by Anne R. Allen
Here we are reaching the end of another year. Some of us have reached our writing goals, and some even “won” NaNoWriMo. But a lot of us haven’t. You may have had trouble getting to that last chapter of the novel, even though you wrote the requisite 50K words. Writing a lot of words is hard, but writing a satisfying last chapter is harder.
I’m hoping these tips can help.
1) A Last Chapter is Dictated by Genre
Conventions in fiction endings tend to spring from the two classic forms of fiction: comedy and tragedy.
A comedy usually concludes with a party or a feast — often a wedding. A tragedy usually ends with death — then a resolution of some kind.
Jane Austen’s Emma ends with a wedding:
“But, in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union.”
And A Tale of Two Cities ends with the doomed Sidney Carton going to his execution:
“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
Here are Some Expectations of a Last Chapter by Genre
Romance requires that Happy Ever After (HEA) ending in the last chapter, preferably with a wedding or a betrothal. If it’s a more contemporary Happy-for-Now ending, there might be a gathering for toasting friends, or a happy couple kissing and fade to black…
Mystery: You don’t need to get Hercule Poirot to assemble all the suspects and dramatically reveal the murderer, but you need a modern equivalent that concludes with the discovery of the murderer. Then the detective and friends retire to a pub or cafe to tie up the subplots over a pint or a plate of scones — a form of the classic comedy “feast” ending.
As in the last line of the Hound of the Baskervilles
“Might I trouble you then to be ready in half an hour, and we can stop at Marcini’s for a little dinner on the way?”
Literary Fiction: You get to do whatever you like with your final chapter if you’re a literary author. But I advise not doing something that will make your reader feel cheated or angry. If you kill off a major character, make sure readers are prepared for it.
Thrillers need to end with the world not getting blown up by the evil mastermind.
Domestic Suspense: You want a twist, but it needs to be an “ah-ha” moment, not a “WTF?”
Epic Fantasy often ends with a detached historical overview, and other fantasies — especially MG or YA — will end with the protagonist safely home from the adventure, but perhaps a bit wistful, hoping for more adventures in the future. Here’s the last line of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.
“And that is the very end of the adventures of the wardrobe. But if the Professor was right, it was only the beginning of the adventures of Narnia.”
2) Ending a Novel Is Way Tougher Than Starting One.
One of the most memorable scenes in the film The Wonder Boys is when Grady Tripp, the supposedly “blocked” writer, reveals his terrible secret: a closet full of thousands of pages of his work in progress. He’s not blocked: he simply can’t get the novel to end.
I can relate. I had a book like that. It grew and grew and never seemed to come to a climax or a conclusion. That’s because my novel was a series of episodes. They didn’t build to a climax or a resolution. I was writing something closer to a series of scripts for for a long-running sitcom than a novel.
So I know first hand that final chapter can be tougher to write than the first. (Not that first chapters are easy: see my post on writing your first chapter.)
But you want to do it right. That’s how you keep your readers. Not by leaving them hanging, but by satisfying them.
As Mickey Spillane said. “The first page sells this book. The last page sells your next book.”
3) It’s Okay to Write your Last Chapter before the Book is Complete.
I’ve even written the last chapter first for several of my books. I picture the ending of the book and jot down notes — sometimes including the final sentence — before I start writing the story in earnest. (Not that there aren’t a lot of rewrites of that chapter along the way. 🙂 )
This isn’t the same as outlining, but it gives me a goal and I have some idea where I’m going, so I don’t stray off the path on too many irrelevant tangents.
So if you’re having problems with the direction of your novel, try writing the final chapter. It gives a lot of clarity.
4) A Last Chapter Should Give Readers a Resolution After the Climax
The final chapter is a kind of closing argument, where you can show your themes and show what your characters have learned from this experience.
You don’t want your final chapter to end with a bloody death with no closure. Make sure there is a resolution of some kind, not just a truncated action scene.
