The Author’s Prerogative

There are books I have enjoyed that I don’t think ended well. There are books I would have preferred to see stay as a single book rather than setting up a sequel. However, it seems to me the height of entitlement to say that I would rewrite an ending. The author has put months or years into getting the work to a finish and they have finished the book in the way that makes sense to them. I will have spent a few hours reading the book so I have no right to change anything. If I don’t like it I just shrug my shoulders and move on.

These prompts seem to be a bit of fun, a ‘what if’ piece of revisionism that doesn’t do any harm. Actually, it does. It diminishes the craft of writing to a simple equation where the ending ‘x’ can be seamlessly replaced by ending ‘y’ at the whim of someone who, in the vast majority of cases, has no idea of the huge amount of mental effort that goes into writing a complete book. I wrote three, over a period of four years, put two on Kindle where the only comments appeared to be critical, and gave up on that form of expression. I am a decent writer, in technical terms, but I was learning my craft and I chose to do it through the wrong medium. My blog has proven to me that I have an ability to engage an audience but just in a different way.  By the way, those who do have experience of writing a book have even less reason to criticise an ending because they should know how much mental energy and emotional effort goes into writing.

I did dip into writing fan fiction many years ago and that was fun, and it wasn’t doing any harm to the original author or concept, because it was just an extension to the universe that had been created. So, write your own books, without any AI help (!), and create your new ending but don’t think for a minute that you have any right or ability to change someone else’s ending.