How to Handle the End Times?

The start of the meta-story, not the end

One of the most interesting comments that has come back regarding Path of the Warrior is the nature of the ending. Without going into spoiler-tastic details, lets just say that while Korlandril's personal story is concluded, the meta-story of Craftworld Alaitoc is very much left in the balance. This is a deliberate choice based upon the overall structure of the trilogy – across the three books the whole meta-story will be explained and concluded in the final volume -  but it has made me think about endings in general.

On the whole, I almost never tie up every loose end, and sometimes leave a large amount to still be decided by the reader. I just can't bring myself to do 'Hollywood' endings where everything is neatly wrapped up with a bow and presented as a definitive stopping point.

This probably derives from my experience as a world-builder for the Warhammer and 40K games, where the aim is to present information but also include many possibilities for gamers to further explore themselves. It's a means by which an author can share their world and in some sense hand over part of the control to readers. I really quite like leaving openings for further discussion – where did Item X come from? What happened to Character Y?

Real life rarely gives us neat finishes. There are always few stray threads left lying around after every event, encounter and relationship, some of which never get resolved or can be resolved. It's the Sopranos approach I suppose.  That is not to say the narrative or story should not have some kind of definable arc and conclusion. There should be some sense of progress, or at least change, from the start to the finish, even if the nature of those changes are not explored to their ultimate extent.

I have taken several approaches to endings in the past. My Warhammer trilogy Slaves to Darkness concludes with a

Shadow King, Book 2 of The Sundering

series of epilogues that leap forward a few years to show what effects the events had on the characters' lives. (In)famously, Annihilation Squad's end is very definitive for the main character, although many people continue to ask what happened to The Colonel and the rest of the Last Chancers (and there are hints as to what might have befallen Kage later on). As with the Path of the Eldar series, the individual volumes of The Sundering leave the narrative at pivotal moments, to be picked up in the other books – though as the third book Caledor will be a proper conclusion to the series. Angels of Darkness has a similarly blunt end for the characters involved, but in recent discussions with Black Library I've talked about ways in which the meta-story could be continued if not the individual narratives.

So, Hamsterites, what sorts of endings do you like to write and read? Are they different from each other? What's your favourite ending (put spoiler warnings if necessary)?