Should you know your series ending?

What's sad is that so many TV series go on and on and on without anyone knowing the end goal. Heck, most show runners have no idea what to do with another season if they get it. That's why so many really good shows fall apart in the second season because there was no overall plan.

 

It's as sad as it is mindboggling. I could not imagine submitting a story, or approving a story to become a television series that isn't even finished, and hoping nobody looks behind the curtain for over a decade lol. The only explanation that comes to mind is money. If there's no planned end, no vision, they can stretch it on until people get bored of it. Puke out some half-baked ending like you just don't care- 'cause you actually don't. You just made millions.

And what also makes me scratch my head with such confusion that people might think I have lice: how does the original creator of the work pre-approve somebody else ruining their own creation? Guess artistic integrity died with chivalry. Why bother handing the rights of your creation over to somebody who isn't going to do it justice?

Is "If you're going to make a show based closely on my novel here, you need to know where you're going to take it ahead of time (also known as a PLAN) so that you can't just milk it." an absurd request? Isn't there some way to include a contractual binding that prevents them from sabotaging their version of your work without consequence? lol

(Of course, I'm talking about adaptations here.)

 

If the book are tightly related? Absolutely. If they're not, then I don't think so.

 

Maybe a vague idea, but not too specific as your plot will evolve. If you don't plan at all though, everything will seem disjoint and just plain weird. Remember the tv show Lost? It's pretty obvious that they had an idea for maybe three season, but then went completely off the rails.

 

I want to thank everyone for the suggestions. I think I'm on the right track to figuring out the ending now (I have an idea for the final villain for one).

 

At least for several of them (such as Claymore, Full Metal Alchemist, Hellsing, etc), it was because they were based on a hit manga which hadn't actually finished by the time of broadcast. And the showmakers had to improvise an ending of their own, which was seldom satisfactory, just have things just stop abruptly, or adapt a single arc which made no sense unless you already knew the source material. It seems to be happening less often lately, thankfully.

 

A lot of it, I'm sure, is the fact that so few series ever get beyond the first season, or even complete the first season, so most developers never think that far ahead. They assume it's going to get canned so they don't plan for more than the first season. Of course, when it is successful, they have no idea where to go because have no overall plan. Like you, I could never do that, I'd have an overarching story worked out long before the first day of filming, so in case it goes somewhere, I'm ready.

That's why I don't do screenplays. It's just too depressing.

 

In those cases. they should at least have the decency to have the manga-ka write an ending. Instead, they get things like Game of Thrones which is completely off-script and really isn't very good anymore.

 

Did you watch FMA Brotherhood?

 

I'd say the idea of the ending should be there when you start ...at a very basic level. Is the world going to end? Are wrongs going to be avenged or righted? This kind of thing. You don't need to know how you're going to get there, but I think you do need some idea of where you're going. You can, of course, change this as you evolve your story, but I think it's a good idea to have an idea. Not a plan, but an idea.

Since somebody else brought it up, the reboot of Battlestar Galactica didn't work for me, even though I was glued to the series nearly all the way through because it was so well made and the characters were so good. However, I thought it went totally off the rails. It led us down all the wrong paths, and the original premise got totally lost in the confusion. And that's because the writers, in my opinion, made a very basic mistake. They got a bad BAD case of cliffhangeritis. They were great at ending each season with a cliffhanger. However, I think the cliffhangers got them into deep trouble.

Starting with the first one. 'I'm taking you to Earth.' A mysterious earth that nobody was even sure existed, and was NOT where the humans had come from originally. WHAT???? It was a fantastic cliffhanger, but then the story started to get diverted from its original purpose, which startedout to be about Cylons and Humans, and the relationship between creator and created. Suddenly the focus changed, started getting tied up in Greek deities (which could not have happened, because these people didn't come from Earth at all), sushi, springer spaniels, prophecies, etc ...and got badly knocked off kilter. Then the Cylons started turning out to be characters we already knew as humans (another great cliffhanger) and the series started having to explain how THAT happened ...then it all descended into mumbo jumbo and nothing made much sense after that.

I know from what the writers have since revealed that they didn't have a clue where all this was heading when they made these decisions. And I'm sorry. For me that lack of focus showed, and ruined the show. Contrasting that with Farscape, which on the surface appeared to be a much more haphazard show—and it had its own cliffhanger season endings. However, the cliffhangers were easily resolved in the first episode of the following season, and never led the series off track. Farscape's purpose was strong, and when it got prematurely cancelled 4/5ths of the way through, we were devastated because we knew that was NOT the ending. Thankfully, Peacekeeper Wars (however truncated and irritating at times) condensed Season 5 and answered the main questions of the series ...the resolution of the Wormhole Weapon conflict, the Scarran/Peacekeeper conflict, and of course the relationship between Aeryn and Crichton. That's a series that should have been given the promised 5 whole seasons, because it was a complete story. It was not a meandering series with no central theme or purpose. Still my favourite Sci-Fi series of all time.

