“Can’t say I’ve ever been too fond of beginnings, myself. Messy little things. Give me a good ending anytime. You know where you are with an ending.” ― Neil Gaiman

By PJ Parrish

I love it when I can draft along in someone’s wake. James had a good post Sunday on how to end scenes or chapters. He talked about how he studied how King, Koontz and Grisham artfully ended chapters. And then yesterday, I was a guess blogger over at Kay’s blog The Craft of Writing, where she complimented me on the ending of one of my books.

So what better time than to talk about the alchemy of a good ending? I wish I could remember who said this, but my memory is unreliable: The opposite of a happy ending is not a sad ending. The opposite of a happy ending is an unsatisfying ending.

I recently watched The Princess Bride for the first time. Great storytelling. The last scene is the four heroes – Westley, Buttercup, Fezzik and Inigo Montoya — riding off on white horses. No lousy epilogues, just a sweet satisfying ending reflecting the movie’s tone. But here’s what screenwriter William Goldman said about it in an interview:

Well, I’m an abridger, so I’m entitled to a few ideas of my own. Did they make it? Was the pirate ship there? You can answer it for yourself, but, for me, I say yes it was. And yes, they got away. And got their strength back and had lots of adventures and more than their share of laughs.
But that doesn’t mean I think they had a happy ending, either. Because, in my opinion, anyway, they squabbled a lot, and Buttercup lost her looks eventually, and one day Fezzik lost a fight and some hot-shot kid whipped Inigo with a sword and Westley was never able to really sleep sound because of Humperdinck maybe being on the trail.

I’m not trying to make this a downer, understand. I mean, I really do think that love is the best thing in the world, next to cough drops. But I also have to say, for the umpty-umpth time, that life isn’t fair. It’s just fairer than death, that’s all.

You probably don’t want to even think about your ending, because right now you’re spinning your wheels in chapter 7. But you should think about it. Because often it’s the ending that resonates strongest with a reader. Everything you write before it leads up to it. And if the ending is good, everything points back to it. Last impressions are important.

It’s all about structure and you being in control of your narrative and pacing. It’s also about mood and theme because a good ending emotionally connects. What you don’t want to do is write until you are exhausted and go out with a whimper. What you don’t want to do stay too long at your party and bore everyone to death. A good ending is, like everything you write, a definite choice. It is not a final groan. It is a goal.

Let’s start by defining some different types of endings. If you all think of any I’ve missed, please weigh in. SPOILER ALERTS.

Tied Up With a Bow. Common in stand alones because the story is resolved, no questions are left unanswered, the bad guys are vanquished and the hero has won. Boy gets girl. The child is rescued. The world is saved. The implication is that order has been restored and everyone lives, maybe not happily ever after, but at least existing above the dirt. Unless you’re H.G. Wells. Now my tastes run toward ambiguity in endings. But the bow route can be very satisfying for readers. Don’t apologize if it’s what your story needs.

Closing The Circle. In this structure, the story ends where it began, as events eventually lead back to the imagery, event, or scene that begins the story. Best example I can think of is Steinbeck’s Of Mice And Men. The tragic ending is inevitable because Steinbeck sets up in the beginning the idea that happiness is impossible for Lennie and George. George always protects Lennie, but the task becomes too difficult when Lennie accidentally kills Curley’s wife. Steinbeck begins and ends at the same place — the pond. It is symbolic in that despite all their efforts to better themselves, Lennie and George end up exactly where they began.

Open-Ended Ending. There is still some element of resolution, but nothing is neat. There may be lingering questions, doors might be left open. This is good for series in which you may want the character arc of your protagonist to change over the course of several books. You have put your protag through a challenge, but he still has more to tell. This is one reason readers love series — one story might compel them to the next book to see what is going to happen next to the hero.

The Ambiguous Ending. This is a little different than open-ended. Ambiguity may occur with a character, plot point, image, or situation that can be understood in two or more possible ways. An ending can be interpreted in different ways. Tana French’s In The Woods is a good example. The ending, wherein some events of the case prove unresolved, left some readers frustrated.

The Twist. You’ve led readers down a plot path that makes them expect a certain ending. The satisfaction for readers is thus seeing only how you pull things off. But, maybe you decided to add a last minute plot twist that no one sees coming. Best one I can think of is Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island, also a heck of a good example of an unreliable narrator.

