Don’t mess up the ending

No matter how well you write your beginning and middle, don’t mess up the ending. The end of a story is the emotional catch and release. It’s the height of suspense and the catharsis; the emotional release; the climax.

Authors spend so much time crafting opening chapters, opening pages, opening lines. And yet so many endings fall flat. There’s an art to storytelling, in which the story builds from a low tension state to an elevated tension state. And at a critical moment, that tension releases. Hopefully in a satisfying way for the reader.

When and where

The briefest search of the Internet reveals any number of answers to ‘the shape of a story.’ Usually it has a rising curve from the beginning to the climax around 80% in. A sharp drop-off takes us to the wrap-up or epilogue.

Whether it has five, seven, fifteen, seventeen or twenty-seven beats or incidents, that curve appears in some form.

Freitag’s oft-misunderstood story pyramid peaks around half way through. That isn’t the climax, but the revelation of the ‘truth’ that steers the protagonist to the conclusion. The rest, as they say, is plot.

But the shape of the plot is important. Often that tension curve shows a spike after the Act Two ‘minor victory’ and another spike early in Act Three when the protagonist goes through their ‘dark night of the soul.’ The tension ramps steeply upward toward the all-important climax for the peak of Act Three.

Not just plot

But the ending isn’t solely about plot or incident. This is why too many superhero movies and TV shows fall flat, despite the smash-bash-and-crash, CGI-laden finale. A satisfying ending packs an emotional punch. It has to mean something to relatable characters, and to us, the reader or viewer.

Darcy and Lizzie: will they? Won’t they? Does Bilbo Baggins make it there and back again? Does Frodo escape from Mount Doom? This is the level of external plot. This only takes us so far.

What we look for is the resolution of the internal plot; how does the character change from their initial state of ignorance to their final end-state of wisdom?

Too often, endings get caught up in external plot, what happens, not why it matters, the internal plot. At the end of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, for all their experiences, the kids go back to being kids in the ordinary world. The dream world fades. Aslan becomes a memory. Lewis’ Sunday School allegory of faith isn’t enough.

Emotional release

Genre expectations have a lot to do with this. Pride and Prejudice is the archetypal romance. We expect a happy-ever-after. The author plays a game with the reader, presenting all kinds of obstacles the protagonists must overcome. We willingly join in the game, accepting those obstacles as insurmountable. And when the final one falls, we get that cheer-out-loud moment, the release of tension, the emotional catharsis.

The Hobbit is a children’s book. Kids expect Bilbo will make it there and back again, despite all the dangers.

The Lord of the Rings is epic fantasy adventure. We kind of expect Frodo to destroy the One Ring, otherwise Sauron wins and everyone dies. It’s not that kind of tale. But there’s no guarantee that any of our heroic protagonists make it back alive. From Arthurian legend, to the Neibelung, to Beowulf and the Mahabarat, plenty of heroes make the ultimate sacrifice.

This assumes the author made a bridge between us and the characters; that we connect, empathise, sympathise. If we invest in the characters, then we invest in their journey. Swept along with them through the rise and fall of the plot, we arrive at the climax fully wound, ready for the release.

Well, that wouldn’t happen.

Endings go wrong all too easily. The big action set-piece goes on too long, and nobody cares about the death and destruction because it’s either too big, too silly. We don’t know or care about the casualties unless the story makes it personal.

Perhaps the author cheats and pulls an easy solution out of the bag? Perhaps there’s an external Deus Ex Machina to fix everything? Maybe the honking great plot twist undermines everything that went before?

Are the stakes are too low? Who cares if the protagonist burns the cupcakes or can’t reload their office stapler?

Worse, the story ends on a cliff-hanger carried over into the next book, with no closure, no victory or happy-ever-after to cheer.

All that emotional tension, all that investment in the characters, and the author blows it at the end. The reader throws the book in the trash in disgust.

The shape of water

But what qualifies as a satisfying ending? We laugh, we cry, we cheer, we grieve. How much emotional release do we need, and for how long? We humans are conditioned to a certain story arc. Finish too soon, we feel cheated. Drag it out too long, we get bored. Mary-Sue and Gary-Stu breeze past the antagonist without breaking sweat, that’s a let-down. End it with a contrivance for the sake of ending it, we feel cheated. Never cheat on the reader.

Too many endings

Jack Nicholson famously walked out of The Return of the King movie adaptation. His reason: “too many endings.” Not a genre fan, Nicholson spotted a weakness in the story telling for a general audience. Arguably, the movie of Return of the King should end with Aragorn’s coronation, reunited with Arwen, and the honoring of the hobbits. A medal ceremony, like Star Wars.

But director Peter Jackson followed Tolkien’s book. The coronation occurs a thousand pages into the trilogy. Tolkien wrote multiple epilogues to wrap up the story of the hobbits; their return home, and Frodo’s eventual journey to the Grey Havens. We followed them this far, let’s see it through.

The big emotional climax is the coronation. But Tolkien goes for a longer, slower, more thoughtful and complete finish. As a war veteran, he knew that wars don’t end neatly with the final battle. Dealing with the aftermath is the veteran’s burden, and Tolkien took the time to show it.

The dramatic drop-off

But many genres don’t hang around for that long, slow, gradual curve to complete the story graph. Look at any movie of the 1940’s and ’50’s. As soon as the key climactic moment is done, the closing credits roll, often jarringly abrupt. That story graph falls off a cliff.

But authors look at story differently. Having spent so much time and effort, so many words, they want to explore the aftermath, the longer-lasting effects. Writers want to describe the impact on character of these life-changing effects. That’s what authors do, describe, in words at length. They let go of characters reluctantly. The temptation is hard to resist. How many epilogues do we really need? How much of a return to the ordinary world, to the new normal? Sometimes the reader imagines an ending far better than the author.

Finishing a story is a complex and difficult equation, with so many factors in play; character, internal plot, external plot, genre tropes, reader expectation, the length and shape of the story arc. One thing you have to ensure: don’t mess up the ending.