Writing a short story is a little like walking into a dark room, finding a light and turning it on. The light is the end of the story.
I think a writer's first job is to entertain, even in novels: to tell a compelling story that pulls the reader along toward an end. At the same time, the best stories are character-driven.
A true epilogue is removed from the story in time or space. That's the reason it is called an 'Epilogue'; the label serves to alert the reader that the story itself is over, but we are going to now see a distant result or consequence of that story.
Don't adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on on the story.
I think stories do have an ending. I think they need to have an ending eventually because that is a story: a beginning, middle and end. If you draw out the end too long, I think storytelling can get tired.
It's been a privilege to write for you and to have you accept me as a storyteller in your lives, Now, as my story draws to an end, may I say only, 'Thank you. You have been simply wonderful'.
Over and over, we start our own tales, compose our own stories, whether our lives are short or long. Until at last all our beginnings come down to just one end, and the tale of who we are is done.
You can insist on a different end to the story.
Plotting is difficult for me, and always has been. I do that before I actually start writing, but I always do characters, and the arc of the story, first... You can't do anything without a story arc. Where is it going to begin, where will it end.
I've had such an incredible arc, so it made sense to me, creatively, that we've told Laurel's story. It has come to an end in the 'Arrow'-verse.
Sometimes we don't want the bad guy to get caught because otherwise the story is over. You want to at least see it through to the end.
