Part One
Have you ever gotten to a story ending (book or a movie) and wanted to throw something? That frustration is because the ending broke a promise–one made by that book or movie. The story’s promise is hinted at in the title and cover art and built through genre and character, tone and style, theme, pace, and stakes. When the promise is half-delivered, the reader or viewer feels cheated.
Before we get into the techniques and tips for writing your story endings, you must understand: your ending only lands well if you have targeted right readers. You target your readers with the right cover, the title, the book description, the first chapters, the story tropes, the story structure, and the ending. In other words, targeting works when all the pieces fulfill your target reader’s expectations.
In addition to knowing what your story promise is, you need to craft an ending that delivers on that promise.
Crafting the End of Your Story
There are two very simple rules about how to create a satisfying ending for your story.
1. Make your character earn the ending.
2. Put the final conflict On. The. Page.
The concepts are simple, but the execution isn’t. A well-constructed ending includes structure, character, emotions, pacing, and the right pacing and style of ending for the genre. Entire books cover how to write the end of your story.
Here we’ll discuss each of the steps required in a two-part blog article. Today, in part one, we’ll discuss structure and ending techniques.
The Structure of the End
The structure style you choose to use for your story must be appropriate to your genre. Epic fiction typically uses the Hero’s Journey form. Romances usually follow a four-part HEA or HFN (Happily Ever After or Happy For Now). Many genres use the three-act structure. If you believe story structure requires outlines and therefore doesn’t apply to pantsers. Take a breath.
Understanding story structure will help you craft a better ending, but it doesn’t mean you have to plot before you write, or even plot during revisions. If you thoroughly understand story structure, you’ll embed some of those things into your first draft without trying.
Who Needs Structure & When to Apply It
For most us, planners and pantsers alike, endings are crafted in revision where you cut and tweak to refine those struggles for the reader.
The structure is an important choice that influences which elements you use when in your story. Though the labels for each element may be slightly different in each structure style, the same elements are in all satisfying endings. Keep this in mind. For the purposes of this discussion, the three-act structure is used to demonstrate how the elements relate.
So let’s talk about the structural parts of the story’s ending from the crisis decision through the climax and the resolution. But first, we must talk about the end of Act Two.
The Third Plot Point
The second act ends with the third plot point. This is the culmination of a third major attempt by your character to solve her problem. It brings her new knowledge, a sudden twist, or an unforeseen blow. Well-known writing instructors like KM Weiland, Larry Brooks, Syd Field, and many other say the third plot point comes at about 75% of the way through your story.
Positioning Your Plot Point
When I first learned about the three-act structure, I worked obsessively to make certain my third plot point fell on the 75% mark. I could not seem to get it right. So I studied books I thought handled the ending well. Guess what I found. Very few stories have their third plot point exactly at that mark.
So don’t worry too much about making your third plot point happen at 75%. Some stories tend to push it further out. As long as it works for the genre, all the elements are in place, and the pacing is appropriate, it will work out.
I don’t recommend positioning this plot point at less than 75%. In most cases, having the third plot point at 60 or 65% either dilutes the ending or makes the ending drag. As always, it’s your story. You get to decide what you want to do. Your readers get to decide if what you did is satisfying.
The next step in creating your ending is what many writing instructors call The Dark Night of the Soul.
The Dark Night of the Soul
This is your character’s reaction to the third plot point. It’s her lowest point in her struggles. She thought she was about to win, but the new knowledge, the twist, or the blow hits her and she must make a crisis decision.
Every choice your character makes in the entire story leads up to this one point. Part of the reason the main character is at her lowest point in her struggles is that she now knows she must make her most difficult choice.
Common Mistakes in Crafting the Reaction
The reaction must be like the “just right” soup in The Three Bears. If you have the character revert to the behaviors she had at the beginning of the story, your reader will be disappointed and perhaps quit reading. Don’t make her wishy-washy or whiny either. She can feel like giving up, feel uncertain about what she is going to do, but only for a short time. She has to move forward to the next step.
