Wow, congrats to both of them.
Uncle Jim, I have a question on endings. From memory, you've said three things about them (that I've read anyway):
1) Don't abandon your characters (e.g. everyone dies), because it comes across as just abandoning them. It's like you just bored of writing so you decided to end the story. The good guy nearly always wins. Readers want that.
2) Have the story end at the climax. Anything after the exciting bit is just boring. Write the story, and then delete the last page if it doesn't add anything.
3) Have the story end when everyone is going to go for pizza.
I'm writing a short story (I should probably write this in the short story forum) and for the story #1, #2 and #3 seem to conflict with each other. When this happens, is this a sign of a bad story?
Here's an attempt at a brief synopsis of the story:
Millenia ago society was quite advanced, a bit more then our own. Something happened and anarchy ruled. Over the millenia people forgot about the olden times and a medieval society formed once more. Old ruins were discovered and the King created a secret society to research the ruins and try to learn from their technology and recover any working stuff.
The main character Theron, a woodsman and part-time tax collector for a small town is forced to escort a strange man from the King to a place in the woods that no beast or plant enters. He has to do it if he wants to keep his job as tax-collector. He does so and the "sorcerer" pulls out some old technology and tells Theron a little about his true identity. He steps into the clearing and promptly dissapears. After several hours Theron enters the clearing and falls to the ground, when he lands on it he is "transported" to some old building with no windows. He walks through it and finds several animals that have been experimented on, and are now part animal-part machine. He finds the sorcerer who has began to be mutilated himself.
The sorcerer explains that metal-men have began to steal animals all over the kingdom, and that this is the first time they dared to enter their lair.
Now I'm a bit uncertain as to how to end it. My first thought was to have the sorcerer be attacked because he attempted to free one of the villagers who had been stolen in the night (I had a fair bit of foreshadowing for that) and to get Theron to leave, have the sorcerer tell him that the roof in the first room is only an illusion (which is why nothing grows in there, everything falls to the ground). And to go to his saddle-bags and pull out an explosive and throw it into the entrance to block the entry/exit. Tell Theron the metal-men will ignore him if he doesn't try to destroy anything and if he makes it out before night (the metal-men are robots so their hunting program doesn't kick in until nightfall). I was going to have Theron escape, constantly being worried about the time, and block the entry-way and ride back to town to tell the mayor what happened so the mayor can tell the King.
The problem with that ending is that isn't really the ending. The mayor is likely to insist that Theron go with him to the King to tell the King what happened, and then the King is likely to send some more "sorcerers" to destroy the other entrances in the woods (there's quite a few), and the metal-men are then likely to retaliate, etc, etc, etc. The story continues to grow quite a bit longer. He isn't really going out for pizza at the ending I suggested. A war is likely to occur.
So I thought of a new ending. The metal-men attacked the sorcerer before the sorcerer did anything because they're designed to do this if any beasts enter their lair. Theron tries to escape, but if the sorcerer, whose well trained couldn't escape, neither can a simple woodsman, so he's attacked and dies/mutilated.
But that's an "everyone dies" ending, which is no good.
In books I tend to ask "what next?", which is what I've done with this short story. I keep asking "what next?", "what next?", "what next?" so the story never ends. And I really only wanted to write a short-story in the first place (I've been avoiding writing the story because I don't think it's that great, but I do remind myself that yes, I can write crap. As long as I write). So how do you suggest I work out how to end it? Or how do you suggest I end it?