Troubleshoot an Ending You Hate

After you’ve spent weeks, months, or years writing a story, you want to like what you’ve written. What if you hate your ending? First, you need a thorough understanding of the three parts of the an ending. You may hate your ending because you don’t understand the function of each part. If that’s not the problem, ask yourself the questions below so you can troubleshoot an ending you hate.

Do you love the beginning and middle of your story?

Review the beginning and the middle. If anything isn’t working in either of these sections, it may be reflected in your ending. Fixing a problem that far back in the story can be a lot of work, but it is more than worth it.

Do you hate the climax?

Maybe the climax isn’t really all that … climactic. If you start your story with your main character finding out her mother isn’t her mother, then the climax must be more intense. If your climax isn’t the most intense or exciting part of the story, you need to rethink it. Or you may need to tone down other high points in the story to make the climax more thrilling or intense.

Maybe the climax bores you. It seems much too typical of your genre. Review what readers expectations are in your genre. How can you give your ending a fresh twist while still giving readers what they want?

Do you hate the wrap up?

The wrap up, or denouement, is when all the loose ends not addressed in the climax are tied up. Have you left a few loose ends dangling, allowing them to trip up readers? Review your story to see what loose ends need addressed.

Is it taking too long to wrap things? As a mystery writer I often have a ton of loose ends to tie up. So I’ve learned not to leave the explanation for all of them during the wrap up. In A Storm of Doubts, I spread the explanations over the climax and wrap up, where it makes sense to insert them during the course of the narrative.

Have you not really wrapped up the story at all? The climax happens, the hero grins, and the story simply quits. Most readers like some time to say farewell to the characters. Give them some kind of closure.

Do you hate the final lines?

I think final lines are the most difficult part of a story to write. When I reach the last chapter, and especially the last few paragraphs of the last chapter, I often feel like I’m composing music. I want depth to my final lines, but I also don’t want to linger so long that readers are rolling their eyes and flipping to see how many pages are left. It’s a balancing act, like balancing the brass against the woodwinds and keeping the percussion from drowning everyone out.

A good guideline in the final lines is to echo a theme of the story. In “A Rose from the Ashes”, the first Rae Riley mystery, the final lines echo a Bible verse from the Christmas story. Since it’s a Christmas mystery, that’s appropriate. It’s also funny, which echoes the upbeat ending. Rae is concerned with being accepted by her new family in A Shadow on the Snow, and the final lines echo that. Rae has doubts about her father’s love in A Storm of Doubts, and you guessed it, that’s what I echo.

Writers, how do you troubleshoot an ending you hate?

For more advice on writing endings, click here.

September 26, 2024 1

Do You Like Not Completely Happy Endings?

Do you like not completely happy endings? So many stories end with everything being perfectly all right for the main character and his and her friends. But sometimes those endings seem like cheats, as if the storytelling hasn’t been built correctly to allow the author to logically tie the narrative up with a pretty bow.

I also don’t like endings that are sad just for the sake of coming across as “realistic”. Again I think it goes back to the storytelling. If the writer hasn’t provided enough bread crumbs to make the sad ending reasonable, I don’t like it.

I don’t mind bittersweet endings. In fact, I think I’ll buy any ending as long as it seems the logical conclusion for the story being told, But it has to have hope in it. That’s the reason I don’t like endings where evil triumphs. I want hope. But I want a hopeful ending that makes sense for the story.

So let me know your opinion in the comments. I love to know how other people view stories.

For more prompts on endings, click here.

September 23, 2024 3

Use Characters to Write a Satisfying and Surprising Ending

I’m a character writer. I start with characters and let their personalities suggest plots. If you come to the end of your story and don’t like it, use characters to write a satisfying and surprising ending for your readers. How? By revisiting your characters to see if there’s some quality in their background that will change your ending from dull or typical to memorable and remarkable.

A Shadow on the Snow

When I reached the end of my first novel, I knew I wanted an action-filled climax. I was writing a teen cozy mystery, so I could add more action than you might typically find in a cozy mystery. The first ending had my heroine, Rae Riley, fight the bad guy. Ho-hum. That’s been done before. The second time Rae had help come from an unlikely source during the fight. A bit better, but it didn’t sit well with me. The action seemed mean. I didn’t like it, and it seemed wrong for the story.

So I reviewed what Rae Riley was like and who the bad guy was. Rae is moved to help people out of compassion–she can imagine herself in their situation and knows she’d like help if this bad experience happened to her. Rae also knew the background story of the bad guy. So using those aspects of both characters, I was able to write an ending that, I hope, satisfies and surprises. Satisfies because the bad guy is revealed and the mystery is solved. Surprises because the ending is atypical.

The Great Man (1957)

Another example of a satisfying and surprising ending comes in the movie The Great Man. I’ll tell you the ending because most people have never heard of it and it’s extremely hard to find a copy of it. But if you like character studies and actors who have parts they can really bring to life, search for it.

