Welcome to Day 5 of Hooked on Writing, your free online writing course. This online workbook will help you create a writing habit in 31 days.

Beginnings & Endings

You can’t start one story and end up telling another. Your reader invests time and money in you and your characters. Don’t disappoint them.

Aim:

1. To show how the promise of a beginning must be addressed at the end.
2. To use the second person viewpoint (you) to create a surreal effect.

How:

1. Read the opening paragraphs of any novel that is near to hand.
2. Now, write your own ending in two to three paragraphs.
3. Write it in second person present tense.
4. Your final paragraph ends with these words:

“You walk. You talk. You may even smile on occasion. You inhale and exhale like everyone else. You know the secrets of life and love and loss and death. You own them. You long to share these delights with someone. You ache to feel the blood and hair and heart again. If only they knew.”

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Result:

Give us an ending that resolves the promise of the beginning. Second person should provide the surreal quality normally associated with a dream – and allow you to construct almost any kind of ending.

At Night

Use your writing journal here. Write ‘At Night’ at the top of a clean page. Free write or expand on the exercise you’ve completed. (If you want to buy the downloadable workbook, which includes space for these exercises, you can get it in our store for only $20.)

‘You can have your book or you can have your excuses. You can’t have both’ – Writers Write