How to finish is an essential tool a writer must develop. Writing just does not finish by itself. We have to make it happen. There are literally thousands of ways to do this. We can improve our chances of finishing our work with a good writing process.
Many writers find themselves left alone in the wilderness to fend for themselves once they leave school. That’s not bad, if you can replicate what you did in school. If not, as is often the case, you need to create a process on your own.
How to finish is a process
Having a process goes a long way. Even with a solid process we still need to know, when is our work finished and how to finish it.
The short answer comes down to how we feel about the work itself. We are finished when the story jives with our soul.
So how do we learn how to finish?
We study the craft to learn about us. It starts with learning things like creating an outline, theme and a beat sheet. Then we learn the key beats of our genre so that that we know when all the beats are filled properly. We even ask ourselves the important questions such as What’s missing? A writer has to learn why a story or article or copy works or does not and why.
Finishing is why a study of the hero’s journey is important. How to finish is literally a feeling for most. The most detailed outline will not tell you what the finished work will look like, though it can help you get there. The search for that feeling is the reason pantser work the way they do. They look for that full steak and potatoes feeling when the book is done. They want that kind of satisfied feeling. We all do.
Satisfied or Not Satisfied
Leaving a journey hungry and unsatisfied is why we don’t like a given book or movie or show. We don’t use specific words and examples to nail down the reason. We tend to say that we don’t think it works. It is a feeling from our guts instead of a thought from our heads.
A work that fills us emotionally, even if we have never even heard of the hero’s journey, will leave us satisfied when we close the book, leave the theater unable to talk of anything else or endlessly rave to our friends about a broadcast.
When writing does not ring with the soul, we walk away somewhat pissed if not ranting to the gods themselves about how “It fell apart at the end. Something was just not there. I was not hooked. It was boring or just died at the end.” Nothing works for a story that is not grounded with our souls.
The corollary is also true.
We find the story “Grabbed me with line one. I could not put it down. It was a page turner. I was up all night. I hope they do a sequel.”
Well what can we do to get there?
Time to get in touch with your soul. No, you do not have to get religious, just become more aware of yourself. Humans are pretty much the same as far as what resonates with us. What works for one follows the same pattern for everyone else. Since everyone works much the same around the world, quite a lot of people have already found the pattern we all use instinctively. We have to just follow their maps.
The writer’s job is much easier than those who originally found the path through the mountains. Our starting point is to read up on the hero’s journey. For homework recommend starting with Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. It is meaty, so re-reading is going to happen. It helps. George Lucas owes a lot to having read it. I keep it on the book shelf next to my desk or on it.
You can dig down more with Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat and Sean Coyne’s The Story Grid What Good Editors Know. That should get anyone started on the process.
What’s a clinker?
We reach the next stage of our development when we learn to identify when we have a clinker.
Back in the old days of coal fired stoves, every batch of coal usually contained a piece or two that did not burn. Those were called clinkers. Over time some people amassed quite a pile of them, but most just threw them out.
The interesting thing is these deposits were often from either low quality fuel or the equipment was not burning the fuel right. At the end you were forced to remove the unburnable lumps and just start over with fresh coal. Writing can often work the same way and we wind up with a work that just does not work no matter how much heat and time we put into it.
The best way to solve this kind of issue is the same way they did clinkers back in the 1920’s, clean up your material and look at your process so that you can burn the material the right way.
Scale Your Process
My process is to look at the scale of the project first. It is easy to skip steps at any point, but I have found that the larger the project the more likely I am to treat it like I would a short story, article or any other short work. A larger project like a book or a blog is a more long term issue. The longer you have to work on a project the more time you furnish the inner critic for sabotage. It takes more time, discipline and endurance to win out over the long project. I have found that you need to address those needs in your attack plan.
When we don’t plan for the scale, we fail to put into play the resources we need from the start. At best we manage to fix things as we go along. At worst we fight a long and losing battle. This is one reason why many writers tend to fail midway or windup with another clinker lost in a drawer or gathering dust somewhere.
When we have a process that fits the type of work we are working on, we are much more like like a mechanical coal burning furnace. We reduce the chance of a clinker with a process that focuses our energies and mental focus to burn through our fuel, ideas, evenly enough to produce a solid work flow instead of an overheated process resulting in another clinker.
How to finish by outline
Let’s get this part out of the way. Everyone outlines. We just do this in one of three ways. We have writers, plotters, who plan all the details before writing. Some are discoverer writers, pantsers, who amass everything by instinct then cut away the unnecessary bits. The rest of us are a bit of both. No matter the method, we all outline. The only difference is just how much detail we create and time we use to draft it.
Even the most vehement plotter like Steven King will make an outline. His recipe is a rough draft (detailed exploratory outline), a draft edit and a polish. The closest to the plotter ideal and a real single drafter I have studied was Isaac Asimov. He is famous for running things through his brain before he sat down to write. His outline was in his head instead of on paper. What came out on the page was only what he had already figured out. Unlike King who writes an entire book in, as he puts it, as season, Asimov tended to work on multiple books at one time. That way when he reached a sticking point he could let his mind simmer a bit to find the right solution.
An outline by any other name
My inner pantser might not like calling his rough draft an outline but then he can fall back on terms like ‘discovery or zero draft’ to ease the angst. However, I have found that a simple outline like the foolscap method is not only a good way to stay on course and on schedule, even during a discovery draft, the time spent creating the single page outline adds thinking time that clarifies my vision before I write word one. More importantly it also lets me flush out the theme I need to tie everything together.
Even if I start without the theme to go with my foolscap outline and still not finding it till I am much closer to done, I have found I am further along in the process. It makes the manuscript work far better than I would have gotten otherwise.
How to finish is a personal choice
Outlines tend to be a personal choice so I recommend you try a few to find which ones you might find useful. I have tried several other methods. All gave me some insight into the process. They also gave me ideas to modify the process I use. Some of my more favorite outlines include the clothes line method favored by PG Wodehouse, the beat sheet Blake Snyder covers in Save the Cat, and the basic idea bullet point method I found used by journalists.
As a bit of a panster, I have tended to use the write a lousy “First Draft” method. It does work, but I have found that any method can be modified by ideas from the other methods. For instance a “Draft Zero” approach can use a time limit equal to the amount of time need for a planning and outlining to write the first draft. This prevents the panster from spending forever to get the idea on paper and stalling out.
I picked up is to use a “liquid outline”. Keep it flexible as you progress. Start with a bullet point outline of what you think will happen. Then write each chapter following it. Circle back every now and then to clean things ups and fix changes you find in the copy as you go forward. Revise the outline to fit the changes. This keeps you organized and on track. This process allows us to know how to finish while it allows you to remain free to make on the spot pantsing moves in your book.
What I use
Personally I have found the foolscap method coupled with a beat sheet to be the winner for me most of the time. I tend to use that for longer works. I also tend to like the journalist method for shorter things like articles.
A lot of finishing is all about becoming aware of yourself. The more aware you become, the more able you will be to know when things do not work.
Check out How to Finish Part 3 here.
