Tag: Marissa Meyer

April and May Reading Roundup

Well here we are, more than halfway through June, and as usual, I’m abysmally late on posting this. I admit, I’ve been putting it off, because it feels ridiculously insensitive to be posting about the books I read in April and May with the world in the state it’s in. I don’t like to talk about politics online, and anyway I don’t have anything to say that hasn’t been said a hundred times and much more eloquently than I could. But I also can’t stay silent.

At the time I’m writing this, more than one hundred twenty-five thousand people have died from the coronavirus in our country. People are still calling it a hoax and refusing to wear masks. I viscerally hate masks, but wearing one saves lives, so it’s really the only decent thing to do. The pandemic is disproportionately affecting people of color, and meanwhile, our president is focused solely on bringing back the economy and winning the upcoming election. And I get that bringing back the economy is important, I do, but we need to do so safely, and based on the rising number of Covid-19 cases in more than half the country, safety still isn’t the watchword, and this endangers everyone, particularly the people of color who will continue to be disproportionately harmed by the pandemic because of the way our society is built. Last, and certainly not least, we have been reeling over the brutal police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless others, and then the police brutality and attacks by right-wing extremists against the peaceful protestors who have come out against the murders and the systemic racism and oppression that enable them. It is high time we are protesting, in all the ways we can, and I only hope we can keep the momentum up through November and beyond, because our country needs real, drastic change. I don’t pretend to know everything there is to know about these issues, but I’m reading and I’m learning and I’m sharing. I am furious. I am furious, and heartbroken, and so stressed out I’m worried I’ve hurt my jaw with all the teeth-grinding I’ve been doing.

Most of this has come about since the end of May. But before that, in April and most of May, I was sheltering in place and freaking out about Covid. And learning all this important stuff. In April, I was so stressed out that I only read one book. I couldn’t focus on anything, and even though I started a bunch of other books, they were mostly library books, and I didn’t finish them before they expired, and then I had to get back on the waiting list. In May, though, I read thirteen books of all different genres. Some were rereads, but most were new. I read three books in Braille which brings my total of Braille books for the year up to four. Still behind where I should be for my goal, but yay!Collage of the covers of the 14 books I read in April and May: Ember Queen; Shadows of Self; The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet; The Deceivers; Circe; There There; the first three Harry Potter books; Spark; Supernova; Daja's Book; Fantastic Mr. Fox and Other Animal Stories; and The Light Between Worlds.

The only book I read in April was Ember Queen by Laura Sebastian, the third book in the Ash Princess trilogy, which came out in February. Anything I say about the plot of this book will spoil the first two if you haven’t already read them. But let’s just say that things are heating up for Theo and her rebellion. Quite literally. I love what Laura Sebastian does with the characters in this book. I particularly love what she does with the villains, and the villains throughout the entire series. It’s really interesting from a writing perspective, and also just so well done. I loved this whole series and would definitely recommend it.

I started off May by finishing Shadows of Self, the second book in Brandon Sanderson’s second Mistborn Trilogy. In this book, Wax is investigating a set of highly improbable murders. We get a lot of Wax’s backstory from before he returned to the city too. I enjoyed this book, but the first two thirds were quite slow by Sanderson’s standards. The ending was heartbreaking though, and I’m looking forward to what comes next.

Next, I read The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. This is the first book in the Wayfarers series, though as I’ve since discovered these books all stand alone and are actually just interconnected novels in the same universe, which I love. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet follows Rosemary, who has signed on as a clerk for a spaceship which creates new wormholes for other ships in the Galactic Commons to use to travel. The ship, the Wayfarer, has an interspecies crew of delightful characters, who embrace Rosemary wholeheartedly. But Rosemary has a secret, and when they are asked to travel for almost a year to build a wormhole to a kplanet at war with the rest of its solar systemand threatening war against the rest of the Galactic Commons, Rosemary’s secret is in danger of coming out. This is the best description I can give this book, because the plot is a bit thin. I’ve seen some reviews claim that this book doesn’t have a plot, but it definitely does. It’s just a very episodic novel, filled with different adventures for each of the crew members. We already know that happy space adventures are 100% my thing, but oh this book was just so much fun! Also it has a great title! It was exactly what I needed to be reading while the world falls apart, and this was the book that really got me out of my April reading slump. I just love it so much, and if you love fun, heartwarming, delightful space adventures too, I highly recommend you give this book a shot.

