The mirage of an ending
The closer I get, the more it recedes
Quick political interlude up top because this is important: If you live in the US, the House of Representatives will be voting this week on an extremely destructive legislation package that will, among other bullshit, take funding from medical care and environmental improvement programs and use it to give tax cuts to the wealthy and strengthen the developing police state. If you are against this, please call your representative and let them know. I live in a district where my “representative” literally had to call the governor to get treated for an ectopic pregnancy after she supported a ban on abortion, then blamed it on the libs. I’m still calling her.
Anyway! Last month I participated on a panel where we talked about how to write a satisfying ending for a novel. This was at Thrillerfest, so it was in the context of crime fiction (which obviously has different criteria than, say, romance). But the principles of how to do it are largely the same across genre. Whether your ending is happy or a downer, the story needs to (1) tie up its main threads1 (2) in a way that’s earned by the narrative thus far and (3) demonstrates the changes that the main character(s) have gone through in the course of the novel (and ideally, the ending should give some hint that their lives continue after the story is done, even if the book is a standalone).
It’s apropos that I was on this panel because I happen to be – not struggling!! – progressing toward the ending of my current WIP. The week before I left for New York, I completely thought I was almost there, just a couple more scenes left to write and then I could tie it up with the resolution! Ha ha ha. Ha.
Then I realized that actually no, this ending I outlined doesn’t make a lot of sense given the themes I want to advance. And it takes some of the agency away that my main character has spent an entire book building up. And it makes the sex scene I had planned kind of superfluous. (Yes, I did in fact re-conceptualize my ending to make the sex scene more necessary. You’re welcome.) So I needed a few (thousand) more words than I thought.
There is a lot of “Don’t give up your momentum while writing a first draft” advice floating around in the online writing community. Like most writing advice, it is very situation-dependent. I think it’s good for when the fear of writing down the wrong words keeps you from writing at all. This advice also guards against the problem of sunk cost (I spent all this time wordsmithing this scene only to cut it!) and against polish making you think mistakenly that your book is done. But I have written to the end of multiple books (more than one different ending for most of them!) and I know I’ll get to the end of this one.
I’m using the word “ending” to be synonymous with “climax” though they are not the same. However, in a three-act structure, the actual final pages will be falling action and resolution that is set up by…your book’s climax. So the climax is the part that’s most important. And most difficult, at least for me.
The first ideas you have are often the shittiest. They are the easy, shallow, surface ideas. The ideas that snuck into your subconscious from the last show you watched. Sometimes, if I write down that shitty first or second idea in a scene, I’ll get into a toxic marriage with it and try for weeks to make it work before I can finally cut it loose.
So for my current book I’m experimenting with not pushing through. Not getting overly attached to my ideas but playing with them in a low-stakes way. One method of doing this is to write an iterative list of plot points (or an unhinged summary full of brackets and emotional support “LOL”s) that gets progressively more detailed, but could never be mistaken for the ending in its final form. Then you work backward to figure out what needs to happen both plot- and character-wise to make this work.
What if you don’t know what needs to happen? I start with the broadest of strokes and ask questions from there. Such as: How does the villain die? Do they absolutely have to die, or are they neutralized in another, maybe more temporary way? (Or do they win? This is also a time when you might try thinking about your ending — and therefore your entire book — in new, fresh ways, since this project you’ve been working on for months or years may benefit from a little shaking up.) I get the main building blocks of my ending in place and then embellish and explain. If something is not working, there’s a reason for that, so I go back and fix it structurally before I make it pretty.
If you are writing genre fiction, questions related to market trends or reader expectations might come into your writing process as well, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this. E.g. if you are writing a romance, the main characters have to end up together, happily. But there is definitely a balance. Keep in mind that the books that are hot now were written years ago (especially if you are wanting to publish traditionally) and trends are not always predictable. There’s room for subverting some expectations (and that’s really the only way to make your book fresh, since there are no truly new story ideas).
Some of the things I take into account when writing an ending:
Theme: What statements am I making with this ending? What do I want to say? (Hopefully those are aligned lol)
Character: Am I giving my protagonist an active role in resolving the story? Are they physically/morally/emotionally able to take the actions I’m having them take? If not, can I develop them in such a way that they are, or do I have to change how they handle what the plot throws at them? Does what they do at the ending show how they’ve changed throughout the story?
Plot: What has been happening, what breadcrumbs have been laid down, which clues still need to come to fruition, can this climax logically happen given what has gone on up until now? (Unless you are writing literary autofiction or whatever, events in fiction have to make sense, more so than in real life.)
There is so much more to it than that (including Will anyone enjoy reading this???) but ultimately, I want to tie up the threads of my main plot in an earned and thematically appropriate way. I can’t just have a rocket launcher drop out of the sky and my main character magically know how to use it (even though she has learned to use magic). Sometimes in chasing the right ending I have to go sideways and backwards, but eventually I’ll catch up.
Weird thing I am researching
Why most houses in Florida don’t have basements.2
Reading/watching/listening
Reading: Long series intimidate me, but I’ve been working my way into Kristen Britain’s Green Rider novels. I hadn’t read the books before, and they were hailed as feminist high fantasy back in 1998 when the first one came out. Really enjoying it so far, and a new installment is coming out in September 2025!
Watching: Recently I posted a thread about getting your feelings hurt as a parent of teens. The latest way I have had my feelings hurt is that my 14 year old specifically asked me to watch the latest season of Squid Game with her…before she read plot spoilers online and bailed on me.
Listening: Luminal by Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe.
If you enjoy my ramblings, you might like my books!
The Other Me, which PopSugar called a “Black Mirror-esque rabbit hole,” is an inventive page-turner about the choices we make and the ones made for us.
When I’m Her asks the question: How far would you go to get even with the woman who ruined your life?
In certain genres (litfic) things might end up less resolved and more “realistic” but generally some sort of statement will still be made.
If you are writing a book set in Florida, keep in mind that your main character probably has to store their holiday decorations in the garage.