"Every story should have a beginning, middle and end", goes the famous quote. And if any of those three elements aren't up to scratch, you've lost your reader. A bad beginning means the reader is not hooked and the book is put gently back on the shelf. A bad middle means the reader's interest is not sustained, resulting in a big yawn and the book being somewhat disappointedly put aside. And, worst of all, a bad end results in either a groan, cry or angry scream and the book is violently thrown at the nearest wall. I speak from experience. I will reveal the book shortly. This fundamental principle of the three elements of storytelling applies to many art forms: novels, poetry, movies ... and of course music. When all three are achieved to perfection then whatever it is, be it book, movie or music, is almost guaranteed to be remembered.
So, time for some examples, both positive and negative. Let us begin with the aforementioned book (plot spoilers follow), which ended its poor life with a broken spine at the foot of my bedroom wall. The unfortunate novel is Jodi Picoult's "My Sister's Keeper", which, to my disbelief, won a rave following around the world and was turned into a movie. It is even regarded as her best book by many people. In this book, a young girl, Anna, is intentionally conceived, through in vitro fertilization, to be a donor for her older sister, who suffers from leukemia. Throughout her childhood years, Anna has had many operations in order to keep her sister alive, and eventually, seemingly fed up, decides to sue her parents for the right to her own body, so that she can opt out of donating her kidney. This thorny moral issue, viewed from many angles, is the central premise of the book, and is sufficiently gripping to sustain the reader's interest throughout. So far, so good - until we hit the final couple of chapters. As with many of Jodi Picoult's novels, a tense court case results in a controversial verdict - in this case, Anna wins and is no longer legally required to aid her sister. To me this was highly satisfying and an appropriate conclusion to the case, given all the arguments. Then, Picoult makes her appalling mistake - in a shock twist, Anna is killed in a car crash, resulting in her kidney being donated to her older sister anyway. After all that, after 500 or so pages of compelling debate and of really warming to the characters, Picoult completely cops out, chickens out, wimps out of following the implication of the verdict through to its organic conclusion (the older sister's death) and instead delivers the most cheesy, pathetic, sob-into-the-hanky ending you could possibly dream of. In another twist it is also revealed that the older sister in fact told Anna to sue her parents in the first place, because she didn't want Anna to go through with the kidney donation; thus the ending is doubly outrageous because it betrays both main characters. In a slightly happy footnote to this sad tale, the movie version altered the book's ending, and concluded properly, with the older sister's death. I say 'slightly happy' footnote, because the rest of the movie was plain awful.
So, what's an example of a really satisfying end? Let me use a movie to illustrate: The Vanishing, a Dutch film made in 1989. In this movie, a young couple are travelling through Europe and stop at a gas station for a break. The woman, Saskia goes in to get a couple of drinks while her partner, Rex, waits. Saskia never comes back; she has mysteriously vanished, and no one knows what has happened to her ... apart from one man; her abductor, Raymond. We learn of her abductor right from the beginning, though we have no idea what he's done to her, or whether she's dead or alive. Rex begins, without any leads, an obsessive search for the truth. Three years later he's still clueless, but can not let go. At this time, Raymond, the abductor, contacts Rex, admitting that he's the one who took Saskia, and asking to meet Rex to explain. Eventually they do meet, and after outlining how he took Saskia and why, Raymond says that he will only reveal what happened to her if Rex drinks some drugged coffee: when he wakes up, Raymond promises, he will learn the truth by experiencing it himself. But if he doesn't drink it, he will never know the truth. Rex drinks the coffee, because he simply has to know - he is prepared to take the consequences, whatever they may be, for the love of Saskia. You'll have to see the movie to find out what happens when he does indeed wake up, but it's one of the best endings I've ever seen: completely truthful to the characters and the themes of the movie. Like a Shakespearean tragedy, the characters are undone by their own flaws, and in Rex's case, his obsessive love propels him to his fate.
So, I guess in my opinion, a good ending is one that remains true to the beginning and middle that came before it. It stays in character, it is organic and natural. It doesn't cheat, take shortcuts or leave you with a bad taste in your mouth.
Music is exactly the same, and here we come to the reason I started this blog. I often find that composers use their best, most beautiful and most powerful ideas for the first movement and slow movement of a large scale piece, and then fizzle out at the last movement, tossing off something trite in a seeming effort to get the piece finished. For me a good example is ... shock, horror ... the Mendelssohn violin concerto. The last movement just doesn't cut the mustard for me. The piece is so well known that you couldn't imagine anything else as the third movement, but still, it seems to me a superficial movement compared to the first two. I feel similarly about the third movements of Mozart's violin concertos, although I just re-listened to number four, and didn't feel so strongly against the last movement as I used to. They're charming and put a little smile on your face, but there's something about that that's vaguely unsatisfying. Perhaps it's that they're unashamedly happy and carefree. I remember Monica Huggett saying in a masterclass that she can't stand relentlessly happy music. I concur.
By the way, I've been staring at the screen for the last two hours, trying to figure out how to conclude this blog, so I'm starting to understand how difficult it is to finish something. Aha, I know - I'll just toss it off with something trivial, like this:
FINIS
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