In May, I started my annual Harry Potter reread. I reread the first three books, Sorcerer’s Stone, Chamber of Secrets, and Prisoner of Azkaban. This time, I was rereading them in Braille. I read these books before J. K. Rowling made all those awful transphobic comments on twitter, and I’ve been working through how I feel about her and the books ever since. Working through my feelings about JKR was pretty easy actually. I’ve been cranky with her ever since Cursed Child, honestly, and we’ve all known she’s transphobic before now, but the fact that she refused to learn from the countless people trying to tell her that her comments are hurtful, hateful, and dangerous for the trans community was too much for me. I’ve been bullied and excluded all my life because I am blind, and I cannot abide anyone who hates and attacks anyone else just because of who they are. So now JKR is she-who-must-not-be-named to me. Sorting out what to do about my feelings for the Harry Potter books themselves is much more complicated. I love these books so much, and I can’t just turn that love off. They have shaped who I am as a person and a writer. I recognize they aren’t great in terms of representation, and they’re actually pretty terrible on some of the sub-issues of the books (the house-elves only ever get better masters but as a species remain enslaved; anyone fat is a terrible person or just plain stupid; Snape is really abusive, but because he’s ultimately a good guy, he’s totally forgiven for that; I could go on). For me personally, I feel it’s important to continue to engage with the books, both because I do love the characters and the story and the fundamental themes of love and acceptence, and because I want to continue to study these books critically and learn from their shortcomings. However I understand that publicly supporting or discussing the books could cause real harm to my trans friends, and I absolutely do not want to do that. I have taken my Hogwarts house off my social media profiles and bios, and I won’t be wearing or displaying any Harry Potter swag in the future. And if I reread the books, I’ll keep it to myself. As I said above, I don’t pretend to know or understand all the issues at play here, but I will keep learning. And as I do, this tentative balance I’ve come to might change. All I’ll say for now is that I reread the first three Harry Potter books in May. Moving on.

Meanwhile, I read The Deceivers by Margaret Peterson Haddix, the sequel to The Strangers which I read earlier this year. In this book, Chess, Emma, and Finn and their friend Natalie have to venture back into the alternate world to rescue their mothers. This book is so much fun, and it’s got a lot of twists and turns. It was a great sequel to The Strangers, and I can’t wait for the third book to come out.

I also read Circe by Madeline Miller. This was another book I started in April but didn’t finish before my library copy expired and had to get back on the waitlist. We were trying to get my Harvard Law School book club back together, virtually, to discuss this, which is why I picked it up, but that discussion never happened, sadly. Circe is a retelling of Greek mythology from Circe’s point of view. It goes through her entire life, from her birth and her childhood, to her exile, and so on. I don’t want to spoil it in case you don’t know the Greek mythology, if you do know the mythology, I’m sorry to say you know the whole book. Unfortunately, I was disappointed with Circe, especially because it’s gotten so many glowing reviews. Madeline Miller’s writing was very beautiful, if a tad melodramatic at times. But she didn’t add anything new to the story, and so it really dragged for me. I can see why people liked it, but it honestly just wasn’t for me.

Next, I read There There by Tommy Orange. This is a book that follows several Native American characters in modern-day Oakland, as they all prepare to attend a big powwow in Oakland. I’m ashamed to admit that aside from what I learned in elementary schools and the few books I read then, I know very little about modern-day Native American culture. I really enjoyed reading about all these different characters, but I admit that I got a bit lost because there were so many characters and they all connected in different ways. I also felt like it was a little too convenient how it all came together in the end. I did enjoy this book, but honestly literary fiction has to really wow me for me to recommend it to others, and this didn’t quite do that.

After that, I read Spark by Sarah Beth Durst. I started reading this in Braille but the electronic Braille version I had kept having whole sentences or parts of sentences missing, so I gave up and listened to it. Set in a world where children bond with dragon-like creatures called storm beasts and control the weather, Spark follows Mina, who is very quiet, and her new lightning beast, Pixit, as they learn to harness and control lightning. Mina struggles at the lightning school, because most lightning guardian teams are loud and obnoxious. She doesn’t feel like she fits in, a fact reenforced by her family’s perceptions of her, and she’s sure she’ll never be able to be a real storm guardian. But when Mina and Pixit learn the price of controlling the weather with their power, quiet Mina must learn to speak up. This was a really fun book. I loved watching Mina grow into the person she wants to be, and I just ador Pixit, who is like a dragon puppy. I would definitely recommend this book.

