To be continued…

Daily writing prompt If you could change the ending of any book, which one would it be? View all responses

I’m not sure I can answer this question [nice way of saying this is a dumb question] for a couple of reasons. The first is that while I might personally be unhappy with the ending of a book, it’s the ending the author wanted so who am I, or anyone, to argue? And we’re talking about a book and published books go through a long editing process before publication that has it edited a number of times which is a lot of eyes on the book, or maybe not so many if all the editors happen to be cyclopes (I learned today from the dictionary that ‘cyclopes’ is the plural of ‘cyclops’. I thought it would just be ‘cyclopses’ so it’s good I checked) and if none of those eyes thought the accepted ending needed to be changed, then the ending must be ok. And finally changing the ending of a book just seems kind of whiny to me.

While I wouldn’t change the ending of any one book, one thing I would change is the endings of all books in general – and this is pretty much thanks to George R.R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss – and that would be no cliffhanger endings allowed if your story extends beyond one book. I used to like reading fantasy books until I found George R.R. Martin who both renewed my interest in fantasy and pretty much destroyed it. Martin’s series was great, and it wasn’t so bad waiting a couple of years between books, but when a couple of years turned into five years and six years only to lead to a complete abandonment of the series and handing it all over to the HBO show writers to finish, I lost interest. And then the straw that broke this camel’s back was Patrick Rothfuss. Rothfuss wrote (or someone did?) a really great first two books of a planned trilogy and then after book two nothing for 15 years and counting but excuses. And for those fans looking forward for the release of book three? Nothing from the author but this. You might say the waiting shows no signs of abating. The reason I wrote “or someone did?” was because that’s just one of the conspiracy theories fans have put out to explain Rothfuss’ apparent abandonment of his trilogy. If you’d like to watch an entertaining take on Patrick Rothfuss and his “evil wizard vibes“, this video by Matt Moore of Dream Canon Publishing is really good.

I kind of went off on a little tangent there. Anyway, I don’t want to change the ending of any book. But I wouldn’t mind changing the rules of publication of books so that cliffhanger endings in series books aren’t allowed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSnQeyXAG_k

#Cyclops #dailyprompt #dailyprompt2803 #DreamCanonPublishing #EvilWizard #GeorgeRRMartin #HBO #NoFluffWritingAdvice #PatrickRothfuss