Do You Want to Win More Readers With a Powerful Close?
“Did I tell you about the time I killed my wife?”
How often do we read stories that open with impact, but close with a whimper?
“Of course, I didn’t kill her. But I was tempted…” Yawn.
An analysis of around 3500 stories entered in the Writers’ Village short fiction contest reveal that 27% were marked down because they closed badly or not at all.
Here are three simple ways to end a story so the reader feels rewarded rather than cheated.
1. Close on an ambiguous note – deliberately.
Told cleverly, a story can end upon a note of deliberate vagueness or ambiguity. The reader shakes the kaleidoscope and sees a different story.
Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw closes with a maddening question: Has the protagonist killed a child? Or did the ghosts do it? Or has the whole tale been a fraud, the hallucination of a deranged woman?
Whichever interpretation we choose, the tale works.
In another short story, a racist woman tortures a young negro child. The last line of the story has the woman saying: “I wonder how that child felt.”
At first, it reads like a malicious chuckle. Then we shake the kaleidoscope. Has the bigot finally discovered compassion? And become horror-struck by her own cruelty? Either way, the story works.
To succeed with a story like that, it’s best to write the last line first. Then you know where your story is heading, even if the reader doesn’t!
2. Introduce a twist that the reader didn’t expect.
Another way to shake the kaleidoscope is to close with a twist that the reader could not see coming.
For example, a man jilts his bride on their wedding day. Why? He has fallen for the bride’s mother. That’s a twist but it’s a cliché. The reader can see it coming.
Suppose instead the tale ends with the mother and daughter happily drinking the wedding champagne and laughing. The mother has saved her daughter from a doomed marriage to a brutal man – by seducing him. Now she has dumped the man in her turn. Duly enlightened, the daughter is grateful. The mother is entertained by her romantic weekends – and by organizing the spoof wedding!
The reader thinks ‘That’s clever. I didn’t see it coming at all.’
Michael Cordy shakes the kaleidoscope in a similar way. At the end of The Crime Code, the hero marries the heroine after predictably saving the world. Jubilation! Then in his last line, Cordy reveals that, uh, they have not saved the world after all…
3. Echo the first paragraph in the close.
Perhaps the most popular form of closure is the ‘echo’.
The kaleidoscope returns to the pattern it showed at the start, but meanwhile, everything has been shaken. The simplest way is to do this is to present a strong theme, emblem or phrase in the very first paragraph and then repeat it in the closing lines, perhaps with a new ironic meaning.
For example, a story might open with an elderly gentleman skating on a village pond. He is ‘very good on the blades’. The tale closes with his arrest as a brutal killer. In the closing line, a detective remarks with unconscious irony: ‘he was very good on the blades’.
Once again, the easiest way to structure an ‘echo’ story is to write the last paragraph first. Then embody some aspect of it in the first paragraph. At once, the story acquires a satisfying sense of form.
Adapt any of these three kinds of closure creatively in your fiction writing, and you will have a powerful close – that stays with your readers and keeps them coming back to you.
What kinds of closure have you found effective in the stories you read or write? Which closures just don’t work for you? Share your thoughts in the comments!
About the author:
Dr John Yeoman, a successful commercial author for 42 years, is a tutor in creative writing at a UK university. A wealth of further ideas for writing fiction that sells can be found in his free 14-part story course here.
Image: How to Win More Readers With a Powerful Close courtesy of Bigstockphoto.com
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It was a joy reading this article. Thank you John!
More timely tips from WTD. I wonder how you know when I need these kind of advices…
Shelly-Ann roper recently posted..The Importance of English-Arabic Translation
I don’t like the ambiguous close. Unless you’re priming me up for a sequel, I like all questions and mysteries answered in the end.
I think echoing the first paragraph in the end is a brilliant close. And a twist is always good in a story.
Jevon recently posted..The Role of Historical Facts in Your Fiction Writing
Definitely food for thought. I do think it depends on genre and conventions to a degree.
Great thoughts on how to do an ending well. Nothing worse than an unsatisfying ending– seems like I’ve read a few like that lately.