Then I finished Marissa Meyer’s Renegades series with Supernova. This was a great finale to this series. Everything comes to a head so nicely, and yes, a lot of it was still really predictable, but it was also a lot of fun. The only bit I didn’t like was the epilogue, which put a twist on everything and really didn’t feel like an ending at all. Now if there was going to be more content in the Renegades world, I’d be fine with it, but as it stands it didn’t work for me as an ending. Still, I really enjoyed the whole series.

After that, I reread the third Circle of Magic book, Daja’s Book by Tamora Pierce. I always love these books. They’re so much fun and really great to reread in times of stress. In Daja’s Book, the four young mages have traveled north with Sandry’s uncle, the duke, and their teachers to figure out how to help with a drought. Since they spun their magic together, the four’s magic has changed and is now getting out of control in some really weird ways, and they have to deal with that. Also forest fires. But the real joy of this book is how Daja has to confront her past and the people who cast her out after her family died in a shipwreck. When Daja accidentally creates a vine of living metal, a Trader caravan  offers to buy it, and Daja gets to interact with her people for the first time in months. This is a really great book, and as I’ve said before, I really recommend this whole series.

I then took a break for something fun and silly and listened to Fantastic Mr. Fox and Other Animal Stories by Roald Dahl. This was a collection of a bunch of different short animal stories: Fantastic Mr. Fox, Esio Trot, The Enormous Crocodile, and The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me. We had this audiobook when I was a kid, and I remember listening to it on some car ride, but nothing else. This was quick and fun and very silly, which was really nice.

Finally, I read The Light Between Worlds by Laura E. Weymouth, and guys, this might be my favorite book of 2020 so far. The Light Between Worlds reminds me a lot of Narnia, but it’s everything I didn’t know I wanted from Narnia. The story is about three children who are whisked into a magical world in the middle of an air raid in World War II, and the book alternates between their adventures in the fantasy world and their lives five years after they’ve returned home. It particularly focuses on the youngest child, Evelyn, who grew up in the fantasy world and is really struggling back in our world. This is an absolutely beautiful book that just gave me so many feelings: It’s the sort of book that I have been not just recommending to everyone but buying for everyone too. You absolutely have to read this one!

And that’s it for April and May of this year. My plan is to have my June reading post up not too long after the end of June, because this is ridiculous. If you’ve read any of these books, I’d love to talk about them. And I hope some of these books might help you find some light in these dark times. Take care of yourselves, and I’ll be back soon.

March Reading Roundup

Over the past several weeks, I thought about blogging more and getting this post up sooner. I meant to do it. I really did. But a solid sense of time and my motivation to do pretty much anything have gone out the window in social distancing life. But here I am now.

I hope everyone is holding up out there. I so far haven’t gotten sick or gone insane, but there’s still time. I did finish my five trillionth round of revisions on my middle grade fantasy project, and then my five trillion and first round of revisions. Now I’m back to the memory-wiping academy project. I also bought myself a television because my iPad or laptop just wasn’t enough of a screen, and I hope to have friends over for a movie night someday ever. I’ve been cooking all the time too. I’ve learned to make some really good bread thanks to a recipe my brother shared with me. I tried lentil pasta, with mixed results, and harissa marinated tofu which probably would have turned out better if I had enough harissa to actually marinate the tofu. But after that it’s been a lot of staples like couscous and frozen veggies or rice and beans or pasta. I’ve also been making homemade ice cream, and there’s no going back to the store-bought stuff now.

Basically I’m doing fine but life is upside down and I hate it so much, even though it’s definitely necessary.

I also read eight books in March. I read most of these books in the first half of March, before the lockdown set in. Oddly I haven’t been reading as much even though I’m stuck at home now. I saw a tweet about this somewhere. I can’t find it now, but the gist is we expect to be a lot more productive with life on lockdown, but we’re also spending a lot of time holding the existential dread at bay.

Collage of the eight books I read in March: A Little Taste of Poison, Archenemies, Ash Princess, Lady Smoke, Sandry's Book, Tris's Book, Babylon's Ashes, and The Drawing of the ThreeWhile I enjoyed all these books a lot, I admit that none of them really stuck out to me, and I’m having a hard time remembering them, but I think that’s more because of the world getting thoroughly messed up in the last month than the books’ fault.

I continued a lot of the series that I started last month, and I started a couple new series. I also read a variety of genres again, some middle grade and YA, some fantasy and sci fi, and a superhero story.

All the books I read were audiobooks. I’m not doing so great on my goal to read one Braille book a month. But even though I won’t be completely successful on this goal this year (unless one of you knows how to time travel), I’m going to keep trying.

