Friday 15 March 2013

The End is the Whole Book

I have to exercise now to keep alive and when I'm gasping away in the privacy of my office, I like to listen to Director's Commentaries of my favourite movies.

Today's director's commentary has got to be the best - Finding Nemo not only features the voices of director Andrew Stanton, co-director Lee Unkrich and co-writer Bob Peterson, but cuts away to details and mini documentaries about the film.


It's particularly relevant because I've at last finished the FINAL iteration of Shine  ... hop skip hurrah!

I think the ending of a book has to be the most important part of the writing - the ending is the last thing that a reader will remember. If they hate the ending, they will hate the book. So it was interesting to hear what Stanton, Unkrich and Peterson had to say about how they developed the ending of Finding Nemo.

We always save our epilogues for the very end. They’re the very last thing we produce because we want to get a sense of which characters the audience is keen to see, which moments they like. We want the ending to feel like a distillation of the whole movie.

So for the Nemo team, creating the ending was about identifying all the winning moments, the best characters and gags ... all the things they wanted the audience to walk away with like an encounter with Bruce the Shark, bringing back Squirt (the turtle) and explaining his presence with just one line ('Exchange student!').

These are not things you would know until you've actually written the piece. Until you've finished the story, you just don't know your characters well enough and you don't know which twists and turns of the plot are winners.

Writing The End can only happen when you know your book.

16 comments :

  1. That's so interesting, and I would agree that you need to know your characters through and though to fully establish an ending. HOWEVER I must admit that I have found that sometimes there is a picture in my head, a scene, a dialogue that you know happens right at the end, and I have to write and rewrite and edit to get to know the characters & find out who is in it and why it is there! That's exciting too!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. In Finding Nemo they said they always knew they would end with the going to school scene again. But they wanted to reprise the best bits of the film ... which they couldn't until they were done.

      Delete
  2. This is so true! For me anyway - I always start the book journey with a fairly good idea of where I'm going but when I get there, so much detail has changed - strange things often happen that I couldn't have known about. I can not wait to read Shine.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Kathy ... I think I work like you. And I can't wait to read Shine either!

      Delete
  3. And, you can't write the beginning until you know the whole book. How can you do the setup without knowing what it is you're setting up. That was the latest edit, planting the seeds that will blossom later. I love seeing this done visually in film. We caught the beginning of Ghostbusters the other day and as Sigourney Weaver emptied the shopping onto the counter at the beginning of the film there was a packet of Stay Puft Marshmallows which of course is what the evil beast from the hell dimension turns into.
    So, if we can't write the beginning or the end until we've written the book maybe we should start in the middle?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Good one Maureen. I find it really difficult to write outside the line of my narrative. I tend to begin at the beginning then work my way to the end. I get paralysed if there is something up ahead that's already created and complete because it doesn't feel like it's part of my storytelling!

      Delete
  4. This is my usual method:
    1. write the first chapter,
    2. write that last chapter,
    3. write the middle,
    4. rewrite the last chapter,
    5. rewrite the first chapter,
    6. rewrite the middle,
    7. repeat 4 to 6 until run out of time....!
    But quite seriously even though it may change the last chapter is usually one of the first things I write. I like to know where I'm going.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Good method!I always know where I am going but I don't put it down because I need the energy of the whole book to write the best words for the finale!

      Delete
    2. Do you plot everything out Teri?

      Delete
    3. How much plotting I do varies - have plotted book 3 quite heavily as I didn't have enough time to repeat steps 4 to 6 indefinitely. But I did write the ending first

      Delete
  5. Congratulations on finishing Shine, Candy! That must feel great. Can't wait to read it!

    So interesting to read about different working methods. Although I always have a general sense of how I want the story to end, I find I can't write the last scenes in any detail until a really late draft. I seem to always write several drafts where the ending is just a few notes, and it's only when the rest of the book is pretty much in final form that I can write the ending properly. I think it's to do with knowing the characters and how they've changed through the story. And maybe it's also that I don't want to expend the emotional energy that goes into an ending until I know exactly what I want that ending to be.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We are totally on the same wavelength, Helen. We should really be in the same critique group. Oh wait. We are!

      Delete
  6. I didn't really understand what authors meant when they said that the characters wrote the book themselves. I used to think "How stupid. You're the author, you decide what happens." Then I wrote my first book. By the time I was only just into my second book I was beginning to wonder if I just bred very independent characters who paid little attention to what I said! I have a rough outline (which as a thriller writer I do need!) but the rest seems to be up to the people who really run the show and that doesn't seem to be me!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh that is so true! Mind you characters can be so annoying - always trying to wrest control of the story from you.

      Delete
  7. Could you clarify guys by 'end' do you mean climax onwards of just the post climax denouement? Thanks :0)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hmm both but especially post denouement ... after expending all that emotion at the climax, staying the course and writing well to the end is tough. I really notice it when books lose energy at the end as if the author just got on with tying up loose ends and let go of his/her magic wand.

      Delete

Comments are the heart and soul of the Slushpile community, thank you! We may periodically turn on comments approval when trolls appear.

Share buttons bottom

POPULAR!