At the end of Hamlet — after all the carnage — Prince Fortinbras enters and orders that Hamlet be buried as a hero. This gives us closure as we’re told that Hamlet is recognized as a good guy, in spite of the fact his plans went terribly wrong.
The most satisfying endings go back to the inciting incident or bring the story around to its beginnings in some way.
5) Readers Hate to be Left Hanging on a Cliff
Unfortunately, it has become more and more common for an author to simply stop a book rather than end it.
I think that’s because we’re all told we need write in a series in order to make money.
And yes, in a series you want your readers to go on to the next book. But stopping on a random scene with nothing resolved and making them pay to know how the story turns out is going to get a lot of angry responses, not fans.
What you want to do is end the major story arcs, but leave one thread to hook them and pull them into the next book. That hook can be an unresolved minor subplot, or an incident that might spark the next installment, such as getting a letter or other piece of news that foreshadows more adventures to come.
Or your hook can be the over-arching storyline of the series, like defeating Voldemort, or ending the Hunger Games.
In any case, you need to wrap up all the major loose ends of this book.
As Jacob Mohr at TCK Publishing says, “It’s bad manners to leave your readers hanging.”
And Joanna Penn addresses the problem of trilogies or serials that want to keep the readers buying books. She says a trilogy should follow the lead of The Hunger Games, where “the first in a trilogy wraps the story up and yet still leads onto the next book.”
6) A Memorable Last Line Can Sell Your Next Book.
This is where you can show off your writerly chops. If you can tie that line back to the beginning of the story, or you can echo the title, it feels especially satisfying.
A classic last line that does this is from Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. It ties the whole play together and confirms what we have learned in the last scene: that Jack really is named Ernest, he does have a brother, and he’s been telling the truth all along (through no fault of his own.) But he has learned that being honest and well, earnest, is the best policy.
“On the contrary, Aunt Augusta, I’ve now realized for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest.
In the final chapter of The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald shows us with his last line that Nick has learned the power — and the danger — of nostalgia and dwelling in the past.
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
7) Avoid that Deus Ex Machina or Off-the-Wall “Twist” in the Last Chapter.
Telling us it was all a dream, or a story your protagonist is writing, is bound to bring disappointment.
Yes, you can surprise readers with your ending. People like a surprise. But make sure it fits with the rest of the book and you’ve given us enough clues that we can look back and say… “I should have seen that coming.”
But providing your romantic suspense heroine with a sudden rescue by aliens from Betelgeuse or a time-travelling Robin Hood is going to infuriate your reader.
If there’s a sneaky twist, like in Gone Girl, make sure it involves elements that already exist in the story. Don’t have them suddenly appear out of nowhere.
8) Leave The Reader Wanting More.
Don’t stay too long at the party. Leave some things up the reader’s Imagination. With my first published novel, I was astonished when my editor drew a big red “X” through my whole final chapter. He said the book ended with the marriage proposal and the rest was unnecessary.
I felt totally tragified. There were happy endings for every single character in that chapter. I wanted to take the reader to visit all of them and see how rosy things turned out for one and all.
Unfortunately, that was terminally boring. The story was over, but I just kept chattering on and on like that last guest who won’t leave the party even though the host keeps yawning and the hostess has gone off to change into her jammies.
Don’t be afraid of being ambiguous, as long as you’re not withholding vital information. You want to leave your reader feeling satisfied, but not burdened with too much information..
It’s like running a good restaurant. You don’t want to send customers away hungry or reaching for the Tums. You want them to leave with memories of a wonderful, satisfying experience they’ll want to come back to again and again.
***
by Anne R. Allen (@annerallen) December 18, 2022
What about you, scriveners? Do you have trouble ending a novel? Have you ever written your last chapter first? Do you know where a novel is headed when you start out? Do you like reading books that end with a cliffhanger?
