The ending I was not allowed to write

Every chapter of Pantheon ends on a hook. That part is easy to love. The rule I made for myself is the part that causes the trouble: a chapter is not allowed to end the same way as the two before it.

There are only so many good ways to leave you hanging. A question you are desperate to have answered. A turn you did not see coming. Somebody walking in at the worst possible moment. A decision that cannot be taken back. Or one line of dialogue that makes you read the whole scene again in a different light. If I used the same trick three chapters running, you would feel it, even if you could not say why.

Most of the time this costs me nothing. The scene wants somebody to arrive, arriving happens to be allowed, and everyone is pleased with everyone.

Then there are the other chapters. The ones where a scene has made up its mind about how it wants to finish, and that way is exactly how the last two chapters finished. I argue with it. Out loud, sometimes. The scene says this is how I end, and I say not today.

I could cheat, of course. I could go back and change an earlier chapter so the ending I wanted is free again. But those chapters are already built around the way they close, and pulling one loose usually makes a mess further up. So almost every time, I change the scene instead.

That means going back to the last page and asking what else is true in the room. Who else is nearly there? What has someone not said yet? There is nearly always another way out, and it is often better than the one I was so sure about. If I want a line that turns everything over, I cannot simply wish for one. I have to plant something a few pages earlier so the line has something to turn.

You will never see any of this. You will meet a chapter that ends the way it ends, and no trace of the ending that was sent out of the room. I like that, a little. Somewhere in the book there is a scene that lost an argument with me, and you will never know it had an opinion.