I have no idea how many hundreds of thousands of words have been written regarding the opening of any story, but I’m sure it’s considerable. Rightly so, of course. A strong opening is arguably the most important aspect of any work of ficion. A good opening entices you into the story. It raises questions, introduces compelling characters, and suggests intrgue.

All good, and yet no matter how brilliant your opening is, you will still get bad reviews if your ending is disappointing. Think of it from the readers’ perspective: you have spent perhaps 600 pages with these characters, and then the author doesn’t even have the grace to tell you what happens to them next.

How rude.

It’s been a good 40 years, I’d guess, since I read John Fowles’ novel, The Magus, and I’m still smarting over the non-ending ending. I suppose there is comfort of sorts in knowing that even brilliant writers can get it badly wrong. How bad is the ending? So bad, that The Guardian critic, Benjamin Wood, says that, ‘It has one of the most frustrating endings I’ve encountered… I threw it at the wall.’

I got thinking about endings recently because I have been listening to a writer read his short stories on YouTube. He’s okay, if a little hit and miss. He has a tendency to resort to cliches, and his idea of characterisation is to give a thorough discription of the character’s appearance. Worst of all, though, is that his endings are consistently weak to bad. Sometimes very bad indeed.

If that’s the case, I hear you ask, why do you continue to listen?

Because it gives me the opportunity to test my own creativity. I listen to the stories and make corrections along the way. Then, at the end, I plan how I would have brought the stories to a conclusion. I highly recommend this as an exercise, even with good books that have fine endings.

So, what distinguishes a good ending from a bad one. Not, good means satisfying, not necessarily happy. Here is an overview of the good and bad endings.

Good

Feela inevitable, but can still surprise the readerTies up all the loose endsIs clear and appropriate to the characters

Bad

Feels tagged-on, like the author ran out of ideasLeaves some parts of the plot unexplainedForgets some charactersLeaves the ending vague for no good reasonIntroduces a last-minute character or event to reverse everything we’ve read so farIt was all a dream. DON’T YOU DARE!

There are several types of perfectly good endings that don’t have to be happy, or even unambiguous. Gone with the Wind, as I point out later, isn’t happy, but it does feel right. The ending of Catch-22 or To Kill a Mockingbird leave plenty of questions unanswered, but the reader has enough information to be able to draw a reasonable conclusion about what happened next. Let’s now look at the various types of endings.

Types of Endings

Loose Ends resolved

Regardless of whether the story ends happily, sadly, or something else, the first most important point is that all the elements of the plot and the subplots are resolved. That’s not to say that you, as the author, have to tell us every detail of every character, but you should be able to at least hint at what will happen with everyone else.

Recently, I watched a World War II film, based on the real life of a particular Sergeant Major. Throughout, the British officer causes problems for the Germans he meets, he makes friends among other prisoners of war, and, ultimately, is able to escape. While the story is based on the events of his life during this period, I was disappointed that the film-makers never acknowledged what happened to the various people the man had met along the way. I realise that that wasn’t the primary focus, but I felt dissatisfied by not knowing.

In a book with a lot of characters, it can be intimidating to detail what happens after the novel to all of them, but a big-picture summary can work. In the film, which is narrated by the main character, he could have said, ‘I was glad to discover later that all the men in XX Camp made it home. Even was happy to return home to his farm and his nine children. Which must have been a relief after being responsible for 250 prisoners of war…’

Unless a specific character has some prominence in the story, it’s all right to put them into a group with others, as I did in the example above. It’s also acceptable to delegate one character to a more nebulous fate. “I often wondered what happened to Kursk. One of the lads that I ran into in Piccadilly said that he’d made his way to Canada and was in the lumber trade. Jameson, the chap from Dublin, said he’d heard that Kursk had gone home to Berlin where he was court martialed for letting so many men escape…”

Much depends, of course, on your narrative choice. If your story is in the first person, you can only relate as much as that character is likely to know. A third-person narrative allows you the scope to give more definite information about the various characters.

Happy Ever After

The most common and by far the most appreciated by readers is the type where all the characters live, we suppose, fairly unremarkable lives thereafter. Fairy tales are a good example of this category. Cinderella marries the Prince and they live happily ever after. The wicked stepmother and her odious daughters are made servants in the laundry, and everything is as it ought to be, at least so we suppose.

In Shakespeare’s comedies all the insanity of the play are resolved and the status quo is reestablished. From a modern perspective, of course, that status quo may be odious — the woman is relegated to a subserviant position to her husband (The Taming of the Shrew), and the Jew is forced to become a Christian (The Merchant of Venice), but a return to the ‘norm’ is what the audiences of the day found positive.

Overall, the ‘happily ever after’ ending is one in which all the Is are dotted and the Ts are crossed. In general, the honourable are rewarded, and the villain gets his or her comeuppance.

The Unhappy Ending

Here, while all those loose ends are resolved, the outcome may be bleak for even the good characters. Someone (maybe many someones) might be dead, the villain has triumphed or at least escaped, and the future looks bleak. This tends to be the case of many classical Russian writers. Everyone from Dostoyevski to Solzhenitsyn have gone this route.

Often, in this type of story, the reader knows from the outset that a specific character’s ending is not going to be happy. If your hero is, for instance, terminally ill, the best we can hope for him is that he dies peacefully. Or if he has a goal, like Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, we hope he achieves what he wants before the end. Is that an unhappy ending, or just realistic? What about Anna Karenina? Or Jude the Obscure?

Don’t fight too hard against the sad ending if it feels right for the story. Many readers love a good cry.

The Win-Some, Lose-Some Ending

In life, it’s rare that you and everyone in your circle enjoy the same degree of happiness at the same time. As Orson Welles once said, ‘A happy ending depends on where you end the story.’ Going back to Cinderella again, her story has a happy ending, but not so much for her stepmother and stepsisters.

In many stories, good triumphs, but at a cost. In A Tale of Two Cities, for instance, Lucie Manette gets to live happily ever after (presumably) with her husband, Charles Darnay, but only because Sydney Carton sacrificed himself to ensure their safety.

As long as all the questions have been answered, the plot and subplots resolved, and the various problems resolved, most readers will feel satisfied with the ending. While many dislike the ending of Gone with the Wind and are upset that Scarlett and Rhett don’t end up together, others recognise the rightness of the conclusion. The moral is that even if you get everything you ever thought you wanted, you may find it’s not as wonderful as you had expected. Worse, you may find that the price is too high. Besides, the point of the ending is to reveal the indominatable spirit of the heroine. Rhett might not want her right now, but she’ll get him back. ‘After all,’ she says, ‘tomorrow is another day.’

What is a good ending for you? What is the worst ending you’ve ever read? How would you change it?Point of View and Endings

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