Showerthought: Hitting 500 alternate endings on my personal list was kind of eye opening

I crossed 500 alternate endings I've written up in a notebook over the last 3 years. That number surprised me because I only started tracking as a joke after hating the end of The Stand. The milestone mattered because I realized most of my 500 ideas were just fixing the last 10 pages of books or movies. Like, 400 of them are just 'cut the final scene and let it breathe' type changes. Has anyone else just tallied up how many endings you've thought up and got a weird number?

2 comments

2 Comments

anthonykim2d agoRising Star

That's an interesting tally, but I think you might be selling your own ideas a little short by saying 400 of them are just "cut the final scene." A change like that can actually be pretty profound in how it reshapes the whole story's feeling. It's not just a simple fix, it's a different approach to how much closure the audience really needs. I think those sorts of endings are often the hardest to pull off well, because you have to trust the reader more.

rileygonzalez1d ago

Are we really acting like cutting a scene is this deep?