Cheating the Reader

I've just finished reading The House at Midnight by Lucie Whitehouse. I was gripped for most of the book, avidly turning the pages, waiting for the denouement which was surely going to happen. I expected high drama, possibly violence - not graphically described, it's not that sort of book, but I reckoned at least one of the characters was going to die.

The pages diminished, my anticipation grew, we were obviously near the end and...then the author let me down. I don't want to give away the plot but the narrator isn't present for any of the dramatic events at the end. She gets told about them. What????? Was that what I read 374 pages for, to hear about the ending second hand?

Well. I was that disappointed. And it's a shame, because Lucie Whitehouse writes beautifully, and is good at creating tension. Up until the ending, I'd have recommended the book to anyone, but now...because of the ending I would only recommend with caveats. I wrote earlier about how the ending, as the last thing we read, colours our memory of the story or novel and The House at Midnight is a good example of a novel falling at the final hurdle.

I just wish she'd got her narrator there to witness for herself what happened. Not only that, but the newly-revealed baddie has run off and is never heard of again. No comeuppance, no final show-down - the characters left standing have to guess what happened.

As writers we ask people to give up their precious time to read our stories. The least we can do is give them a satisfying ending. I reckon that means three things:

1. It's narrated first hand, preferably by the main view point character.

2. Not all the endings need to be tied up, but the big plot questions need some form of resolution.

3. Promises made during the course of the story should be delivered.

In this case, my prediction was accurate. The ending was dramatic, was violent, and someone died. If only the narrator had been there to experience the events...

The Importance of a Good Ending

Reading the shortlisted competition entries for the Wells Short Story Prize has been a real pleasure. There's been such a variety of subjects I've never once felt, ho hum, I've read this before and choosing the prize winners is going to be difficult. Right now, no one story stands out and I'm in a bit of a quandary.

But the competition is for a short story, and one of the essential elements of a short story is that it is a satisfying tale. And that means the ending has to work. The beginning sets it up, hopefully in such a way that I'm enticed into the world of the short story, and then the ending rounds it off so I put the story down with a satisfied 'ahhhhh'. Ideally what happens is something I don't see coming, but when it happens is exactly right that it couldn't have happened any other way.

What is clear to me that of the twenty of so stories I've read, well written though they are, more than a handful end suddenly as though the word limit was reached and the author just cut the story off. Others just fizzle out. A couple have been obscure enough for me to have to read again to check that I've understood what's gone on.

The ones that stand out in my mind are the ones where the ending is spot on. Think about it - the ending is the last bit you read, of course it's the part you remember most clearly. I haven't made my final decision yet, and everything could change, but I think the deciding factor is going to be not the beauty of the phrasing, nor the cleverness of plotting, but the aptness of the ending. I'm looking for, not the X Factor, but the Ahh Factor.

PS And not a single one has featured a domestic pet, so - phew - no personal factors to cloud my judgement.