Ending Your Story Like A Boss (Writing Workshop)

We all know how important starting strong is, right? That first sentence needs to stick a finger in the reader’s mouth and say, “You’re coming with me, Jack.” Or Jill, whatever your name is. That first sentence drags the reader (kicking and screaming if need be) into the first paragraph, which leads to the second paragraph, so on, so forth…ad infinitum. All the way to the end.

Now, endings can be sticky furballs worth of frustration. You’ve partied hard for a couple hundred pages, getting your heroine into one snafu after another. They’ve been introduced to no less than fifty million new interesting characters and now there’re loose plot strands dangling from the rafter like toilet paper from a Freshman Frat party (I’ve never been to a frat house, but I assume everything is gilded in a thick veneer of TP. I don’t know why I have this mental image, but now you do too. So come along with me as we stretch this peculiar metaphor even further.)

Delivering a gratifying ending (whether it be happy, sad, or tragic) is one of the hardest things we writers are expected to do. If your ending sucks, you’re gonna leave your reader with literary blue balls and they’re gonna think twice about going out with you on a second date, ie: they won’t pick up your next book. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule. Stephen King is notorious for his weak endings, but here’s the problem: You’re not Stephen King.

Unless you are. In which case, “Hi Stevie!”

Anyways, for the rest of you yahoos, you aren’t King, so you need to work extra hard on sticking the landing. I don’t profess to be an expert on writing strong endings (except for when I do), but here are some tips and tricks I’ve learned the hard way to deliver consistently satisfying climaxes.

WHAT MAKES A STRONG ENDING?

Let’s begin by figuring out what even makes for a strong ending. Is it a Shamalyanana’esque twist ending ala The Sixth Sense? Is it a gut wrenching cathartic moment ala The Notebook? Does everybody get their comeuppance? Does nobody get their comeuppance? Does everything need to be wrapped up nice and neat, or can you leave some dangling ploticiples? (participles? Hm… lame grammar pun anyone?)

Here’s the answer, and it’s part of what makes writing a strong ending so frustrating. Ready? Here it is.

It depends.

Yep, that’s right. The type of ending your reader will find gratifying is dependent on a hydroplaning semi-truck’s worth of factors. But let’s start simply with this:
What promises did you make in the beginning of your story?

To write a good ending, you have to go back to the beginning and figure out what promises you actually made to the reader. If you’re writing a murder mystery, you’ve promised to reveal the bad guy. If you’re writing a light-hearted romance, you’re promising the main characters will get together, or at least have a happy ever after ending. If you’re writing a Narnia’esque portal story, you’re promising to return the reader to the regular world when it’s all done (nobody wants to be left twisting in the Narnia-wind, right?)

So that’s first, figure out what your BIG STORY PROMISE is, and fulfill it. Now, as the story progress, you’ll no doubt make a mole-hill’s worth of other smaller (but no less important promises). You have a bit more freedom in breaking these, but on the whole, it’s still very important to keep them. Now the question becomes: How?
How do you deliver on these promises?

This is the part of the writing process that can drive you to putting down the pen and taking up something easier, like astrophysics or something casual like that. We’ve all been there, so take solace, dear reader. You are not alone.

But let’s talk about how we deliver on all those promises, because if you’ve written even a slightly complex story, you’re gonna have a bunch of plot strands needing to be tied into neat little bows. The general rule of thumb here is to resolve promises/plot strands in the reverse order they are made.

Example:

[Big story promise[[Slightly smaller story promise[[[Small story promise[[[[Smallest story promise/resolve smallest]]]]Resolve small story promise]]]Resolve bigger story promise]]Resolve biggest story promise]

Here’s how this might look with an actual story for example:

[Dillon falls through magical portal[[Dillon meets friendly magical mermaid[[[Dillon recruited to assassinate evil Mermaid King[[[[Dillon loses magic trident needed to kill Mermaid King/Dillon regains magic trident]]]] Dillon kills Mermaid King (or doesn’t, that’s up to you. It’s your story after all)]]]Dillon and magical mermaid friend must say goodbye]]Dillon jumps back through portal. Comes home]

Okay, I’m fully aware that this will go down in the annals of writing advice history as one of the worse examples ever provided. For that I am sorry. I wish I had an excuse, but it’s 2 pm on a Sunday and I haven’t even started drinking yet. My apologies.

Anyways, you get the general idea, right? Oh, whew, thank god. I thought I was gonna have to provide another example. Let’s move on and forget this ever happened.

Why wrapping up all your loose plot strands isn’t always necessary (or advised).

