JPC Allen Writes

Welcome to my writing pages!  The main focus of this website is to offer writing tips, prompts, and inspiration to writers, no matter what their genre or skill level. You’ll also find information on my published works and the ones in progress. My schedule for posting is:

Monday Sparks: Writing prompts to fan your creative flame.

Thursdays – Writing tips based on a monthly theme

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Best Last Lines from Stories

Books with the best endings

Readers often talk about favorite opening lines, but what about best last lines from stories? Of course it’s often hard to share a favorite last line because it may give away the ending. Since this month on JPC Allen Writes I’m discussing endings, here are a few of my favorite last lines.

The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell

This short story is one of the best ever written from the opening to the final lines. Rainsford has survived being hunted by mad General Zaroff on his private Carribean island by faking his death. He sneaks back into the general’s mansion and surprises him.

*****

The general sucked in his breath and smiled. “I congratulate you,” he said. “You have won the game.”

Rainsford did not smile.”I am still a beast at bay,” he said, in a low, hoarse voice. “Get ready, General Zaroff.”

The general made one of his deepest bows. “I see,” he said. “Splendid! One of us is to furnish a repast for the hounds. The other will sleep in his very excellent bed. On guard, Rainsford …”

He had never slept in a better bed, Rainsford decided.

*****

Murder in Three Acts by Agatha Christie

Master detective Hercule Poirot unmasks a tripe murderer and explains that the first murder was merely a rehearsal for the second one. The killer didn’t care who got the poisoned cocktail. He just wanted to test the method he’d worked out for the man he needed to kill.

After the killer is taken away, it takes a few moments for his scheme to fully hit Mr. Satterwhite, who has accompanied Poirot in his investigation like a Watson.

*****

Satterthwaite said slowly: “I could have drunk that cocktail…”


Poirot answered gravely: “There was an even more terrible possibility… It might have been me.”

*****

That quote sums up Poirot so well, a detective whose ego is only surpassed by his brain.

Black Orchids by Rex Stout

This book contains two novellas featuring the eccentric private detective Nero Wolfe and his assistant Archie Goodwin. The first, “Black Orchids”, relates how Wolfe acquires the unique flower during the course of an investigation. The second, “Cordially Invited to Meet Death”, has two mysteries. The main one concerns solving the murder of a client. The other is why Wolfe sent eight blooms from the rare black orchid plant to the funeral with the card “N.W.” He hadn’t told Archie was sending anything, and it’s completely out of character for the egocentric Wolfe.

After the murder is solved, Archie is still wondering about the orchids at the funeral. He has a few theories–Wolfe sent them to pester Archie because he knew Archie would go to the funeral and notice the flowers. Wolfe had a past with the client that Archie knows nothing about. Wolfe was paying a debt because he suspected the client was in danger and bungled it. Archie thinks the last theory is the most likely.

*****

But Archie writes:

But it’s still a mystery, and when he [Wolfe] catches me looking at him a certain way he knows darned well what’s on my mind.

*****

You don’t have to quote the last lines and possibly ruin the story, but what stories or novels do you think have the best last lines?

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The Fatal Flaws That Ruin a Novel’s Ending

How to write the ending of a novel

This month on JPC Allen Writes I’ll be posting about how to write an ending for your novel. Endings for novels are tough to write, and if the writer gets it wrong, the ending is what readers remember more than any other aspect of the plot. So what are the fatals flaws the ruin a novel’s ending?

The fatal flaws that hide in plain sight

The fatal flaws are the beginning and middle of your novel. The purpose of the beginning is to introduce and establish the plot, characters, and the main problem the protagonist faces. The middle takes the beginning and explores and complicates the plot and characters. If you don’t have a strong beginning or middle, their flaws will be reflected in your ending.

The purposed of the ending is to echo points introduced in the beginning and explored in the middle. It’s also supposed to resolve the problems established in the beginning and complicated in the middle. If your beginning or middle falls down on these basic components of story structure, your ending will be not be compelling, meaningful, or memorable.

