Flip the Script: End Anywhere
By Jael McHenry | September 3, 2012 |
All good things must come to an end. That applies to books, of course, and to the Flip the Script series itself. Last month I suggested you Start Anywhere and — fittingly, for the series’ ultimate entry — we’ll cover the last bit of non-rule-based advice: End Anywhere.
As with any part of a book, there are “rules” that you’ll hear about how things should end. Endings are important, and difficult, since they’re the last thing that lingers in the reader’s mind. A great ending can save a saggy middle, but an ending that’s abrupt or ill-thought-out can ruin all the goodwill built painstakingly page after page by an otherwise good book.
Of all the rules and guidelines and old-chestnut-fallbacks on the topic of endings, here are the three pieces of advice I would advise you to reject:
Readers require happy endings. Outside of straight-up category romance, no genre demands a Happily Ever After (HEA). If your characters have struggled mightily, and darkness has been present throughout the book, the tacked-on HEA will feel just that — tacked-on. Rather than trying to deliver a cheerful solution that will reward your characters for the struggles they’ve endured along the way, you need to find the ending that matches the story. Maybe it’s happy, maybe it’s not. Hopefully it’s not Game Of Thrones-level depressing with heads getting hacked off and whatnot, but if you’re writing the kind of book where heads get hacked off, so be it. Don’t think of it as happy or sad. Think of it as an ending that fits.
End with something they didn’t see coming. This applies more to mystery and thriller writing, but the chestnut is that you don’t want your reader to have figured out the ending ahead of time. Don’t let them guess the murderer is another way to say it. But this rule is dangerous — the surprise solution that comes truly out of left field can leave readers feeling not just surprised, but deceived. The perfect achievement, instead, is to deliver a murderer (or solution to whatever question has loomed over the whole book) that is hard to guess on a first read, but crystal-clear on a second. In other words, readers who know the answer will go back and see that the clues were there all along. Now, “perfect achievement” is a pretty high bar, but in short, signaling a bit too much is a better sin than not laying the groundwork at all.
Tie up all your loose ends. Sure, if you’ve been dropping hints and sprouting subplots for the first half of the book, readers have a reasonable expectation that most of them will start wrapping up somewhere after the halfway mark. If your plot raises questions, at some point you have to lay down some answers. But a slavish adherence to this rule can result in a rushed, overstuffed ending. Your last 50 pages can’t be crammed with every single thing that happens to every single character who was mentioned along the way. If you use a checklist, it’ll read like a checklist. Resolve your main action first. Everything else is gravy.
Hmm… too abrupt?
(image from Flickr via ncanup)
Jael McHenry is the debut author of The Kitchen Daughter (Simon & Schuster/Gallery Books, April 12, 2011). Her work has appeared in publications such as the North American Review, Indiana Review, and the Graduate Review at American University, where she earned her MFA in Creative Writing. You can read more about Jael and her book at jaelmchenry.com or follow her on Twitter at @jaelmchenry.
Good bit of advice. I tend to err on the side of “too much” for fear that people will see it as “too little”. I think it’s all about giving the reader the respect they deserve.
A forced happy ending in a book is annoying. Some stories simply don’t work if you jam in the happy ever after. Sometimes it’s a nice gray “sort of happily ever after” and sometimes not at all. I want it to be a believable story, right till the very end.
An ending that matches the story . . . an ending that is hard to guess on a first read, but crystal-clear on a second — those notes just went into my Scrivener binder in the last, as yet unwritten, chapter. Thanks so much!
I have a pet peeve: the author who makes a blatant lead into his next book with the ending of the book I have just read. Harrumph!
I see what you did there…gravy is supposed to be on top.
I just finished a rewrite, so the endings flip the script is pertinent.
I had to rewriting my comment after the captcha din’t work, it erased my comment. waddup with that?
Noel Gallagher on producing his album and ‘fixing things”
“It’s never finished, it’s either wrong or it’s right.”
I read mostly romance so I appreciate my HEA’s. Beyond that, though, this is fiction, not reality. If I wanted reality, I would read non-fiction. So if an author has spent an entire book developing a character that I care about, I really appreciate them giving me a happily-for-now ending.
And I detest writers like Anne Rice who may have 20 main characters in a book and all of them have UNHAPPY endings.
Everyone needs to read what they want to read but I exercise my right to not read books that end up with me feeling hopeless.
Judy, you make a good point — there are some readers who do want the HEA and nothing but, and we all get to make our own choices about where to spend our precious reading time. So HEAs are definitely right for certain books and certain readers. It’s just one of those dangerous “always/never” rules I hear beginning writers parrot too often!
I have loved the Flip the Script Series–thanks for the guidance and inspiration, Jael. I’ve saved them all for future reference. You rock.
Aw, thanks, Jocosa!
Writing in the historical romance genre, all my books end in HEA. However, as a reader in that genre as well I have one small pet peeve – the wedding scene. Not that ending with a wedding is necessarily a bad thing, mind you, but some of these authors must have been wedding planners before they took up writing. I hate it when a really fast-paced story ends with a long drawn out wedding scene that one has to read if they want to see how all the little loose ends gets tied up.
Ha! I can imagine what a slam-on-the-brakes feeling that is. “And her ecru illusion veil lightly fluttered in the breeze, its aged-ivory Alencon lace edging brushing her shoulder-length newly-highlighted goldenrod hair…”
Good stuff. That last point in particular is something I see many writers attempting to do, wrapping up every loose end in such a nice perfect package that it either feels terribly rushed, unbelievable, or unbearably saccharine.
Credit to Therese Walsh, who piped up with that suggestion as a “rule” that weighs too heavily on writers’ minds!
I LOVE when writers do #2 well, so it’s good advice. The key is sprinkling little hints and foreshadowing here and there, things that the readers might not deem a big deal on the first read-through but which will stand out as obvious clues the second time. The seemingly little things can deliver the best payoff! And this doesn’t just apply to mysteries!
And for books that haven’t been all sunshines and roses the whole way through, I find perfectly happy endings feel forced. I don’t mind somewhat happy endings, but there needs to be some amount of tragedy or bittersweetness mixed in for it to seem believable. e.g. A Song of Ice and Fire (the series that starts with A Game of Thrones) can end with peace, if Martin wants, but I expect tension between the remaining kingdoms/families, deaths in the war or against the White Walkers, and so on. If nobody loses anything, I won’t believe it and will be unsatisfied.
Great tips, thanks! At the eleventh hour, I changed the last lines of THE K STREET AFFAIR. I didn’t like that everything was so neatly tied up. Mistake? I guess I’ll see what the reviews say.
Aw, I’m sorry to see this series end. But thanks for so much great, against-the-grain advice, Jael! It’s been so helpful and refreshing. :)
[…] here are some useful, non-threatening ones from Jael McHenry, who talks about writing endings. “Flip the Script: End Anywhere” offers some insights into satisfying readers, but reminding us that satisfaction doesn’t have […]
[…] Click on over: What are the Best Ways to End a Story? Then, tell us how you tackle the final scene. “A great ending can save a saggy middle, but an ending that’s abrupt or ill-thought-out can ruin all the goodwill built painstakingly page after page by an otherwise good book.” ~ Jael McHenry, “Flip the Script: End Anywhere” […]