There’s nothing quite like the disappointment of a bad ending to a story. You’ve invested all that time in reading, only for the finale to fall a little flat, to not deliver on the promises that were set up. Likewise, there’s a special kind of magic in a really good ending, one that makes you stare at the book in awe for a few moments, one that sticks with you long after you’ve finished.
So what makes a good ending?
Knowing when to end
It starts with knowing when in the narrative to bring the story to a close, and this can depend on the story’s core theme/s, the question that it is asking the reader, or the message it is sharing. In Pride and Prejudice, the themes are closely linked to societal expectations, something that gets in the way for both main characters, but by the end, Darcy sets aside his pride and Elizabeth overcomes her prejudice to realise what true love means.
On this note, the protagonist of a story usually has a journey of their own to complete, one that isn’t necessarily external. By the end of the book, they should have changed in some way, they should have learned a lesson or grown in some regard, and the ending needs to reflect this. If the character is no different from how they appeared on Page 1, then there’s been some crucial development missed out.
Knowing your genre
Aside from the story’s thematic resolution, there’s also genre expectations to be aware of. In romance, it’s expected for there to be a happily ever after. Thrillers might lean towards cliff-hanger endings, horror often leaves the reader with doubt about whether the big evil has actually been defeated, and the end of a crime novel needs to unmask the murderer.
Once you’ve read widely within your genre and understand the usual pattern, you can absolutely use this to subvert reader expectations, but there are certain genre-specific resolutions that they will want to see in order to enjoy the story, so you can’t always be clever about it – romance readers will not be best pleased if the couple doesn’t end up together, no matter what smart twist you’ve tried to write.
Knowing what comes next… if anything
Another big influence on how you should end your story is what you have planned for the next instalment, if there is, in fact, a next instalment. Let’s start with standalones; if the book you’re writing is planned as the only book in the series, then the resolution should be as described above. Loose ends should be tied up, the villain unmasked, or the couple happily vowing to spend the rest of their lives together. The reader should be left with a sense of completion.
If you’re writing a multi-books series, it gets a little trickier. For one, there does still need to be a satisfying conclusion to the first book. It might end on a cliffhanger or leave the over-arching mystery unsolved, but there should still feel like a resolution by the last page, the characters still need to have grown and developed across the events of that first book.
How you present this will depend on the plans for the rest of the series and whether the narrative thread will continue or not. For instance, a series of books following a specific police detective might all have the same main character, but each book will present a different case for them to work on, so the narrative doesn’t continue from where the first book left off. Series like this can often be read in any order.
If you are planning a series that happens chronologically, however, with the plot threads from Book 1 expanding into Book 2 and beyond, you’ve got a bit more work cut out for you. You have to make sure the first book ends in a satisfying way, but without tying off all those loose ends. Without mentioning the title so as to avoid revealing spoilers, I’ll give the example of a favourite series of mine. The first book sees the protagonist unearth a plot to steal the throne in favour of an unworthy prince and the events of the story follow their attempts to stop this from happening. By the end of the book, the protagonist succeeds – resolving that narrative thread – but they won by giving the crown to another, and that promises to open a whole new can of worms, which is what the sequel goes on to explore.
Seek out good endings
As with many aspects of writing, the best way to learn how to do something is to study how others have done it. If you want to understand the anatomy of a good ending, you need to trawl through your bookshelves or head to the library and find all the books you’ve ever read that you feel ended well.
Re-read them, knowing now what the resolution is, and really look at what the author has done to make that ending so impactful. We often don’t realise on our first read how many breadcrumbs the author left for us along the way to telegraph what was coming at the end. It’s not until we go back through a second or third time that we pick up on those small details cleverly planted in the narrative.
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