Flaws in the beginning of the novel

If you haven’t taken the time to establish who your characters are, what their personalities are like, and how those aspects affect the plot, the ending won’t have much meaning. The major characters will seem remote, and readers won’t be invested in them. So their victory in the end will read like a news story. Nice but something that happened to strangers on the other side of the country.

If the beginning doesn’t establish what’s at stake for your protagonist, or the ramifications of achieving or missing his goal, then again the ending is hollow.

Making clear who the characters are and what the stakes of solving or not solving the problem are goes a long way to enriching your ending.

Flaws in the middle of the novel

The middle is the bulk of your novel. You have the space to explore your characters and how they will solve their problem. You also have the space to throw complications in their path as they pursue the problem. An ending won’t be satisfying if the problem is solved too easily. Take the time in the middle to deepen relationships and make the happy solution to the problem less and less possible. Both of those techniques will invest readers in the characters, making them root for their success at the finish.

If you find your ending is boring, hollow, or dissatisfying, reread your novel. The flaws that are ruining your ending are probably staring you in the face.

Here are more tips on writing endings for novels.

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How to Write the Middle of a Novel Without Losing Momentum

Advice on writing a novel

When writing the middle of your novel, you can run into two common problems with momentum: it’s either too short or too long. Here are my tips for how to write the middle of a novel without losing momentum.

If the middle of your novel is too long

By too long, I mean you exceed your word count for a novel in the particular genre you write, you find it boring, or you’ve lost your plot, your point, your protagonist, or all three. Since the middle of your novel is the largest part of it, it’s easy to overwrite this section or lose your way. To trim it or drastically reduce it, try these techniques.

  • Write a one to three sentence paragraph that sums up your novel. It sounds impossible, but you should be able to describe who your protagonist is, what the problem of the novel is, and how the protagonist intends to solve the problem in just a few lines. Post those sentences where you can see them while you edit. Cut the subplots that don’t support the problem listed in those sentences. For example, my amateur sleuth’s young half-brother always invents some device during each of my novels. But I only include his invention because I can use it to effect the course of Rae’s investigation to solve the mystery.
  • Is your protagonist the active agent? It’s easy to let secondary characters take over in the middle. But your protagonist(s) should be front and center of most scenes. If the novel is written from 1st person POV, then the protagonist is the mover and shaker of every scene. Cut those scenes where the protagonist isn’t actively involved.

If the middle of your novel is too short

By too short, I mean you are way under your word count, the middle isn’t the longest part of your novel, or your novel feels rushed or boring.

  • Examine your beginning. The beginning introduces and establishes characters and plots for the novel. The middle complicates and explores those introductions and establishments. Have you explored relationships you set up at the beginning? Have you complicated the path your protagonist is following to solve the main problem of the story? Don’t be afraid to put serious obstacles in the way of your protagonist as he tries to solve the problem of the novel. The more challenging the obstacles, the more satisfying the resolution.
  • Are there subplots you’d like to add? Maybe you thought of some subplots but didn’t think you had the space to include them. Now that you see that you do, add them and see if they support your one-to-three sentence synopsis. For example, in my third Rae Riley novel, A Riddle in the Lonesome October, I introduce Rae’s cousin Claire. It may look like she’s just an extra in the ticket booth at the Halloween attraction where Rae has a temporary job. But that would be silly to introduce her if I can’t give her a pivotal role in solving the problem of the novel, which is discovering a lost inheritance.

Here are my other posts this month on writing the middle of a novel.

What have your learned about the middle if you’ve written a novel?

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How to Write a Set Piece for Your Novel

Writing the middle of your novel

This is a revised post from a couple of years ago. If you find that the middle of your novel isn’t as compelling as the beginning, your story might need a set piece. Below are my tips for how to write a set piece for your novel.

What’s a Set Piece?

I’ve heard this term in connection with movies, specifically the thrillers by Alfred Hitchcock, so I looked it up. According to Wikipedia, the term originated when a movie needed the production team to build a new set instead of reusing sets leftover from other movies at the studio. To make such an expense worthwhile, the filmmaker made the setting part of an important scene. Now the term means a critical or jaw-dropping scene or sequence within a movie. 

