Everybody dies! Well, not all of them.
#thanksmarkruffalo
But yes, this is the part of the
outlining process where you spoil the story by writing out the beginning and
ending scenes. Keep in mind that these scenes do not have to be full chapters.
Really, they could be only half-a-page long, provided that the scene fully
defines what is supposed to be happening in that moment. For the sake of
outlines, we’ll be using these two scenes as a goal of where we want the story
to begin and to end. But why?
Think of writing like a river. The
beginning scene of the book is the shore you currently stand on, while the
ending scene of the book is the shore on the opposite side of the river.
Everything in between is the river itself. While you can estimate the length of
the river (in this metaphor, the word count), you don’t know how deep the river
is, what’s lurking beneath the surface, or how fast the river is flowing, but
you do see the stable, peaceful shore on the other side. Your goal is to make
it to that shore by whatever means necessary. This story is yours and yours
alone, so cross however you think is best, knowing that land is definitely in
sight.
Make sense? No? Well, don’t worry. It
will become clearer the more you write. Before you begin to write your
beginning or ending scene, refer back to your blurb to remind you exactly what
the story is supposed to be about. For the sake of this article, we will be
using Into the Dark as our example. From the article entitled Build-A-Blurb, we know
that the story can be summarized into a few sentences:
Kraig Jones is running out of meat to
feed his starving family. Each hunt into the darkness takes him further from
his home, wife, and daughter. Worse, Kraig doesn’t even have a lantern to guide
the way back. The light is gone. All that remains is darkness, predators, and
cultists who unleashed the monster that ate the sun.
The second step is writing the beginning
scene. Again, this doesn’t have to be a full chapter. Just 300-1,000 words
describing what’s going. From the article entitled The Idea Machine, we
have our first scene:
Kraig Jones was lost.
The fact that he didn’t know the way home scared him more than this dark forest
and its unseen predators—humans among them. While he could survive those
threats, being lost was an entirely different matter. His family was counting on
him to return. Without him, they’d starve to death.
If the pillagers
didn’t find them first.
The image was too
horrifying to think about, but more probable with each passing moment. Which
way was he supposed to go?
With a bloody game bag
over his aching shoulder, Kraig stared up at the stars, trying to remember
which one to follow. The North Star shined brightest and was to his left, so
Kraig was facing east, where the sun should have been this early in the day.
Not that there was day
anymore.
Surviving wouldn’t
have been a challenge with light—any light. He could have used it to look for
marks he’d made on trees or even his own footprints. But lanterns were a danger
to use in the open where anybody else could see them. It was an easy way to get
killed.
Yet, Kraig could
stumble around in the dark for hours, even days, without finding home. What
other choice did he have?
Kraig lit his lantern,
and the wolves started howling…
While this isn’t a terrible long opening
scene, we know exactly where we’re going with this. Kraig Jones runs through
the forest with his light. The wolves run after him, though he has no idea how
close they are. Kraig finally finds a path that begins leading him down some
familiar trees and brooks so he extinguishes the light and waits for the wolves
with guns drawn. He kills one of the wolves and the others scamper off, and
Kraig thinks he’s in the clear until somebody shoots at him. Kraig then gets
into another fight with a hunter, kills him, and makes it home, where he
pretends like it was an easy day…
See? It really is that simple. So, now
we need to write the ending scene—spoiler alert.
We know what you’re thinking, what if
you don’t know what the ending should be? Simple answer: you actually do
know. Think about all of the stories you’ve ever read, watched, and heard—there
are only two types of good endings. Happy ending or sad ending. Which do you
want yours to be? If you choose a happy ending, the problem is resolved, the
protagonist wins, and everybody lives happily ever after. Yay! If you choose a
sad ending, determine how the protagonist failed. Is it his/her own fault or is
your protagonist simply outmatched by the antagonist? Use these types of
questions to guide you to what you want to write. Then… write it. Yeah,
not so hard, is it?
Let’s return to Into the Dark. Despite
being a survival-horror/thriller book written for an adult audience, we want a
happy ending. We really don’t have a reason as to why—simply because we feel
like most survival-horror stories try to be too edgy with a final gotcha! moment
where the protagonist loses at the last second. We’d prefer to just keep the
ending sweet, simple, and uplifting.
So, what does a happy ending mean for Into
the Dark? Well, that the cult is defeated, the monster dealt with (probably
a devilish deal made to get the sun back), and that Kraig is reunited with his
family. How are we going to do that yet? Simple answer: we don’t know yet.
Right now, all we care about is that ending. Quite literally, after spending
the entire book in the dark, we want him to step out into the light. So, that’s
what our ending scene will be.
Bleeding from a dozen
cuts and the deep wound just above his heart, Kraig stumbled from the burning
hotel of the Cult of the Sun only to be blinded by a sight he never thought
he’d see again—the sunrise.
The sun had risen over
the trees and the hills to his north. Finally, he could see the withered trees
and the plants. The trees, somehow, were still alive but all of the undergrowth
had withered away and died. And yet… Life remained. Birds chirped, wolves
howled, and in the distance, people cheered.
It was the second-most
beautiful sight Kraig had ever laid eyes on.
Trudging from the
cliffside and back down toward the wood, Kraig followed the marks on the trees
that he had made what seemed like a lifetime ago, but may have only been
yesterday. The farther he walked, the faster he walked, and as Kraig past the
familiar streams near his woodland home, he was running. He could see where
he was running. Who would have ever thought he’d be grateful for that?
Kraig sprinted as he
saw smoke rising from his home’s chimney and ran up the steps. He tried to open
the door and found it locked. “Honey? It’s me! It’s Kraig! Open the door?”
“Kraig?” his
wife asked from the other side of the door. She undid the three locks and
through the door open, only to step back out of pure shock. “Is that… the sun?”
“It is,” Kraig said,
stepping across the threshold and embracing his wife and his little daughtered
tottered over to him and wrapped her arms around his leg.
“Oh my God,” his wife
whispered, looking over his shoulder and out the door. “It’s so beautiful.”
“It is,” Kraig said
without turning around. To him, his family was the most beautiful sight—the sun
simply made it easier to see them. “It sure is.”
Awwwwwwww. Isn’t that adorable? Especially
for genres that pride themselves on sad or ambivalent endings, we prefer happy
ones. But the real question becomes, what do you do with these scenes. Simple.
Now you write your summary.
