Writing your final chapter can be tougher than writing the first.
by Anne R. Allen
A new book by Patricia Cornwell, of Kay Scarpetta fame, has had 100s of scathing reviews on Amazon. Not only has she strayed from the mystery genre into scifi, but the book did not come to a satisfying conclusion. Readers were not pleased.
Here are some quotes:
- IMHO, 2 stars is generous, because this book ends with threads untied, the story barely half-told, and all the character-arcs are TBC.
- Be warned this book is a completely unfinished in every way ending. In fact it feels abrupt where it ends with so much unfinished that I am really annoyed by it.
- It really deserves zero stars for having no ending — at a critical point, it just stops, referring us to the next volume.
- Don’t make this your free book choice unless you want to spend $10 on the second book to find out how the story ends.
I should note that the book is a #1 bestseller in three categories, so I’m not sure the bad reviews have slowed sales. But without Cornwell’s highly recognizable name, I think her fizzling ending would have stopped sales dead.
You don’t want to do this. Even though you’re tempted to end on a cliffhanger, don’t. An angry, unsatisfied reader isn’t going to come back for more.
A Final Chapter is Partly 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.”
If you write romance, you want a Happy Ever After Ending, preferably with a wedding or a betrothal. If it’s a more contemporary Happy-for-Now ending, there might be a gathering for toasting the friends who got the heroine through her rough patch with Mr. Right, or a family happily reunited, or a happy couple kissing and fade to black…
***
With a mystery, the final chapter needs to follow a formula too. You don’t have 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?”
***
If you write literary fiction, you get to do whatever you like with your final chapter. But still, I advise not doing something that will make your reader feel cheated or angry.
With a thriller, you need to end with the world not getting blown up by the evil mastermind, and with domestic suspense, you want a twist, but it needs to be an “ah-ha” moment, not a “WTF?”.
Often epic fantasy 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.”
Ending a Novel Can be 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 scripts for for a long-running sitcom rather 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.”
1) DON’T Be Afraid of Writing 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.
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.
2) DO Provide 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.
3) DON’T Leave Your Readers Hanging on a Cliff—Even in a Series
Cornwell is by no means the only author whose final chapter fails to satisfy readers. 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’sbad mannersto 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.”
4) DO Aim for a Memorable Last Line.
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.
5) DON’T Cheat with a 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 Amelia Earhart 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.
6) DO Leave Them 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 all 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) November 17, 2019
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?
BOOK OF THE WEEK
Academic Body, a classic academic cozy by Anne’s mom, the late Dr. Shirley S. Allen
“Move over Nick and Nora Charles, there’s a new crime solving couple in town. We’re not talking Manhattan, the Charles’ turf, here, but the rarified world of academia as practiced in the northern wilds of Maine’s Weaver College.” …mystery author Sue McGinty
Retired theatrical director Paul Godwin longs for the life of a college professor, but can he woo hisfamous wife away from the New York stage to become part of his academic life in small-town Maine?
Not easily, especially after the dean accuses him of having a fling with a student and then is found dead in circumstances that make Paul a prime suspect in the investigation.
Paul’s efforts to discover the real culprit provoke dangerous reprisals, but he must succeed to save his new career, his marriage–and perhaps his life.
Academic Bodyis available in ebook at all the Amazons,Kobo, and Nook.
