Plausible to the End

All good stories must come to an end.


Novel writers in the nineteenth century didn’t have to worry about ratings or upsetting their fan base. All they had to do was to write a sufficiently interesting story so that people in possession of money would be compelled to trade it for a copy of their story. There were no chances of the story being picked up by a major network as a miniseries. They weren’t concerned about being consulted (or ignored) when a studio started work on a screenplay adaptation or began to pick out actors to portray their characters.


I’m not trying to say that novels in the nineteenth century were better than fiction today. If reality television is any indication, it seems that all that people need to stay glued to the screen is a sufficient amount of interesting upheaval in the lives of the principal characters.


But after a certain point, the drama and intrigue get a bit too much to believe. How do you keep the balance of a love interest to hold the viewers’ interest (that is, how can you keep shoving two people who obviously want to be together toward one another while still keeping them apart)? How many times must a grizzled bad guy catcher lose trusted advisers in a gun battle without becoming a casualty himself? And how is it that the same four (or six, or eight) people stay best friends with one another for years and years without falling out, drifting apart, or losing touch with one another?


Every story, whether it’s a television program, a movie, or a book, can be fit neatly into three parts: the buildup, the climax, and the wrap-up. During the buildup, we get to know the characters: their motivations, the things they want most, and how they will react to whatever happens during the climax. The climax arrives, and all of the character’s wildest dreams or worst fears come true. The wrap-up is sometimes shows us who the character really is even more vividly than their actions during the climax. How does the lovesick girl handle the fact that the man she’s loved all along finally loves her back? Does the mean-spirited man, selfish to the core, remain silent and unmoved at the death of someone who was kind to him, or does he turn away from everyone, weeping?


Usually, books and movies only contain one story, and so don’t have a chance for those who enjoy them to get tired of the characters and the way they react to certain things. The exception comes when it is part of a series (“Oh look, a woman is in distress. I wonder what Dresden will do,” or “I hope Harry will defeat Voldemort this time,” etc.). At this point, these things become similar to a television program, which usually follows a pattern of having one story spread throughout the season, a bit in each episode which has its own self-contained story.


The best of these types of stories are those which have an end in mind. The best example of this is a Japanese comic (manga) called Fruits Basket, which is a beautifully told story that was not begun before the author/illustrator (mangaka) knew how it was going to end. Though there were tons of characters, she did relatively little dithering around with the secondary characters (except once or twice when I was like “An entire chapter about Hanajima? Who cares.”), and developed the love interest slowly so that her readers wouldn’t get tired of it. There’s a wonderful example of what not to do in the manga Boys over Flowers, in which the main love interest gets shoved together and pulled apart so many times that by the fourth or fifth unlikely scenario you just want to put the book down and quit caring about the characters, but at the same time you're wondering, “will they ever actually get together???” In this instance, the author cared more about the success being achieved by the manga and continuing that success than the fact that there was no plausible end in sight. If it had ended after the first or even second breakup/get back together rigmarole, I may have enjoyed rereading it, and recommending it to friends. As it is, I recommend they avoid it, if they don’t want to be yo-yoed around like the characters were.


All good stories must come to an end. Instead of rebooting Spiderman fifty times, let it come to a satisfactory end while we still enjoy it (this means you, Hollywood.) Instead of dragging that love interest out until we just don’t care anymore, let the poor couple get together and end everyone’s misery. And no group of people can stay friends forever; everyone changes and grows in their own way, and slowly becoming different from the people you once knew so well is a part of life.
Even though books, television, and movies are fiction, there’s a level of plausibility that needs to be maintained. it doesn’t matter if your character is a star ship captain or a talking pony, there’s a fine line between believing a character exists in their environment and realizing that the character is an actor pretending to be someone who doesn’t exist. Once your audience stops believing, it’s difficult to keep their interest. And at that point, the whole thing becomes an exercise in futility.


Continuing when there is a failure to recognize that the end is coming means that the story is no longer good. It’s better to end while the fans still love it than to let it dither down into something terrible before it gets cancelled for lack of ratings. If you’ve run out of ideas and plausible drama, it’s time to end.


And all good stories come to an end.