Craft Post: Endings (Patreon)

I talked about beginnings in previous craft posts (in fact, a couple of times and I'm sure I'll get to that again because beginnings are so important) but let's talk endings. Endings are incredibly important, not just before the book itself but the series.

So let's get to it.

Writers Generally Suck at Endings

I include myself in this, and should preface this by saying 'beginner writers generally...' and there's a simple reason for that.

We don't practice it enough.

Most beginner writers have started dozens of stories, gotten towards the middle maybe a fifth of the time and very, very rarely get to the end.

In fact, the first time you finish a novel, it's a moment of huge celebration. So their beginnings have been crafted, over and over again. Their middles have been reworked a number of times, practiced a few times.

The endings? That might be the first time a novelist has written an ending. And then they want to send it out.

Ooops.

It'd be like asking an artist who has spent years drawing in pencil to suddenly sell their first ever watercolor painting. The pencil drawings might be amazing, but the moment they start using watercolors...

Well, would you buy that? Maybe... But there's no way that's their best works. So, endings generally suck.

The Elements of a Good Ending

There are a few things you need for a good ending:

The answer to your plot / conclusion of the story plot

A satisfying climax. The proportion of the climax in relation to the work should be sufficient. You can't end a two thousand chapter serial in 2 chapters and expect readers to be satisfied.

Tie off main loose ends. You don't have to tie off everything, but the main loose ends should be sorted.

Foreshadow your conclusion.

Tone and genre should stay the same. Unless you're doing something innovative, don't jump genres randomly (your cozy book suddenly ends with grisly body horror, your scifi invasion work introduces vampires as the solution, etc.).

Have a denouement. This is the part after the big battle, when everything is over. This is the aftercare for the readers soul, where after bringing the book to a climax, you're setting up a soft landing. The final few pages, where everything is done, and you're coasting along to a stop.

Character arcs should be finished (optional for some books)

Plotting & Pantsing

I like knowing my ending for a book and series before I start writing. It means I don't wander off too far, and it gives me points to write towards while I discover the world.

Other people are pure pantsers. They don't need to know their endings and might even prefer not knowing.

Both are valid. If you're a pantser, you will NEED to edit your book to make sure you foreshadow your conclusion, that the theme that cropped up later on, that the right mood is set. You likely tied off most of your main plotlines, but it's worth checking as you edit that everything is sorted.

If you're a plotter, this is a lot easier, but you need to check that you've built enough reasons for your characters to do what they did without breaking who they are. The biggest danger is creating an ending that has to be hit, without giving your characters time enough to grow into it.

The final season of Game of Thrones suffers from this problem. The conclusion isn't the problem as much for Daenerys, it's an entirely a pacing problem. Give us a full season for her to descend, and no one would complain. Give us a full season of John seeing her descent and struggling with his final decision.

I have nothing to say about Brand. That was terribly foreshadowed (in the TV series).

Getting Better

How do you get better? Well, writing more endings helps. So:

short stories (bonus, you can try selling them. If they get bought, you know you have work that is meeting at least some professional standards. Even bigger bonus - free editing (sometimes) ).

novellas and novelletes - for those who can't do short stories, this is another great option to get a lot of conclusions done.

hiring editors and/or writing groups. Again, be careful about writing groups, you want people who are able to provide constructive criticism and at a level where they can offer that criticism

research and editing. Grab your favorite books, read the endings again. Figure out at what point the climax begins. Where does it end? What % of the book is that? Now, read the endings themselves, how do they give that emotional punch? And what's the denouement like? How much further does it go?

Word of warning - when doing self-study, pick books in the last couple of decades that you've enjoyed. (and are, preferably, bestsellers) That will fit the current trend. You are VERY unlikely to get away with a Lord of the Rings 5 ending, ending for your book in modern times especially if it spans another 50 pages.

Book & Series Endings (Differences)

Firstly, it's worth remembering a series ending does not have to satisfy every reader. In fact, it probably shouldn't. Your ending just has to satisfy the plot and character.

Books ending in a series should be mostly finished. You should tied off the thread for the book itself (he found the killer!) but there should still be questions for the series that are incomplete (who set the killer up to do the killing?).

You can also include what I've heard as a 'slider' in the denouement. A new thread starts up, after the current big bad is defeated. Maybe it's a hovering dark castle appearing on the horizon. Maybe it's the cavalry officer riding up after the battle with dire news of another army only a half day away. But this is the slider to the next book, the 'cliffhanger' that some readers complain about (mind you, this is NOT a cliffhanger - those are when the actual plot is never finished).

A good slider or cliffhanger will bring readers to your next book in a huge way. The slider in book 5 of the System Apocalypse is so powerful, for a time, we had a 98% readthrough rate. It still hovers at roughly 95%.

Alright, series endings are trickier. You have to write up like 90% of all your plot threads, though leaving a few mysteries isn't necessarily bad. You want to make sure it's satisfactory for the themes and characters, but realise that not all readers will be happy with your potential ending.

Good endings are memorable. They're the way people remember a series, and if it isn't memorable, you've actually failed. So, yes, feel free to annoy some readers if necessary if it is a good STORY ending.

Beyond that, if you wrote or conceived your series ending long before you started writing, be ready to change it. The 'tone' or the 'feel' of the ending should be similar, but the exact configuration of it should alter.

I cannot tell you how many times the ending for the System Apocalypse changed. Same with A Thousand Li. In fact, if you go looking, I think the 'If Tao Dies' ending scenes I wrote are floating around on the Patreon if you're curious to read.

Same tone, same feeling, same character arc, but the actual details? So different. And that's because unless you're a rigid plotter, things will change.

And that's GOOD. Because your characters are growing, changing and so are you, as a writer.

Alright, that's it for now. Questions?