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Anne—great post! In fact, this A+++ post is the last word on last chapters for every writer who has ever wondered, “now, how do I finish the d*mn thing?” 😉
Ruth–Many thanks! I think it’s the hardest part of writing. That’s why I like to write some version of the last chapter first. But I’ve just started a new book and have NO idea where it’s going. That’s why I wrote this. Advice to myself. 🙂
Thanks again. Now I’ll have to add “intriguing endings” to my collection of “intriguing beginnings.”
CS–That’s a great idea! Something to keep in that notebook.
A helpful post, Anne. Thank you
VM–I’m glad you find it helpful!
When I fell in love with writing, in my teens, I wrote very few last chapters. I lost interest in the story before I got to the end. Short stories, novelettes, novellas taught me how to write the end. I learned tips like writing the final chapter first. And, who knows, maybe someday I’ll write a novel. To be continued…
Thank you for this in depth examination of how to write a final chapter, Anne.
Leanne–Me too! I was in third grade when I first tried to write a mystery novel–with my friend Leebet. It had such a great beginning. We’d get together regularly to write more, but we never could figure out what should happen at the end. Writing short stories gives a much better chance to reach a conclusion. Although I have to admit to dozens of unfinished short stories in my files.
Marvelous! I think this is spot-on advice about such a precise and helpful topic. I have come to expect that here, yet you keep surprising me.
I wonder sometimes around what you have in #8: I can’t bring an example out of books, but in certain movies I have definitely seen a lingering happy ending, where the tale-tellers take their time and show us a lot of how well off everyone is. The best example I have is Toy Story 3. It’s a long happy slope from a series of crises to an incredibly suitable ending, and I find myself thinking about it again and again.
However overall you are certainly right: our imaginations can live in the worlds we create just fine and that’s really important.
Will–I think those extended endings work better in film than in books. Or that’s what my editor told me when he lopped off my last chapter. In a film or TV series, they can have a montage–usually accompanied by some uplifting music–that shows everybody’s happy ever after. And I love those. But when I did it in a book, the ending fizzled. Because it was my first finished novel, I’d been with those characters for years, and I didn’t want to just let them go. But he convinced me that readers wouldn’t care.
I’m nearly finished with my latest draft so this post is really helpful. Thank you.
Gail–I’m so glad this is helpful!
Excellent subject and some excellent tips, Anne. And a good Sunday to you too, Ruth. I’ve ventured into screenwriting in the past several years. One course I took did a deep dive into M. Night Shyamalan and his well-known twist endings vs. surprise endings, The course facilitator gave a great takeaway of a twist being, “I should have seen that coming but missed what was set out in clues all along” and a surprise being, “Now where the hell did that come from?”
Garry–That’s what I mean by an “ah-ha” ending instead of one that goes “WTF?” Shyamalan and those twisty domestic suspense books and films like Gone, Girl and The Girl on the Train have made twist endings very popular, but we have to be careful to put in all those clues, or the reader/viewer will be furious.
Like you, Anne, my second published novel (which I began first) was a collection of related scenes, but I set it aside for about 20 years (to work on my first published novel) because the premise was fuzzy, at best, and I had no idea what the ending would or could be. After publishing the first novel (2nd one started), the characters from the first story came to me in a dream one night and said, “Don’t forget about us!” (Evidently I had developed them enough so they retained their individual personalities and integrity over two decades.) I was inspired to brainstorm the story for the next few weeks, scribbling notes and questions, stream-of-consciousness style (“What if Rory does this? No, that wouldn’t work because … OK, maybe if Josie does that …”) Then one day my ending emerged onto the scrap paper, obvious and the only possible solution that recognized my characters’ dignity and individuality. Once I had that ending, I had direction.
I’m a great believer in brain-storming and stream-of-consciousness noodling.
Sally–How wonderful that your characters came to you in a dream and gave you a message! I’ve only dreamed about my characters once, and if there was a message, I couldn’t decipher it. It’s also great when you can brainstorm the solution. It took a good editor to make me see how to give my episodic novel a through-line story arc to bring it all together.
Hi, Anne,
The resolution is probably the most important part of ending the book. A lot of writers assume the resolution is the same thing as the climax and it isn’t. Another term for the resolution is the validation (I believe Scott Meredith used that in his seven story story points).
