The Elongated Ending

The end to Episode Six, and musings on how stories just kind of keep going sometimes.

Episode six is finally done, though it needs a significant edit before I can publish, with its release date coming up on me quickly. Episode seven, well, that’s just been a slog to complete. The problem, well, my problem, as I’ve come to find, is that my ending scenes tend to go on too long. It was an issue with episodes five and six. And now seven as well.

“The tale grew in the telling" - JRR Tolkien

For episode five, it was a matter of a climactic scene just needing extra time to go through the actions that had to be done. There was an ending I was working toward, but certain events had to take place to get there. If I cut corners to get there quickly, I feel like things would be somewhat unbelievable. Granted, worrying about believability in a fantasy farce seems kind of silly, but it’s important for me to keep in mind that while the rules of the world can be fantastical, the characters have to exist within some kind of parameters. While I do McGuffin or Deus ex Machina the characters out of situations, which I feel is acceptable as long as it’s set up in some manner, the characters still have to struggle beforehand. And a proper struggle is tough to keep within 3,000 or so words if it’s interspersed with comedic banter.

For episode six, it was a similar issue. Plus, the denouement went on for a bit as a character was revealing a significant backstory that would be central to episode eight, and a certain mystery was no longer operational within the story, so it needed to be explained.

For episode seven, the climax actually moved along fairly well. Granted, it was less action-oriented than I thought it would be, but the conversation seemed to work well. Then, there was supposed to be just one quick scene wrapping things up to let the characters get back to normal life, with one little laugh at the end. What ended up happening is an extremely long, event-packed scene that I’m just having trouble getting to the end of. I think it’s a good scene, and looking back, the ending I needed required more things to happen than I originally thought so that it wasn’t rushed, but with three of these in a row, I’m beginning to wonder if I’m simply letting things go on too long.

The original concept was for each of these episodes to be between 20K and 25K—decent novella size and capable of being written within a month for me. Now, the episodes are ballooning up in size, with episode seven crossing the 40K barrier. On the surface, it’s not a terrible problem, especially for readers who are engaged, but from a writing standpoint, it slows things down. I’ve been able to keep up my release schedule for now, but I can’t keep it up if this goes on too long.

I’ve thought a lot about the problem this last week, and I think it comes down to how I write comedy. I tend to gravitate to banter and comedic discussions, mostly because that’s what comes naturally, which is probably rooted in what I find funny. In the entertainment I consume, the quips and plays on words between the characters usually get me going, so it’s natural that I write that way. I don’t do as well with narrator-driven comedy or action-driven comedic events. I probably need to work on that. Still, with most of the comedy being centered on conversations, I constantly find the characters doing asides from the action to keep things light and comedic. It makes me laugh when I read it back (good thing), but definitely makes scenes much longer than the action in the scene would call for (current problem).

Part of me wants to just rewrite the last scene of episode seven, but part of me knows that it’ll just wind up being the same length but with different plot/action elements, resulting in a lot of work for the same kind of result. So I’m a little torn. Looking forward, episode eight (currently 25% written) is plotted out in a manner that should result in the 20-25K sweet spot. If the problem persists, maybe I should think about expanding the episodes to be smallish novels (70K or so) rather than novellas. It would significantly slow down my release schedule, but maybe it’ll be better for the overall story.

I don’t know. But typing this all out will help me find clarity. Once I find a readership, maybe I’ll solicit feedback to see what the readers want. If there’s a thought that some scenes go on too long due to the back and forth between the characters, maybe I can just work on whittling that down to the truly funny moments.