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#HistFicThursdays - The Clockmaker - Free Short Story

Today, I'm super-excited to be sharing a short story from the fabulous Gothic Horror writer, Judith Crow. Here is her Poe-inspired story, The Clockmaker ... The Clockmaker I cannot sleep. I cannot allow myself to sleep. In sleep, Death may strike with as little awareness as warning, and I find myself refusing to accept unawareness at the moment of demise. Yet, I wish I were afforded others’ natural ignorance of the timing of death. In the names of heaven and hell: I both curse and envy them for their ignorance! I, like others, started my final day with little to suggest it may be my last. I was in rude health when I arrived in London twelve days earlier, and today I took the time to call upon Sir Benjamin Pelham, a man I had served alongside in India. Twenty years ago, his interest in science and invention had lured him back to the English universities, while I had stayed abroad to make my fortune overseeing the collapse and redistribution of the once-mighty East India Company.  Si

NaNoWriMo Day 29 - Endings

Friday 29th November - Endings

Well, we're pretty much at the end of NaNoWriMo!  If you're anything like me, you'll be wondering where the last month has gone!  It might seem strange to have the penultimate blog on endings, but hopefully this just proves that the end of your book is not the end of the adventure!



On the first blog, I spoke about the importance of beginning a book well and how - in many ways - it's the most important part.  Endings are equally important, but for a totally different reason.  You don't have to hook anyone in, you want to give them a satisfactory ending for the characters they've invested in.

One thing I realised, after several years(!), is that happy endings are never going to be exclusive.  As readers, we invest so much in characters, so by the end what we're really looking for is a contented ending.  The reader will be as lost without these characters as you are, so give them an ending full of hope.  This could be with a stereotypical happy ending, but more often (speaking as a reader here, as well as a writer!) it's by leaving it open for good things to follow.

Here are a few ideas about ending your story:

  1. Life is never easy, but after the rollercoaster you've sent your characters on, make sure you open up the opportunity for it to be as near-as!
  2. You've built your characters into your readers imaginations.  Don't spell out their whole lives, let your readers decide what happens next UNLESS...
  3. ...There's a sequel! But still allow the book to stand alone.  There's bound to be someone who starts in the middle of a series!
  4. Comeuppance is underrated.  Sometimes a satisfactory ending is more about what happens to the antagonist than the protagonist.
  5. There will always be that person who reads the last line first (Grrrr!).  Make sure your ending is slightly ambiguous, just to keep them guessing!
Whatever your ending, just remember: you've built this world, now let your characters (through your readers' minds) continue to live in it.

[Psst! Have you seen this: Power to Your Word]

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