The beloved radio and TV host Herb Fuller dies in a car crash. His network wants to wring as much publicity out of his death as they can. Herb’s manager Sid persuades another radio host on the network, Joe Harris, to tell the top brass that he was a close friend of Herb’s and wants to put together a radio tribute to great man. The top brass approve the project, including the network head Phillip Carleton, who runs the network with a quiet voice and an iron fist.

So Joe dusts off his reporter skills, interviewing the people who worked with Herb. And discovers what an utterly despicable guy he was, completely at odds with his public image. Joe grows more and more conflicted. Sid says if his live show goes over well, the network will give Joe Herb’s shows. If Joe doesn’t create the tribute, Sid will run a show that is a highlight reel from Herb’s old shows.

Joe also learns from Carleton that the network won’t hire him for Herb’s shows unless he breaks his contract with Sid. Carleton does not want to work with Sid, who is a bully. He thinks he can get Joe out of the contract by letting people think the network isn’t interested in Joe. Carleton explains the charade he’s put in place and the build up he’ll give Joe if he gets out of the contract. Joe comments that it’s cold-blooded. Carleton disagrees, saying it’s a business that sells time for products and those are promoted by on-air personalities.

On the night of the live broadcast, Joe decides at the last minute to roll the show that reveals who Herb Fuller really was. This won’t surprise many viewers–the hero of the story doing the right thing. This ending is satisfying because Herb is so repugnant that viewers are glad he’s going to get his comeuppance, even if it is posthumously.

The surprise comes in Carleton’s office. Sid hears on the radio what Joe is doing and rushes to the phone to have them cut Joe off and run the back up show. Carleton stops him. He says Joe has just made himself a household name across the country. Sid’s only power came from covering up for Herb’s horrible behavior. Now that the world knows, he’s go no hold over the network. The network can use Joe’s integrity to sell products just as easily as Herb’s avuncular act. Both are good for business.

This ending surprises because we are used to stories in which characters in power react angrily at being thwarted. But Carleton’s view of how to run the network is established earlier. The network is just a business to him. And he’ll use whatever necessary to stay in business.

What stories or movies have satisfying and surprising endings?

For more tips on how to write endings, click here.

September 19, 2024 0

Writing a Satisfying and Surprising Ending

Writing a surprising and satisfying ending

Writing a satisfying and surprising ending? It sounds like a conflict in terms. If it’s satisfying, how can it be surprising? That’s the biggest obstacle when writing an ending–an author wants readers to close the book with a feeling that they’ve spent their time well and enjoyed the story while also delivering a story that delights with a surprise. A good ending also encourages readers to look for more books and stories by that author. So what’s a writer to do?

Know your genre. I repeat. KNOW YOUR GENRE.

If I say my book is a mystery and don’t provide a solution for it, mystery readers will definitely be surprised. But they will also feel betrayed. The mystery genre comes with the promise of solving the puzzle in the story.

Authors cannot satisfy readers with their endings if they don’t understand the promises implicit in each genre. A romance in which the heroine doesn’t end up with the hero because she decides she’s better off alone isn’t a romance. You have to know your genre from A to Z. If you write it, you probably like reading it, so you’re are familiar with the rules even if you haven’t sat down and thought about them critically. But you should as a writer. You should also know the endings for the classics in your genre and the typical ending for currently published books.

Review endings that surprised you.

This is probably the best way to dissect a good ending. What endings have surprised you and yet left you satisfied? Treat the dissection like an assignment for a class. Underline the elements the author used. Take notes about why it worked.

The Midnight Visitor by Robert Arthur

My sixth grade reading teacher read my class this very short story, and it has always stayed with me because the ending was so surprising. Because it’s short, it’s easy to analyze.

Fowler is a writer who has spent an evening with spy Ausable to do research. Ausable is fat and sloppy, the last person Fowler would think of as a spy. Ausuable tells him he’s receiving important papers that night, so Fowler will finally see some real spy stuff.

But when Ausable and Fowler return to Ausable’s hotel room they find an intruder holding a gun. Max has come for the papers. But instead of acting afraid, Ausable is simply irritated. Max is the second person in a month to gain access to his room from a balcony that runs for Ausable’s room to an empty room two doors down.

At this point, the reader is wondering if Fowler will do something heroic or if Ausable will prove he really is a great spy. Max talks about the papers and Ausable complains about the balcony until there is a knock at the door. Ausable says it’s the police. He asked them to check on him at the time he was supposed to receive the papers. Max tells him to get rid of them or he’ll kill Ausable and Fowler and risk taking on the police. He’ll wait on the balcony.

So Ausable has proved himself to be a clever spy after all. This meets readers expectations for a spy story. Readers may be expecting a shoot out, or the police waiting on the balcony for Max. But Mr. Arthur doesn’t leave it at that.

Max steps out the window and screams once. Ausable opens the door to a waiter and accepts the drink he brings in. The waiter leaves. Fowler is worried Max will return.

“No,” said Ausable, “he won’t return. You see, my young friend, there is no balcony.”

In this very brief story, Mr. Arthur meets the expectations of his genre and then adds a surprise that still works within the genre.

Which have endings have surprised you?

For more tips on writing endings, click here.

September 12, 2024 0

Tag: Tips on how to write endings