Psychedelia Gothique

Not long ago, I was going on about the importance of endings and how the recognition of the weaknesses in my original ending in The Human Template drove me to rewrite it. All well and good, but it leads into the next topic – on the dangers of rewriting. There are several levels of rewriting.  We're in home renovation mode lately at our house, so it was the metaphor that sprung most easily to mind. If you think of a novel as a house: 1)     There’s the complete teardown and subsequent replacement with a whole new structure. 2)      There’s your regular reno with repainting inside and out, plastering, filling of plot holes, and maybe a bit of roofing or sanding of hardwood. 3)       There’s the room by room remodeling meant to beautify and improve the existing structure that requires moving of furniture and selective repairs. 4)       And then there’s the spruce-up with new door handles, curtains, light fixtures and th...

I’ve been working on the final chapter of my novel for a few weeks now. Not that the old one wasn’t working. Of my eighteen beta readers, only one reader picked up the flaws at the climax and they didn’t mention it until literally yesterday. No, I mean it. Yesterday. Literally. The thing that's been on my mind a lot lately is the importance of endings . The other day I tried to track down a Gardner Dozois quotation that made a big impact of me – I think it was from one of his Best SF of the Year anthologies. In it, he mentioned a couple good novels that came out during the year he was reviewing and he paused to contemplate how great they might have been if their endings had been the same quality as the rest of the book. I remember how much it resonated with me because I too had just read several potentially great novels that fell apart or simply petered out when it mattered most – during the climax that ends the book! This is a thing writers do - spend five years writing their ...