WHAT MAKES FOR A GOOD NOVEL ENDING?

{The ghost of George Bernard Shaw endorses it

And he wrote the introduction!}

http://www.amazon.com/THE-THREE-SPIRIT-KNIGHT-ebook/dp/B00AD94EQE/

And remember:

It is FREE FOR A LIMITED TIME!

For all of you weary souls furiously typing your fingers into nubs to finish your WIPs,

I thought the answer to that question might interest you.

I have just re-read my novel, THREE SPIRIT KNIGHT and its ending was important to me.

An inept ending can kill your otherwise great book. So what questions do you need to ask about your ending?

1. Does it resolve the core conflict of the novel?
 
This is the big "this is what my book is about" question that your protagonist has spent the entire book trying to achieve.

 This is a biggie for series books, as there's a larger story arc across multiple books. But the goal in that one book needs to be resolved.


 2. Does it satisfy the major questions posed in the novel?


You don't have to tie up all the loose ends, but there are probably a few major things in the story readers will want to know answers to.


3. Is this the ending most readers are hoping for?

 We've all read books where we wanted one ending, but the book ended another way. Let down the reader, and you can bet she or he will not recommend your book.


4. Is your last line memorable, summing up your entire novel?


The trick of a good ending, of course, is that it must capture and equal everything that has gone before.

The line “He loved Big Brother”

(from a novel that ends as masterfully as it begins) means very little until you understand exactly who Big Brother is. 

A great last line will have your reader putting down the book on her lap, murmuring, "Wow."  Guess what book she next recommends to her friends?


5.  A bad ending will unfailingly kill a good story. Is your ending such a one? 


 The ending is why the reader just invested their valuable time reading your story, and if it stinks, then they've wasted that time


6. Is there CHANGE at the end?


What makes a good ending hinges on the same things that make a good story. And the most important thing that makes a good story is change.

If nothing changes, nothing happens. And if nothing happens, you've got no story.


7. Do your characters save themselves or at least those they love?


If the U.S.S. Enterprise sails over the horizon to zap the bad guys in the nick of time, say good-bye to repeat readers.


8. Resonance is the new Closure. Does your ending have it?


One symbol, or moment, from the beginning of the story is repeated at the end. By the time the story is done it means something else completely.

The ending echoes the beginning. It gives a sense that the story has come full circle.


9. Does it establish a new normal?


The heroes begin a new life. Sometimes the farm boy returns to the farm. Sometimes the farm boy becomes king. Sometimes the hero decides to set out on a new journey.

It's a chance to show how the character has been altered by the journey, and what they're going to do with that new knowledge.

10. What are your favorite kind of endings?

The best endings leave me full, and remain with me for days.

The best books make me wish they never end, but I know they have to.  Which is why I enjoy series books.

That's the sort of ending I like. What about you?

TIL DEATH DO US START

This work is in the Public Domain in that it was published in the United States 

between 1923 and 1977 and without a copyright notice.

{A living mummy stalks the beautiful woman he believes 

is the reincarnation of his lover.}

The League of Five loved THE MUMMY.  

Now, you might think it had many sequels.  It may surprise you to find it did not.

It was followed with a series of Mummy movies, staring, not Imhotep, as the Mummy but Kharis:

THE MUMMY'S HAND (supposedly occurring in 1940), THE MUMMY'S TOMB, THE MUMMY'S GHOST, and the last THE MUMMY'S CURSE.

In a strange storyline that stretches the decades, THE MUMMY'S TOMB supposedly happens in 1970 and the hero and his sister are killed by the arisen Kharis.

THE MUMMY'S GHOST also occurs in 1970 and evil things happen to the heroic folks of THE MUMMY'S TOMB.

For the last film, THE MUMMY'S CURSE, although it was filmed in 1944, the action zips to the year 1995! 

And the setting is Louisiana where we lived!!

I and the other League of Five members fell in love with the animated mummy, Ananka.

