NaNo Coach: 4 Tips for Ending Your Story

This season, we’ve brought on published authors to serve as NaNo Coaches to help guide you to reaching 50,000 words. This week’s NaNo Coach, Cari Noga, author of the soon to be re-released novel Sparrow Migrations, shares how to find an ending for your story:

During my first NaNoWriMo win in 2010, sometime after Thanksgiving, I distinctly recall typing the sentence, “Their relationship progressed quickly.”

Ugh. Talk about a horrible sentence. Telling, not showing. Stiff, formal language. And the cardinal writer’s sin: An adverb.

What that sentence did do, however, was cover a heck of a lot of ground in a mere four words. November’s days were dwindling. Somehow, I had to get there from here. Even if it took boring, unsubstantiated sentences.

This week, a lot of your #NaNoCoach questions have focused on how to get to the end. How do you know if you’re on track to finish with a bona fide beginning, middle, and end? Let’s check in on your story arc:

Is your core conflict heading toward a peak and resolution? 
If not, can you see yourself clawing your way up to the climax after a few more plot turns? 
Are you still introducing characters and filling in backstory?

If your answers aren’t yes, yes, and no, it may be time to recalibrate that arc. Some suggestions:

Take a giant leap forward for story kind. That’s what my skeletal sentence accomplished. In December, I could flesh it out, truly show the reader how and why my characters became fast friends. But on November 26, all I really needed to do was have one reveal her lifelong secret to the other to help wrap up the whole novel.

Envision your characters where they need to be to resolve conflicts. Maybe that’s a physical place, an emotional place, or both. Write the bare minimum to get them there, then focus on the ending.

Follow the first rule of getting out of a hole: stop digging. Assuming you’re on-pace with word count, if you find yourself mired in new characters and backstory, impose a moratorium. 

Realize your plate is finite. One Wrimo tweeted this week that he had no ending.

"Were his characters mid-action, facing a decision, or poised for a discovery?" I asked.

“Yes, yes and yes!” he replied.

Your novel may feel like a literary buffet, filled with tempting plot possibilities. But eventually you must pick something and sit down with it. The end of week 3 is an ideal time to choose.

Look to real life. If your characters aren’t on a trajectory to resolve their conflicts, something must change. In real life, new jobs often trigger other changes. Birthdays inspire moments of reflection and assessment that inspire change. So can illness. Try throwing one or more of those at your characters.

Can your character get a new job that requires a physical that happens to be scheduled on her birthday? Boom, you’ve hit the trifecta.

See you at The End.

Cari Noga independently published her 2010 NaNo-novel, Sparrow Migrations , a literary fiction semifinalist in the 2014 Best Kindle Book Awards. The book is now under contract to Lake Union Publishing, an imprint of Amazon Publishing, for re-release in spring 2015. Sign up for her author newsletter and read her blog here.