So, I’m getting pretty near the end of my work in progress and something hit me. Stopped me in tracks, really. I don’t have faith in my ending. I’m only a few thousand words from the end, and so far…the climax seems sort of anti-climactic.

I wrote a (very) rough outline of the story before I started, but I left a lot of room to just write off the cuff, because I like doing that and feel like I do it fairly well. I had a final scene in mind that I really liked, but nothing that really led up to that final scene. I was happy with the story up until the last couple chapters; then I started to feel like I heading toward an impasse.

I stopped writing it for about a week. I edited the second novella, I wrote the rough draft for a short story, then today I forced myself back into the WIP. I plowed through a couple of paragraphs, and things started to flow a little better. I feel better about it now than I did a week ago, but still, it feels….a little weak. I’m bound and determined to get the rough draft finished as soon as I can, because work becomes more of a burden in the summer months, so maybe if I put the story away for two or three months and look back at it in the fall a better ending will jump out at me.

I am curious, though…any writing Jedis out there have any advice for when you feel like you’ve written a good story that just falls flat? And for the non-writers out there, are there any books or movies that stand out to you as being especially anti-climactic?

A quick search of a couple of websites that addressed the topic led me to believe No Country For Old Men especially frustrated people. I really liked that move, and while I can see why people weren’t satisfied by it, I liked the ending. If I’m going by my own tastes and memories, I’d say…forgive me, any other Stephen King fans…It. All that build up, a thousand freakin’ pages, and it’s a giant spider? I was a little let down, to say the least. But please offer up your opinion in the comments.