I went to a workshop featuring Christopher Vogler, author of THE WRITER’S JOURNEY, over the weekend. He had a lot of interesting thoughts on storytelling. One of the things he talked about is open-ended and closed-ended stories.

Closed-ended stories are traditional in popular fiction. I write closed-ended stories with a beginning, middle and an end. Most of the best selling type of fiction is structured like that.

But the younger generation is growing up with the Internet and storytelling in the anime (Japanese Comics) format. Anime stories are open-ended, which means they do not have a resolution at the end, but the story continues on (although my son tells me that some story lines do eventually have “big epic endings.”) Evidently the unpredictability of the shows is part of their charm. The TV show Lost is another different type of open-ended storytelling that is very different from traditional one-hour drama formats. Vogler theorized (and I’m paraphrasing from memory, not quoting) that is one of the reasons movies aren’t doing as well lately as they have in the past is that the younger generation has lost interest in what they consider stale storytelling formats. They feel old fashion to them.

Every generation changes…we as fictions writers are challenged to change with it, or even be a part of the change. I remember when the Next Big Thing was Star Wars. The original Star Wars movie was stunning, both visually and in the storytelling arc. People flocked to see it, not only because it was different, but the story was intriguing and presented in a fresh way.

Today, series fiction is utilizing a little bit of the open-ended format, I’ve particularly seen it in the paranormal genre. The main plot is usually a closed-ended with a beginning, middle and end, but there are other (subplot) storylines that are open-ended without a resolution at the end of the book, and often having a plot arc throughout the entire series of books. Mystery series do this to some extent too. A very simple example of that is Janet Evanovich keeping Stephanie Plum is forever torn between Joe or Ranger. Note, too, that in the wildly popular Harry Potter books, there are open-ended plot threads, and in fact, Rowling wrote the stories on a large arc that she meant to cover about seven books, not just one. Although she does end her main plot with each book, she still leaves other threads dangling and fans can’t wait for the next book to pick up the threads.

It used to be that the secondary story in a book had to have a closed-end arc that was shorter than the main plot. In other words, the subplot was resolved before the main plot. But the rules are changing. And it seems to be a really a cool way of sucking in readers!

On the other hand, from what I’ve seen of anime and the TV show Lost, it looks like it’s just an updated version of soap operas (Desperate Housewives is another prime example!). So maybe it’s not really something new, but a fresh twist on ideas that have been around for ages.

So what do you all think? Do you like open-ended story telling? Or do you want the comfort of closed-ended books where everything is wrapped up and you walk away knowing all the answers?