I’ve written the last scene. It’s over. Lyra has completed her journey, finished her quest.
There’s only a small, tiny, itty-bitty, little problem that is stopping me from celebrating: I haven’t actually written anything in between the opening and the closing.
My book coach Jennie has me writing the final scene, the one that best demonstrates how Lyra has changed, grown and developed over the course of my story.
Uh, yeah. Right.
It’s not that I don’t know how Lyra changed, grew or developed–Jennie had me working on a brief outline to ensure I thought about that before I started writing–it’s just that I have no detail about how to reflect those changes.
In drafts and novels past, I’d start writing and see where my story ended up. Go back through these blog posts and you’ll see how I struggled with what Lyra’s ending should be. I’d change it up, then have to go back and rewrite earlier scenes so the trajectory made sense. From one scene to the next, I’d sit and think about what should come next. For sure when I started, I had no idea where I’d end up.
Jennie proposes a different strategy: Know where you’re going before you start. That’s not to say you can’t change the destination en route–nor does mean you need to take the initially-planned path–but at least you have some idea. Here’s the obvious analogy: I’d like to go south. If you don’t know where in the south (Florida? the Carribbean? Mexico? The Cook Island in the South Pacific?) you’ll have a harder time trying to determine the best way to get there. (I dare you to drive to the Cook Islands). You’d save yourself a lot of time and effort if you looked into flights first. It’s true you can’t anticipate what you’ll encounter on your way, but if you’re not in a rush (ah, there’s the rub), then enjoy the journey.
But you know what the problem with writing the ending is now?
It’s hard.
Instead, I say, why do today what you can put off until tomorrow! After all, it’s the ending, and I’m still not sure about the beginning…
It’ll come to me later, I told myself. Jennie is being unrealistic if she expects me to know now my brilliant plot twist that will reveal to Lyra how she grows as a character. I didn’t know that Katniss, from The Hungers Games (spoiler alert!), would try to outsmart the Capitol by pretending to eat the poisonous berries, thereby guaranteeing no victor for the Games, until the end. Couldn’t it be the same for Lyra? I could wait until the end to find out…
Only, Jennie assures me, the writer is actually supposed to know what happens. It’s true you’ll read about famous authors who have done the opposite–and I don’t dispute their experience. Except, I tried that. See my book in the bookstore yet? Yeah, me neither. So that strategy, successful as it may be for others, ain’t gonna work for me.
Still, with Jennie’s deadline approaching, I grew more sullen and irritable. This is a waste. I can’t do this. I don’t know how the plot is suppose to reflect Lyra’s development. It just is, with this very cool thing that she’s going to discover. It’s the plot twist that the readers will never see coming, but, upon re-reading will be as obvious as the sun. Only… what is it?
I was *this* close to emailing Jennie and saying I couldn’t do it.
And then a thought… and some research–was my idea even scientifically reasonable–even in a world where someone lives with phoenix cells? No matter the world a writer creates, it has to abide by certain logic. Lyra’s world runs very much like our own–only more scientifically and medically advanced. But still, would my idea work?
I’m talking blood and viruses and antibodies and cures. I’m no scientist (bless his heart, my Grade 12 physics teacher, upon meeting me at my 10-year high school reunion, said he remembered me. “Science wasn’t your interest,” he said politely. My Grade 11 chemistry teacher, upon learning I wouldn’t pursue chemistry in what was then Grade 13, said “Good.”) Since I never took advanced biology, (a relief to all the biology teachers at my high school, no doubt), I was at a disadvantage.
Thank goodness for Google.
(Note to writers: have a clear explanation ready when your significant other innocently looks over your shoulder, trying to show genuine interest in your work and sees you googling treatments for life-threatening viruses.)
But I got my answer. I have my plot twist.
It’s true it may change, and I am loathe to share it with you now in case a) it changes and then I’ll look really, really stupid for believing something I thought was a brilliant idea was, in fact, stupid, or b) it works so well I don’t want to give away the end so you can enjoy the suspense of the novel when it is in bookstores. 🙂 )
Regardless, Lyra has learned what she needs to learn.
The End.
(As soon as I go back and fill in the middle…)