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Writer's pictureKeith Lowe

Are You Really Ending with a Toilet?

Yeah, I mean… isn’t that the end of the process?


It makes sense, right? That’s the last part of digestion…


So, at the end of the first draft of the book, the story ended with Julia going to the bathroom. 

In my defense, she is just running towards the doorway, which is still in the book.


Ah yes, the porcelain throne

But still, that was the end. Or did it have to be?


And while perhaps our digestive journey does end in such a fashion in the real world, it doesn’t necessarily make for a great book ending. There had to be a better solution.


The answer revealed itself one day after I had scrapped and rewritten the beginning of the book. 


I had successfully introduced the problem of needing food for energy (i.e. fuel), and communicated this through the narrative. But once the body was recharged, that was the conclusion. Or did it have to be?


As I think about my kids, I have to acknowledge that it seems like they are constantly hungry. Like, all the time. I know I feed them! To be fair, they might eat poorly at a meal and set themselves up for failure in this way. 


But at the same time, a child’s metabolism is insane. I think they could eat paper and playdough and still grow an inch overnight. My daughter Julia, whose digestive tract is the focus, is extremely active and athletic. She is a little nuclear furnace.


The pink, the tail and ears - very Julia

It began to take shape. 


A child is always eating, always digesting, always having to do the same thing over again.


This was the breakthrough I needed. 


A great visual storytelling technique I’ve learned from our class, Composition and Storyboarding, is ‘bookending’ your panels by using the same scene you opened within your ending. It takes the audience full circle and reminds them of the beginning. Naturally, a written narrative can do this as well.


As Foreman Blake begins to celebrate his and his team's success, he is hit with the reality that they have to start the process over again.


Bro, you didn't see that one coming?

I love that the characters just overreact to this event as though they wouldn’t be totally used to it by now.


It’s the idea of usurping the audience's expectations - hopefully in a good way.


And it sure beats the pants off of the alternative ending.  😃


(I meant for that joke to be as bad as it was)

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