my vote. Naw, Nick is probably it.

My one sadness about this novel is that no one has ever done a very good movie of it -- most of them assume it's some decadent and tragic romance, when I think it's tragic, but only a romance in Gatsby's...

Re: So--do you HAVE to suprise with an ending?

feeds@yuku.com (Chris Conlon) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 09:03:01 GMT

I don't diagree with anything you've said, Doug. I think we're just expressing it differently. My point about the endings of the Shakespeare tragedies is that in the world of commercial fiction today, revealing at the start that Hamlet dies at the end would be considered a "spolier"--by definition a bad thing! But obviously, as you point out, knowing that he dies spoils nothing--in fact, it vastly enhances the reader's/viewer's experience of the work as it...

Re: So--do you HAVE to suprise with an ending?

feeds@yuku.com (TMWright) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:02:59 GMT

I found your "overlong note," Doug, to be illuminating and enjoyable. Thanks for writing it.

T.M.

Re: So--do you HAVE to suprise with an ending?

feeds@yuku.com (Douglas Clegg) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 07:53:51 GMT

Chris -

Any tragedy usually means the death or ruin of a character, and I think that doesn't really telegraph the end so much as one piece of the outcome and removes it as consideration for what the ending will be -- in fact, it is a kind of short-hand misdirection so that we -- the reader, the audience -- will immediately ask, "How did it happen?"

The ends of King Lear and Othello and Hamlet include a series of calamities and horrific events well beyond the...

Re: So--do you HAVE to suprise with an ending?

feeds@yuku.com (Chris Conlon) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 06:46:01 GMT

In Elizabethan times, anything called a "tragedy" ended, by definition, with the death of the main character(s). But the fact that audiences know ahead of time that the protagonist will die at the end doesn't seem to have hurt the popularity of The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Or King Lear, for that matter. Othello. Macbeth. Romeo and Juliet. Etc.

Fitzgerald very clearly indicates Jay Gatsby's fate at the start of The Great Gatsby.
...

Re: So--do you HAVE to suprise with an ending?

feeds@yuku.com (TMWright) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 06:15:24 GMT

Nebuly said:

Sometimes I'll reject a story where the ending is telegraphed from the first page, and sometimes I'll accept it. The difference, to me, lies in the journey between the two points.

Exactly. In any story, at least for me, the journey itself is what's most important.

T.M.

So--do you HAVE to suprise with an ending?

feeds@yuku.com (scottstandridge) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:19:43 GMT
I've received a couple of rejections for a story lately, which I ordinarily take in stride, except that this particular story is one that I really believe is strong and want good things for. I'm sure we all have works of our own that we feel are among the finer examples of our writing/style/what we wanted to say/etc., and this is one of mine.

But I know that writers are not always or even often the best readers of their own work, so...