Day 42: Endings

I really struggle with endings. Usually I know how I want something to end, but getting there is a problem. I inevitably hit some roadblock that makes it impossible to get where I want to go. If I vault over the roadblock then the plot will fall apart or make no sense, but if I try a different route it always seems to lead to a less satisfying outcome. You might think the problem would be solved by not having an ending in mind at all and just letting the story take me where it would, but I haven't found that to be true either. I usually get right up to the climax of the story and then it ends something like this:

[The remainder of this thrilling and eventful story will NOT be found in this or any other publication, either now or at any future time.]

The truth is, I have got my hero (or heroine) into such a particularly close place, that I do not see how I am ever going to get him (or her) out of it again--and therefore I will wash my hands of the whole business, and leave that person to get out the best way that offers--or else stay there. I thought it was going to be easy enough to straighten out that little difficulty, but it looks different now.

This is actually how Mark Twain's short story 'A Medieval Romance' ends. Seriously. Here's the rest if you would like to suffer.

https://americanliterature.com/author/mark-twain/short-story/a-medieval-romance

Remember how yesterday I said he breaks all the rules, even his own? Well, rules have certainly been shattered with this one. After taking a cold shower to get over this massive middle finger that has been lying in wait for more than a century, I got to thinking about how to avoid this pitfall. It would seem that even Mark Twain can write himself into a corner when he takes the subject material a little more seriously. Every other story he wrote has a twisty, absurd ending that obviously came right out of an orifice better left unmentioned, so maybe it's no surprise that he couldn't end a romance on a better note. But what makes this a bad ending? Well in short, it doesn't deliver on the implied promises of the story. I'll have to summarize it to come up with those implied promises that are left hanging.

In 'A Medieval Romance' the main character, Conrad, is a woman who has been raised as a man by her treacherous father so she can claim the duchy for her family line, something she wouldn't be able to do as a woman. She comes of age and her uncle, the duke, invites her to take over so she can learn how to lead. She soon becomes the de facto duke as the aging ruler happily passes the torch along. Before she is officially crowned, disaster strikes. The duke's daughter falls in love with Conrad, but is subsequently rejected. Conrad can't risk a close relationship because it would reveal her secret. The duke's daughter gets pregnant out of wedlock, a crime punishable by death, and when pressed to name the father to save herself, she accuses Conrad. Conrad will be executed and can only save herself by revealing the truth, but that will damn her as well because a woman cannot sit on the duke's throne before being crowned duke. This is when the story ends abruptly.

So, from this synopsis, the promises are:

1. Someone must be crowned duke.
2. Conrad's secret will be challenged.
3. The duke's daughter will deal with her unrequited love somehow.
4. The implied promise of a romance is that love will somehow lead to a climax, in this case via promise 2 and 3 combined.
5. The treacherous brother of the duke may or may not get his just desserts.

Promises 2, 3, and 4 are addressed (and arguably promise 5), but the main promise established at the beginning of the story, promise 1, is not delivered on in the worst way possible. A deus ex machina might even be preferable. I'm sure it wouldn't be quite as funny though, so I'm guessing that's why Twain left it like this.

Unfortunately, I think Twain is correct. There is no good way to end this. Just to prove it, let's say Conrad chooses to fight this accusation in a way that doesn't involve revealing herself as a woman. Well, now a romance morphs into medieval court legal drama. Not exactly fulfilling the fourth promise and it would probably be contrived and shockingly boring.

What if Conrad reveals she is a woman? That doesn't work out because now both Conrad and the duke's daughter are executed and nobody takes the throne.

The only solution I see is for Conrad to accept the child and the duke's daughter and get married. This fulfills all the promises, but doesn't make any sense. The duke's daughter will no doubt discover Conrad's secret after the story ends and then everything falls apart.

Then the story is unsolvable in this state. There's no way to fulfill the promises without making a giant plot hole, and there's no way to maintain consistency without leaving a promise unfulfilled. The only solution is to change the promises. That involves a rewrite, and that's a lot of wasted time for a writer known for being proud of his output like Twain.

This isn't the only story Twain ever wrote, and so I'm sure he learned a thing or two from the failure. The real solution is to make sure your promises add up before the story even begins, but that of course is much easier said than done. I think this story only needs a slight alteration to one of the promises in order to make sense.

1. Someone must be crowned duke.
2. Conrad's secret will be challenged.
3. The duke's daughter will deal with her unrequited love somehow, but it is certain she will never give up on it or jeopardize her relationship with Conrad.
4. The implied promise of a romance is that love will somehow lead to a climax, in this case via promise 2 and 3 combined.
5. The treacherous brother of the duke may or may not get his just desserts.

If Twain took more time to flesh out the romance beyond a confession and rejection then it would be a lot more believable that the duke's daughter would use such an underhanded trick to achieve her goals in the first place. Moreover, it would make marriage an option for Conrad. If she knows that the duke's daughter will never give up their love for anything, then it makes sense that she would choose to reveal her secret, but only to the one person she knows would never betray her.

Would the story be amazing with this change? Probably not. It wasn't all that inspired to begin with if I'm being honest, but it would certainly be better than a non-ending, right? Ironically, I'm not even certain of that anymore. It taught me a better lesson than a mediocre story with a mediocre ending would have. In being so palpably awful that I have to keep thinking about it, Twain has circumvented the established rules of what makes a story memorable and impactful yet again. I don't know how he keeps getting away with this. Maybe I should to add another promise implicit in Twain's stories for this ending to make sense:

Something unexpected will take you by complete surprise, for better or worse.

He certainly fulfills this promise every time he puts pen to paper. I think my issues with endings are still going to haunt me, but Twain has made some blatant mistakes I've been able to learn from. Working out the promises made beforehand will help, but I'm not sure how to avoid vast rewrites if I find a new promise I didn't think of, or realize that I need a new promise that should have been established from the beginning. It will probably take forever to get any good at this, so I suppose I'll just have to keep trying.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley