(okay…yeah yeah yeah yeah!)
Sometimes the hardest thing I encounter when writing is giving a satisfactory ending to a character. I believe this is a common occurrence. I can’t remember all the times I’m fully invested on a novel, and looking at the page number I start stressing out. “How is this ending in just a couple of pages?” “What’s gonna happen to Guy or Gal?” “What’s the resolution?”
The majority of times, it’s a short conclusion. Satisfying and succinct. Other times, it fizzles out, either being abrupt or so out of the blue it breaks apart at the minimum of criticisms. I don’t want to say Stephen King, but we all know he’s famous for terrible endings.
I’ve got a character I’ve dragged along for 3 novels. Main dude in the first one, side character on another one, although he increases in presence by the end, and back to main in one of the three intertwining stories from yesterday’s novel. A lot of people do a Gary Stu (or Mary Sue). I go for Nega Stu approach because I tend to criticize myself harshly.
This character goes through a lot, but the majority is self-inflicted. A series of bad decisions powers a train of consequences, so by the end of the last novel, set in Tampico, he finds himself at a zero sum situation with himself. His best friend approaches him and asks: now what do you plan to do?
The novel cuts to a house party back in Mexico City. Throughout this loose trilogy of novels, this dude was aching to sing once, only once, in a party. The opportunity happens when some friends who have a punk garage band are celebrating the end of the semester. They have him over so sing one song and he chooses All I want by The Offspring. It felt right, that after all the stuff he went through, mostly for being too uptight, he embraced a short, punk song to let it all out. It felt like the perfect ending for the character and I wish I’d stopped writing about him there and then.
Off their 1997 album, Ixnay on the hombre, All I want finds The Offspring on their purest punk form. Short and sweet, the rebellious lyrics are as outward as possible. It fits Ixnay on the hombre’s counter establishment message without losing itself into meandering ideas. For some purists, this is the last album by The Offspring, before fully embracing a commercial version of themselves. I still like Americana, but everything afterwards I’ve listened only once or twice. Heckuva live show, though.
PS: I once gave Dexter Holland a Virgin of Guadalupe stamp. I have no idea why.
-Sam J. Valdés López