Essentially, it tells the reader the story is done. You can see all over TV, and where they get it right and where they botch it. NCIS always does it well—it’s that humorous piece it ends on. But with another show, the character was badly hurt. The rescue team shows up, and it ends with him greeting his rescuer. It was unsatisfying because it just stopped. It needed one more scene like him recovering in a hospital so the viewer knew he was okay.
If you have trouble with your endings, you’re probably missing the part that tells the reader the story is done.
Linda–I agree 100%! Unfortunately, there’s a tendency, especially with thrillers, to end with the climax and not offer a resolution. They leave the reader so unsatisfied. I just read one like that. We need that “hero’s return” that lets us know the characters have solved the problem, got back to “normal” and returned from their adventure.
Even though I’m a nonfiction writer the post includes tips that resonate and mirror the way I ended my first book. Thank you so much!
Lady D–Isn’t it great when something you just wrote gets validated? I’m glad this helps with nonfiction, too.
Agreed! Early on, I thought the climax in my second novel was the emotional turmoil around the death of the MC’s brother, but the climax really was a pivot point closer to the end with a new twist in the MC’s relationship with his nephew. But the resolution comes in the last two chapters, as the MC comes to accept how the changes all of these struggles have matured him, so now he can commit himself to living now, not nursing the past. As Anne points out in her notes above, those elements of those changes had to be introduced throughout the story, like foreshadowing, in order to make the ending not only believable, but the only possible one.
Sally–I often think I know what the climax is going to be, but when I get there, it’s just a pivot point, just like yours. We have to see growth and change in the character before the story is actually done.
Great post, Anne. As a mystery writer, endings are important to me. It’s especially hard to come up with something that the reader will react to by slapping themselves on the side of the head and muttering, “I should have seen that coming!” If I think of a great ending, I’ll write it and then fill in previous scenes to misdirect the readers. 🙂
#5 is a real sore spot for me. I hate novels that end with a cliff-hanger. There are so many good books out there, I won’t read another one by an author who ends the story with a poorly disguised attempt to sell their next book by not providing a resolution to the current one.
Have a wonderful holiday season and a great new year!
Kay–We do want our readers to have an “ah-ha” moment when the mystery is solved, don’t we? We want them to be not entirely surprised, but surprised just the same. They say Agatha Christie didn’t know how her books would end, and after she wrote the ending, she’d go back and sprinkle the story with clues. Happy Holidays to you too!
I often know/have the general Idea of how my novel is going to end, so the majority of the writing is getting there. Usually, I don’t have a problem in writing that last chapter of the book. I believe the only time I had an issue was when I wrote the original ending to a former denizen of my slushie pile (now patiently waiting for the 2nd and 3rd round of edits). I really didn’t like it, as it felt very awkward and trite. Let it be for a few weeks before the idea of how the ending should be came to me. Rewrote the last chapter. Still wasn’t too thrilled, but it was better than the original. Fast forward about several years and I re-wrote that same last chapter again and had a much better end result.
These are definitely good tips to have at one’s disposal.
GB–It’s wonderful when the ending comes to you first. Or early on. Books that come to me that way are much easier to write. But sometimes the endings can be elusive, like your “awkward” one. It is best if you can wait until the right one comes to you.
Robert Heinlein ended his novel “The Cat Who Walks Through Walls” with the protagonist and his wife having been ambushed and she is either unconscious or dead. He finds two weapons, with nine shots in one and four in the other. He ends his narrative with, “If they come back–or a fresh gang, I don’t care–I’m going to get us a baker’s dozen.”
With my short fantasy novel, I decided from the first that I would end it similarly. There is a prophecy involved and it predicts that the hero and his wife will fall beneath the weapons of the enemy. When I finished it, with the protagonist surrounded by bodies behind enemy lines and his wife unconscious, he says, “Let them come. I will kill them all.”
