10 Ways Not to End Your Novel

1. “And then she woke up and realized it was all a wonderful dream.”

2. “Everyone died.”

3. Just before the bomb went off, I sat down and contemplated my life.

4. He found out everything he had believed before was a lie.

5. And the character’s real name was—Lee Harvey Oswald.

6. Life has no meaning, and she knew it then. The end.

7. He stabbed his beloved as the madness took him over.

8. The villain turns over a new leaf and joins the good guys.

9. No one has ever died during the whole course of the book. They all come back to help with the final ending.

10. The whole book has been written with certain genre expectations, and then ends with another genre’s expectations entirely.