In a breathtaking sequence, the mummy of Ananka (Virginia Christine) rises from the swamp 

after being partially uncovered by a bulldozer during the excavation. 

She immerses herself in a pond and the mud is washed away, revealing an attractive young woman.

I decided to tell my own story of an animated mummy girl-child, the Princess Shert Nebti.

She is first introduced in THE THREE SPIRIT KNIGHT at the novel's end.

Princess Shert Nebti is the bane of Samuel McCord in THE STARS BLEED AT MIDNIGHT and RED LAND, BLACK DEATH (yet to be written.)

And following the Universal tradition of visiting Mummy Vengeance on the children of the hero, 

I have the undead Princess seek revenge on McCord's son, Victor Standish in CARNIVAL OF THE DAMNED.

So here is a Halloween SNEAK PEEK at Carnival of the Damned, I call:

TIL DEATH DO US START

The mummy wrappings were alive, writhing around my body caressing me tighter and tighter.  I struggled in the moving golden throne, but it did no good.  

Closer and closer it flowed like mist towards the waiting arms of Princess Shert Nebti.  

She was almost dressed in an ancient Egyptian outfit that she must have thrown into the washer on the Hot cycle.

Her moon-white face creased in fine lines from the mummy wrappings that had smothered her for centuries, 

she smiled a thing of nightmares as I flowed nearer those outstretched fingers.

The horizon around me was impossible.  I mean, I knew Carnies got around, but to the Nile?

I looked out across the flowing yellow Nile that is the mother of eons and dynasties.

Beyond it lurked the menacing sands of the Libyan Desert, rolling and burning and evil, murmuring ancient mysteries. 

The red sun sank low, bringing the relentless chill of Egyptian dusk.

And as it stood poised on the world’s rim like that ancient god of Heliopolis—Re-Harakhte, the Horizon-Sun— hey, I read in those libraries I hid in - 

I saw silhouetted against the velvet chasm of night the black outlines of the Pyramids of Gizeh—

those age-crusted tombs that were heavy with a thousand years when Tut-Ankh-Amen mounted his golden throne in distant Thebes.

Then I knew that I was done with civilized sanity, and that I was about to taste the deeper mysteries of primal Egypt—

the black Khem of Re and Amen, Isis and Osiris.

Sin-black mists swallowed me, and then their lips parted to reveal the Sphinx.   I struggled silently beneath the spell of those terrible unseeing eyes. 

On the vast stone breast I could faintly make out the emblem of Re-Harakhte, for whose image the Sphinx was mistaken in a late dynasty.

And though sand covered the tablet between the great paws, I recalled what Thutmosis IV inscribed on it, and the hellish dream he had when a prince. 

The dream that had driven him mad.

It was then that the smile of the Sphinx unsettled the hell out of me, and made me wonder about the legends of subterranean passages beneath the monstrous creature, 

leading down, down, to depths none might dare hint at—

depths connected with mysteries older than the buried Egypt modern Man excavates, 

and having an evil relation to the lingering of abnormal, animal-headed gods in the ancient unhuman pantheon.

And with the thought of those depths, I found myself there – 

with Princess Shert Nebti not a foot away from me in the swirling dark mists.

An ocean of glistening wet scarabs surrounded her, scuttled up over her, and tittered back down.  

I swallowed hard as I saw she was chewing a few who had scurried too close to those thin lips.

A dank breeze moaned around us in barely understandable words:

“The subterranean nymph that dwells

’Mid sunless gems and glories hid—
The lady of the Pyramid!”

I forced a smirk, “Lousy poetry, Princess.”

She smiled with very sharp teeth.  “Just wait until you see our wedding night, Victor.”

I forced out the words.  "Looks like there's not another soul in miles."

"No, victim mine.  We are quite alone."

I laughed relieved, and she frowned to which I smiled wide, "I guess I never told you about my Death Scream, have I, Princess?"