Now let’s dive in and talk about these books.

First, I read the second Uncommon Magic book, A Little Taste of Poison by R. J. Anderson. I read the first book, A Pocket Full of Murder, back at the end of January, and I loved it lots. This was a great sequel. It did a great job following up on the problems left unsolved at the end of the first book, delving deeper into the world, and complicating everything further. My only complaint is there’s this epilogue at the end that, without spoiling anything, puts a new twist on everything, and it’s really sudden and fast and in my opinion makes the book and series feel incomplete. If there’s going to be a third book, I’d be okay with it, but I’m not sure there will be a third book based on my very cursory research on Goodreads. On the whole though I really loved this world and these characters, and this is a very fun middle grade fantasy series.

Next, I read the second Renegades book, Archenemies by Marissa Meyer. I don’t want to say too much in terms of plot synopsis because I don’t want to spoil the first book if you haven’t read it, and almost anything I say would be a spoiler. But we continue with the spying and the secret identities and the superhero teamwork and friends and romance and everything I loved about the first book. Archenemies took the story forward in a logical way but a different way than I expected. It also raised the stakes a lot, and it did a lot better with the issue I had with the first book that I felt like we were in the wrong character’s head during key moments for the other character. And oh my gosh I loved the twists this took for its characters and the complexities it added. I just love all the characters and I don’t know how I want this to end because I’m cheering for all of them (with a few exceptions). I’m really looking forward to diving into the third and final book soon.

Last year while I was studying for the bar, I read Ash Princess by Laura Sebastian. I really loved the book, but also had no recollection of it because I was studying for the bar. And since the third book just came out, I reread Ash Princess this month and then read the sequel, Lady Smoke. And just oh my gosh these books are amazing! Ash Princess follows Theo, the princess of a conquered country who has been kept by the conquering force as a prisoner and tortured to keep her people downtrodden. But when she is forced to do the unthinkable, Theo decides to fight back. These books go some really unexpected places, and I just love how brilliant and driven Theo is. She is willing to sacrifice everything for her goal, and she does. And while she has emotions like any other sixteen-year-old girl, she has iron control over them and she acts for her head every time. The world is also really interesting, and like I said the plot takes some really interesting twists and turns. At this point I’ve finished the third book, and while I’m not talking about this until next month, this series is one I’d love to go back and reread from the beginning knowing what’s coming. If you haven’t read these books, I highly recommend them.

After that, I read the sixth Expanse book, Babylon’s Ashes by James S. A. Corey. A lot of this book felt like fall-out from the events of the last book. There was a lot of political maneuvering and planning and then finally a big battle. We get to see Holden play the mediator again which is fun because he’s bad at it. Some pretty big important things happened in this book that I won’t spoil. But on the whole, it was just an okay book. There were honestly too many point of view characters, characters who were very minor players in previous books and rose to the level of point-of-view characters in this book. Some of them it was cool to see their viewpoint, but on the whole it felt like just too much and it became hard to follow. I’m not entirely sure I’m going to continue with this series, because I can’t get any of the rest of the books on audio from the library, and I’m not sure I care enough to either buy the audiobooks or invest in reading them in Braille. I might just switch to the TV show at this point. I don’t know. We’ll see.

When the lockdown hit and I needed some literary comfort food, I started rereading Tamora Pierce’s Circle of Magic books. In March I read the first two, Sandry’s Book and Tris’s Book. Did I momentarily forget that the fourth book in this book is a plague book, and now I’m on track to read a plague book in the middle of a pandemic? Yes. Yes I did. Will I read it anyway? Probably. These books have been all-time favorites for a while, and they held up on reread, which is fabulous. They’re just so much fun and full of such great meaningful relationships, and I love them. I also love Tamora Pierce’s Circle world way more than her Tortall world. It’s so detailed and rich. I loved rereading these books, and I’m looking forward to getting back to the series soon.

Finally, I read the second book in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, The Drawing of the Three. I enjoyed this more than the first book. It was way more coherent, story-wise. There was also a female main character. Yay! Unfortunately, I’m not really comfortable with King’s representation of mental illness in this book, and his treatment of women still isn’t great. I’ll probably keep reading this series, but not with a ton of enthusiasm. (Spoiler alert: I’m really just in it to get to the talking pink train I remember in the third book.)

And that’s it for March. Have you read any of these books? Do you have any other reads I might want to check out during quarantine?

Whose Story Is It Anyway?

