{"id":885374,"date":"2026-02-27T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/?p=885374"},"modified":"2026-03-05T14:48:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T14:48:38","slug":"closing-the-opening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/closing-the-opening\/","title":{"rendered":"Closing the opening"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We\u2019ve spoken in recent weeks about opening your novel. (Why so obsessed? Because of the Ultimate Start<\/a> course.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(And \u2013 to put two brackets back to back, which is pretty sinful in almost any context \u2013 I should probably mention our Festival of Writing<\/a><\/u>, which is \u2026 well, it\u2019s pretty obvious what it is. We\u2019ve already sold a lot of tickets, so I wouldn\u2019t hang around too long on this one.<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But have done with parentheses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Openings only exist so you can, many thousands of words later, create an ending. In film-lore, those opening and closing images need to resonate with each other. It\u2019s as though the story of the film is all there in those two glimpses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can see a compilation of opening & closing shots on Vimeo here<\/a> (you may need to create a free log in if you don\u2019t already have one.) But one example will maybe suffice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the film 1917<\/em>, the opening shot shows two soldiers resting, in sunlight, against a tree. The field beyond is full of flowers. The two men look peaceful and relaxed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The closing shot shows one soldier \u2013 one of the two from the first frame \u2013 resting in sunlight against a tree. The other soldier isn\u2019t there: he\u2019s been killed. And the remaining soldier isn\u2019t peaceful or relaxed: he\u2019s exhausted and haunted by what he\u2019s just been through. And this field, though essentially a similar sunny French pasture, has no flowers in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s all powerful enough in itself \u2013 but the symmetry of the two shots says one further thing to the viewer as well: and now we\u2019re back to the beginning. We go again. This never stops<\/em>. The meaning of the closing image is immeasurably darker than the first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And novels?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, novels are bigger and more complicated than films. I don\u2019t think that, in general, there needs to be this kind of direct conversation between opening and closing shot. I suspect the rather literal reflection I\u2019ve just mentioned is rare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, however, stories are stories. They need to have a purpose. A sense of something accomplished by the preceding narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, Pride and Prejudice<\/em> starts by telling the reader that Mrs Bennett is anxious to see her girls get married \u2013 and does so via the famous line about a truth universally acknowledged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book ends, of course, by marrying Lizzie off to a gazillionaire. But just as the opening chapter dwelled on Mrs Bennett\u2019s feelings about all this, the closing chapter starts there too: \u2018Happy for all her maternal feelings was the day on which Mrs. Bennet got rid of her two most deserving daughters.<\/em>\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a mirroring here again, as well as a sense of the narrative arc. Opening: not married + underlying anxiety. Closing: Married to Mr Handsome-Rich-and-Honourable + all-round yippee-dee-doo-dah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week, we took a look at an opening chapter of one of the FG books, in which we established:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Fiona is nuts<\/strong> (she can\u2019t hold a basic conversation about jeans without comforting herself with memories of serious road accidents)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. She\u2019s deceitful<\/strong>: she thinks about road accidents, but doesn\u2019t reveal her inner life to her friend.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. She\u2019s somewhat less than human<\/strong> in all this. Not failed exactly \u2013 but someone who is rather less than those others around her: other people could have managed this chat; Fiona\u2019s performance was limping, at best.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Now, my book is not the sort of book that closes with a triumphant chat about jeans or new shoes, in which Fiona shows herself a master of small-talk. But the closing scene does show a kind of before-and-after comparison. It\u2019s not that Fiona has changed \u2013 she hasn\u2019t \u2013 but we do get to see a side of Fiona that compensates for her other deficits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    By way of context, in the course of the book, Fiona saves the life of a Ukrainian multimillionaire\u2019s daughter. The rich guy offers Fiona some thank-you money and she (rightly and properly) says no. But he doesn\u2019t immediately accept her refusal, saying:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u2018The money is in Switzerland. Very safe. Very private. Very, very private.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I say nothing.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u2018Eleven million dollars.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    He looks at my face and the light changes and the cedars still don\u2019t move and he gives a slight shrug and says, \u2018I send you the details.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    And only then do I move.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I shake my head and say, \u2018Mr Zhamanikov, I cannot take your money and my \u201cno\u201d really does mean no. But there are some criminals behind this whole thing\u2014\u2019 I wave my hand at the big house, the house where Aurelia is a prisoner of nothing more than her own head, her own past. \u2018Perhaps we will catch those men in conventional ways. In the ways of police officers. Ordinary regular law enforcement. And I hope that\u2019s what happens. But sometimes . . . sometimes, we fail. Or rather . . .\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I taper off and Zhamanikov murmurs, \u2018You might need a little help.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I echo his phrase. \u2018Exactly. We might need a little help.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Yuri gazes at me with those steady eyes and gives, again, that half-shrug. \u2018OK. Then when you are ready, you give me call.