Writing the Final Chapter: How to Write a Satisfying Ending of your Novel or Memoir

by Anne R. Allen

I’m home from the hospital recovering from pneumonia. But as we come to the final chapter of 2025, I thought I’d post some of my tips from earlier posts on how to end your novel or memoir. If you’re like most writers, you may have trouble getting that final chapter to do what it needs to do. That’s because it needs to wrap up all the loose ends of the story in a way that satisfies the reader. But it also needs–as Mickey Spillane said— to sell the next book.

I’m hoping these tips can help.

1) Your Final 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 Final Chapter by Genre

Romance requires that Happy Ever After (HEA) ending in the final 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 final 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 final 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.

3) It’s Okay to Write your Final Chapter before the Book is Complete.

I’ve even written the final 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 Final 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 Final 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 final 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 final 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 final 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 Final 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 final 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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