Storytellers often defend their work that is criticized for a poor ending (cough-cough LOST) by claiming that the story or plot didn’t really matter—it was about the characters all along. This is a cop-out. The most important part of any story is the STORY, not the characters, and a story is not a story without “The End.”
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Mystery is the key to every successful story. Even if a story is not explicitly a mystery, it needs to have some element of mystery within it. If there’s no mystery, wherein the reader is wondering what will happen next, they have little reason to continue reading the story.
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There have been many great television shows since, and the ending wasn’t perfect, but I’ve never had more fun watching a TV show than LOST. The finale was extremely divisive at the time, with many fans claiming it ruined the entire series for them. I won’t spoil any details of the ending other than to say that the dissatisfaction came from frustration that it didn’t provide enough answers to the many mysteries set up over the years. I thought the final episode was amazing in itself, but I was also frustrated that I didn’t get answers to certain mysteries—though ultimately that didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the show.
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I love podcasts. I’ve learned more from free podcasts than I did from a $200,000 college education. There’s a podcast for literally every topic under the sun. Actually, there’s about twelve for every topic under the sun. A podcast can be broad or extremely specific. It’s basically radio on-demand. You listen to exactly what you want, exactly when you want to. And it’s completely free–except for the Audible and Stamps.com commercials that sponsor just about every podcast, though you can skip over them, anyway. While there are some podcasts I listen to for pure entertainment value, I listen to many more podcasts to learn. Continue reading
T.Z. Barry 