SPOILER ALERT: Where The Crawdads Sing. After standing trial for murdering Chase, it is revealed that an exonerated Kya did, in fact, off him. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn. Here’s how she explains her shocking and very abrupt ending: https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/sharp-objects-finale-recap-gillian-flynn-hbo-713667/

The Ticking Clock. This is stock in thrillers. To end the story, you decide what should happen last. One example is Lee Child’s 61 Hours, wherein Jack Reacher is racing against the clock as he investigates a small-town murder in South Dakota. But Reacher doesn’t know he’s under a countdown, which creates a second layer of tension for the reader. Like Hitchcock’s bomb-under-the-table, readers know about the time “bomb” as they wait for Reacher to figure things out.

Spoiler alert: 61 Hours ends in a cliff-hanger, with the plot resolved but Reacher desperately running for his life. There’s an epilogue (see below for my take on that!) wherein Child suggests that nobody survived the explosion that ended the novel. What? Reacher’s dead? No answer in 61 Hours. But the next Reacher book Worth Dying For, opens with a bruised and battered Reacher talking to a doctor who wonders why he’s so beat up. Reacher never really explains how he walked away from the explosion. Some fans were miffed about this, but hey, he’s Jack Reacher, right? And maybe James Bond survived that missile attack in No Time To Die.

Epilogues. You all know how much I dislike prologues. (it’s mainly a taste thing). So it is with epilogues for me. This is a pin-the-vestigial-tail-on-the-donkey kind of thing. You’ve ended your story with a good resolution yet you keep yakking away. Usually to impart something like: After her would-be killer went to jail, Barbie went on to marry Ken, become a brain surgeon, and they remodeled their dream house in Hoboken. Yuck. You have to know when to leave the party, folks. After the tragedy/mystery is resolved, allow breathing room for your reader to envision what comes next. At this point, the reader’s imagination is much more powerful than yours.  “Epilogue” looks all artsy-fartsy on the page but it’s almost always an ego thing. Unless you’re Lee Child.

Example: The one good one I can remember is The Book Thief. The epilogue runs four “chapters” and it bookends the four “chapter” prologue. It worked within the complex structure of the story wherein the narrator is Death, who tells us about the girl Liesel’s journey, and laments humanity’s cruelty and hopefulness. I loved this book and its closing lines:

All I was able to do was turn to Liesel Meminger and tell her the only truth I truly know. I said to the book thief and I say it now to you.

*** A LAST NOTE FROM YOUR NARRATOR***

I am haunted by humans.

Tips For Good Endings

1. Know how things end from the beginning. I know, I know…you don’t want to hear this. It’s hard enough, especially if you’re a pantser like me, to figure things out when you’re still mucking around in chapter 2. But I almost always have at least a vague idea of what that last chapter is going to say. Sometimes I know the ending before I know where to start and I almost write in reverse gear. What you should know is the central question of your story — who killed poor old Roger? (See Agatha Christie). Can the team come together to save the world? (Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton) How far will a woman go to protect her murderous sister? (My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite.) If you can articulate the central question of your story, you have a good jump on knowing how it ends.
2. Earn it! How you resolve your story has to come organically. What does that mean? You have to lay down clue trails logically. The end, regardless of its tone, must feel inevitable and true. Also, your antagonist must be a presence in the book early (even if you artfully conceal him or lead the reader away from him.) Don’t get lazy and resort to the Long Lost Uncle From Australia ploy where the bad guy suddenly turns up at the end.
3. Know your tone going in. Happy or sad? Hopeful or uncertain? You want readers smiling or crying at the end? That is up to you, but whatever you chose, it must be supported by the plot foundation you lay. My own books are dark and sometimes ambiguous at end. But I like a grace note of hope.
4. Stand Alone or Series. Of course this affects your ending. If you plan to write a series character, you must carefully consider each trait and event in that person’s life (and please, commit this to a record or dossier!). The endings of series books often provide transitions to the next. You must decide if that series character will age with each book. My own hero Louis ages one year to 18 month with every book, so I’m thankful we started book one with him age 24. Or your series character might be static. Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone was born May 5, 1950 (according to Grafton’s website) but she is perennially “in her mid-30s.” A stand alone, of course, dictates a different structure. At THE END, there should be nothing left to say.
5. Write more than one ending. So you get to act 3 and you’re in a fog. You know that finish line is out there but you can’t see it. Don’t choke. Write one ending, then write a different one or two or three. Think of it as your Director’s Cuts. Give them to a trusted friend for testing. Usually, the shortest one, the one with the emotional kick, is best. One of my favorite movies is Cinema Paradiso. An Italian boy Toto, obsessed with movies, grows into a teen who falls in love with the beautiful and obtainable Elena. He becomes a famous movie director but his bed, as his mother tells him, is always filled with strangers. In the ending, Toto returns to his tiny village and watches a montage of old movie clips of couples kissing. It is heart-crushing but so perfect. Yet the director unwisely issued a special cut in which the adult Toto tracked down Elena. It’s awful. Here’s the good ending, the most romantic two minutes ever put to film.

