How long is this story?  For me to write something with that much action it
would take 30-40 pages for what you already have.  Haven't had the class, so
I don't know what they want.

I'll be brutal by pointing out your "yadda, yadda."  That doesn't sound good
to me.  If you're not willing to actually say what's happening in the story
then I feel like you're not proud, or confidant, about what you have
written.  Don't try and respond with an excusal of this.  If you do it's
bull shit.  There's a conscous reason why you used "yadda, yadda."  Whether
you're ready to admit it or not.  What this tells me is that your story is
completely centered around these turns of plot and that I can get the same
enjoyment from reading your synopsis as i can from actually reading the
story.  Make your writing so pleasing that I will want to read your story
for the "yadda, yadda" alone and not even care what's going on with the
plot.

I hope you have also subtley described the son's character enough that when
the reader discovers that the son tried to have his father killed, he's
surprised at first but when he rereads the story he/she can see how the
son's character has been built with this patricital urge.

For the ending, I'm assuming you don't plan on killing off both mom and dad,
maybe one or the other, but certainly not both.  You probably have some
cinematic scene where the house breaker comes back and almost kills them,
but is suddenly stopped.  The son repents at the sight of his almost dead
father.  The family dog attacks the villain.  Something has to happen to
save them, right?  You couldn't possibly end a marketable story with the
hero and heroine dead.  Draw a card, any card.

Ryan Schaller
[log in to unmask]
www.xanga.com/thelonelyartistclub




----- Original Message -----
From: "canadianokie" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2006 7:59 PM
Subject: [PWA-L] Ideas needed


> Hi everybody!
>
> I'll break the silence on this board.
>
> I'm taking the Short Story class and I'm stuck for an ending.  Or at
> least my daughter tells me my ending "sucks" so I'm needing some help
> to revamp.
>
> I'm writing a story about a home invasion.  The villain comes to the
> door--he is expected b/c he works with the husband.  The son and wife
> are home, they get tied up, yadda, yadda, dad comes home and gets
> popped on the noggin' and tied up, yadda, yadda.  The son is tied and
> left at home to be dealt with later when the villain comes back for
> anything he wants to steal.  Meanwhile the parents are carted off to
> be killed.  They attempt to escape and fail, but try again and
> succeed.  The bad guys go to jail and the family moves away.*  They
> are so traumatized by what has happened that they don't want any ID
> trails, so they don't have a bank account, they only use Virgin
> phones, etc.  The villain gets out of jail and finds them.  How?
> Well, it seems that the son is in cahoots with the villain all
> along.  The Dad made a fortune in business and the villain and the
> son want to kill mom and dad and get their money.
>
> How do I end that?  Be brutal about the story line, too.
>
> OK, fellow writers, let me hear from you!
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jocelyn
>
> *Actually, this actually happened to a friend of mine.  Scary, huh?
>