So ...beware cliffhangeritis. If a 'cliffhanger' or sudden lightbulb idea leads you into tangents you hadn't planned for, then I think you can be in bother. I'd much rather end a chapter or book or season with a quiet resolution that still leaves more to come, than with a cliffhanger that ends up either being a stupid misunderstanding, or worse, a path that should never have been taken.

 

I think it' also worth considering that shows like this don't just have one writer though. By the time a show has been approved for another season a writer or a whole team might have to try and find another job, with new people beong brought in. That's got to affect continuity and plot interpretation.
And I think you have to consider that some people #need# the money. If I had a book that Uwe Boll wanted tof make into a pile of nonsense I totally would sell out because I have a son, a sick husband and a mortgage!

 

But that's really still the same problem altogether - if the manga author knew his ending, the anime could make it before the manga artists get round to drawing it. The thing is I think they just keep making it up for as long as it's popular

 

I think you should have an idea of its direction, but I also think that sometimes, stories and characters take on a life of their own and move us is a different direction.

As with most things, there are pros and cons about having a plan and sticking to it. Sometimes, the plan might not actually work and sometimes, research into a particular part will tell you that it "just can't happen that way", so changes need to be made.

In other words, don't fret about not knowing your ending, and also, don't fret if you do know your ending!

 

As I said in my lengthy blurb above, if you're the writer you can change anything. Provided, of course, you haven't published it before you should have done, or sold the rights to a TV series that is going to lap you.

I truly believe that if you're writing a series, and plan to publish the books one at a time while you're still writing later books in the series, you had better have a pretty good idea of where you're heading. Otherwise you are very likely to leave your readers feeling unhappy, angry or cheated, because you've changed your mind partway through, and the beginning and the ending don't add up.

I know if I feel a writer has let me down, by creating a story that doesn't make sense in terms of resolution, I will not be reading any more of their stuff.

 

If it's not episodic to the point each installment can stand alone, I'd say so. It needn't be super specific. You can change it if things end up developing differently than originally planned. But you should absolutely have an end destination in mind.

I mean, most people wouldn't go on a road trip without knowing where they want to go. Why should a piece of fiction be different?

 

The short answer is, yes, but I was never any good at following rules. My stories decide for themselves where they're going. I'm just along for the ride.

 

I've noticed that several posters have said 'don't do this or don't do that because your story will change'. Well, regardless of what you do or don't do, your story is going to change as your write it. Accept it and embrace it. Change is part of the process, its called development. You will see changes in your story starting with the initial draft all the way to the final edit.
That said, it you're just want to start writing there is a planning method called the Reverse Outline. That's where you write your story. You don't need to know your ending or all the specifics, just let it develop as you write. Now, you have a story, characters and ending. Characters and other elements have probably changed during the 3rd or 4th part of the story. Maybe pretty drastically. No biggie. Now, you take that story, and break it down into an outline. You're now ready to begin your second draft.
Godspeed!

 

I feel knowing the ending is a spoiler.
I mean i get wanting to have a certain outcome, but having a preplanned ending can really dampen the story and make writing it more of a chore in my opinion.

I write based on how I feel, so if I’m feeling happy, I might spark a romance in the story. I’m feeling angry, I might kill someone in the story. And doing anything polar like that can COMPLETELY change your ending.
One I’m writing I KNOW what I want the outcome to be. It’s called “The Amazingly Wonderful World of Billy Beetlebuck” and it’s about a girl who attempts suicide, and meets this guy in the afterlife who teaches her about loving ones life. Now I’ve destroyed a few characters in there, including one who was almost a main character. NOW my ending has changed. And that’s just the way that the story went.

A story is like life... you can never predict endings

 

There's that word "should" . . .

I don't know the ending of mine. My WIP was going to be a one-off, until a couple of beta readers said they really liked the protagonists and wanted more of them. I got to thinking of the unfinished business they both still have at the end of the first book. That gives me at least three more novels for them to work these issues out--- God willing and this writing gig doesn't drive me nutty.

But foreseeing some conclusion so I can say the series is done? I don't know yet what that would be.

 

I liked the ending, but I hate them for having claimed in interviews that they had an eight season Bible all done and a definite arc and conclusion on paper.

Mack Bolan. Or the James Bond movies, if that's your thing. The fans like them, they don't care that the titular character could have started the series at 18 and retired two or three times in the intervening decades, and the writer is set up comfortably. Nothing wrong with it if you can hit that sweet spot.

However, I'm in a similar bind, where I realized that my WIP standalone sounds more like The Final Chapter, so I'm busy casting about for more ideas...