On Closures · 8:18pm Jun 26th, 2014
Budding authors, please read this. Readers who encounter stories affected by this, please, send the authors here.
Please, oh please. Close your plots.
Before you click "Finished," account for all characters and motives and make sure all of them got a closure.
I never saw it in any writing tutorial, but I can't overstate how critically important it is.
There's Chekov Gun. You all know Chekov gun. You hang it in act 1, and it fires in the last act. If you miss it, it often remains merely as a small flavor of act 1, without significance to the story, no great harm done.
But if your story involves the characters saving the world and simultaneously herding a wild elephant along the way, as they travel across the continent, once the world is saved, I'd really like to know what happened to the elephant and why was it even there.
Instead, many authors simply forget about the elephant some two acts before the end, and as the characters get their time in the epilogue, the elephant (which seemingly stayed with the team through the end battle, although entirely unmoving) doesn't get a single word of mention.
Recently, every other or so story I read happens upon this pitfall.
I read only finished stories. I hate breaking halfway through and forgetting the events and characters when (if!) an update comes out finally. I give my vote and/or fav upon finishing the story (except when the story is so abysmally badly written I quit halfway through the first chapter.) But I really can't upvote a story which is unfinished - even despite the author claiming otherwise. All the past merits are lost on lack of closure of an important thread. It leaves a bad aftertaste. It's unsatisfactory and annoying.
Let me pick some examples.
My Little Economy - Economics is Science.
A neat subversion of the theme of friendship and magic, an epic battle, then a closure for each of Mane 6 and Princess Celestia. Meanwhile, Nightmare Moon was wiped off all records, author's memory foremost.
A Simple Reflection
Luna acts as a villain with "end justifies the means". The day is saved, at a great cost, and all protagonists are happy to be alive and safe. Meanwhile, Luna - who happened to dig herself ears deep in dung through the course of the story, doesn't earn even a mention in the epilogue.
Restraint
The internal conflict in Rarity's heart escalates, her newly-found love in danger of being snuffed by her anxieties. At key moment Pinkie and Rainbow do the worst possible thing they could, a mean, insensitive thing, and Rarity in her fragile state snaps. A Chekov gun hanged early enough pulls her out of the pit of despair and she manages to save the relationship in the nick of time. Love flourishes, and Pinkie and Rainbow... no, what Pinkie? We get another look on that chekov gun thread in the epilogue. Pinkie and Rainbow are forgotten. They never reappear even though Rarity was completely broken for a week.
Shades Of Grey
Not 50. Coincidental similarity. Actually, I did upvote it because there was too much this story did right. The characters earned closure, although the key OC got something of short end of the stick, a little too terse for my liking. But the important thing that was missing was the closure of the backstory. There were some events a 1500 years ago, that were not really understood back then. Then our action happens and some mysteries from 1500 years ago are uncovered. And others don't. What was the cause of the circumstances that caused the central character's condition? What happened to him later? Who the hell did Luna fight in the end?
A Dream of Dawn
Epic conflict, epic antagonists. After Nightmare Moon and Discord head away to face redemption for their sins, Chrysalis steps in, to commit atrocities by which crimes of the two former ones pale. Then two chapters before the end the scene cuts from Chrysalis being in the middle of the conflict to some other characters, and there's never another mention of her.
Oh. And don't even get me started on "End of Part 1. To Be Continued."
Immortal Game: Mentions Sir Unimpressive does nothing but be a badass and set up potential, and now that I think about it, his name kind of makes that ok. But yeah, the author basically says in her last blog post that there was no way she could handle all the plot threads that were started.