It’ll never happen.
Here’s a good game to try when you are stuck at the very end of a Story, and feel yourself becoming unresponsive and inert. I suggested it recently to a writer I work with (okay, it was my wife) when she rang me from a writing retreat and was feeling in despair about the end of a second draft which she knew wasn’t right. Off the top of my head, I suggested she might try imagining as many different endings as she could, based on different kinds of traditional story types. I had no clue if this would be helpful, but the idea was simply to try and shake things up, get her unfixed on the ending she’d already written and was doubting, and switched into a more playful, creative mode.
Well, it worked! She rang a day later to tell me excitedly that she had written a new ending and finished the draft. And so, in case it may work for some other desperate writer out there, I thought I’d share the idea here. Along with some prompts linked to the structure of a few basic plotlines. Please go ahead and choose any other basic plots that come to mind. I’ve used six, but you can look up Basic Plots and find more. Remember, though, that the most useful option in this exercise, in terms of getting yourself unstuck, is to choose plotlines/genres that are far removed from the sort of story you are writing.
So. Here we go.
If your Story was a Romance, how would it end?
The Protagonist and their love interest find each other.
The Protagonist and their love, who have been striving all through the story to find each other, part reluctantly.
One makes a sacrifice for the other. One might sacrifice her life for the life of the other.
How would your Story end if it were a Comedy?
The Protagonist might succeed in a clever sidestep, evading consequences, and prove herself successful at a new venture or in a new role.
Protagonist’s eyes might be opened to a big misunderstanding when new information is revealed. Renewed peace and happiness prevail.
The Protagonist has new status and leads the other characters into a happy future.
How would it end if it was a Monster story?
The Protagonist faces the monster and kills it.
The Monster subsumes the Protagonist.
The Monster may be the Protagonist, or the system in which she lives.
The Protagonist flees the Monster forever, taking with her the people she wants to keep safe.
How would it end if it was a rags to riches story?
The Protagonist outstrips competitors and the existing powers that have aimed to keep her down, to achieve lasting success.
In the process, the Protagonist may have lost something they had before. They may have made a difficult sacrifice to gain riches.
How would it end if it was a Quest?
The Protagonist finds the person or treasure they have been seeking and returns Home.
What they have found might not have been where or what they expected.
The final tests in the story might be to do with getting the treasure home again.
How would it end if it was a Tragedy?
The Protagonist would be killed. Because of a wrong choice she made earlier. She needed to atone for this. She’s chosen not to and it catches up with her.
Feel free to explore other tradition plots to see what ideas these might bring up. And remember, the point is to plug in the specifics of your story, your characters, and their problems, your world, and re-imagine them in a new way, in order to unlock a stuck place. So be specific as you can in these newly imagined endings.
Onward!
And thanks to my wife for inspiring the idea.