Hey everyone! You all know about that feeling when you read a book that you so far really like? It’s a world of color, imagination and thrill, you sometimes don’t know when to stop reading!
…but then the ending falls flat.
Yeah, not a lot of people would want an ending like that in their books, movies, webcomics, WHATEVER! But sadly, there are some works like that that do end up like that.
One of these works that does this is the Amulet series by Kazu Kibuishi, the main reason why I’m even writing this blog in the first place. The series is beautiful, the scenes are well drawn, the characters have very good designs, and the plot is really good!
…until the last book came out. It was terrible. The plot just dropped out of the sky and landed flat.
So, what causes stories to either have bad endings or (even worse) to have a bad plot in the first place?
Well, there are many reasons why writers usually struggle in their works, usually something to do with the characters or the world-building in the plot. I’ll just skim through some reasons, as they can be pretty much anything.
- The main character is a Mary Sue (or if male, Marty Stu), as the writer seems to like the character a little too much. This removes the characters flaws and doesn’t create any tension or conflict for the character to struggle with, causing the character to not learn anything at the end of the story.
- The main supporting characters seem to have disappeared into the background, and have instead become minor characters instead of the main ones*. The characters either become insignificant to the plot or “accidentally” cause problems for the hero(es) in a last-ditch attempt by the author to make them significant again. The characters can also leave for a certain reason if the author doesn’t want to kill them off.
- The story’s genre changes. For the first few books, it’s a realistic fiction, but then either someone is revealed to be a robot or a demon. Pick your poison!
*a good example of this is a book called Remy Sneakers and The Lost Treasure, the second and final book of the Remy Sneakers series by Kevin Sherry. The first book was pretty good, with a cast of lovable characters and an ending that ends with a cliffhanger to the second book. But in that second book, the spotlight seems to be on the main character a little too much, as the supporting characters simply followed him mindlessly and their own personalities were never expressed in the process, which is why I hated the ending.
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If you are now concerned with the way you write now after I pointed all of this stuff out, worry not! A YouTuber called Abbie Emmons makes videos of how aspiring writers can improve their work, giving advice of what to do and what not to do. You can access her channel here.
Seeya later!
– Nova S