Sometimes you don’t need all the answers
You can embrace the questions and the maybes it represents
Remember when you first watched Star Wars: A New Hope, the Force was mysterious and wondrous. How about when you first heard about the Butlerian Jihad which happened lifetimes before the events of Dune. Another I just finished watching was Avatar the Last Airbender when you first learned that before they could bend the elements people bent the energy within.
As the curious, we seek answers we want to know the how and why and in the Star Wars prequels that is what we were given, answers. Same for Dune, after decades and hope that the series would conclude before Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson concluded Frank’s universe they went back before then came to the end.
Even in The Legend of Korra, we saw the beginning of what the Avatar cycle was before we saw them entire a new era in the world. We always seek answers but maybe to those that are trying to craft stories, some of those shouldn’t be answered.
Without the questions how can we continue to reach. For every story there is a beginning, middle and an end but sometimes the best part is reading or watching a story within a story where it was already in progress when we are introduced to it.
I think of stories like Lost where there were so many questions, layer upon layer but as it went on it felt like some questions took too long to be answered. I don’t know what the balance is because I am building a universe myself and while I don’t have the history laid down I have the much of the science.
In the written word I think as I’ve tested scenes I end up wanting to explain to much and I don’t have the authority as a new writer in fiction to do that. What I do know is I remember JJ Abram’s mystery box TED talk and the reason why I didn’t like the answers in Star Wars, Dune and Avatar the Last Airbender is that they answered all the questions.
For Dune it made sense in a way because people wanted to see that epic’s conclusion but by revealing what the wizard was before you bring them back to Dune you remove some of that mystery so that when you read the final line you know it’s the end.
I guess for me even as a writer I always want there to be more questions. I want to end the story I set out to create but I want the universe I would have created to go on at least for what I am trying to write at the moment.
I don’t know where I am going and I keep on evolving the world but I have to start writing. I’ve written a lot I will never use and its time to tell small stories as I try to find the one that will hit the right notes.
I need to remember to lay off the exposition, not explain everything all the time. To let the reader figure somethings out to show in words and not tell in words. To make the characters interact in order to engage instead of using the narrator to provide every level of content.
So as they say leave them wanting more and one of the best ways to do that is you close the story but leave a question in the air, asked but not yet answered, a mystery still to come.
