End! EEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNND!!!

Hey internet!

Very brief updates about Ze J Larkin:

I will be moving into my own studio apartment. WOO! Possibly soon. Probably I will be sleeping on my mom's couch for a little while if it takes the apartment complex's people a while to process my paperwork.

I am rewriting the entire climax of Ze Book. After I added a new arc, which put me 10 days behind schedule, I got to the climax and realized it made. Zero. Sense. But after much rage-at-self for being enemy-of-self, I have figured all that out and just need to really crush myself against the grind stone and make it happen. Ze Book is much better for it. Trust me.

Ze Book will be in the hands of official Beta readers in November. Woo! Excited! Concerned! Excited! Woo!

And Now Onto Le Blog!!

Let's talk endings.

As I said above, I'm currently reworking the climax of Ze Book. The final chapter remains more or less the same, but the big BAM! THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED! moment is completely different. And I have spent a lot of time thinking lately about novel endings.

I've heard it said (okay, read it written) that it is the ending, more than any other part, that a reader will walk away thinking about. It is the ending of a book that determines what a reader will say to their friends about the book. The characters can be awesome, the prose can be ridoncidonculous, but the ending is the thing that weighs on their mind.

This makes sense, of course. If the punchline of a joke is lame, are you going to walk away praising how well it was told? If the climax of a film is the weakest of weak sauces, are you going to walk away talking about how sweet the filmography was?

Maybe. If you're one of those people.

But then, what makes a good ending?

Personally, I like to see the characters struggle. I don't want to read "AHA! And then we won." I want to get concerned. I want to not be able to stop turning pages, even if I'm pretty sure I know how things are going to go down.

I also like to be surprised. As many novels as I've read, it's not often that that happens any more. I've become tragically genre-savvy. Even the books I've loved lately, I knew pretty much exactly what each person was going to do and what role they were going to play before their introductory paragraph was over. But--and oh boy, here is where I get choosy--the surprise can't be the kind of thing you'd only know if you were, say, the author. So I want an 'Aha!' moment, but not a 'Duh!' moment, but not a 'Yeah, whatever' moment.

Picky picky.

What else? I like bookend endings. Themes that tie the ending back to something that happened way at the beginning. It makes me giggle. I don't know.

I like endings that are concise. Boom! BAM! Whammo! Brief conversation. The End.

I saw a movie recently that had the climax about thirty minutes before the ending. It also had thirty minutes of introduction before the movie started. I was screaming at the screen (the theater housed only my sister and I) "END!! EEEEEEEENNNNNND!!!"

On the other hand, a story shouldn't just...end. Boom! BAM! WHAtheend.

No.

Also? I like bittersweet endings. Heavy on the sweet. But it's hard for me to buy a story where EVERYthing is wrapped up neat and pretty with zero loss or quarter given. Life is compromise. A good story is a peek into someone else's life.

One of the best endings I've ever seen?

Granted, this clip skips a great deal of the other issues that are closed up beautifully (until the second movie rips everything all up to shreds for no reason other than to create some pointless drama AAAARGGH WHY DISNEY WHY) but this film, which happens to be on my top five list of all-time favorites, hits all of the points I listed above.

So what about you guys? What do you like in endings? What do you hate? What's an example of one of your favorite endings evar?

Peace out!

-J

Avast!

Hey folks, long time no post. Thou wouldst not believe the madness that the last couple of weeks have been. Perhaps I will post about it, perhaps not, but really...I don't think half of you would believe me. And I'm pretty sure there's only one person who regularly reads this thing. The math is not good.

Anyway, in this post, I figured I'd write about Pirates of the Caribbean!

Yes, Please.

As many of you may know, there's a new PotC film coming out soon. As many of you may not know, I saw the first film about seven times in theaters (and when I got it on DVD it was practically on infinite loop). I've been into pirates since I was knee-tall to a grasshopper.

I like pirates even better than ninjas, and I was second only next to my brother in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fanclub.

I like pirates even better than knights and the medieval ages, both fictional and historical, and I wrote almost every single one of my 'choose your own theme' high school papers on medieval-themed stuff (usually on their methods of criminal punishments).

If I ever get married, this will probably be my wedding cake.

In fact, the only thing that challenges my interest in pirates is the film noir, hardboiled pulp fiction stuff, and that's what I'm working on in hopes of founding a career in it! I celebrate National Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19, for those of you not in the know), I introduced myself as Jenni Hawkins in first grade, and my favorite ride in Disneyland is...well, you see where I'm going here.

So Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, was like filmographic manna from heaven to me. It had everything an awesome movie should have: memorable characters, tragic and/or hilarious backstories, action, adventure, intrigue, mystery! It even had a strong female lead, which is not really typical for piratey goodness (in spite of historical examples of pirate chicks crushing various things that ought not to be crushed, but that's a topic for another day).

It was the pirate film to end all pirate films, and somewhat unusually, it gained a massive following to reward its awesomeness. I was beside myself with glee when I heard about the sequel, and went to the midnight release all dressed up in pirate regalia with my friends, ready to be wowed.

This pretty much sums it all up.

Instead of just focusing on sword fights, demon ships, and the potential eternal damnation of Jack Sparrow's soul, they decided to throw in a love triangle. Because, y'know, nothing draws you closer to a character than watching them stab their most beloved partners in the back for no apparent reason at all.

There was so much that went right in this movie. But the focus they put on this ridiculous development soured everything around it. Like putting a slice of moldy cheese in the middle of a really, really, ridiculously good sandwich. (Also, I haven't eaten breakfast or lunch yet. I should probably get on that.)

But there was still hope...sort of. The movie had still been a gorgeous feast for the eyes. There had still been pirates in it. So maybe the thing between the three leads had been tossed into obscurity...surely they would fix it in the end!

Or...you know...not. Pirates 3 came out and the special effects were ridoncidonculously good. Jack was still Jack...ish. Elizabeth ended up as a Pirate King, which was so incredibly cool. The wedding mid-battle was so unfreaking believably hardcore piratical, I couldn't blink throughout the sequence. The problem was, the writers had already thrown the characters into the same lot as the villains inasmuch as what they were willing to do to get what they wanted. So...the 'good guys' win. Yaaaay?

Four out of five pirates agree that bad decisions were made for the sake of plot idiocy.

It took me a long time to get the bad taste out of my mouth. Not that it should really surprise me; tons of films with unexpected (or even expected) sequels wind up deviating from the path they landed on in the last ending rather than actually working off of what they accomplished. Maybe it's the snobby writer in me, but it drives me nuts (which reminds me of a great pirate joke).

So when I heard about PotC 4, I was hesitant, then excited, then more hesitant. They've done away with Will and Elizabeth (partially because their actors were also disgusted with the route their characters took, according to various hushy sources). That eliminates the dumb love triangle. But instead of bringing back the really cool pirate chick from the first film (Anna Maria, based off two of the most well known historical pirate ladies) they decided to bring in Penelope Cruz for Jack's love interest. The idea, as I understand it, is that she's Blackbeard's daughter. Meh...

Am I going to see this new movie? Most definitely. Will it disappoint? I don't know...I'm going in with really low expectations, given the track record. Which usually results in liking a movie better than you would have if you expected it to be unbelievably good.

And that's all I have to say about that. I'll come back with another Pirate Report once I've seen the movie. 'Til then, drink up, me hearties. Yo ho.