We somes make promises to readers without realizing it. This happens all the time when we introduce an intriguing mystery or enigmatic character. Some won’t remember them, and won’t notice if you never show the resolution or purpose of these elements.
But others will, especially if you have re-readers.
If you’re writing a series, you can carry these over from book to book, answering some, introducing new ones. But the trick is to keep track of them and bring them to a close in some manner or other.
I have an Excel spreadsheet called “open loops” for my Starside Saga series. I have a short name for all the open plots in the left hand column.
Here are some examples:
- Vol. Minn and her merculyn army
- Raginalt Keel
- Startle
These are characters I’ve mentioned and who were last seen “doing something” of import or interest. By the end of the series, I need to close these.
I occasionally go through and add a column to update the current-state of that loop.
Sounds like a lot of thinking and inventing, doesn’t it?
But that’s not how it works for me.
By regularly reviewing and updating this list, I reawaken those characters and plots in my mind. I sometimes go back and read some passages to refresh my memory. And then I continue on my merry way, trusting my creative mind to take advantage of those open loops to solve other plots.
Leaving a few stray loops open can give the readers a sense that the world you’ve created will continue after the story ends. But they better not be important ones!
One of the biggest open loops in a series that I remember is the question of Who Killed Asmodean? in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series.
I read the Brandon Sanderson books that ended the series (very excellent work, BTW), but I had to look up the answer to the Asmodean question on the internet. The question was answered in the books, but not explicitly, and that was a let down. It was a small thing in the scope of the story, but the manner of his death was so dramatic and suprising (and his murderer’s identity withheld), that it was an enormous question and source of theories for years, and years, and years. So it was a huge question in readers’ minds.
If you’re dealing with one book, you can do most of this during revision. As you read through your first draft, you’ll see the plots and characters and objects that seem important.
If you wrote about a snake that got loose from somebody’s aquarium, we’d better discover what happend to it.
But if you get to the end of the novel and the snake hasn’t reappeared and it’s disappearance wasn’t important at all, you can:
1) take out all mention of it
2) close the loop by having someone mention finding the snake
3) use memory of the loose snake to spark a new idea in your hero’s mind
4) have the snake’s disappearance end almost immediately by finding it in the same scene.
And there’s a dozen more ways to handle it. But leave it unresolved and your readers will feel that something isn’t quite tidy about the ending of your novel.