When I finished it, though, I realized that this cheated the readers, so I wrote a last chapter that basically summed up the eventual victory of the heroes due to the strategies the hero had made before the battle.
(And it turned out that Heinlein had another book that resolved his situation.)
Fred–I’m glad to know that Heinlein resolved that story eventually. Those cliff hangers may seem clever, but they’re so unsatisfying. I’m glad you fixed your ending too. Sounds like a much more reader-friendly way to wrap things up.
I enjoyed this post, Anne. I usually have some clue as to how my novel will end so it’s “getting there” that’s a bit harder for me. I write women’s fiction, though, and would love to know what you suggest when it comes to ending that genre.
Patricia–Women’s fiction is a big umbrella, and these days, it includes a lot of what used to be called “mainstream fiction.” It also encompasses a lot of literary fiction. It can be anything from Danielle Steel to Margaret Atwood. So if your book is on the more literary side, you can do anything you want, and enigmatic or sad endings are the norm. If it’s more on the mainstream and romantic side, you want a happy ending. Maybe the romance didn’t work out, but the sisters are sitting around the kitchen table having reconciled, or the friends are sitting in a bar drinking cosmos and toasting the fact they didn’t get hooked into a relationship with one more bad boyfriend. 🙂
These are great tips! As a romance writer, I’m all about the happy endings, but I’ve learned to cut some of those extra “See! Everyone’s happy!!” scenes from the book and turn them into bonus epilogues for those who like them 🙂
Jemi–I love this idea!! You could also use the epilogue for a “reader magnet” to get sign-ups for your newsletter, or even put it on your blog!
Excellent post. I had no idea there were conventions based on genre for ending books. I’ll have to DDG how historical fiction should end!
Jacqui–“Historical fiction” is such a big tent, you’ll have to get more specific in your search. Historical romance definitely needs a HEA ending. Fiction about real historical figures like Hilary Mantel’s usually ends with the death of the main figure. In literary historical fiction, anything goes.
Oh, I like that idea, reserving the what-happened-to-whom-afterward stories for a separate section after “The End.” I’ve seen that only rarely, but think it’s a great technique. In series, some authors place the first chapter of the next book after “The End” as a teaser to tempt the reader – also a good idea.
Thanks for the inspiration!
A great post. I normally know the ending before I begin a novel but as I am sure many here are aware sometimes that ending is a “shape shifter” what it was at first adapts and develops as you write and often becomes a completely different ending than the one you envisioned.
A friend of mine is a serious plotter, not a word of the story is written until he has the characters mapped out, the first and final chapters written and the story arc for each chapter in-between mapped out including what information can be given away each time. A big advantage to the plotter rather than the pantser like me.
Oh, and I just wished to mention as you didn’t, for hard Sci-fi, the ending should not follow rules of any sort. If it does the smart sci-fi community will just laugh at you. It must be completely unpredictable. Note “Dan Simmons” Wonderful ending to the story of Troy including little green men from Mars and a machine intelligence from the asteroid belt helping Achillies, Ajax, Aeneas etc. to kill their fathers and mothers on Olympos So the little green bubble men can rule the solar system.
Ray–I love it! Sounds like a Vonnegut ending. He was never one bit predictable. I didn’t mention hard sci-fi because I don’t read it. I didn’t mean that to be a comprehensive list. I do read some space operas, but they tend to be like epic fantasy and have a pan-out overview at the end.
In the words of the Martians in the film “Mars Attacks,” “Aack-aack -aack! Aack! Aack-aack-aack-aack!”
(If you haven’t seen this film, don’t hesitate to get it or rent it or otherwise acquire it – hysterically funny and everybody – and I mean, everybody – is in it. Jack Nicholson as the US president – scary!)
Sally and Fred–I love Mars Attacks. A severely underrated film. Brilliant satire!
Natalie Portman as the President’s daughter and Rod Steiger as the shrinking general, also Jim Brown, Tom Jones, and James Bond! (That’s all I can remember, but it seems like there’s a few more…)