One Thing You MUST Do After the Climax of Your Novel
10 ESSENTIALS OF A DYNAMITE STORY #9 RESOLUTION
No, wait—what about the little dog?
What dog?
The dog you introduced in Chapter 5. You remember, Sparky. The mutt the kid found at the rest stop and the kidnapper thought it would calm the boy down so he let him keep it. Did the kid take Sparky with him when he got away?
Uh … well …
And the old couple—what happened to them?
There was an old couple?
The old couple at the gas station! Maude and Clarence Higginbotham. Maude recognized the boy from his picture on television but Clarence said it wasn’t the same kid and they argued about calling the police. Did they? Is that why that State Trooper pulled up? And when the kidnapper blew up the propane tanker to get rid of the Trooper, did Maude and Clarence die in the fire?
Well … I guess they … I don’t know.
You don’t know! How can you not know, you wrote it.
The preceding is not a conversation you want to have with Loyal Reader at a book-signing. Or worse—a conversation you never have with anybody so you have no idea why the proceeds from your book sales only inhabit the right side of the decimal point.
Unless you want your reader to throw your book at the cat, don’t leave him hanging at the end. After he has become invested in the characters and engrossed by the story, it’s absolutely maddening not find out what happens. Loose ends are a result of muddy thinking and sloppy writing and they’re as deadly to your novel as holes in the plot.
*Indulge me, here. I have a personal rant about holes in a plot. I’m not one of those readers who goes out looking for them, but sometimes the little buggers come running up and kick you in the shin. Stephen King (in my opinion one of the all-time best writers on the planet) left a hole you could drive a forklift through in the plot of Black House. The room is pitch dark. The bad guy uses his victim’s blood (from a puddle of it where the victim was hiding, which, oh by the way, the bad guy couldn’t have found in the dark) to write a message on the wall to the good guy. I’m ok with something like “you die!” Maybe even “I’ll kill you,” though that’s a stretch. But this guy writes a sentence—uses the good guy’s name, which is nine characters long. How do you do a thing like that—in blood, on a wall, when you can’t see? You don’t. End of rant.*
The place to tie up loose ends is after the climax. That’s why they call this part of a story “the resolution.” It’s the answer to the question “now what?” It’s what’s left of the story after the hero wins the battle or the girl or throws the ring into the Cracks of Doom on Mount Doom (in the Land of Mordor, where the shadows lie).
Some resolutions are fairly drawn out. In The Return of The King (the book, not the movie) the resolution involves the company of hobbits returning to the Shire where they must fight the final battle of the Great War and Tolkein ties up the loose end of what happened to Saruman and Worm Tongue.
Others are brief. In Lord of the Flies, Ralph runs from the savage boys in the burning jungle out onto the beach and there stands a British Naval officer. Ralph and the other boys begin to cry. And that’s it—the book’s over.
For obvious reasons, the movie versions of books cut the resolution down to sound bytes. The resolution of Gone With The Wind goes on for several pages, very small print. It’s the part after Scarlet figures out she’s spent her life with her wagon hitched to the wrong horse, romantically speaking, and Rhett dumps her. The movie version is more succinct: Scarlet tells Rhett she loves him, he tells her he doesn’t give a damn and she determines to “think about that tomorrow.” Badda boom, badda bing, it’s over.
It is my personal preference to keep the resolutions in my novels brief. After the climax, I try to get out as quick as I can. As a reader, I don’t like lingering resolutions so I try not to write them. As a writer, I particularly like to tie up some loose end in an astonishing way right before the two words centered on the last page. In The Last Safe Place, something is explained that the reader may have suspected, but it is astonishing nonetheless and two sentences later the book is finished. In my WIP, When Butterflies Cry, a loose end from the first 100 words of the book is tied up in a red ribbon, hopefully leaving Loyal Reader with her mouth hanging open.
A word of caution here—if you decide to employ that technique, it can’t be artificial, something you tacked on just to end with a flourish. Unless the reader does a duh forehead slap at your reveal, you’re better off tying your loose ends with a simple square knot. But do tie them; don’t leave any of them dangling.
Write on!
9e