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    We leave it there. The whole thing arranged as simply as calling a cab, booking a table<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The woman who carefully protected her inner life from her jeans-discussing friend is preparing to be deceitful here on a massively larger scale. She thinks she might need some cash to bring down the bad guys. Here\u2019s someone offering eleven million bucks. And she\u2019s happy to take it \u2013 and to conceal that fact from her colleagues in the police and, in fact, from essentially everyone. She\u2019s not taking the money for herself. But cops aren\u2019t meant to do those things and she blooming well does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So she\u2019s still deceitful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    She\u2019s also kind of nuts too \u2013 or at least, she\u2019s acting here far, far outside the norms of society. She shouldn\u2019t do what she\u2019s just done, but we know she\u2019s not about to change her mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    But then we need to consider the less than human<\/em> bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Fiona has had cause to consider the seven deadly sins in the course of the book. She acquits herself of most of them, but says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It\u2019s the two remaining vices that give me pause.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Ira, wrath. <\/em>Superbia, pride.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The two sins whose names that night filled my mouth with an awful silence.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Am I a proud and wrathful person? Was it my pride that led me down that footpath alone? Was it the boiling heat of my wrath what enabled me to do to Anselm what few people ever do to another in their lifetime?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    And it is not the first time. I own it. These things fall in patterns and I deny neither the pattern nor its dark consequences. My preference for working alone. The bloodshed which so often results.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Anger and pride<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Is that less than human, or more than human? Well, naturally that\u2019s for the reader to decide but, in the course of the book, Fiona has single-handedly \u2013 and through her own intelligence, resourcefulness and courage \u2013 defeated a particularly nasty kidnap ring. She\u2019s happy to give her own self-summary, in very direct terms:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I confess this.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I am a woman of pride and wrath, and my soul is troubled.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I have asked for peace and peace has not come.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I have sworn at an abbot and rubbed caustic lime in the eyes of a man I almost liked.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I have done these things and I am that woman: prideful, wrathful and without truth.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I am that woman. And I repent of nothing<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So there we have an echo between opening and closing image \u2013 not in a literal way, but in the way that a reader will nevertheless intuit:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Opening<\/strong>: Fiona is nuts, deceitful and somewhat less human.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Closing<\/strong>: She\u2019s nuts, deceitful and both simply human (flawed) and magnificently more-than-human (a wrathful angel of justice.) She\u2019s also declaring herself satisfied to be the person she is \u2013 implicitly including her terrible-jeans-chat in that declaration. The \u2018repent of nothing\u2019 statement includes the violence she has just done to others, and includes her hopelessness with Bev a few hundred pages earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    For what it\u2019s worth, I don\u2019t think that literal mirroring makes much sense in novels. I mean: if that\u2019s the way things happen to fall out, then fine. Just, I don\u2019t think you have to force that outcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Also: I never look back at my opening when I write my ending. The ending just comes as it does. It feels right if it honours the entire preceding narrative. I don\u2019t feel that the closing scene has to curtsey backwards to the opening one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    And also: films are visual and external. The landscapes of the novel can be both external (descriptive of the exterior) and internal (describing the human soul). The result is that the echo in a novel doesn\u2019t have to be as literal as man-lying-against-tree. The echo can be much less directly physical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    All that said \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Yes, I think you probably should feel some echoes between opening and closing. The kind of echoes we\u2019ve just highlighted here. Not too crass. Not too obvious. But there nevertheless. A sense of journey done, distance accomplished. To all those of you who have completed Ultimate Start, I bow to you. Well done. We will be on a new topic next week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    FEEDBACK FRIDAY \/ The Final Polish<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    This is the last of our six weekly Feedback Fridays where we pick up the theme from Ultimate Start<\/a>. Today Sam Jordison requests \u2013 or, to be honest, demands with menaces \u2013 that you, \u201cGive your opening 500 words a final polish using everything you\u2019ve learned.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The link you need to post your work is here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Oh yes, and you do remember that the Ultimate Start is Ultimately Pointless unless you Ultimately complete your novel to a very high standard. I think I know a programme that might Ultimately Help with that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Til soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Harry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    We\u2019ve spoken in recent weeks about opening your novel. (Why so obsessed? Because of the Ultimate Start course.) (And \u2013 to put two brackets back to back, which is pretty sinful in almost any context \u2013 I should probably mention our Festival of Writing, which is \u2026 well, it\u2019s pretty obvious what it is. We\u2019ve<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":815759,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,29292],"tags":[29212],"class_list":["post-885374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-novel-writing","category-harrys-friday-email","tag-harrys-friday-email"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nJericho Writers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/closing-the-opening\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Closing the opening – Jericho Writers\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We\u2019ve spoken in recent weeks about opening your novel. (Why so obsessed? Because of the Ultimate Start course.) (And \u2013 to put two brackets back to back, which is pretty sinful in almost any context \u2013 I should probably mention our Festival of Writing, which is \u2026 well, it\u2019s pretty obvious what it is. 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