Embarrassing Endings

Confession time!

Confession 1: I am in a rush, so this will be quick
Confession 2: I missed a day at the weekend so will have to catch up!

Still sticking to random inspirations, I decided to run my eye down the list of other A-Z blogs, find one belonging to someone whose name began with an E, and be inspired by that. Luckily it didn’t take long –  I came across this blog: Workingmymuse by Eric.

I will forgive him for bracketing Benny Hill with Monty Python in his ‘F’ post (even though this is sacrilege and I’m crying, inwardly, on the Pythons’ behalf). I do so because he wrote this in his E post about writing endings:

I actually had a very embarrassing moment once (when I was in a writing class no less).  I had to finish up this short story I was working on (which incidentally I’m still revising), and when I got to the end, I just didn’t know how to end it.  So I went all melodramatic and wrote an ending that I was definitely ashamed of later.”

Endings that you’re ashamed of struck a chord with me because one of my juvenile story endings has become a family legend. And I still have the book with the story in -somewhere. I was only 7 or 8 when I wrote it and my teacher was very impressed by my idea (it was all about a trip to another planet and some aliens who, I think, were invited on board the spaceship). It was detailed. It had dialogue and plot. All sorts of stuff.

Green alien clipart monster with lots of long tentacles.

However! Like my son, who is a brilliant writer (I say that as a fact, not a gloat, because he will be – perhaps already is!- farrr better than me), I did sometimes have a problem getting my work finished in the allotted time at that age. So when the teacher had said, ‘right, that’s it, time to finish!’ I had panicked. All the plots and imaginative descriptions went out the window. Character motivation? Pah! I had aliens in my story, and back then we all knew what aliens did.

Hence my brilliant story ended thus:

‘The aliens turned. “We will eat you!” they cried.
And they did.’

Hah! Come on Eric – bring it on. I dare you to say that your ending was worse than mine! 🙂

3 thoughts on “Embarrassing Endings”

  1. I hate, HATE writing endings! I guess I don’t want to seal the fate of my characters, who are my friends through the journey that is their book!! It makes me a little sad … like I’m losing them?? Haha … Lizzy Ford

    Reply
    • Thanks:)
      I would love to put the A[-Z buttons on my blog, but reading about the intricacies of getting Java to work on WordPress, and being short of time, I wimped out. Might have a play next week though. HOLIDAYS! 🙂

      Reply

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