An ending fails if we forget someone along the way
Let’s say our story has a girl and her broken doll, which never got fixed. Don’t leave out important characters who helped your main character after you’ve detailed them.
There’s nothing more annoying to a reader than to be introduced to a character, then through the book they seem to vanish.
The reader does not know what happened to them because you, as the writer, accidentally forgot all about them.
A good ending must take care of everything and not leave any loose ends
In Beatrix Potter’s the tale of Peter Rabbit, Peter loses his new jacket and shoes in his ordeal in Mr. McGregor’s Garden. I must abandon them. But the story does not abandon them; it tells us that Mr. McGregor uses them for the scarecrow. This may not make Peter happy, but it hones for a better story.
Details are important to a story, but not unless the story remembers them. Only when we tie up all the loose ends and attend to all the details is the action truly complete.
For example, if a girl loses her doll on page three, and the book tells us on page four, five, six, seven, and eight all about the girl searching for her doll, and then finally finds it on page nine, then we have experienced the searching for that length of time.
Because the reader has participated in the search by turning the pages of the book, the search for a lost doll is no longer an abstract concept—it’s a concrete physical experience.
The turning of the pages has added weight to the meaning of the words.
Make sure the ending is consistent with the beginning
Let the character take on a life of their own and lead the story to a conclusion that is consistent with the inner dynamics.
The action and the actor are alive, and so is the aim: it grows as the story and the actor change and grows.
Whatever your subject matter is in your story, every story is about change and growth, so don’t forget about anything you introduced that played a role in your story to create action and move the story along.
Unlike films, a picture book with its still pictures cannot show certain kinds of movement. This is where the words come in; they can help emphasize the detail, clarify an action, all linked together.
When writing a novel, the best way to not forget about a character or an action or incident is to color code them. Give each character their own color. Give each inciting incident its own color.
Make sure that your color characters appear in the chapters you want them to appear and make sure that if you notice a color is no longer displaying or has not appeared in several chapters for a while, you know the reason and it’s not because you forgot about them. They were either killed off or they left town. I think you get the idea.
The Final Curtain
Just as it’s easy to work a maze backward, it also helps to know what and where your ending is when you begin your book.
From the moment you conceive your opening sentence, you will write with more confidence and more forward with a stronger sense of purpose if you have a general idea about how your story will end.
It’s unnecessary to focus on the fictitious destination, but every word you write. It’s a matter of maintaining a general awareness of your goal.
You don’t need to know all the details of the ending. Nor do you need to know how every step of the last scene will play out. But it’s a good idea to have a keen sense of the general direction in which you are going.
The first thing to keep in mind about your ending is that it must honor the contract you made with the reader in the opening paragraph. This does not mean the ending must be predictable. But it means that the ending must be inevitable.
The fundamentals of endings
There are lots of ways to end the book- from happy, sad, and mysterious to ambivalent, comic, and tragic.
But for endings, the bedrock issue to remember is to keep the promise you made to your reader at the beginning of the book.
Honesty is key, no matter what the ending
You can’t spring a surprise on the reader at the last minute that you haven’t laid the groundwork for in advance.
The groundwork might be obscured and the hints might be subtle, but the clues must be there to justify the surprise you create.
Keep your promise
- if you promise a mystery, then end with a solution.
- If you promise action, end with a resolution.
- If you promise sin, offer redemption.
- If you promise confusion, end with understanding.
- If you promise anguish, end with relief.
- If you promise humor, end with a punchline.
- If you promise a coming-of-age story, end with insight and growth.
- If you promise a love story, end with the resolved relationship.
The ending of your story should be the inescapable outcome of the plot line you have woven together throughout the book and the promise you have made. The actors should play this out on stage in full dramatic regalia.
I find the best way to keep track of my characters and plot is to use color coding on index cards.
Another great program that I use is called Scrivener.
If scrivener is too complex, another great tool for writers that helps you keep track of your plot and characters, and it’s called Xmind. It helps you mind map your plot and characters.