What do you do when your story isn't over yet, in real life? Or when the perfect ending shows up 25 years later? Today we're tackling the art of endings. And I'm sharing a story about a confrontation that gave me closure after decades. In the middle of the Park Slope Food Co-op, obviously.
What do you do when your story isn't over yet, in real life? Or when the perfect ending shows up 25 years later? Today we're tackling the art of endings. And I'm sharing a story about a confrontation that gave me closure after decades. In the middle of the Park Slope Food Co-op, obviously.
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(00:01):
What's harder than starting a story? Ending one. I’m Micaela Blei and welcome to The Story Letter, the podcast about telling better stories. I'm so glad you're here. Endings are so hard. You want to wrap it up in a satisfying way, but especially if you're telling a true story, there can be real obstacles in your way to landing that plane. Last week we talked about story structure, and this week we are diving into one of the most challenging parts of any story arc– how to end it. This is an episode where we're going to get very strategic and if endings are not a problem that you currently have, you never know when you will have that problem. Here's what I've noticed after years of coaching storytellers and telling my own stories: there are two main ways endings can be a problem. This is going to sound so simple, but they're either too neat or they're not neat enough.
(00:58):
So let's look at both. First, how do you keep from being too pat with your ending? We've all heard stories that wrap up just too perfectly and there's this perfect little moral and it ends with a kind of thud. You feel a little manipulated when you hear these stories. They don't ring true, or at least I feel like they don't ring true. But you can solve this if you've got one of those stories. Just try ending your story a couple different ways and you can see what feels right. Let me share some endings that you can try. One, you can bring us to the present and reflect a little. This is that “and ever since then” moment in the story spine, which you might remember from last week. Obviously, keep it light. You don't need to write a whole thesis about your life now.
(01:42):
You don't need to catch us completely up, but you can tell us a little of what the world is like now that this story happened. So if you ever tell a story and the last line is something like, “And I'll tell you something, I've never eaten shrimp again.” You're doing this ending. So that's the first way you can play with your ending. And here's another one, try ending us inside a scene rather than in a moral of the story or reflection. You can layer in your reflections into that final scene, but we don't need you to explain your story to us. You can let the moment speak for itself. I started really liking this strategy with a story I first told years ago at a Moth Grand Slam championship. It was a story about when I had to get some third graders to stop playing a war game, and I wanted my last line to be a real zinger.
(02:31):
So I put all my reflections into the moment on the playground right before the end where I was finally being a four star general in their war game, so that my final line wouldn't be a reflection, it would just be me telling them, “Go play.” So we've got catch us up, we've got end in a scene. And now here's the third one. Instead of giving us a moral of the story, try telling us what you are going to do differently. This keeps it personal and real. Maybe you're wondering if there's ever a good time to use a moral of the story. I think yes, of course, but it depends on the context where you're sharing. Moral of the story can also be a crutch. You can expect it to do the work that you're worried the story didn't do. If you're telling a story and the ending is, “and that's why we should all celebrate life and appreciate life the way it is and know how precious it is and never take things for granted,” you're saying all that stuff because you're worried your story didn't quite show the preciousness of life.
(03:25):
So you don't have to agree with me here, but I actually think most stories are stronger if they let the listener do a little bit of that work themselves. Not all of it, you should still know what you're trying to say, but give them some credit. They're smart. If you leave some meaning-making for your listener, you're inviting them into the storytelling process and they feel shared with instead of lectured to. They'll lean forward a little. They get to have that moment of going, wait, the whole thing was really about his ability to be a dad. It's a great tool to engage them in your story. So how this looks in a story is, if I am ending with reflection or meaning-making, I'm going to try to reflect on what this story means for me rather than what it should mean for the listener. That keeps me out of that moralizing minefield.
(04:23):
Okay, the final tip I have for helping those two neat endings, think about how you actually end stories in conversation. A big part of this work is learning about yourself and being yourself when you tell a story. So what do you naturally do? Trust that instinct. Alright, that's a lot about neat endings, but what about when you don't have an ending at all to the story or to the experience itself? Maybe what happened is still going on or you still don't know quite what it's about. Maybe it's an ongoing divorce or a project that still hasn't concluded. We don't live our lives in seven minute increments, so we don't bring things to a nice conclusion and then start the next section of our lives for the next seven minute increment story. We are constantly living these very layered lives. One story is coming to an end, one story is starting, then we meet this person.
(05:18):
All of it's always happening. So I think you can remember when you're telling a story, you don't need an ending to the experience or a neat bow to tie on it. You just need a last line. You can try saying, here's what I hope is ahead. You can treat this not as an ending, but just a pause for reflection. If you're honest with us that it's an unfinished story that will actually make us appreciate your authenticity. It's so much more effective than pretending there is an end. The other thing you can do if your story isn't over yet, you could just wait until more of the story happens. A theme or a meaning might reveal itself. That's what happened to me. Here's a story I'm going to tell you for this week that didn't have an ending until it did, way later than I ever imagined. Because sometimes the perfect ending shows up 25 years after you think the story is over.
(06:19):
My first kiss was when I was 15 years old, and it was a very surreal first kiss. This guy, let's call him Justin, he was a senior when I was a sophomore. He was kind of a loner. All my friends were dating very ordinary boys who played saxophone or soccer or whatever, and he was just very mysterious and broody and I was very into that. I had seen Pump Up the Volume starring Christian Slater many times. So broody boys were my thing. So I struck up a friendship with this guy, which was very exciting, and we would do homework together after school. And at one point he said to me, “I can confide in you.” And I said, “Of course.” And he said, “Well, the forces of good and evil are fighting over me in my sleep on a different astral plane.” And I did not know how to respond, but I liked him so much and I kind of ended up going along with it.
