Post #266 August 2 2021 “The Last Page” In the previous post, we looked at how to write a compelling first page for your story. I introduced an acronym called A-T-P to keep you on track as to what’s important. But, clearly, the last page is just as important, if not more so. Below, I’ve included the last few paragraphs of my most recent sf novel, The Farpool: Plague, now available at Smashwords.com and other fine ebook retailers…. Below the waves, circling around the foundation and the outer vortexes of the SPACETRAIN farpool, Charley Meyer finally came to a hard decision. As fast as she could pull, she headed back to the breakwater and the steps up to the Paseo. On Calle Vortice above the promenade, she messaged for an autocab to Quito, using her Farpool pass as payment. Two hours later, now in the capital city, she left the autocab at Mariscal Sucre hyperport and purchased a hyperjet ticket to Bermuda. The flight lasted two hours, with two stops…Miami and New York. Once she had reached Bermuda’s L.F. Wade International at St Georges, she rented a jitney and sped over the hills and narrow twisting lanes of the island to Great Sound Beach, to a marina she knew about, other side of Hamilton harbor. From the jetty, ignoring the curious stares of outside diners and early evening strollers, she ditched her Farpool uniform and went full commando. She did a racing dive into the cold waters of the Sound and headed north, descending, sounding off the Mid-Atlantic Ridge off to her right to get her bearings. It had been awhile and she couldn’t run the risk of getting lost…or running into a Ponkti fleet assembling. Unerringly, feeling more and more that this was the right thing to do, she headed north by northeast, for the Muir seamounts. For Keenomsh’pont and what was left of Muir City, ready to man the barricades if she had to. Ready to defend her people from the coming onslaught. Okay, so that’s the excerpt. To me, your last page has to accomplish several things, most importantly including wrapping up the story in some kind of satisfying conclusion that makes sense, seems inevitable (after the fact), and secures all the loose ends. Many and maybe most last pages, or story endings follow one of three approaches. 1. Everybody lives happily after ever (the hero achieved his goal or failed magnificently) 2. The evil goes on 3. Some kind of big confrontation is coming (later, perhaps in another story) I believe most people would say the excerpt above fits #3 best of all. I did several horror stories years ago in which I used #2, pretty common in those types of stories. To be sure fiction and stories are emphatically not real life. Real life is messy, confusing, repetitious, mostly boring except for moments of terror and always unpredictable. Fiction is a condensed form of real life, where the operative term is verisimilitude…resemblance to the truth. In fiction, the storyteller guides what happens, and does so in such a way to bring matters to a believable conclusion, which hardly ever happens IRL. Having said that, the way a storyteller concludes his story has a lot to do with how his readers or listeners will remember and regard the story as they ponder it later on. “He got what he deserved.” “Wow, I’m glad I didn’t have to go through that.” “She was incredibly strong and brave…maybe there’s something I could learn from her example.” Decide ahead of time where you want the story to go and how you want it to end. Some writers do the story ending first and work backward (not me). Some insist they don’t know how the story’s going to end until they get to the end (don’t believe them). Once you have a general idea of how all the events are going to turn out, then you can script the narrative to arrive at that place in some kind of fashion that makes sense, is believable, and satisfying. I can’t emphasize that last sentence enough: if your ending isn’t believable and satisfying at some level, the whole story will seem a waste of time to your readers. The last page or the ending is the icing on the cake. It’s what everything in the story is working toward. In the past, we might have called it the moral of the story, the thing that’s important for the reader to remember. Give your last page some extra thought. Then steer the ship of your story on that course from the beginning, understanding there might be a few detours and storms along the way, and maintain that heading. Your story and your readers will be better off for it. The next post to The Word Shed comes on August 9. See you then. Phil B.