There is one thing that I think can be horrendously frustrating in a story! And I’m guilty of doing it a few times, myself, despite my efforts to avoid it at all costs...because it makes you want to tear your own hair out at the roots! Hehehe, but for one reason or another...I changed my mind on a few major plot points in my story that took me in a different direction, and it left a lot of plot points left to dangle without any answers. Now that I’m re-doing my stories to put them in ebook form, I’m correcting a lot of those unforgivable mistakes. But it sucks that they were ever there in the first place, you know? It’s just a scar on a story that didn’t need to be there if I had planned things out a bit better before I got all ‘deep in the weeds’ with it.

I’m talking about loose ends in your storytelling. So let’s discuss, shall we? Because this can be a serious problem in some of the stories that I’ve read in the past.

I can remember watching the third “Matrix” movie in theaters for the first time, and I was one of the biggest “Matrix” fans out there (Including “Matrix Reloaded”, which I still think is highly underrated)! So I was glued to my seat and doing my best to absorb every word. Now...there’s a scene in that third movie where some of our heroes go to this elaborate nightclub, and they’re trying to get to our protagonist. And one of the other characters basically says, “Fine. I’ll give him back to you...but first...if I’m going to help you, I want the eyes of the Oracle.” Oooh, what does that mean? Where is this going? Explain!

And then they’re just like, “No!” And we have a shootout and an action scene...and it’s never mentioned again. But wait! What the fuck was that about??? You can’t just bring up something like the ‘eyes of the Oracle’ and not ever address it again. Wait! How? Why? What did they just do? How would he have benefited from this? What are the consequences of not performing that one particular task? What the hell is going on here? It’s like there’s an entire reel of this movie that is missing that should have been expanded upon and shown to the audience. Or at least built up to or foreshadowed ahead of time. It might have made for a cool plot point with a little bit of thought and unraveling. But it ended up being just an idea that kind of got tossed aside without any further elaboration at all, and so now we’ll never ever know what he meant by that or why the hell he mentioned it in the first place. It’s so weird, and I hate it because it’s all that I can think about now! Hehehe!

This is the sinkhole that your readers fall through when it comes to having loose ends in your fiction. You end up leaving the story incomplete in the long run, and you seriously drag all of the life and meaning out whatever scene you put it in. All it does is leave people scratching their heads, wondering why you would take the time to think up and then write that scene out when it has no impact on the rest of the entire story beyond that point. The details that you put into your story are all about two things...introduction and payoff. You can’t really have one without the other. Not in any significant way. So why do it?

Trying to have a payoff with no introduction feels like being blindsided or senseless sucker punched without warning. Where did this come from? And why? But to have an intro without a payoff is worse in my opinion, because it leaves a reader hanging...and going back to it makes it seem like fluff or filler that never needed to be there to begin with. Either way, it sucks all of the importance out of the major moments that you want your story to have. It’s fictional ‘pollution’. Not a good idea.

So, in order to avoid this...what you want to do is plan these things out in pairs. Like bookends during certain moments in your plot. If you include some kind of big detail earlier on in your story...you want to make sure that it has some level of impact on the character or the story itself as a part of the evolution of your fiction. If it happens to be a point of interest for your readers, it’s natural that they’re going to commit these details to memory. Remember that your audience is reading the details of your story with a sense of forming an investment in what’s going on there. If you give a minor character a name...they will try to remember it. Almost as if it’s going to be on ‘the test’ later on. So...if you’re going to make it a part of your project, then you’ve got to have some sort of significant payoff further down the road to make retaining that little bit of information worth their while. You know what I mean? Don’t leave elements of perceived detail to dangle in the wind when you’re done.

Like...let’s say that one of your characters was once a heavy alcoholic, and you want that to be a part of his back story. Ok, that’s cool...as a random mention or just a bit of added detail to give some depth to their character it works. That works just fine. BUT...if you’re going to concentrate on it in a major way, and on more than one occasion...then you’ll be missing one of your bookends if the story ends and it never comes up again. Not only does it leave your project dangling at the end...but it dismisses the whole point of you writing it into your narrative. And that part of the character you attached to it begins to crumble and burn itself out. Readers feel cheated. Wouldn’t you?

Now...if you’re going to make it a focused part of that character or the plot of the story...then justify its existence in your text. Maybe your character is struggling with sobriety and has now fallen off the wagon...having a big impact on the story. Or maybe...you main character needs someone who can drink somebody else under the table in a shady bar as a distraction, and he’s the only one with a high enough tolerance to pull that off. Who knows what you’ve got in mind...but do you sort of understand what I’m saying here? You made the introduction into your narrative, and your readers got all engaged and invested into this being a part of the story that you’re trying to tell. Not a random bit of conversation or a minor backstory detail, but something heavier than that. So now you have to pay it off. Have it make sense. Why is it there? Why did you add it in such a not-so-subtle way? People will ask themselves about this...and hopefully, you’ll have an answer to give them.

This is where the ‘bookend’ method comes in most handy. When you’re plotting your story out...and you come up with a spontaneous idea here and there (It happens sometimes, and it’s a good thing) always try to keep in mind that it has to ‘connect’ to something somewhere else in the story. Where is this going to come back and add something to the plot? How is it going to somehow explain its mention and focus earlier on in your story? It should be a fairly easy question to ask yourself and answer without too much mental strain. Hehehe, that should be the easy part, right? Why did you add it? What did that little bit of detail do to move the characters involved or guide the story forward? If you can’t immediately answer that...then what you have in your fiction is ‘fluff’. Pointless prose that doesn’t really go anywhere, and therefore serves no purpose other than padding the page count when you don’t really need to do that. The more attention you pay to that detail in the beginning...the bigger the payoff has to be in the end. Even if it seems like it would be cool for a few scenes here and then, adds depth to your character, or is a fun part of you doing some world building...if you bring attention to it once, bring attention to it twice. Don’t just allow it to be a loose end with no resolution. It’s frustrating.

Something else that I’ve wrestled with in the past with my own work is the fact that my writing can sometimes be rather spontaneous in its presentation. Now, if you’re that kind of author...I definitely applaud you for that, as I feel like it often adds something organic to a writer’s work and brings readers into the moment. However, by making that a practice of mine, I’ve had to train myself to stay on point and not change the story’s path and my protagonist’s journey later on in the project. Because what happens is I start to set things up in a way that will send the story down one path...and later I end up impulsively end up following my gut instinct down a completely different path instead. So going rogue...it’s not always the most effective way of putting a story together. What that does is cause the plot to take on a whole new life of its own and you get an entire domino effect of events to end up as loose ends in a narrative that you’re no longer thinking about. I’ve done that a lot in my older stories, and I’m constantly watching my storylines to keep it from happening again. Live and learn, I suppose. Hehehe!

Basically, you just have to keep in mind that minor details are fine...great even...but the more major defining traits of your characters, your plot, or the world that they inhabit, need a reason to be there. Well, technically, everything in your story needs a reason to be there...but certain highlights can’t just be mentioned in passing and never come back around again later to prove their merit as a part of your story. Think about how much certain details are going to stand out and possibly intrigue your readers and raise questions that they might want answers to at some point before you wrap everything up at the end. Those are the ones that you need to bookend with something else so it doesn’t feel pointless.

It’s all guess work, so there’s no foolproof way to get it right every time. But you can improve your odds by improving your natural instincts with stuff like this. So keep it in mind, k?

Anyway, as always, it’s good to see you guys again! Feel free to give your thoughts down below, and I hope this helps out a little bit! I still learn something every time I try something new. It keeps me somewhat sharp, ya know?