Or is it?
All good things must end – including novels. At some point, every writer has wrap up the story and clarify mysteries. Some authors use a character to explain everything. Hercule Poirot gathers all living suspects in the drawing room and describes his deductive reasoning. Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort duke it out with wands and words several times, and Lord Voldemort gets to do most of the talking.
Those final soliloquies are so tempting to write. I had one in my WIP, until I realized it wasn’t necessary. The story still made sense when that dialog was cut. Changes could be made earlier in the novel to release clues. Now the ending focuses on the protagonist’s victory, not the antagonist’s defeat.
Prologues
2 minutes ago
1 comment:
So true, Ann. I really don't like those final tell-alls by the antagonist/villain. I have been assiduously avoiding that in my Work In Progress. In fact, I may go a little too far in that direction. There are two candidates for antagonists and they are both really tight-lipped. And there are things the protagonist and reader need to know that can only come from them. But I made an interesting observation last night that makes their silence more helpful than I thought. More on that at crit group, perhaps.
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