The Trouble With Being God

The Ending of The Trouble With Being God

Posted by William under Philosophizing, book

Now that The Trouble With Being God has been out for a while and quite a few people have read it, I feel it is now okay for me to discuss an area of the book in which there have been questions.  Some of you have contacted me directly about this, and I’ve seen a few other instances out there where people are asking the question, “What happened at the end?”

Now I’m not going to go into huge amounts of detail here, since there are plenty of you who still haven’t bought a copy (wink, wink), but consider the following to contain a bit of spoilers about the ending of the book.

First though, let me be clear: unless there is a printing error out there I don’t know about, the ending really is the ending.  You’re not missing any secret chapters or anything like that.  The story was always planned to end like this, and this ending was always in mind while telling all the parts that lead up to the final act.

(Here’s where the spoilers really start, so if you haven’t read the book yet, stop here and go read the book first).

<START SPOILERS>

Who the murderer is in the story is unknown. What I was attempting to do was have the reader go through the same kind of assumptive process that Steven did, even though in reality there was nothing really tying him to any of the murders. I wasn’t trying to trick anyone with the story, but instead I wanted to reemphasize the importance of understanding self, and the dangers of thinking you are someone you are not.  There is no denouement because crises are not resolved, there is no release of tension, you get no catharsis, and things end up being pretty shitty - kind of like real life.

As for the story ending the way it does, I really consider it to be Steven’s story, and when Steven died his story ended. The main point wasn’t to really find out who did it, but instead to see how these events affected Steven, and those around him.  One reader likened the identity of the killer to the contents of the briefcase in Pulp Fiction - which is a better explanation than I’ve ever been able to put forth.

<//END SPOILERS>

And so, the book definitely was an experiment of sorts - and this is one of the main reasons I decided to publish it independently. My goal was to write a story in a somewhat traditional pop-thriller style, but to use this style as a way to deliver a different kind of story than what one would normally get out of those types of books.

Much like how Spike Lee used the Son of Sam murders as a catalyst for telling the story in Summer of Sam, The Trouble With Being God is an attempt to use extraordinary circumstances to tell the story of the final stages in the devolution of a man.

Whether I did a good job of this or not, is entirely your call.

Edits Continue, Ending Clarification Improved

Posted by William under book

Edits are still continuing at my own pace for the final version of The Trouble With Being God.  The final version is still likely a few weeks out, but a method for clarifying the ending without changing what happens (or dumbing it down) has finally been figured out.

As I continue with the edits, the ending continues to the the only area that will really be altered in any way, and even then it will mostly be addition of some extra exposition that was frankly left out in the original.  It always happened, but I hadn’t really discovered the proper way of including it without ruining some of the suspense around the climax. This morning I figured out the best way to do it - and I think it will work out quite well.

As part of this, the Epilogue (called “Resurrection” in the original draft) is planned to be completely removed from the book.  This doesn’t mean what happens changes - but instead of sticking a nice neat bow at the end (which it really wasn’t, since I think it actually made people say WTF even more) the ending of the story itself should better explain what happens.

We’ll see how it all pans out when I do the rewrite, but for the time being this seems to be a very solid, albeit minorly major, improvement.