The Crisis Decision
Ideally, this choice is a dilemma for your character. It’s a choice with no single choice that is easy or perfect. Each one has a negative consequence. No matter what she chooses, it forces her to give up something of value to her.
The choice your character makes reveals what really matters to her, her true nature, and/or how much she’s changed since the beginning.
Examples:
Sophie’s Choice is commonly used as an example of a dilemma. Sophie must choose which of her children to send to the gas chamber, or both of them will die. (I’ve not seen this movie, so I’m relying on other sources).
In the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Frodo must choose between maintaining his personal integrity and submitting to the power of the ring’s manipulations.
In Frozen, Anna must choose between protecting those she loves from her power or embracing her true self, including her power.
At the end of the first book in my alternate history dystopian series, my main character must choose between loyalty to her parents or to the rebels she’s grown to care about.
Common Mistakes Crafting the Crisis Decision
If the crisis decision does not reflect the character’s arc, either growth or no growth, it will fall flat on your reader. This may mean that you craft the most effective crisis decision in revision. How? You look at the beginning and ask what could your character not do back then? Craft that decision to show her growth or lack thereof.
For example, in the first book of my series, my main character could not oppose her parents to their faces. At the crisis decision, she decides whether she will show up for or against her parents.
Climax
The climax of your story is the resolution of the story’s primary conflict. This happens sometime after the 75th percentile point of your book but before the 95% mark.
The character, acting on her crisis decision, confronts the antagonist. It is the peak moment. The most emotionally intense tension, conflict, and drama of the entire book. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a huge battle or action scene. But what the central story problem must answer is the big question posed in the beginning of the book. It brings the question to a close or a closed-enough-for-now moment.
If you are aiming for a satisfying story ending, your main character must be the one taking action. Her action must defeat the antagonist, whether that antagonist is a person, the environment, or some inner doubt or demon. Let me repeat. The defeat does not have to be a death of the antagonist, or even some kind of permanent, he’ll never-rise-again type of defeat. It can be a defeated-for-now.
Common Climax Mistakes
The Final Conflict Isn’t On The Page
The most frustrating story endings are those where the character was unconscious, in another realm, or suddenly wakes up and remembers how she made it through the last challenge. Another way authors try to avoid a face-to-face, is to have it happen in between chapters, then the character tells another character what happened.
As a new writer, I struggled with putting the final conflict on the page. I lost count of how many drafts had the character’s final confrontation with the antagonist happen off the page. Writers must become comfortable making their characters uncomfortable at the very least.
The ending that satisfies your target reader is one where the main character is face-to-face with the antagonist, no matter if the antagonist is a person, the environment, or herself. The final conflict must appear on the page. Without that on the page, the reader wonders what was the point of reading this. She throws the book against the wall and is extremely unlikely to read another book by that author.
Your Character Doesn’t Lead
Another common climax mistake is when the final conflict or struggle happens on the page, but your character isn’t the one who acts. She was tied up, or a best friend, a mentor, or the team member with talent delivers the final blow. She is rescued and that rescue takes the hero role away from her.
You will make your story’s ending much more satisfying when your character’s acts to make a last stand in direct confrontation with the antagonist. Everything after that confrontation is called the denouement or resolution.
The Denouement
The rest of the story is the resolution or falling action. It’s a release of tension and a glimpse of the future.
Show the character’s reaction to her final victory. In a hero’s journey, the character returns home, and the reader sees her behaving differently in a familiar environment. Or you can have the hero celebrated for her bravery, a la Star Wars. Or you can have the main character enter her new home and life. This is also where you might want to tie up some more loose ends: have your side characters rejoin your main character or discover an inconsequential or comedic secret that’s been bugging your character. You can summarize some, but don’t summarize the whole scene.
How you craft your story’s resolution is highly dependent on your story’s genre, question, and where your character goes from here. You answer the question, “Where your character goes from here” with your choice of ending style or technique.
