Cameron MacKenzie
HOW TO NOT END A STORY
When I get to the end of a story I’m writing – especially if it’s a long and complicated story – I always want to really nail the landing. I want to stick a post in the ground on the last word and say ‘There, dammit! It’s done!’ I bet we all do.
But when I can feel the story heading toward the finish, when I look at the screen and start to get the sense that, before I reach the end of this page, the door of this world is going to close, I start to panic a little – and that means, I start to think. But thinking at this stage is deadly for the story. When I start to think while I’m writing, I start to try to say. I want to say what’s been going on and why it’s important. I try to explain the story, or the meaning of the last scene, or otherwise write something to tie everything together with a little bow that wraps it all up as a present for the reader. And that sucks.
A story – a good story – has a life of its own, and it’s doing and saying things over which the author has no conscious control. To try to wrest a story into submission, especially in the last paragraph, is insulting to the story, and to its readers. That’s all to say that, when I think I’ve finished a piece, it’s really common for me to study those last few lines for a while. I’ll ask myself if I’m trying to do too much. I’ll ask myself if there’s any real energy in those final words, or are they just dangling there as an ‘end.’ Then, I’ll cut them.
I’ll read the last page again, and I usually like it better without the ending I was self-consciously trying to make. I’ll look at that last page and try to figure out where the emotion really peaks, and I’ll try that point as the new ending. It doesn’t always work, but when it does it makes me feel like a pro, because I think a story should open at the finish, and release the reader in a way that allows that final emotion to flare into life while the intellect is stymied, frustrated, confused, bereft. Those are the stories I love to read. Those are the stories I try to write.
Cameron MacKenzie’s work has appeared in Blackbird, Salmagundi, CutBank, and The Michigan Quarterly Review, among other places. His novel, The Beginning of His Excellent and Eventful Career was called “original, poignant, brutal, and beautiful” by Kirkus Reviews, and The Rumpus called his story collection River Weather, “riveting.” His collection of flash fiction, Theories of Love, is forthcoming from Alternating Current Press. You can find Cameron MacKenzie online at his website.
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