writing

Epilogues in Fiction

/ Lisa / Leave a comment

Be forewarned, there are spoilers here relating to a book.

I just finished These Silent Woods by Kimi Cunningham Grant. It was a great story I thoroughly enjoyed. Until I got to the epilogue. I’ve never read a book where the epilogue ruins the whole story. Typically they let you have a few more moments with a character, see how they managed after the drama of the story. This epilogue fulfilled that role, but, for me, left a gaping plot hole. It would be interesting to hear from anyone who has read the book to see what they think. Maybe I missed something, which is entirely possible.

The premise of the book is that a father had his baby daughter taken away by grandparents. He retrieved his daughter and since then they have lived out in the woods, helped by an old friend and a hermit neighbor who watches over them. The premise is believable and well-written, there are great subplots, and the story is easy to sink into. The characters are fully developed and as a reader, I was immediately invested in their story. You know from the beginning that there will have to be a reckoning, but the journey to that end keeps the reader hooked.

Warning again, here comes the spoiler.

Finch, the daughter, witnesses a murder. The consequences mean that father and daughter may now be identified and found. The father will have to turn himself in, he knows he will lose his daughter and face jail time, and that Finch will be returned to the evil grandparents. Before this can happen though, the hermit steps in and, in the middle of other plot twists, says he murdered father and daughter and has proof. He is arrested and it gives father and daughter a way out.

And then the epilogue. A few years later. Finch eventually went to live with the grandparents and went to college. In these last pages she is returning to the cabin in the woods to see her father. She has lived a full life in her teen years, and her father let her go to the grandparents because he realized she needed that full life.

Wait just a second.

The grandparents were the antagonists, but suddenly in the epilogue they are the good guys. The solution to all the past drama is that grandparents and father simply don’t speak to each other. There are no consequences for the father., or for the grandparents in how they initially took Finch. We never get to see the father face the grandparents over what happened in the past. The old hermit, presumably sitting in prison for murder, continues to do so even though father and daughter were clearly never murdered. The grandfather is actually a judge, but does nothing to show the hermit was innocent after all. They all just let him continue with whatever sentence he was handed for confessing to something he didn’t do.

The epilogue made me not like any of those main characters that I had just spent a few days with. How did no one in the editing side of things not sit up and say ‘hey, wait a minute’. How did no one mention to the author that there should have been some culminating interaction between the father and the grandparents to tie up the main reason for the whole plot? Not to mention the fact that a young girl who loved the hermit could simply just shrug shoulders and move in with grandparents who buy her a car and send her to college.

Like I said, this was the first time the final ending pages of a book ruined the whole thing. Typically when I check a book out of the library and love it, I’ll buy a copy so I can reread it. I actually was planning on doing that but now I can’t get past the epilogue.

Has anyone had a similar experience with a disappointing ending? What book was it, and why did the ending fail? I see this as a good lesson for us writers so I’d love to hear your stories.

Creativity in Driftwood

/ Lisa / 2 Comments

Last week my husband and I took a vacation to the Oregon coast. We like to go there during low tides or after storms to look for agates and rocks of all sorts. We hadn’t been in a long time and we both were very in need of a break. Plus, this was our dog’s first road trip to the ocean.

On one of our walks we saw a young man building a structure out of driftwood. He was busy digging a large hole in front of the structure, tossing out sand and oblivious to our passing.

We see people doing things like this with driftwood, typically building a simple pile of sticks for kids to play in, or to sit in while they have a small fire. But the things this young man built were different. For one thing, there were several of them along the beach. For another, they were complicated. Good sized, intricate, wood woven into arcs and organic shapes, and clearly more like artwork than just playing around building a camp.

On top of that, we noticed other things as we walked in the vicinity. Closer to the waves there was a simple circle of stones, already getting covered in sand. There was a slender piece of driftwood upright in the sand, decorated. I took a photo, which is below, but you can’t really see the details. There were feathers, shells, pieces of beach grass, and stones decorating the wood. I felt uncomfortable after I took the photo, as if I’d gone into someone’s church during service and started snapping pictures.

My husband spotted a ring of sand. It may have been a hole originally, like the one we saw the young man digging. But the tides and waves left only a hint of what had been, and left patterns of movement in the sand that showed what change looked like. It was like a subtle reminder that nothing remains constant.

I’ve been thinking about those structures since we got back. Why was the young man building so many? Why did he build them at all? Did he see them as transitory art, or were they just something to do with the things he found on the beach? Did he want people to use them? Did he sit back later and watch the afternoon crowds and how they interacted with his creations? Or was he, too, transitory, and moved on without looking back?

That led to more questions. I wondered if people saw the creativity, or just saw camps. I wondered if people respected them, or destroyed them. Did kids play in them and dream adventures? Did homeless people sleep in them at night?

So many possibilities. So many stories.

I wonder if that young man knew he would make imaginations soar? I hope so.

Oh, and Corbie loved the beach. The picture below is him with the wind blowing his ears up. He was the most well-behaved dog we have ever traveled with and we made sure to pay attention to what sticks he played with.

A Quiet World

/ Lisa / 9 Comments

I’m in that fallow period between writing projects. Waiting for Otherkin to move through the publication process and waiting for a new story to come to me. It’s like the winter season, quiet and dormant, cozy and gestating.

In the meantime I’ve made a few discoveries relating to hearing.

Several years ago I lost hearing in one ear. Three little bones that should vibrate, calcified. Surgery replaced them with an implant that didn’t work. More recently, my ‘good’ ear has been getting worse. So I gave in, got a referral, and found out just how bad my hearing actually was.

I didn’t realize how much hearing was related to context. When face to face with someone, in a conversation, able to watch faces, you can anticipate what the words are going to be. But when you’re in a little room alone with headphones on and a specialist speaking random words with no context, it’s a completely different matter. I couldn’t figure out any of the words. After a series of interesting tests, I left with a graph that showed where normal hearing was, and where mine was, way, way, way down at the bottom. I also left with an appointment to come back and be fitted with hearing aids. When my husband saw the graph, his response was ‘Sh**, you can’t hear f**k all’. Succinct and true.

This past week has been the trial, and I’m not adjusting well. The hearing aids are extremely painful, there’s a loud echo to everything, an odd high-pitched regular beeping like a miniature car alarm in my head, and, of course, noise. Most of this will be adjusted at the next appointment.

In the meantime, I’m startled by noise. Birds! So many birds. The squeak of the floorboards. The sound of traffic. It took me way too long driving home to realize the odd breathing sound I heard was cars passing going the other direction. Conversations and clanking and voices of strangers. It all sounds so exaggerated.

It’s made me realize how quiet my world has been. How muffled. I can no longer hear my own heartbeat. I’m no longer cocooned. Which has made me realize I’m not sure I want to be in a noisy world.

Hearing aids are going to be fantastic at work and out in public where acoustics make it impossible to pick out individual voices. I can see other benefits, too, such as the fact that music will play directly into my hearing aids and no one will know.

I find myself using the pain though, as an excuse to take them out. To return to that quiet place with just my heartbeat. I might choose to only wear them at work.

There’s something to be said for quiet, for the ability to remove hearing and step away from the noise. I suppose that’s why people use ear plugs, putting something in, to find quiet, rather than taking something out to prevent sound.

Though I think my husband just said something. He hasn’t realized I took the hearing aids out. This might actually end up being fun. Either way, it will be an interesting learning curve.