This is one of those damned if do, damned if you don’t type situations. On the one hand, if you wrap up all your plot strands nice and neat, then you’ll get called out because it’ll feel manufactured. Then again, leave some strands flapping in the wind, and you get called out for finishing on a cliffhanger which leads to general feelings of resentment amongst your readers.

In general, it’s a bad thing when your readership resents you, so let’s try and avoid that, yeah?

Here’s my stance: Life isn’t neat and tidy, so neither should your fiction. The caveat here is that you must address the big story promises you made at the beginning. If you neglect those, or leave them unresolved until the next book, you’re gonna piss your readers off. So answer the big mysteries your story raises, but play a little loosey goosey with some of the smaller ones.

For example, maybe you have a really mysterious wizard fellow who swoops in every now and then and does something mysterious and cool. As long as this character is sufficiently ancillary to the story as a whole, you don’t need to dive in deep to his history and background. In fact, doing so might steal some of his mysterious thunder.
As a rule, don’t steal wizard’s mystery thunder. Leave it out there as a tantalizing bit of information that the reader wants, but can’t have.

Why do this?

Well, when executed properly it adds a layer of complexity and inherit breadth to your story world. It tells us as the reader that there’s more to this world than what we’re being told, more history, more adventure, more more more.

One of the interesting things about George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire is how huge the story feels in the first few books. All sorts of things are only loosely hinted. This drags the reader in and makes them ask: Well, what about that thing? I want to know more about that thing.

Martin, like the master he is, drags out this want over the course of multiple books. Now that he’s knee-deep in the story world, however, it’s all starting to feel a bit smaller, yeah? Things that were once mysterious have now been explained and are almost commonplace. We forfeit mystery in favor of intimacy.

When crafting your endings, be considerate of which mysteries you are leaving open and which ones you are closing down. If we learned everything there is to know about the white walkers right off the bat in Game of Thrones we would have lost the mystery and intrigue (two powerful motivators for luring the reader deeper into your story).

What makes a good cliffhanger?

Bad cliffhanger: Not delivering on the promise you made early in the book.

Good cliffhanger: After resolving the the book’s big problem, you reveal a NEW BIG PROMISE!

Dexter Season Four has one of the best season finales of any show I’ve ever seen. If you’ve never seen the show, well, you should. Do yourself a favor, stop reading this, go watch the first four seasons, and then come back.

*SPOILER ALERT*

There were two big promises made at the beginning of this season

1) Can Dexter learn how to live a normal life from befriending the Trinity Killer?

2) Will Dexter kill, or be killed, by the Trinity Killer?

The show writers are very intentional about making these promises in this order, and then resolving them in reverse order.

RESOLUTION/ENDING:

Dexter succeeds in killing the Trinity Killer. He wins and in the process learns some valuable things about himself and he’s confident he can live a normal life. That is, until he goes home to find his wife murdered in the bathtub. Now we get our answer to the BIG BIG SEASON QUESTION. Can Dexter live a normal life? No. His life will never be that thing.

The symmetry of this season is a beautiful thing. That final episode is a masterclass in giving a strong ending. I highly recommend it, even if I have now ruined it for you.

*END SPOILER*

What about twist endings?

Good Twist Ending: Properly foreshadowed with a sense of inevitability.

Bad Twist Ending: Seemingly random event sideswipes everything.

I’m a fan of the twist ending, but they are hard to pull off. The trick to getting it right is in the foreshadowing. What I often see are writers terrified that somebody will guess their twist beforehand, and therefore remove all the foreshadowing and allusions. Problem is the twist then comes out of left-field and leaves everybody scratching their head.

As a rule of thumb, just assume that some people will guess the twist, you can’t fool everybody. Best you can hope for is about 70% I’d say. Hell, I’m sure a bunch of people had The Sixth Sense twist figured in the first 30 minutes. That’s just how it goes, don’t stress too hard on it.

If you’re reader gets to the twist and says, “Wait, what?” and not “Ah, of course! How didn’t I see that?” then you’ve done something wrong. Don’t worry, you’re not alone on that. We’re all guilty of this one at some time or another.

Beta readers go a long ways here in helping you figure out if your twist is actually any good.

IN CONCLUSION

Alright, it’s time to wrap this up. If I were a better man, I’d rehash all the points I made, closing them down in reverse order, (ya know, to practice what I preach). But guess what, I’m not a better man. Muahaha! Plot twist! Bet you didn’t see that coming. No, see, you did see that coming ’cause I’ve gone to great lengths ensuring your expectations of me always remain low.

Anyhoo, I want to hear from you folks. What are some of your favorite endings? Doesn’t matter if it’s a television show, book, or movie. Or, if you’re feeling like a Negative Nancy, tell us about some of your least favorite endings. Get down to the comments and let your voice be heard!