Welcome to my final post on writing awesome characters. If you’ve missed any of my earlier posts, I’ve talked about creating strong protagonists, antagonists, and side characters; developing your characters so they become real people to your readers; and finally killing your characters. I want to finish up with characters by discussing point of view. Point of view could be its own series of posts in and of itself (and maybe I’ll get to that later), but here I’d like to talk about it as it relates to your characters.

 

To give a very basic overview, point of view is literally the viewpoint from which you are telling the story. The most common points of view are first person and third person limited. In first person point of view, the story is told directly from the point of view of one of the characters, usually the protagonist. To describe it another way, the point of view character is telling the story as it unfolds around them. First person point of view uses the pronoun “I”: Today I went to the store and bought kumquats. Third person limited, however, is not told directly from the point of view of the character, but instead the story is told about the character, narrating their actions, thoughts, and feelings from the third person. It uses the character’s name or the pronouns “he” or “she”: Today Jameyanne went to the store and bought kumquats. You can also have third person omniscient (where the reader sees the thoughts and feelings of all the characters) and third person objective (the story is told objectively with no thoughts or feelings for anyone). Even rarer types of point of view are second person (Today you went to the store and bought kumquats) and first person plural (Today we went to the store and bought kumquats. All the kumquats.) Complicating matters even more is the idea of the narrator of the story (especially in third person scenarios) having thoughts and feelings of their own unrelated to the characters’ thoughts and feelings. You can also have multiple points of view in a story, and there are myriad ways to do that. In my small child magician novel, for example, I have three points of view: my young magician (in first person), her mother (third person), and her father (third person).

 

But I don’t want to get into the specific nitty gritty details of all these types of points of view. I’m talking about your characters and their stories, because once you have your plot and your characters, you need to decide how you’re going to tell the story. A key part of that is deciding your point of view. Who’s telling this story? And whose story is it anyway?

 

In almost all cases, your protagonist is the answer to both questions. There are other options, certainly, but there’s a good reason why this is the most common approach. If it’s your protagonist’s story, then your protagonist is the character you want the reader to connect with most, and the easiest way to get a reader to fall in love with a character is to give a direct window into the inner workings of that character’s mind.

 

But let’s not just leave it there. What if it’s not just the protagonist’s story? What if it’s many people’s stories? Or what if, as you developed all your important characters, you’ve planned out lots of character arcs, and you want to show them?

 

One option is multiple points of view, but there are dangers to that. I’d say, when there get to be more than four or five point of view characters, the story can feel confused. I felt this way, for example, when I recently read Cassandra Clare’s Clockwork Angel for the first time. While I was pretty sure who the protagonist was, I couldn’t be sure it was actually her story because there were so many points of view. This isn’t to say that lots of points of view can’t be done. By the end of Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles series, there are at least nine point of view characters running around, and that worked for me, but at the same time, she built up to that, adding a couple point of view characters each book. And while this works for me, it might not work for everyone.

 

Something else to be conscious of if you plan to work with multiple points of view is what the protagonist knows versus what the reader knows. Not only can it get confusing, but when other characters know important information—and the reader knows they know—but the protagonist doesn’t know, it can lead to the reader being frustrated either because the protagonist appears stupid or because the characters aren’t communicating with each other. I find this particularly true when one of the point of view characters is the villain. I get really, really annoyed when the villain goes and reveals his plans, and then I know them, but the protagonist is still angsting about not knowing what the villain is up to. A huge part of this for me comes back to the question of whose story it is. If it’s the protagonist’s story, I want to follow the protagonist along her journey, to make discoveries when she does and to feel what she is feeling, not before. Call it simplistic, but that’s the most enjoyable reading experience for me.

 

Finally, it’s crucial to consider the length of the story you’re telling. With multiple points of view, you’re implying that each POV character has a story of their own to tell, their own path through the plot. However, if you’re writing a 5000 word short story, chances are good that the scope of that story is too narrow to focus on more than one character. If you’re writing a novella or novel, on the other hand, you have more room to explore other characters’ journeys through their perspectives if you so choose.

 

I’m not saying don’t use multiple points of view—I do it myself. But there are things to be careful of when you decide to do it. If you decide not to use multiple points of view, you can still have character arcs for multiple characters. As long as your protagonist doesn’t completely live in a bubble, they’ll notice the people around them changing (they don’t even have to say anything explicitly), and your readers will notice it too. Basically, this boils down to showing the other characters’ journeys externally, as they are observed by your point of view character.

