Match to Flame 237

 Another and better example of an open ending came at the end of my collection The Last Leaf. When I first presented the book about the story of Les’s life after Lisa to my publisher, my pitch had ended with the strip shown here where a remarried Les and his wife Cayla are sitting on the front porch steps as Cayla muses in a positive way about the future.

However. When I was pulling together the strips for the book, I came to a Sunday strip in which Cayla gives Les a CD dubbed from a tape that Lisa had made for him before she died. In a silent last panel, through a window, we see Les watching the video that Lisa made, and I made the decision to end the book with that. After all, the book was a part of the Lisa’s Legacy Trilogy, so why not have Lisa’s presence be the very last thing you experience at the end? (Busino strikes again!) There was absolutely nothing wrong with the first closed ending I described, except that it was maybe a little too on the nose, and too pat. While it certainly tied a nice, neat bow on things, I preferred the ending where the readers were left to wonder a little. What was Lisa saying? What was Les thinking? What did the future hold for Les and Cayla? Why isn’t there a proper ending here? Here’s the kicker: both of those endings, along with the strips leading up to them, are collected here in this volume as part of the established continuity. You can read each one and decide for yourself if I made the right decision or not. How cool is that? So, before we exit this digression, I have three last thoughts on rules for writing. First, trust yourself, trust your audience, and write the story that you’d want to read. Second, avoid tricks and superstitions designed to get the writing started—lighting all of those candles takes a lot of time. And finally, if you really, really want to, go ahead and open with weather.

From The Complete Funky Winkerbean Volume 15