Start at the Ending
Kevin Ahearn responds to Challenge 186
Don:
The Challenge: “Rogers is surly enough a character to justify the ending of Clyde Andrew’s “Spacesuit Blues.” Can you think of other possible endings?”
Maybe this is strictly my problem, but I believe, as Aristotle decreed, that a story has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
“Spaceship Blues” has a beginning, but NO middle, and it stops rather than ends. How does one come up with an ending without a middle?
It is also my belief that a story consists of the “Three C’s”: Concept, Character and Conflict. “Spaceship Blues” has a character and not much else. Like too many so-called stories, it is a “first-person whine” with NO concept and a self-proclaimed conflict.
Before “Spaceship Blues” can have an ending, it must be about something.
Kevin
Copyright © 2006 by Kevin Ahearn
Thank you for the feedback, Kevin. Aristotle was right: stories are logical constructs, and as such they do have a beginning, middle and end. Incidentally, they don’t have to occur in chronological order: it is theoretically possible to write a story with the order end-beginning-middle. That kind of plot is outlandish but not impossible.
In my experience, writers conceive of the ending first and then back and fill, writing the rest as it comes. Beginnings are often written last. If you start with the beginning, you take a big chance that you may not discover an ending before you run out of gas. That process holds with just about anything, be it an epic, a novel, a term paper or a joke.
In the case of “Spacesuit Blues,” I obviously agree that the story needs an ending: Challenge 186 invited readers to send us ideas for one. Now, that’s hard to do for the reasons you state: the story is mostly an exposition that’s almost certainly too long.
Now, even and especially first persons are entitled to “whine”; there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that. We don’t have to like all characters; in fact, in the case of Rogers, we’re not supposed to. But you’re right, Kevin: that’s where a story starts; no one is interested in stories that end there.
“Spacesuit Blues” exposes a pitfall inherent in “hard” science fiction, one that Analog Editor Stanley Schmidt must have to guard against every day: neglecting internal conflict in favor of accidental problems. And spacehand Rogers does not have a conflict; he has a technical problem, namely getting a creepy-crawly off his suit when all about him want him to keep it.
The solution — whipping out a the equivalent of a Boy Scout knife — is as simplistic as “reversing polarity” or even the most arcane technical contrivances in hard science fiction. In a sense, it’s a parody of the genre. One wonders why Rogers is so slow on the uptake and doesn’t think of it earlier than he does. He could have held the alien hostage in exchange for a raise — or at least a new spacesuit.
What conflict might Rogers have? It has to be one of character: he’s everybody’s enemy and doesn’t like himself very much, either. In the end, he has to change. But how?
Rogers can go from being self-absorbed and surly to being a maniacal, nihilistic alien-slayer, but that’s too much in character and too short a trip to be worth mentioning. And it’s dull, to boot.
Rather, Rogers has to change his attitude. And that’s exactly what happens twice over in Jörn Grote’s “Home, to the Sea,” in issue 125. It’s hard to find a better model than that to illustrate concept, character and conflict.
So that’s why this Challenge was so difficult: we have to start all over... from the ending.
Don
