Original subtitles

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The middle of the book--

always the most difficult part.

You've got the beginning.

You have an inkling of what the end is going to be.

But how are you going to get through the middle?

More to the point, how are you going

More to the point, how are you going

to get the reader through the middle?

I was talking last night to a script

writer who happens to be the showrunner for "The Handmaid's

Tale."

And I said, well, there's going to have

to be a season three because you left us with at least

five cliffhangers.

And he said, that's my thing.

I can really do cliffhangers.

So in the days when novelists were writing

in serial form inside of three chapters

in serial form inside of three chapters

or so had to end on a--

and what next?

And that, too, is the secret of Sheherazad,

telling the 1,001 nights in one night.

She always ended when dawn appeared,

things were not resolved, and the central character was

in peril or about to open a forbidden door.

So you needed to know what is going

So you needed to know what is going

to become of these people.

Even if it's somebody who's saying,

my life was just a mess, and I sat in my room all day

staring at the wall, that, too, is a cliffhanger.

How is he going to get out of that room?

Or is he just going to be in there forever

staring at the wall?

Something has gone off the rails and needs to be resolved.

How are you going to get your characters out

of the difficult situations we hope you have put them into?

of the difficult situations we hope you have put them into?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

What they say about writing longer books--

not poetry, but longer books, fiction, nonfiction, memoir--

it's one part inspiration and nine parts perspiration.

So writing is work.

It's something you work away at.

And that includes scratching things out, moving parts of it

And that includes scratching things out, moving parts of it

around, making it better.

Let's speak of it in terms of furniture

arranging in your house.

You put the sofa there.

Then no, it might look better over here.

Maybe it's the wrong sofa.

Maybe we can put this sofa upstairs

and then put this other different one here.

Sometimes you take a turn down a corridor, and it's a dead end.

Sometimes you take a turn down a corridor, and it's a dead end.

It leads nowhere.

And at that point, it's not a question

of resolving the difficulties in the middle.

It's a question of realizing you ought

to be writing a different book.

However, things where you needed to

resolve the difficulties in the middle--

I would say just about every book

I've ever written is that sort of thing--

or the moment when you realize that something

you thought about your character isn't true.

you thought about your character isn't true.

Something else, on the other hand, is true.

And then you have to backtrack and work it

through in a different way.

There's no shame in backtracking.

There's no shame in revision.

There's no shame in realizing that you got it wrong

or that there's a better thing that you can do that's better

than what you have done.

And those pages can just go away.

And those pages can just go away.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The ending that you think is going

to be the ending is often not the ending.

And of course, it's quite usual for you

to write the ending some time before you actually

write the part leading up to the ending.

That's normal.

As you approach the end of the book,

your writing pace can get quite a lot

faster if you know what ending you were heading towards.

So you can actually find yourself

So you can actually find yourself

writing quite a few more hours a day

than you did at the beginning when you're working things

out and thinking a lot rather than necessarily just writing.

You can get too speedy.

You can skip over things.

You can not go into enough depth at such moments.

But usually, your primary reader,

whoever it is you show the book to, or your editor will say,

this went too fast.

I needed to know more about this.

I needed to know more about this.

I think the lesson is going to get the book finished, and then

read it through.

And if it goes too fast at that point, add more in.

Remember, there's always revision.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

So the difference between a book and life

is that in life, there is no "the end."

There are different stages.

There are different stages.

People get born.

They live.

They die and all of those kinds of things.

But there isn't any final "the end,"

whereas in books, there is.

There's an arbitrary end of the book.

And that ending can either be a closed ending

or an open ending.

And the 19th century tended to go in for closed endings,

although not always.

And our century tends to go in for more open endings.

And our century tends to go in for more open endings.

So it's not necessarily Cinderella married the prince

and lived happily ever after.

It's not necessarily like that.

So what you do at the end is going

to be something you're going to have

to quite carefully consider.

How much are you going to resolve?

If it's a traditional murder mystery

If it's a traditional murder mystery

and Hercule Poirot calls everyone into the drawing room

and says, I don't have a clue, we'll all be very annoyed.

We thought we were in the kind of book in which we're

going to finally be told how the person skied downhill

in the middle of the night and murdered

somebody in the conservatory with a wrench

and then got away leaving no trace, except for.

and then got away leaving no trace, except for.

We think all of that will be explained to us.

And if it isn't, we're going to be put out.

So you're always dealing with readers.

You're always dealing with what you

think they may already expect.

And how much of that expectation you're going to fulfill

is really going to depend on you.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

"The Handmaid's Tale" is an example of an open end--

so reader's choice.

Reader's choice.

Does she get any further away than Bangor, Maine, or not?

Does she manage to escape over the border to Canada or not?

Does she make it as far as England or not?

We don't know.

And people have been after me for 33 years to tell them.

I have not been able to tell them

I have not been able to tell them

because it is one of those instances in which we just

don't know.

People want things to be tidy.

It drives them a bit crazy when they're not,

which is I think why there are policemen dedicated to solving

cold cases.

It just drives them crazy that they have not got the answer.

How did I decide on how "The Handmaid's Tale" would end?

It doesn't end with our central character maybe getting

It doesn't end with our central character maybe getting

rescued and maybe not.

We do find out in the historical notes

that she made it as far as Bangor, Maine.

So in fact, she was being helped.

In fact, she was not betrayed at that moment.

So we know that much.

We don't know what happened to her after that.

And my reason for doing that is that in history,

And my reason for doing that is that in history,

when you're trying to trace historical figures,

they often simply vanish.

They vanish.

Somebody burned down the church.

The records were in it.

Somebody escaped and changed their name.

Somebody just disappears.

So the fact that this character just vanishes

is more like the norm than it is like an exception.

Usually, people vanish out of history, especially

in times of turmoil and catastrophe.

in times of turmoil and catastrophe.

They often just simply aren't there anymore.

Researchers cannot trace them.

It was all very tidy when people lived in their home villages,

had their births and marriages and deaths recorded

in the parish registry.

But it's not the norm for history.

So that's why I had her simply disappear.

It's more likely that that would have happened than that it

It's more likely that that would have happened than that it

would not have happened.