 

Point of view and character overlap in complicated ways. There are so many types of point of view to choose from, with their own advantages, disadvantages, and pitfalls to watch out for. but when I’m deciding what to use, it comes down to the two questions: Whose story is it? And who’s telling the story? And of course, why? (Sorry, that was more than two questions.) These questions are not just about the technical aspects of point of view. They are about digging into your characters and the heart of your story.

Confronting the Climax

Last week, I talked about how the ending is my first step when I’m planning a story. This week, I’m going to talk about my next step: the climax. I plan the climax right after I plan the ending, because when I get to planning the ending next week, where I start the story will have a lot to do with where the story is going, and where the story is going is not simply the ending.

 

In very simple terms, if the ending is the solution to the story’s main problem, then the climax is the moment when the protagonist confronts the problem. This means that the shape of the climax often dictates the shape of the ending. The climax is the time where all of the protagonist’s internal growth and struggles that they have experienced over the course of the story are put to the ultimate test. In many stories, the climax is the moment when the protagonist realizes how they have changed—even if that realization is not expressed until after the action of the climax is over. The climax should at the same time put the protagonist’s character growth to the test and be the moment when everything the story has been building towards comes to a peak.

 

So, for this story I’m planning, at this point, I have a basic plot idea and a protagonist. I have an idea of what my ending will be. It could be a very specific idea, a specific moment where I want my story to land, or it could be broader, the solution to the problem and a feeling I want to convey. If my thinking here is broader at this point, it will probably become more specific as I plan out the climax. Also, at this point, if I don’t have a concrete grasp of my protagonist, my antagonist, their separate and conflicting motivations, and the main problem of the story, I spend some time ironing out those details. More specific detail will come as I continue to plan, of course, but I need some basic, concrete information before I move to the climax, otherwise, planning the climax now doesn’t make any sense.

 

I realize that this can seem like a pretty backwards way to think about this, and other people may plan their stories differently and just as effectively. But this is the way my brain works, and it makes sense to me, so I generally run with it. Also, it is so much fun to invision the most intense moments of a story. Often, it is the climactic scene that is the scene that sticks with me while I’m writing the whole story, the scene that I can’t wait to get down on paper, the scene that I even sometimes regret putting on paper because now it isn’t in my head anymore.

 

When I plan out my climaxes, I again think about what kind of story I’m writing and what kind of climax it should have. If I’m writing a more literary story, the climax might tend to focus on the characters’ emotions rather than high-stakes action. But if I’m writing fantasy or even historical fiction, which is most of what I’m writing, a little high-stakes action might be the right way to go. Or, you can go the middle route, my personal favorite, where there is lots of action and lots of feelings.

 

After I’ve figured out what kind of climax I’m looking for, I look at all the elements of the story that I have outlined so far (whether that outline is in my head or on paper). I have the main character, their goals, their strengths, their weaknesses, their fears. I have the antagonist with all their goals and strengths and weaknesses and fears. Personally, I really like to have the bad guy and the good guy be evenly matched throughout the story, or else the bad guy is slightly stronger, and something changes in the climax that tips the scales in the protagonist’s favor. I have the main problem of the story, which may or may not be related to the conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist. For example, the protagonist and the antagonist could both be working to solve the same problem, but with opposing methods. I might also have side characters I need to consider, or other points of view I’ve been narrating from that I need to deal with. Finally, I have the setting, which is one of my personal favorite elements to play with. I’m going to talk about all of these things in much more detail in future posts—I promise—but it’s important to bring them up now because they all play a role in the climax. The best climax for my story, in my opinion, is the climax where all of these elements come together.

 

Finally, I want to look at a couple real-life examples of climaxes that work for me. Again, I’ll try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible.

 

One excellent example of a climax that works is The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. The Night Circus contains so many different elements and characters, most of whom the reader cares about. It has a phenomenal setting, and the antagonist isn’t so much the main characters’ teachers, but the game their teachers have forced them to play. In the climax, all of these elements come together. The climax confronts the problem not only of the conflict between the game the two main characters are playing against each other and their love for each other but also the tension over the fate of the circus, and all those who are part of the circus, when the game is over. And then the problems are resolved in an unexpected and intriguing but ultimately satisfying way.

 

I am also a big fan of the climax of The Hunger Games—the first one. It brings into play the rivalry between Katniss and Cato; Katniss’s regret, grief, and horror over the deaths of the other tributes, some of them at her hands; the romance between Katniss and Peeta that cannot possibly have a happy ending—not if only one of them can go home; Katniss’s confusion about her feelings for Peeta; and finally her desire to be more than a piece in the Capitol’s games. Here again, the book confronts a seemingly impossible problem and solves it in a unique way.

