Here at Honeycomb Author Services, we have a story we're creating throughout our blog posts. So if you're new here or just want a refresher, here is our story's synopsis!
Now onto the episode!
Gabrielle here!
No one likes goodbyes. Especially when the thing you’re saying goodbye to is really good. This is true of stories just as it is of real-life events. Many of my friends and I have mourned the end of a good book. We made good memories following the characters on their adventures and got invested in their lives. Yet, despite these negative emotions, a story’s ending can be the most impactful and memorable part of it—for better or for worse. However, getting your readers to not just accept an ending but actually enjoy it is quite the challenge. It may seem intimidating, but there are some key methods to make sure your story ends in a satisfying way. So to wrap up our series on plotting, we’re going to look at four principles of writing good endings.
#1: Have an Ending in Mind
This is probably one of the most cited pieces of advice about how to write a good ending, but why is it so popular? Well, it’s the best way to make your ending fit your entire story. By knowing your ending from the beginning, you can know what you need to set up and foreshadow from page one. Those familiar with Brandon Sanderson’s creative writing lectures will recognize this as the idea of story promises. Essentially, this means that the things the author sets up in the beginning of the story—character flaws, worldbuilding mechanics, character goals, plot points—should get addressed by the end of the story. This doesn’t mean they need to be fulfilled in the way the audience expects, but they can’t be ignored or the audience will be left wondering what the point of them was.
So how much of your ending should you figure out before writing the story? First, I want to make it clear that you don’t need to have every detail of your ending planned out right away—especially if this is a first draft. If you’re a discovery writer, you might work best if you have the freedom to make decisions about the story’s ending as you write it. But you should have the answer to a couple of key questions in mind: what do you want your story to say and what do you want your characters to learn or accomplish? These answers will direct the story but aren’t so constrictive that they don’t give you room to change and experiment. Think of these questions as the endpoint of a map—you can get there in a number of ways, but as long as you get there you’re on the right track. Having an idea of how you want your story to end will allow you to make your story more cohesive and make your ending feel earned.
#2: Resolve the Plot
Okay, so that’s how to write an overall good ending, but what about the specific pieces? I like to break endings down into the plot and character components. Let’s start with the plot:
How can you wrap up the plot in a satisfying way? The satisfaction comes from bringing closure to the story’s main conflict. The book has been asking for the past couple hundred if this conflict can be resolved and how it will happen, so you want to answer that question. Even if the resolution is messy, there needs to be a sense that the main conflict is done. The characters aren’t going to be continuing down the same path. This is Frodo throwing the One Ring into Mount Doom and ending the war. The task the fellowship has been struggling through has been accomplished, and how they’re going back home and moving into new roles.
Another key to a good plot resolution is to wrap up all the loose ends. These are all the subplots and plot twists you introduced to keep the story engaging. If you introduce a subplot half way through but never bring it closure, the audience will be left confused and frustrated. Imagine if in The Lord of the Rings, there was all that conflict around Aragorn’s role as the rightful king of Gondor, but he just never became king at the end. The hobbits just went back to the Shire without even paying attention to Gondor. That would leave the audience frustrated and make them wonder why they bothered caring about that at all.
With Honey, we’ve made the main conflict revolve around the Unwraveler. However, that wasn’t the only conflict in the story. First, she wanted to find her brother and only after she learned about her place in the world through her quest to find her brother did she end up caring about that conflict. It would be pretty jarring if we abandoned the plotline with her brother to focus on the Unwraveler story. So in order to wrap up the plot we need to first give Honey closure about her brother and then give her closure about the Unwraveler.
#3: Resolve the Characters
Now onto the character component of your resolution, and this boils down to the character arcs. An easy way to keep track of this is by thinking about a character arc as a question and the resolution is the answer to that question. The beginning asks “can the protagonist grow” and the resolution occurs by answering “yes, no, or maybe.” This is the question of “will Frodo give into the power of the ring or will he persevere and defeat evil?” Once that question is answered, the story can wrap up. Resolving arcs is especially important because readers will often get invested in the character more so than the plot itself and will want to know if their favorite character will succeed or fail.
We’ve established that Honey is a homebody. She loves her simple life in the village and doesn’t want anything to change. So, as her writers, we’re forcing her to change. Specifically, everything in the story is preparing her to grow beyond her village. She must learn about sacrifice and how much she can grow when she challenges herself. So she can’t just return to Ilverseed in the end otherwise the story would seem pointless. Instead, she has to take the lessons she learned in the climax and apply them. Rather than going home, she takes up her role as the Guardian of the kingdom and continues to use her powers to keep people safe.
#4: How They Work Together
So how can those two elements collaborate to create a good ending? While character and plot are separate beasts (hence why we talked about them in two different series) they are inherently connected. This is because the characters and plot are constantly putting pressure on each other. The characters create conflicts, and conflicts force characters into action. So both of these resolutions need to work together otherwise the audience will be left unsatisfied. The easiest way to resolve both the plot and the character arcs is by making the success of one depend on the other. The lesson the character has to learn can be the thing that allows them to rise to the challenge and defeat the conflict, or they are only able to fulfill their personal goals and development after they defeat the conflict. Either way, this demonstrates that both parts of the story are important and makes the narrative feel cohesive. This is how Frodo’s personal arc and the overall conflict in Middle-earth is resolved once the One Ring is destroyed. The culmination of internal and external conflict makes the resolution feel that much richer.
I’ve shown how our ending is composed of two elements: Honey defeating the Unwraveler and Honey deciding not to go home. These two work together really well. In order for Honey to defeat the Unwraveler she had to decide to care about the world beyond her village. And in order for Honey to show that she’s truly learned her lesson, she needs to take up her role as Guardian. The two fit together really well and one can’t exist without the other. And this is a great place for your ending to be—both elements twisted together like a two-stranded pretzel.
Bonus: What About a Series?
But not all books are meant to end so neatly. Sometimes this is because the end of a book doesn’t mean the end of the story. So how can an author manage the resolution of a single book when the overall plot and character arcs aren’t meant to be resolved yet?
Well, while each book is part of a whole, it also needs to be a complete story. So consider what the story of this individual entry is. What are the stakes and questions that are specific to this entry? How can the lessons and conflicts in this story build towards the characters' ultimate goal? In the case of a series, it might be helpful to think of the plot or the character arcs as a multi-step process. Before the characters can continue to book three, they need to accomplish X goals and learn Y lessons in book two. That way each book feels meaningful and connected to the larger series while also being its own story.
Switching examples, the Harry Potter series does this well. Each book is another year in Harry’s education, which gives each story a distinct feel and distinct set of goals, and the things he learns about himself and the world build upon the events of the previous book. So while each story has different events and conflicts, they all connect through Harry’s experience and the broader plot of Voldemort’s return.
Conclusion
Well, as much as I’d love to keep rambling about endings, I have to wrap this—and our plotting series—up. It’s been fun to dive into what makes a plot work and how to use practical techniques to help your stories shine. Hopefully this was a satisfactory ending to our plot series. We’ll be back with our next writing techniques series soon, but next time Emily will have a book review ready for you all. See you in two weeks, and in the meantime, bee brilliant.
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