The End.
The End.
The words that every writer loves to write. It gives such a fantastic feeling of completion. Of accomplishment. It can be a relief when a book has been particularly difficult to write. It can be a moment of sadness that the people (characters) with whom you’ve spent the last few months (more or less) writing and living with are now going to leave your life—at least until you get the book back from your editor and you have to visit with them again to make your corrections.
But what about those words that come right before those two beautiful ones? What about the actual ending of your book? How do you write that?
For me, writing the end of the book is nearly as hard as writing the beginning. It’s usually something I do three or four times before I get it just right.
The ending of a book is nearly as important as the beginning, as well. It’s how you leave your reader. Just as you want to entice your reader to enter your fictional world at the beginning of your book, you need to entice her to pick up your next book (if you have one or when you have one) and stay in that world. So, the end of your book is actually a marketing tool for your reader to continue reading your work.
So, what’s involved here?
Well, you’ve got to tie up all of the threads that have been running through the entire book—meaning all plots and subplots. Or, if this book is one of a series with more to follow, you’ve got to leave your reader, not hanging so much as wondering.
Leaving your reader hanging, not knowing if a character lives or dies, or in some equal sort of peril can be just plain cruel. On the other hand, if you leave them wondering what happens to the character just before they get into peril (a great way to begin the next book, with the character stepping into such a situation), then they’ll care enough to want to buy the next book, but not angry at you for leaving your character (and them) in such a horrible situation (honestly, I once got so annoyed with a writer who ended every book in her series with the heroine sure to be killed that I just stopped reading everything she wrote).
If you’re writing a mystery, naturally, the mystery has to be solved. But then what? What are the consequences? Do we know what will happen to the killer? Do we care? What about the detective? What will happen to them (presumably our hero)? Will you leave the door open for a next in the series or is that it, are they out of the crime-solving business? Do you leave your reader wondering about this or satisfied with what they’re planning on doing with their life?
If you’re writing a romance, do you end with your hero getting down on one knee (either figuratively or literally) to ask for the heroine’s hand? Or do you leave us wondering if he’s ever going to get up the nerve to do so? Or does she ask him? There are so many possibilities. I always toyed with the idea of including the wedding in the book and then having the hero and heroine riding off into the sunset to live their newly married life. And, what do you think, are readers tired of books ending with a proposal?
Endings are tricky things. You want to leave your reader satisfied and a little sad that the book is finished. But you also want to leave them happy that things worked out the way they did. You want to complete the story and yet you may want to leave the door open for a sequel.
So, what do you think? Do you have problems with your endings? Do you know how your book is going to end when you start writing or is it a surprise for you when you get there? Do you have problems writing the end or does it just flow into a natural conclusion?