(07:15):
I mean, who knows? Maybe he's telling the truth. What do I know? Knowing his secret makes me feel like we're in this secret together, which is amazing. And I don't know that I'm totally believing him, but I'm trying to keep an open mind. And then it's a couple weeks later and he's updating me on the astral plane stuff and he tells me, “It turns out you're a succubus.” And I went home and looked up succubus in the dictionary and it is a lady demon who has sex with you in your sleep. And the next day we're behind the science center and he kisses me. It is my first kiss. And even never having kissed anyone, I knew that this kiss was so bad, he kind of licked around my mouth, but I was like, okay, maybe we're dating now. I'm dating this kind of fantasy warrior. That's cool. And he pulls away and says, “Just to be clear, this is not romantic. This is strategic. Because since you're a succubus, we need to complete a circle of power to keep me safe from the forces of evil.” And I say, “Well, I do want you to be safe.” And he says, “So to complete the circle of power, we just need to have sex.”
(08:32):
And I say, “I'll think about that.” But inside I'm thinking, absolutely the fuck not. And his response to this was he just took his hand and just put it very matter of factly on the crotch of my jeans. Not in a sexy way at all, just consider this. And I immediately got up from where we were doing homework in the back of the theater and I said, “No thank you.” And I left. I was kind of shaking and wondering what the hell just happened? And I go back to where my friends are and I told them– I couldn't tell them anything about the astral plane or being a succubus. I just told them Justin wanted sex without love. And they got it immediately. They were so indignant. And for the rest of the year, whenever they would see him, they would form a little protective circle around me.
(09:20):
And I never spoke to him again. Honestly, I mostly never talked about it again until fast forward 25 years later. I'm 40 years old. I'm swiping people in at the Park Slope Food Co-op, which is a members-only grocery store in Brooklyn. You get their membership card and you swipe them in. That's my job. And it's very popular, this grocery store, and it's a very busy Saturday afternoon. And I love swiping people in because you get to see all their information on the computer like how many people are in their household or if they're in trouble with the Co-op. And all of a sudden there's Justin, he's in front of me, and he looks exactly the same except a little puffier. And I don't even look at his membership card. I just go, “You're Justin. You were my first kiss in high school.” And then I say, “You had some very specific views.”
(10:14):
And he looks at me in shock. He clearly does not recognize me. And there's another girl across the way from me who's also checking people in. So I've paused my line, but people are still coming through, but it's crowded and I'm not talking quietly. And he says, “I'm sorry.” And I say, “Yeah, you were my first kiss behind the science center. I was 15. You called me a succubus and you wanted us to have sex.” And I'm mad and also talking full voice, and there is a crowd gathering and I feel kind of great. I'm finally yelling at him the way I should have so long ago. And he just goes, “I was a very vivid dreamer in high school.” And I said, “Okay.” And he says, “I'm sorry I called you a succubus.” And I don't understand why I said this, but I said, “Well, it was the nineties.”
(11:09):
And then I take his membership card so he can grocery shop and I feel like a weight has been lifted off me. And he says, “Do you want to grab a beer sometime?” And I go, “Oh, no, no, no.” And I give him back his card and he goes shopping. And the woman who was across from me who was swiping people in leans over and goes, “I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but holy shit.” And until she said that, I think I thought I had imagined him. He'd always felt a little bit Fight Clubby to me, like Tyler Durden, like my imaginary friend. He didn't hang out with my friends. I never talked about him my whole life. And until that woman witnessed it, until she heard it, it didn't feel real. But finally, finally, 40-year-old Micaela got to yell at him for 15-year-old Micaela.
(12:07):
So I had to wait 25 years for that ending. And that's okay. Some stories need time to reveal their meaning. Some stories need witnesses, some stories need you to grow into the person who can tell them. If I'd wanted to tell that story before I ran into him again, of course there's all these ways that I could have done that. I could have ended by saying what I would say to him if I ran into him, I could have reflected on mental health in teenagers. Honestly, there's a lot of options. So here's what I want you to take away. We put so much pressure on ourselves to wrap everything up perfectly, to know exactly what our stories mean. But real life doesn't work that way. Sometimes the best ending is just a strong last line or a pause for reflection. And sometimes if you're patient, the right ending finds you after 25 years.
(13:02):
So here's what I want you to think about this week. What feels unfinished right now that you're still waiting for? How could you take something that's in process and think about a final line you could give it for right now, just for this moment? And then here's a very concrete one. Try writing out five different last lines for a story you're working on and see which one feels right. You know that I think storytelling is a social activity. So share The Story Letter with a friend. Who would you like to work on stories together with? Or if you have a friend who tells terrible stories or just their stories don't do it for you, The Story Letter could help them get better and that's good for you. So share it. This episode was written and hosted by me, Micaela Blei. It was produced by Laura Boach. The music was Duke of New York by Adrian D. Walther. I'm Micaela Blei, and this has been the Story Letter podcast. I'm so glad we're doing this.
OUTTAKES:
What's harder than starting a story ending? Why can't I say it? No worries. I love this paragraph. So as many times as you want me to read it, I will read it. Wait, are you there? You froze. Hello? Hello?