Those Pesky Endings

 

by Sybil Johnson

 Endings are hard. At least they are for me. It’s the part of writing a story that I fret about the most. Thomas’ post on Monday got me thinking more about endings.

Here are my thoughts on them:

• There are some stories that can go either way, i.e. the bad guy(s) get discovered and get their comeuppance or the bad guy(s) win and stay free. Doesn’t mean I have to like the ending as a reader, it just has to seem right. It depends on what the writer is trying to say. Are they trying to show that not everything turns out right?

• The ending needs to be appropriate to the genre/subgenre. For mystery fiction, if you’re writing a cozy, you’d better have the bad guy caught or at least get some kind of comeuppance at the end or you’ll have lots and lots of readers annoyed with you. I know I like cozies because the bad guys are always caught, something that doesn’t happen in real life. I think there’s more leeway with some other crime stories. Generally, though I think most people want the bad guys to be caught. I’m not sure what the rules are for romances, but I suspect the couple needs to get together in the end. I’m not sure about children’s and YA books, but I suspect there are rules there as well.

•  The ending should feel satisfying, or at least appropriate. I’ve written a number of short stories that the ending doesn’t feel right. For those, I read and analyzed a lot of similar short stories to get a feel for the typical kinds of endings. Usually, I find one for my story that feels more satisfying.
•  There’s a Writer’s Digest book on “Beginnings, Middles and Ends” that I found worthwhile to read.
•  This is an interesting blog post on endings that I think some people might find useful: https://thewritelife.com/how-to-end-a-story/
•  On cliffhanger endings. In general, I don’t like these. I tolerate them if the cliffhanger has to do with a personal relationship and not the resolution of the main conflict in the story. i.e. you’d better say whodunit for a mystery at the end of a book. I won’t read the next one if you leave it unresolved. I've also read some ghost stories that were split into several books. Even though I found them very well written and interesting, I wouldn't recommend them because of the way the story was split between books. So, when you're splitting a story into a trilogy or something like that, watch how you do it!
  

• On twist endings. I like these. They’re fun. They’re hard to do.

 Those are my thoughts on endings. What are yours?