 

Finally, I am deeply in awe of Marissa Meyer’s climaxes for her Lunar Chronicles series, especially the climaxes for Cinder and Cress (I haven’t finished Winter yet so no spoilers please). In each book, as she adds more and more characters to the mix, her climaxes become ever more complicated, and yet they all work. She is also able to make each of our heroes—by the end of the third book we have a pretty large group of them—take significant action that is necessary for the success of the group in the climax. And I could keep gushing.

 

I’m having trouble thinking of climaxes that don’t work for me, mostly because climaxes are so important to endings that climaxes that don’t work are usually tied to endings that don’t work, and I already ranted about those last week. An important distinction I feel I need to make, though, is that a climax can define a character’s growth, and do so effectively, even if the ending of the book then invalidates that growth (my biggest pet peeve when it comes to endings). For example, it is not so much the climax of Mockingjay that ruins it for me. It is the moment when Katniss votes for another Hunger Games. It is not so much the death of certain characters in How I met Your Mother that drives me nuts, but Ted’s decision when he finishes the story. On the other hand, it is the decisions made in the climax of Allegiant that don’t work for me, and that just bleeds over into the ending.

 

But climaxes I love to read—and so climaxes I love to write—are complex. The protagonist is facing seemingly impossible odds. The solution is not obvious, but it’s also not so complicated that no one could figure it out ever. The protagonist needs to make some kind of choice that ultimately reflects their character growth. Something may be lost, but something else must be gained. The climax brings every piece of the story so far together. For me, if a story is a journey, the climax is the moment that every dark and twisting step has led towards. It is the moment where the protagonist stands and faces down their problem and their antagonist. It is the moment when the protagonist stands and faces a choice, faces their fears and hopes and strengths and weaknesses, and overcomes all of it. It may seem backwards, given that everything must lead to the climax, to plan the climax before I plan the beginning or the middle or most of the specific details, but for me it works. For me, the climax is integral to the ending, and if I can’t begin without an end in sight and a solution to the problem, then I can’t begin without knowing how the protagonist will confront that problem in the climax.

 

And now that I have my ending and my climax nailed down, I can begin.

Journey to an Ending

November has arrived, which means once again, National Novel Writing Month is upon us. Unfortunately, I can’t count law school application essays towards my word count, so I have decided not to attempt to write fifty thousand words this month. Instead, I have set myself a much more reasonable goal of writing four short stories. But in the spirit of NaNoWriMo, I have been playing with my basic concepts of stories that need revising and thinking a lot about how I plot my stories—short and long alike. Back in July, I wrote about how I outline stories, but now I really want to get into the meat of how I plot stories. And as I was planning this series of posts, I realized that I usually start with the ending.

 

I have no idea if this is how other people morph their idea stews into cohesive stories, but this is what I do. I start with a basic concept—a main character, possibly an antagonist but probably not yet, and the problem that main character is trying to overcome. Then, with this idea in mind, I jump straight to the ending. It’s sort of like I’m planning a trip. I can’t decide what route I’m going to take if I don’t know what the destination is. If I know the destination, I can plan the path I will take—where I will start, where things will probably get difficult, where I will pause to rest and use the bathroom and refuel my car and myself, where I will turn aside to get lost in the halls of cobwebby museums full of rare fossils that might give the whole trip meaning. Maybe this metaphor has gone too far. I can’t even drive. Yet.

 

My point is, before I set pen to paper or, in my case, fingers to keyboard, I need to know where I’m going. Many times, I don’t start a story until I have a last line in my head.

 

This isn’t to say that the ending I come up with when I am first planning a story will definitely be the ending I write when I get there. It could happen that I reach the ending and realize that I have been driving at something completely different all along. In that case, I revise my ending and do what’s right for the story. Other times I reach my ending and everything feels just right, and I write that ending, but then when I go back to revise the story, I realize that while the ending is right for the story I want to tell, the beginning or the middle or the character arc isn’t fitting in, and I need to revise that. So it doesn’t always work out the way I want it to, but that is the joy of storytelling: it is an act of discovering the story as much as transcribing it for others to read. But even if I change the ending, if I don’t start writing with an ending in mind, the story will inevitably be a mess.

 

So when I have my basic premise for the story, when I have my main character and my problem, how do I come up with an ending? And how do I know if that ending is the right ending for the story I am telling?

