Over the years I must have told my wife a thousand times, "Hey, I have a great idea for a story!" Then I'd proceed to tell her about said story and almost every time I began a sentence this way and told her of my latest story, I would end the conversation with, "But, I don't really have an ending. I'll have to work on that."
It's the story of my writing life.
Oh, setting up a story with interesting characters arcs and engaging situations--I do it all the time. I've even started many of these stories. I get all excited because in my mind these people are real and I know others will be able to relate to them, if they ever get from my imagination to a finished product. There's even a story I've written that's been stuck at forty thousand words for three years, and for the life of me, I can't imagine the ending. Once I get that down, I can finish it.
So now that you know all these details about my writing deficiencies, what happened to me this afternoon made me so happy. A few weeks ago I thought of an story that, I believe, would make a great film. I opened my Celtx program, created a new project, named it and began thinking about the characters and the situations. This afternoon while on a break at work I found myself alone with a pen and a blank notepad. I began outlining the story, something I don't do very often (as evidenced by my lack of finished projects...). I wrote down some of the thoughts I'd been considering since the initial idea struck me.
And then it happened. An ending--worthy of the rest of the storyline--came to me and I wrote it down. I thought, "Yeah, that'd make a nice ending, a nice way to tie up the whole thing without being too unbelievable." Then the more I thought about it, the more I liked it.
And so, I have the basic idea. I have the main characters--their motivations and fears. I still have a lot of research to do, but this one has something a lot of my ideas doesn't...an ending!
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