Common Mistakes in the Denouement
There are two errors I see in the denouement most often: going on too long and ending too quickly. If you have so many threads in your story that you can’t end your story in the final 25% of your book, you’ve got too many threads. Cut any that aren’t a strong support for your story’s theme. Keep those threads. They may be useful in a companion story to this book.
Ending too quickly doesn’t give the reader enough time to decompress from the story’s tension.
Knowing if your story’s denouement is too long or too short is something you must learn from prime examples in your genre and from your alpha or beta readers. If your trusted first readers say it’s too long or short, trust them. Don’t let them decide what to cut and what to keep. Study your ending and find the balance.
Speaking of balance, you must also balance your story with the right ending technique.
Story Ending Styles
There are three common ending styles for stories: the closed ending, the open ending, and the cliffhanger ending. Each of these three styles or techniques has a place.
Closed
A closed ending is just what it sounds like. The ending concludes the story, even if there are some small story threads that aren’t ended. Even if it’s not a HEA, the reader feels the character made her choice, got her “just deserts,” and will “live on” in that story world. This ending style feels inevitable and complete.
Open
An open ending is one that leaves a “dangling thread” or two. The character made a choice, and one story problem is solved, but another problem looms in the future. It’s a promise of a continuation of the character’s story in another book. The reader feels this ending is complete but looks forward to the next step (book) in the character’s journey.
Cliffhanger
A cliffhanger ending is one where the story stops in an unresolved, tense or shocking situation. It’s a device that is meant to compel the reader to buy the next book and continue reading. Done well, it can generate excellent reader retention.
Which ending style works best for your story depends on which genre you are writing and how well you execute that ending. A poorly executed ending can mean the reader stops there and has no desire to pick up another book by that author.
Common Mistakes in Choice of Ending Technique
Some authors obsess over making certain they close every single story thread they opened during the story. In general, that level of detail will make your ending drag, and the reader may lose track of what the story was really about. Close the important story threads, but keep those to two or three. That will help the reader’s understanding of the story’s meaning and give them a sense of completion. Smaller, less important threads can remain open. That’s what makes the reader feel as if the character lives on after the story ends.
Give it an Ending
When the author doesn’t close the loop, the story feels like it ended abruptly. Ending in an open or cliffhanger ending that leaves all the character’s story problems in peril, or the character is unconscious or feared dead, gives the reader an unsettled feeling with no sense of completion. Unsatisfied, the reader may vow never to read another of your books or, worse, give you a bad review.
If you want your reader to love the book and be eager to read the next one, you must close at least one important story loop. If you want it to lead to another story, give the character a smaller victory in this book. Not too small, but a victory that is “enough for now” and still leaves a portion of the story problem unsolved.
No matter what choice of ending technique you make, you need more than structure and techniques.
Review of How to Write a Story Ending
In this article about crafting a strong ending for you story, you’ve learned:
- The third plot point brings new knowledge, a sudden twist, or an unforeseen blow at about the 75% point in your story.
- The dark night of the soul is your main character’s reaction to the third plot point and her lowest point. It’s a dilemma, where no matter what she chooses to do next, she will lose something.
- Your character moves from the dark night of the soul to a crisis decision that she makes with enough conviction that she will act on it.
- A satisfying climax is where your character faces her antagonist on the page.
- The denouement’s function is to release tension and give a glimpse of your character’s future.
- And finally, that the ending technique you choose must give the reader a sense of closure on at least one part of the story promise.
Understanding the structure and techniques to use in ending your story is crucial. But a successful ending requires more than structure.
Next month, we’ll discuss the character arc, the ending’s emotional payoff, and the pacing of your ending.
Which of these ending structure mistakes have you caught yourself making? Tell me in the comments.
More Articles on Story Structure and Endings:
Reward Your Readers with a Battle that Earns the Ending
Image Credits
All Image purchased from DepositPhotos.