So, no director’s cut, okay? If you don’t believe me, go watch Apocalypse Now Redux.  

I’ll leave you with one final example from one of our own books, Island of Bones. I bring this up only because Kay told me she really liked it. I think it’s also an example of coming full circle and leaving a definite mood of hope. You can skip this part. I won’t be offended.

I wrote this last scene right after I wrote the first chapter. Chapter 1 is all action: a woman trying to escape from an island off Florida coast, so terrified that she risks taking out a small boat during a coming hurricane. The plot revolves around Louis and Mel tracking down missing women and, in the end, saving a boy and an newborn infant. The ending is back on the gulf, this time at sunset with Louis and Mel, who is slowly blind, reflecting on the case and the children they saved. Louis is compelled to tell Mel he is haunted by the fact he got a girl pregnant in college.

“What happened to her,” Mel asked.

“She left school and got an abortion.”

“You sure?”

Louis kept his eyes on the gulf. Sure? Hell, he had never thought about it before. There was no reason to think she hadn’t done what she told him she was going to do.

“Shit,” Louis said under his breath. “Like I really needed to be thinking about that possibility right now.”

Mel didn’t answer. His eyes were closed and he was leaning back on his elbows, his face upturned to catch the faint breeze. “What was her name?”

“Kyla. I screwed it up,” Louis said softly.

Mel was quiet for a long time. “You know, memory is a strange thing,” he said finally. “I mean you can’t always rely on it. I have a whole library of images in my memory, things I use to remember what something looks like, things I use to make me feel like I’m not groping around in the dark when things get bad.”

Louis was quiet, looking out at the gulf.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is that you might not be remembering that thing in college all that clearly. Memories can be…unreliable. You did the best you could at the time. I think that’s all any of us do. When you know better, you do better.”

The waves were a gentle hiss on the sand. A flock of pelicans were flying up the beach toward them, and Louis watched as they went by in a perfect V, gliding over the water. The birds were beautiful, no sound, no effort, moving through their world with not a single wasted motion. He watched them until they were gone.

“The boy will be all right,” Mel said. “And the baby is alive. You did the best you could.”

The breeze was kicking up. Louis closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath of the salty air. He listened to the breaking waves.

“Tell me what it looks like,” Mel said.

Louis opened his eyes. “What?”

“The sunset.”

“I’m not falling for that again. I know you can see it, some of it anyway.”

“All I see is a big blur of color.”

“Well, that’s all it is.”

Mel laughed. “Christ, you’re hopeless. Tell me what it looks like.”

Louis looked at the sky and shrugged. “I told you, it’s colorful.”

“Try again.”

Louis took a deep breath. “It’s red at the bottom and kind of yellow at the top.”

“You can do better than that.”

“Okay, it’s really red and really yellow. Damn it, Mel, you tell me.”

Mel lifted his face to the sky, eyes closed. “The clouds are wispy, and it’s like someone tossed a bunch of yellow and pink feathers against a freshly painted red wall. And the sun is laying itself down on the water, giving in, like you would if you were going to sleep and knew you had nothing but good dreams ahead.”

Louis looked at Mel then back out at the sky.

“I can’t do better than that,” he said.

The unreliability of our memories is a theme in the book. No cops fully trust witnesses. No person, as Mel knows, can fully trust their own memories. The mood I was going for is weary but hopeful. And with the mention of the pregnant girlfriend, we set up the plot for a future Louis book.

And on that note, I’m leaving the party.