Just Thought I’d pop in and mention that The Morning After The Life Before is 99p till this Thursday (22 October 15). So if you fancied reading the sequel to Ice and a Slice, now’s your chance 🙂
Nothing like curling up with a good book and a glass of mulled wine – you might want to drink the mulled wine first, tee hee!
For me, endings have always been the most difficult thing to get right. But a bad ending can ruin an otherwise excellent story. There are all sorts of bad endings. You probably recognise most of these. They don’t really need explaining.
So – how do you make sure your ending doesn’t fall into these categories? Here’s a list of types of endings and tips that might help to make them work:
It’s worth remembering the following too:
An ending must resolve the problem you initially set up.
It must be relevant to the beginning.
If you’re stuck for an ending, look at what you’ve written so far. The clues to the end will always be in what you’ve already written.
And while we’re on the subject of endings, did I mention the sequel to Ice and a Slice is out this week. Yay! The Morning After The Life Before is my latest novel and I’m very proud of it. SJ doesn’t quite get the Happy Ever After she thought she was heading for! Nice matching cover for Ice and a Slice too – Can you spot the hidden message in these two covers?
The fabulous covers were designed for me by Peter Jones. Find out more about his book cover designing service here.
The Morning After The Life Before comes out on 5 February 2015 and is available for pre-order here. Ice and a Slice with its funky new cover is available here. They are both £1.99, less than the price of a glass of Chardonnay!
I used to believe that the art of writing suspense was mostly about technique – short sentences build tension and pace, longer sentences slow it down. But suspense means so much more than this. So what does the word suspense actually mean?
Maybe I won’t tell you yet…
Just kidding, but, according to the Oxford Dictionary, suspense is a noun and it means:
A state or feeling of excited or anxious uncertainty about what may happen
So how do we create this in our writing? Here are my top three tips:
1. Pose questions, but do not answer them. As soon as you answer a question the suspense is gone.
Here is the beginning of A Table for Four, a story I sold recently to My Weekly.
What should I wear? I looked at the clothes laid out on my bed and sighed. There was a part of me that didn’t really want to go to this reunion lunch. I didn’t want to face all that emotion, all that honesty. I didn’t want to be reminded of the past. And it was going to be odd without Alice. It was the first year that we had met without her.
There are several questions in this opening paragraph. What should the narrator wear? What sort of reunion is it? Who’s Alice and why isn’t she there this year?
In order to create suspense – they should not all be answered in paragraph two. In fact, it’s a good rule of thumb to make sure you never answer a question without posing another one.
2. Withhold Information – for as long as you possibly can without being annoying.
Paragraph two of A Table for Four
For a moment I let an image of her face fill my mind. Her sparkly blue eyes, her ever present smile. I’d loved Alice to bits. I don’t think I’d have got through my surgery or those endless hospital visits without her irrepressible brightness.
Cue flashback.
“Chin up, honey,” she’d say if I’d moaned about my hair falling out. “You’re not going to miss a bit of grey hair, are you?”
“It’s not grey, you cheeky mare,” I’d snap, and she’d click her tongue and shake her head. “You’re smiling though!”
It was amazing how you could joke about the darkest of things. It had often surprised people – family and friends – when I’d told them how much laughter there had been on Marshall Ward.
I had to go to the reunion. Besides, I wanted to find out how everyone else was.
So now we know a bit more about Alice – but we still don’t know who she is – or where she is – or exactly what’s going on here, although we are slowly being given more information.
3. Use Foreshadowing
I don’t mean the type where you say, she had no idea that tonight would be the last night of her life. Although that might well create suspense, it’s a bit clunky and amateurish. Instead, set up a scene or situation where you don’t explain something that will crop up later. Here’s a paragraph a little later in A Table for Four.
The waitress came for our order.
“Are you still waiting for someone?” she asked, glancing at the empty space beside me.
I shook my head, but when she moved to clear the surplus knife and fork, I stopped her. “Please could you leave them?”
“Er – yes, sure…” The waitress looked puzzled but no one enlightened her.
In this way although the reader might well guess that the fourth place is for Alice, they won’t know for sure why the others want it left, even though she isn’t coming.