Julie Luek recently posted..Take A Hike, Stress
I love the idea of writing the last sentence or paragraph first. It sounds powerful. I’m definitely going to try it out.
As for the kind of endings I like and don’t like…
I’ll start with the ones I don’t like. The first place goes to unexplained or ambiguous endings where the reader has to figure out what has actually happened. When I finish reading a book and then in the end I don’t have the explanation of everything that happened it makes me feel betrayed.
I love unexpected endings (like in the story with the spoof wedding).
I also love “open” endings. Just when you think that the story is finished and the hero has slayed all the monsters, something new comes up. I love this kind of ending because it promises a sequel which means more enjoyable time with the characters I’ve already fallen in love with.
Paige recently posted..From a Place of Love
Paige, I agree with you entirely. In one of Colin Dexter’s early novels, detective Morse solves the case two thirds of the way through. Dexter obviously then realized that he had not fulfilled his word count. So he added three chapters in which every twist of the plot was spelled out laboriously in a court room. Superfluous! Dan Brown did the same in The Lost Symbol. The last 20,000 words are redundant.
And yes, I particularly like a twist in the final paragraph, especially when it lampoons the Victorian ‘happy ever after’ convention. Our hero has saved the world! Wedding bells ring! But guess who’s lurking in the congregation… a smirking villain. And thereby hangs a sequel.
Good article! I am a series writer, and I end each of my books with a cliffhanger that gets resolved in the next installment. Not only does this give me a lead-in for my writing, but it also intrigues the readers enough to make them want to continue with the series. This strategy works great for me–I have been getting requests for my next book since the second day of the the last book’s release. The ending is a question of whether my hero lives or dies, and my readers can’t wait to find out!
I actually love the ambiguous endings. I don’t want all loose ends tied up neatly in a bow, as though the writer is offering all the meaning like a prepackaged gift. It’s the imaginative and creative work that really makes me reflect on the entire story and appreciate it and see it in a different light.
I love all of these endings though. Great post. Something I’d never parsed out for myself.
Sarah L. Webb recently posted..21 Fears that Will Kill Your Dreams if You Let Them!
That’s true, Sarah. A story where everything is tied up at the end is utterly untrue to life. We need to feel this episode has closed satisfactorily…. but another one is about to begin.
I have no idea of how to enter a URL . I am a French speaker. I like the ways you talked about in How to make the reader like your story
Madani, to enter the URL, you just write “http://the name of your website.com (or .net or .whatever)”. Glad you liked the post!
The concept of echoing has great power and I have used it in the past. Thanks for these tips as they help open up structure and free us from the same old way of doing things. Beth
Beth Havey recently posted..Tips for Habit Change
Beth, you can use echoes throughout a story, of course. A posh name for it is ‘frame reverberation’. Subconsciously, the reader detects patterns in the recurrent themes or emblems and the story acquires great structural force.
John, one of the (many) things I appreciate about your articles is that you state what to do (or not do) and then give fantastic examples. Thank you so much for your helpful advice!
Christine Adler recently posted..Winter, A Day At A Time
You’re very welcome, Christine!
It is realy beneficail for me. It gives me new insights. It gives the idea that how a mere word changing can do miracle! It provides clear cut way of story writing as if I proclaim last paragraph first, then it would be clear for me where I have to go. Ambiguity forces the reader to think and not yawn! It is fantastic!
Interesting article. Ideas such as this drive our imagination to create in ourselves the literary master to which we all strive.
Thank you.
Daron Henson recently posted..Top 10 Country Songs … You Might Not Know
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I’m the author of an inspirational romance series, and I end each book with a cliffhanger the readers don’t expect. It provides a little twist for the reader and a great lead-in for me to work from for the next book. So far, it’s working very well: since the second day after the release of my last book, “Waiting for Tomorrow,” I’ve been receiving messages from readers asking for Book 3–they want to know if my hero, Mitch Tarrington, lives or dies. It’s a great tool to build anticipation in the readers and make them want to buy the next book.