Question of my day–why do we expect a denouement in classic story structure when it doesn’t exist in real life? Who made it up? Why is it so appealing?
Think about it. The only way you can tell someone a story from your life is to pretend there was a conclusion to what happened. Until you’re dead, you don’t know if anything is complete (and we’re not sure about that, either). “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.” What if it’s never over?
Since it is impossible to know the ending in real life, it seems strange that our centuries of storytelling rely on an ending for satisfaction. Perhaps we are prewired to crave closure and the cruel joke is that we can only attain it in fiction.
Imagine a world with a real denouement. You experience a hugely traumatic event in which you confront something or someone. Shortly thereafter, you notice answers appearing. All those things you wondered about are clear. Maybe a horse appears and you are inspired to ride into the sunset, feeling confident that your trial is over and you have changed because of it. You would know that story was complete.
Would we then expect our stories to be open-ended? Would there no longer be a need for fiction if our lives made sense in a linear fashion?
Anyway, I’ve been tweaking the denouement of my novel for draft #5. Wrapping up all the loose ends, reflecting, suggesting subtle changes. I could have finished it by now, but I had to stop and wonder about the question of my day. This is why it takes so long to complete a book, folks.