The art of writing a good short story is to keep the reader guessing. Indeed if you’re writing a twist you need to keep them guessing until the very end. It’s the same with all writing. If you’re writing a novel or novella you have the luxury of cliff hangers too – don’t just keep them for chapter endings – use them for scene endings.
At the end of your short story the questions you’ve posed need to be answered. For example at the end of A Table For Four – we find out why a place has been set for Alice, even though she isn’t coming, and where she actually is. And there’s also a little twist. I’m afraid I can’t reveal the end as I don’t think this story has been published yet. If the suspense is really too much – email me privately and I’ll tell you!
PS in other news: my novel, Ice and a Slice is on Kindle Countdown. Between Friday 27th June and Thursday 3rd July it’s only 99p instead of £1.99.
I have been banging on about this for weeks on Facebook and Twitter, but just in case you’ve been away on Mars, or you don’t use Facebook and Twitter, I wanted to mention one more time that my book launch for Ice and a Slice is this Saturday. And you are very welcome to come along.
I’m so excited. By the time you read this, I will have no grey hairs left and also might even have extra long eyelashes. 🙂
Why I wrote Ice and a Slice
I have alcoholism in my family – my father is a recovering alcoholic – so it’s an issue I’m familiar with. But I didn’t want to write a dark book about it. Or not too dark anyway. I also wanted to write about it from a woman’s perspective. There are lots of novels that are written about alcoholism, from a woman’s perspective, but fewer that are written about women who are alcoholics themselves.
What it’s about
Ice and a Slice is the story of Sarah-Jane, (SJ to her friends) who discovers she can’t stop drinking. On the surface her life is fine. She is happily married to Tom (well at least she thinks she is – he works away so much she doesn’t often see him). She’s also fallen out with her sister and they no longer speak. But SJ is determined to sort that out one day.
At least her best friend, Tania, is on her side, although lately Tania is increasingly preoccupied with her own (secret) problems. SJ feels very alone sometimes and quite scared, but it’s not as though she’s an alcoholic, is it? She doesn’t keep a bottle of vodka by her bed. She doesn’t even drink every day – well not till the evening anyway.
It isn’t until she seeks the help of Kit, the hunky guy at the addiction centre, that she realises things may have got a little more out of hand than she thinks.
SJ is by far the most three dimensional character I’ve ever created. I fell in love with her from the very first chapter. Mostly I think because she is so flawed and so human. And yes, she is based on someone I’m close to – although I’m not telling you who J But one of the reasons that I love this novel so much – and I don’t say that lightly, I’m the biggest self critic around – is because it’s the one in which I think I found my true voice.
I didn’t realise it was going to happen. In fact, after so many years of writing, I thought I’d already found my voice – and I think I have as far as short stories go – but novels are different, aren’t they? The canvas is bigger, the pace is different – everything is different. Although I loved writing my first two novels, Passing Shadows and Helter Skelter, writing Ice and a Slice was like being in another dimension. It was easy to write – the words flowed out of me – I didn’t have to plan what SJ would say – she just said it. Being inside her head felt like putting on a second skin. It was an amazing feeling. And I’ve had some amazing reactions to this novel. Since it came out for Kindle at the end of March it’s had 26 five star reviews on Amazon.co.uk and 3 five star reviews on Amazon.com. I’ve pasted the most recent one below. Not because I want to blow my own trumpet, but because I feel humbled that Ice has touched people enough to say such lovely things about it.
I’ve always loved Della Galton’s short stories and I have to say Ice and a Slice is a writing triumph as a novel. I loved the characters and I can honestly say from when I started reading it I could not put it down – even to go and get a G & T with ice and a slice! This is a book you must not miss.
Bookworm
My book launch for Ice and a Slice is being held on Saturday 13 July at the Red Lion Pub in Sturminster Marshall. I will be there signing books between 11 and 4. If you’d like to come along I’d be delighted to see you.
If you’d prefer to read the digital version you can borrow it for free if you’re an Amazon Prime customer. Or buy it for £1.94 (less than the price of a glass of Chardonnay) by clicking here.
Thank you for reading.
Della Galton x
