The millionaire abandoned Jimmy's mother years ago, and the adult Jimmy has murdered the millionaire out of revenge. This is not a satisfying ending if it seems to come out of the blue. The reader has spent a lot of time speculating about a cast of characters that didn't include Jimmy at all. If I introduce Jimmy at the last minute, I'm not playing fair. To fix this problem, I don't necessarily have to change the novel's ending.
Instead, I could edit the earlier chapters to hint at Jimmy's existence. That way, when the reader reaches the end, his or her reaction will be "Aha! A great twist ending makes readers see the story beginning and middle in a different light.
Think of the famous twist at the end of the movie, The Sixth Sense. I'm not here to ruin movies for anyone, so, if you don't already know how that movie ends, I'll let you go rent it on DVD. I'll just say that the audience gets a surprising piece of information at the end and realizes that the events in the movie were not what they seemed. But with this last piece of information, it all fits together.
The clues were there. Recalling earlier scenes in the movie, the audience thinks, "Why didn't I realize what was really going on?
Once you know how you want the story to end, you can go back and plant hints here and there for the reader, so that when she reaches your ending it will feel logical -- even inevitable. If you bring your characters and conflict to life, readers will care how everything works out and will feel something when your character succeeds or fails. Experiment to get the most emotional impact out of your ending.
Try ending your story a little sooner; try ending it later. Try phrasing it differently. Push the words around until you get the spark that makes the magic happen. Story Endings - Exercise 1 Your character will have an argument with his or her mother, friend, roommate, or spouse.
You decide who is involved in the argument and what it is about. The argument should be very important to both people involved. Decide why it is important each of them.
The argument builds and increases in intensity as emotions get inflamed. At the end, have one or both of the characters do something that lets the reader know what the result of the argument will be. Will the characters forgive each other? Will one of them win? Or will both of them lose?
Will one of the characters move away from home? Experiment with hinting at the result instead of laying it out in detail. Try writing different versions of the ending. Twitter Facebook. Profile She can be reached at kyna bu. Post a comment. Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Submit Comment. Related Stories. But Beware the Downside January 8, Shared from The Brink. University News Training for the Hybrid Office.
Marvel Gets the Scholarly Treatment. New Survey Wants Your Thoughts. Things-to-do The Weekender: November 4 to 7. When the anger of Achilles is finally assuaged and he takes pity on the old king Priam begging for his son's body, the plotline has ended.
When the murderer confesses his crime or the lovers fall into each other's arms or the hero dies of his wounds, the struggle has resolved. Failing to end their novels when the struggles are over is another mistake beginning novelists often make.
How many novels have you read that didn't seem to know when to quit? The writer seemed to feel obligated to explain what happened to every character after the big event that brought everything to a close. When thinking of this problem I am always reminded of a routine Andy Griffith recorded when he was a stand-up comedian. He was pretending to be a hillbilly who had seen Romeo and Juliet.
At the end of his recounting he said, "And seeing as how they was all dead, they brung down the curtain. Commonly in a mystery story there was a short scene in which the sleuth explained how he arrived at the solution. That was the climax, to be promptly followed by a commercial.
After the commercial, Perry usually explained to Paul Drake or Della Street how he knew the guilty party was guilty. In romance stories there might be an anticlimax showing the couple living happily ever after. In war or historical stories, frequently we are transported to many years later, when the survivor gives us a brief summing up. The anticlimax, however, should be brief. Although the information in it comes from the plot, it has little to do with the single thing that makes the plot engaging: the struggle.
Anticlimaxes are afterthoughts, which may or may not add to the stories. You can usually end more abruptly than you know, simply because the ending the climax is usually sufficient. Many beginning novelists indulge the temptation to put prologues at the front of their novels and epilogues at the ends, thereby beginning before the beginnings and continuing after the endings. Having a prologue and an epilogue won't make you a "real writer.
Ambiguous Endings Another common mistake of the beginning novelist is not resolving the conflict presented to the characters. The book starts fast, problems become huge, but at the point at which the ending should occur, things just taper off. Amateurs like to excuse this fundamental flaw by saying they are "leaving it up to the reader. The reader isn't there to write your novel. The reader is there to read your novel.
The reader expects your ending to end the primary conflict, not waffle about. Yes, life's stories are often inconclusive. A suspect is caught and charged with a horrible crime. The evidence against him is rarely totally damning. Some hair and fiber, some circumstantial behavior, some partial DNA and a myopic witness might get him the electric chair. He may get a jury of "select morons" as Raymond Chandler writes, or scrupulously honest people. His lawyer might be more interested in the publicity she's getting than working the case.
Because of procedural errors the guilty verdict is appealed and a jailhouse witness comes forward who claims a now-dead inmate confessed to the crime. Is he believable or not? The God Out of the Machine On the other hand, some stories are so tidy we reject them. The nuts and bolts of what is unexpected and what makes sense will depend on the genre regardless of whether you follow or reject the conventions of that genre. Moment of realization: we see the look on the detective's face as the cup drops to the floor and the shot pans around the office.
The Grapes of Wrath also balances meeting and subverting expectations. Steinbeck does this with more nuance and conflict, but you have the same basic elements. It's a realist novel with a journey plot. They make it to California the journey is complete , but life remains very difficult. They escape drought for flood. The turn occurs in a single image -- Rose of Sharon breastfeeding the starving old man after her baby is stillborn.
I can't tell you how to think of a good ending, but we can summarize what it should achieve though you might not need all of these :.
Above all, write something that you can imagine a book club discussing from a variety of viewpoints, maybe to the point of heated disagreement. That idea applies, perhaps, to the story as a whole; I think it's what they call polyphonic writing. To me, for happy or sad endings of a book or character within a book , and assuming the rest of the book makes the reader love the characters, this is a satisfying ending.
This applies to standalone novels, or those with a sequel: The main fight in THIS novel is done, loose ends are tied, the hero succeeded or failed and the consequences are realized and permanent. Make sure that every chapter of your story has moved your readers closer to the ending. Sometimes in big ways, sometimes small, but they should feel the wind in their hair as they read, even if they don't know where they will end up.
Even if you don't know at the beginning exactly where you want to end up, once you figure it out go back over each chapter and ask "how does this chapter move me toward my climax?
Make sure that the protagonist deserves what happens in the end. Readers need to feel that it was the actions of the protagonist that caused the ending. There must be something unexpected in the end. If we all see it coming, the ending becomes quite dull.
However, it can't be completely unexpected, because that feels like a betrayal of writer contract. The ending of a story should sit firmly on the foundation that the story laid. For example, if a superhero arrives to defeat the villain completely out of the blue while the protagonist looks on, that's what is considered a deus ex machina.
It's very unsatisfying and feels like a cheat. But if we can look back and see how the arrival of the superhero was hinted at even if we didn't recognize it at the time and caused by the protagonist's efforts either deliberately or inadvertently throughout the book, the ending becomes more satisfying.
They need to feel that they could have seen it coming if they had just paid a little more attention, but didn't. Be aware of what your conflict is, and make sure it is resolved. If there are minor conflicts and you want them to be kept in "reserve" for a future novel, then at least resolve the immediate crises but in doing so create others for later.
Keep your promises. This is a little more difficult to define, as each reader will have different expectations. Critiquers are invaluable in figuring out what expectations your writing has set up. They may be as subtle as the "mood" of a story if your world is set up to be a gritty, unsettling world with horrific abuses happening everywhere, your readers aren't going to be satisfied with a fluffy pink ending.
They often have to do with the fates of the characters. If readers like a character, they are not going to be happy with a casual death.
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