Resolution
Dec. 13th, 2004 07:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
odd_buttonsThe following is an excerpt from Part III of the book Making Shapely Fiction, by Jerome Stern. The first two parts are very much worth reading as well. The book is available in paperback.
Resolution
Resolution, when it's right for the particular material, brings the work to a satisfactory close.
In certain forms, like television situation shows, tight resolutions are standard. Everyone learns a lesson, makes a promise, or gets his or her just deserts in one way or another. In realistic fiction that kind of tight ending seems manipulated. Since life does not work out that neatly, fiction that does so falsifies life. However, in comic fiction, part of the fun might derive from an ingenious resolution that brings about desired but unexpected results. In other forms like romances, mysteries, and espionage novels, fairly tight resolutions are traditional, though a few loose ends can be intriguing.
In short fiction explicit resolutions are comparatively rare. A convincing change of personality is difficult to execute in a short space. It's an achievement if you simply show characters beginning to comprehend something significant, and do this plausibly and movingly. Usually the outcomes are implied. One reason for this is that the moment of insight, the epiphany, is often the high point of the story. Final scenes in which characters dramatically manifest new insights or overt changes of heart can feel anticlimactic or simplistic. Too tight a resolution makes the story seem pat, mechanical, and cliché.
See Endings, Epiphany, Irony, Poetic Justice.
Resolution
Resolution, when it's right for the particular material, brings the work to a satisfactory close.
In certain forms, like television situation shows, tight resolutions are standard. Everyone learns a lesson, makes a promise, or gets his or her just deserts in one way or another. In realistic fiction that kind of tight ending seems manipulated. Since life does not work out that neatly, fiction that does so falsifies life. However, in comic fiction, part of the fun might derive from an ingenious resolution that brings about desired but unexpected results. In other forms like romances, mysteries, and espionage novels, fairly tight resolutions are traditional, though a few loose ends can be intriguing.
In short fiction explicit resolutions are comparatively rare. A convincing change of personality is difficult to execute in a short space. It's an achievement if you simply show characters beginning to comprehend something significant, and do this plausibly and movingly. Usually the outcomes are implied. One reason for this is that the moment of insight, the epiphany, is often the high point of the story. Final scenes in which characters dramatically manifest new insights or overt changes of heart can feel anticlimactic or simplistic. Too tight a resolution makes the story seem pat, mechanical, and cliché.
See Endings, Epiphany, Irony, Poetic Justice.