1. Dave says:

   May 23, 2010 at 10:07 pm

   Josh~
   I appreciate you articulating all these things (as I have enjoyed your past updates) but I do want to respond to a few things, for the sake of discussion (apologies in advance if this is long-winded).
   First, the Lost thing. To be clear, I haven’t seen any of Lost so I’m not qualified to pass judgment on it; but in as far as it relates to your discussion of judging a piece of work as a whole based on the ending, I have to disagree with you, at least in part.
   As best I can tell there are two issues here. Re: whether or not a piece of work should be judged as a whole by the quality of its ending, there are a few distinctions that have to be made. Like: a novel is a thing meant to be experienced as a whole. No matter how long it takes to read, it is one piece, together. Like a film. A television show is a different beast entirely, the medium equivalent of writing chapters and publishing them in serial form, if you will. In either case it is wise to have an idea of where you’re going well ahead of time, but in the specific realm of television I suppose this could be more difficult. Point being that in a medium where the writer is more solely responsible for the content and direction, I think a poorly thought out or poorly executed ending will rightly cast a shadow over the work as a whole (the abysmal – in my opinion – epilogue of the 7th Harry Potter novel stands out as a good example). And while it doesn’t really detract from how much I enjoyed the process of getting to the end, it is, to the one experiencing it, the final note, and so should be especially considered. Perhaps moreso in writing novels than in writing for television.
   The other thing about Lost (this is an assumption based on hearsay, as I haven’t seen it) is that the writers of the show apparently created several plotlines that went nowhere, and not in the sense of intended misdirection, but just plain lazy storytelling. The only thing I can compare this to is the show Heroes, which in my mind stands comparable as something that started out coherent and strong, and then devolved into far too many storylines, most of which never saw any kind of resolve. From a writer’s perspective this seems to be to be one of the worst crimes you can commit; whether you have a clear idea of where you’re going or not, everything should be in there for a reason. And so while I understand that the scenario of writing for television might put extra pressure on the writers to just come up with whatever they can, the fact that most shows still make sense and stay relatively coherent makes me think they either didn’t know where they were going, or didn’t care if things made sense. Either way it seems pretty poor storytelling.
   Re: the propensity of the general public to focus on the negative (going so far as to create absurd Facebook groups)… man. At the risk of gross oversimplification, it’s by and large because it is easier to talk shit than make something yourself. I’d guess that the kind of people, if I may generalize, who are drawn to create and/or participate in groups like that are the same ones all over the internet who have nothing better to do than criticize and judge content made by others, which is usually given away for free (i.e. webcomics), which adds yet another layer of absurdity to it all. But I think you are absolutely correct in feeling that there is a market out there for people who want positive content; it’s just that they tend not to be overly vocal online, for one reason or another. Those people are unfortunately never going to go away; all we can do is ignore ‘em and keep on working.
2. joshmirman says:

   May 23, 2010 at 10:30 pm

   Thanks for your opinions, they are interesting to read. I feel with people saying how LOST has made plots that didn’t have endings, I feel like there were more that had endings than not. To give benefit of the doubt and throw a bone to the naysayers, I bet a lot of tv shows suffer from having too many chefs in the kitchen.

   If you have one idea and you’re a creator, then you have an entire team of people underneath you, it’s going to be difficult to follow it exactly as you envisioned.

   I suppose that I think a lot of these movies, tv shows, books, comics, in a creator’s pov. For example, with Stubble’s first year I didn’t know how it was going to end, but when I prepared for year two, I knew how it was going to end all, and I stuck to it. However it still ended up fairly convoluted for what it was and people might say that I didn’t know what I was doing with it, but the fact is, I did.

   With Punks and Nerds I actually had an ending in my head when I began it, that changed around throughout its run. With P&N: QL, I have endings for every character, and so far I’m sticking to the course.

   With the first draft of my novel, I finished the whole thing and I’m pretty sure I resolved any issue I brought up in the book. However it’s just a first draft, and already a few things are changing as I begin to iron it out.

   I know examples of things that are ruined as a result of a bad ending… I don’t think Harry Potter’s fast forward epilogue is one for me. I also don’t think Star Wars Ep. 4-6 is ruined for me because of Ep. 1-3… I feel more like I don’t like a story overall, before any ending comes around, in my head… More than anything, like I explain how all the little stupid pointless things piled up for me with Kick-Ass, just gave me an overall “meh” reaction to it.

   I read one story called “Johannes The Necromancer” who had a highly enjoyable story until the ending, which I didn’t care for. But I didn’t feel like I wasted my time for the “meh” ending, because of everything else given to me before it. I’ve actually still recommended it to people and just said “I didn’t care for the ending, but I enjoyed the rest of it.”

   People so easily focus on negativity because negative thoughts/reactions are more vivid to us. It’s a bit of a caveman-like mentality. Sort of when a person touches fire, they’ll move their hand away in pain. They can’t focus on the positive in that scenario, which was “Don’t touch fire again.” But at the same time, I feel people would be much more happier with their lives if they didn’t react like that for everything in their lives… Be it webcomics, a tv show, a movie, etc. There’s so much more to life than that. If you enjoyed it, embrace what you enjoyed about it. If you didn’t, move on before you waste more time from it.

   I know it’s hard, but I guess as a writer, I’m thinking of ways to prepare when I make stories that are going to be disliked by some.
3. Dave says:

   May 23, 2010 at 10:54 pm

   I agree with all these points. The too-many-chefs analogy is spot-on.
   The Harry Potter thing is an imperfect example because, like you say, it’s a tiny end to one book out of a series of 7, all of which I loved. It was just irritating that she would go so strong throughout and then indulge that moment of weakness (as she had written that epilogue well before finishing the series).
   I think the only instance where an ending should be heavily considered is the single-work medium. And of course things change throughout drafts; hell, how often do we know what we’re even trying to say before we’re a few drafts in?
   I would be thrilled if people began to move away from such an emphasis on the negative. I agree that it is the easy and natural thing to do, but like you say, there is more to life than that. I guess I’m just pessimistic as to the possibility of any major shifts happening anytime soon.
   And as for the being the subject of such rampant negativity, yeah, I think the best thing to do is make it as good as you can for yourself, and just move on to the next thing. While criticism of my work will always hurt, I’ve found almost as frequently that too much praise can screw my head up just as much. I think there’s a lot to be said for not putting too much weight on any individual work (at least those of small scale, like comics). There’s always more do be done.

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