Every successful novelist, whether writing a series, a cast of recurring characters/locations, or a standalone book, has discovered the formula for a good ending. They understand endings are as much about the readers as they are about the storyline.
In his Jack Reacher series, Lee Childs writes a character who is smart, tough, and resilient. He takes Reacher into impossible situations and has him prevail. Then he does something very smart. He realizes there is a progression that will keep the reader coming back for more.
One of the best and most visually relatable examples I can give in defining Lee Childs and other novelist’s success at endings isn’t found in a novel. It is found in a movie that won the academy award for best picture in 1977. That movie was Rocky.
Despite what some people say (usually based on the fact that the movie sequels were predictable and a lampoon of the original) Rocky had the perfect formula for a win.
A man whose dreams have been quashed is left to find happiness one day at a time. Add a love interest, add a chance to rekindle his dreams, add an epic struggle filled with physical and emotional turmoil, give the man a chance at victory, then end by having the character realize the most important thing he has done was to find someone to love.
The formula, to put it simply, is: Crisis, change agent, emotional ties, enhanced crisis, change agent, sentinel event, change agent, emotional ties.
Lee Childs used this formula in Killing Floor, Worth Dying For, and other novels. He can’t allow Jack Reacher to have a permanent love interest. That notion would destroy the mystique of Jack Reacher. But Childs ends those books by allowing the idea of a different life, if only…
This formula works in YA fiction. Read any book in the Twilight series or in K. E. Ganshert’s The Gifting series, which I highly recommend.
It works in romance. Read most any book by Jude Deveraux, Maeve Binchy, or Nora Roberts.
Don’t end your novel with the crescendo. Think of your storyline in terms of a workout. You’ve put the reader through warmup and mental aerobics, give them a cool down that makes sense.
Take the example of Moby Dick by Herman Melville. In the last chapter, while pursuing the great white whale, Ahab, his ship, and his entire crew is lost. But Melville adds an epilogue. There was one man left as witness. So the book follows the formula – Crisis, change agent, emotional ties, enhanced crisis, he skips the next change agent and goes directly to sentinel event, then combines the last change agent and emotional ties.
The book ends with a narrator saying: I floated on a soft and dirgelike main. The unharming sharks, they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths…On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.
If you’ve never read it, Moby Dick is worth the time. The Rachel is a ship whose captain sought Ahab’s help in a search and rescue, but Ahab wouldn’t break off from his search for Moby Dick. The final line is emotional and poignant.
Understand the formula, but don’t be rigid in your ending. Present the emotion and give the reader enough information to reach their own conclusion. In Killing Floor, Childs has the love interest give Reacher a photograph, her number scribbled on the back. Childs last lines read: “On the back she had written her telephone number. But I didn’t need that. I had already committed it to memory.”
Foreshadow events and let the reader imagine what happen. Never tell the reader what the future holds. Hint at it, give clues and possibilities, but let the reader use their imagination. Without foreshadowing, the character must have changed in some way. Without a change in the character, let them learn something that will change them in the future.
Endings are about possibilities. When you write an ending, give the reader something to wonder about long after they’ve finished the book.
As a final note, I’m going to use Stephen King’s Needful Things. Last week I mentioned the way he opens: “You’ve been here before.” He ends the book with a traveler headed to a new town, a wagon of needful things in tow. You realize the bad guy was not defeated. He’s just on to the next adventure, maybe in a town close to our own.
I hope I’ve provided some usable ideas. No matter what else comes, keep writing.
Today's Click Here provides a first look at Joe Kohler, a member of the Brettinger P.D. When introducing authority figures, especially ones you plan to manipulate, you have to be careful to give them both respect and believability.. I hope I’ve done that here.
To set up this scene, there has been one high profile murder. Joe Kohler, who was involved in the first case, is about to finish work and head home when another call comes in. I hope the interplay between the two cops is believable and enjoyable.