How I Learned to End A Story with a Minimal Amount of Bloodshed

When I was young, I had a constant struggle with story endings. My issues led me to create the following ill-advised rules:

1)    The story is not over until every character in it is dead.

2)    No one is allowed to read my story until it is absolutely finished.

I clung so stubbornly to my two Rules that if anyone managed to catch a quick glimpse of my current prose piece whilst any of the characters in it were still alive, I would consider the piece to be ruined. Devastated, I would take the pages of the now-defiled story to my room and tear it to bits.

Now, years later, I still cringe as I pass an unfinished story across the table for a colleague of mine to read, but I force myself to do it anyway. After all, I have learned to side with my characters. A reader’s opinion can save one of my ill-fated heroines from an untimely death when I’ve given up on other ending options.

Then, I discovered something that I've always thought of as the Free Vector Ending, and, since it's a slow day in the bloggosphere and I know you're dying to hear about my favourite writing techniques, I'll share it with you now:

At one point in my young life I found myself in an introductory Physics class, under the mistaken impression that I would understand it and need it for my post secondary studies. While neither of these expectations came true, I did learn one important, mind-blowing fact that I will now entirely misinterpret here (physics was never my strong point). 

What I learned on the first day of Physics was that every object in the classroom has vectors. The teacher described vectors as unending, invisible lines that lead out from every surface in any direction it could move in—for example, the edge of your desk may only be two feet long and end at either corner, but the vector that runs along the edge of your desk carries on and on forever in either direction.

 I see Free Vector stories this way—the part of the story that we see is just a small snippet of a story that carries on after the words on the page end. In a Free Vector Ending, the way the story ends on the page implies that an awful lot happens after that story “ending”

Neil Gaiman, arguably my favourite author, has made good use of the Free Vector ending in many of his stories, including “The Price” and “We Can Get Them For You Wholesale”. I could share either of these endings with you here, as a much dog-eared volume of Smoke and Mirrors sits within reach of my computer chair. However, without the rest of the story attached it would be lost on you, the reader, and, more importantly, it would ruin the joy of discovering the stories for yourself.