The rescue of Princess Leia and the escape from the trash compactor is a set piece in the middle of Star Wars: A New Hope. Foreign Correspondent by Alfred Hitchcock has several set pieces: an assassination on the steps of a large building during a rainstorm, the hero sneaking through a windmill in Holland as he eavesdrops on Nazi spies, and a murder attempt at the top of Winchester Cathedral in London.

So How Do I Use a Set Piece in a Novel?

Use a set piece when you want your story to take a dramatic or unexpected turn that will affect the rest of the story. You can use more than one, depending upon the genre and kind of story you are telling.

In my teen cozy mystery, A Shadow on the Snow, I have set piece smack in the middle of my novel because the plot takes a dramatic turn from that point on. Like in the old days of the movies when the director built scenes around an expensive set, I want my readers to have the time to appreciate what’s happening in the set piece, so I slow the narrative down. The set-up, actual set piece, and wrap up play over three chapters. The set piece itself has a shadowy figure chase my protagonist, amateur sleuth Rae Riley, through her small hometown in a snowstorm on the night of Valentine’s Day. This chase leads to a pivotal scene with her newly found father. In that scene, I let the dialogue take over, which also slows the story down. 

If your protagonist uncovers a traitor, take the time to make this revelation in a meaningful setting and a dramatic way. If your protagonist goes against her moral code with disastrous results, slow the pace enough for readers to get the full impact of this dramatic change in the story.

Two Warnings

I said to slow your story, not stop it. Your story is a glider. If you slow it too much, it will crash. Only had descriptions and dialogue that are needed to highlight this major change in the plot. Good writing rules still apply to a set piece–slowing down does not mean getting wordy.

My other warning is that any set piece can’t be more exciting than your climax. If your set piece in the middle of your novel has the heroine save London from certain destruction, she’d better be saving the world from that same fate at the end. In the climax of Foreign Correspondent, the heroes’s plane is shot out of the sky. They are forced to make a crash landing and then cling to the wreckage while they wait for rescue. If you find your set piece is overshadowing your climax, you either need to tone down the set piece or amp up your climax.

I’d love to hear from you. In your writing, had you ever had to add a set piece to your novel? Readers, what’s a memorable set piece?

Here are more tips on writing the middle of your novel.

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Key Plotting Technique to Save Your Novel From the Sagging Middle

How to write the middle of a novel

Even the newest writers have heard of the dangers when writing the middle of a novel. The middle makes up the bulk of the story, and like an unexplored jungle, it can swallow writers whole, leaving them hacking away at useless subplots and extraneous characters without the end in sight. To avoid this catastrophe, here is the key plotting technique to save your novel from the sagging middle.

The Roller Coaster Method of Plotting

In my post on the 3 steps to mastering your novel’s beginning, I stated that the beginning chapters have two jobs: introducing and establishing the story. The middle also has two jobs: exploring and complicating what we’ve introduced and established. We can do that through the roller coaster method of plotting.

We plot events that are both favorable and unfavorable to the protagonist’s quest to reach her goal. Below is a graphic of the roller coaster method for plotting a mystery.

The turns of the plot not only have to be favorable and unfavorable, but the events need to grow more intense as we reach the climax. Using the above chart as an example, the detective isn’t in danger until toward the end. If one of my first unfavorable events put the detective in danger, then by the end I have to have a climax that’s even more intense, has even more at stake.

So we should plot our favorable and unfavorable events with increasing intensity or higher stakes. We also need to decided how fast these events should occur within the story and how much time we need to give the reader to consider what they’ve learned from the last event. Even in a thriller, a writer has to hit the brakes at some point, even just slightly, so readers have time to digest what’s happened.

So the middle is a combination of events that help and hinder the protagonist to achieve his or her goal as well as breaks for the protagonist to consider what’s happened. And while the protagonist is trying to make sense of events, so is the reader.

But how do I know how fast to pace my novel?

First, we should read the books in genre we’re writing. The genre will guide us in the pace readers expect. Historical fiction usually unfolds at a more leisurely speed than a contemporary mystery.

Second, if as the writer, we find ourselves bored with our own novel, we need to pick up the pace.

Here’s my review of Write Your Novel from the Middle by James Scott Bell, which is another way to shape the middle.

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