 

For starters, I have a running list of endings I have loved and endings I have hated in my head. When I’m trying to come up with the right ending, I start there. What kind of story do I think I’m telling? What books or TV shows or movies have I recently read or seen that might be similar to that type of story? How did they end? Did it work? Why? Did it flop? How come? What kind of ending can I come up with that will be better than what they did?

 

Obviously, this strategy can only take you so far. You need to be careful that you’re not copying endings from things you like or deliberately doing the opposite of something you didn’t like. For one thing, straight-up copying is bad. Most of the time, your story is actually pretty different from the material you’re drawing on for your inspiration, so copying their ending won’t fit. If your story isn’t different from the material you’re drawing on for inspiration, you have an entirely different problem. (Believe me—I’ve been there. Revise. Revise now.)

 

But I digress. Using a particular ending as a model—a baseline—is how I usually start. I look at how that ending was constructed, why it works the way it does—or why it doesn’t work—and I see if I can produce the same effect. Once I have analyzed other people’s endings to my heart’s content, I look back at my own story. In very simple terms, I think about the ending as the solution to the problem the main character is facing (this is different from the climax of the story, where the main character confronts the story’s main problem). Then I start brainstorming all the possible solutions to the problem, including the totally ridiculous solutions that could never actually work, the solutions where everyone dies (I don’t think I’ve ever gone with this one), and the solution where the main character walks away and leaves the problem unsolved—or gives in to the problem in some way. Usually this brainstorming is all in my head, but sometimes I write it out. When I can come up with no other possible solutions, I think about my story fundamentally. What do I want the tone to be? What do I want the main character to learn (if anything)? What is the story I am telling? I start crossing off endings that don’t work. Usually, I’m left with just a few possibilities, and I pick the one I like the best (I usually have a feeling by this point).

 

I don’t always use this whole process. Sometimes the ending I’m looking for is perfectly clear to me from the start. But when it isn’t, going through this process helps me clarify a lot about the story that I may not have thought about before, and ultimately, it’s a better story for it.

 

Finally, I want to talk about what kind of endings I personally like and what endings I hate. I will do my best to stay spoiler-free.

 

My biggest pet peeve about endings is when all the character has learned, all their growth and change, is invalidated. Think the ending of Mockingjay or How I Met Your Mother. Usually, this ending feels so far off the rails to me that it ruins how I feel about the whole book or season, sometimes even the whole series. I have been following these characters for so long at this point, and now they’re making a decision that makes everything that came before not matter. I feel cheated. I feel like I want to throw the book across the room. Often, there are aspects of the ending I would have been okay with on their own, but when it’s all put together, it just doesn’t work for me. I have a visceral reaction to these endings. At best, I’m disappointed. At worst, I feel like I’ve wasted my time.

 

Another ending I despise is the ending where either the protagonist dies or all the people around the protagonist die and the protagonist is left on her own in a wasteland of mindless destruction and grief. My one exception so far to this dislike is The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, and that’s because Death is the narrator, so I knew it had to happen at some point. Most of my dislike for this type of ending comes from the fact that I am fundamentally an optimist, and this depressing view of the world just doesn’t jive with my sunny outlook on life. I know, I know. I kill characters mercilessly in my own stories, and a lot of the time I enjoy a good character death. But only when that character death serves a purpose. When you kill everyone just to show that the world is rough, it doesn’t work for me. Also, as in another popular young adult dystopian trilogy, when you kill the main character for no good reason other than she’s nobly sacrificing herself for someone else I really couldn’t care less about, I feel like I’m wasting my time. Because I’m not reading the story for the interesting world. I’m reading the story for the character. And that was a dumb decision!

 

My favorite kind of ending, on the other hand, is like the ending of the TV show Leverage or Kristin Hannah’s book The Nightingale. It’s what I’m hoping the ending of Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles series will be (we’ll see tomorrow!). My favorite kind of ending brings all the pieces of the story together. It solves the problems of the plot in a satisfying way. It makes me feel like the characters have grown and changed in ways that matter. It is the sort of ending that makes me want to turn right back to the beginning of the book and read it all over again. It doesn’t have to be happy, and it doesn’t have to solve everything. In my favorite endings, there is at least one piece left for the reader to ponder, one more story for the reader to imagine. And while I always love a nice happy ending, my favorite endings are bittersweet. Because what is a happy ending worth—what is any journey worth—without struggles and losses that must be overcome along the way?