A Satisfying Story Ending: 3 Great Tips for Aspiring Writers
There’s nothing like getting to the end of a great book and leaving feeling totally satisfied. Right?? Even if it didn’t end how you expected, you sigh that big content sigh…[do it] You know the one I’m talking about. That sigh.
But there’s also the opposite…a book can be amazing all of the way through, but if the ending isn’t satisfying, I don’t have good memories of it.
So how do you stick the landing? I’m going to share three strategies for how to write a satisfying ending to your story. Let’s go.
Tip #1: Let your character be surprised…and maybe yourself as well
I told this story before in my post on writing a great plot twist, but I’m going to tell it again here because it’s relevant and I think really illustrates this point.
When I was working with my editor at Harper Collins on my first novel, When You Read This, we went back and forth on a few drafts, as we do, and as we were getting closer to it being ready to go to production, she sent me a note saying she just felt like one more thing needed to happen in the last fourth of the book.
She said she didn’t know what. But something. It needed…a little something. I knew what she meant. I’d felt it too.
I sat down and brainstormed—what could happen in the last 25% of the book that would be a genuine surprise?
And then I thought of it, and I knew it was the right thing.
I needed to surprise the main character: Smith.
Get ready for a spoiler. In my novel, Smith learns in the final stretch of the book that his best friend, who had died before the book opens, might have been in love with him.
Doozie. Perhaps nothing was what he thought.
When you surprise your main character, it can feel really satisfying to the reader because it’s such a true to life experience—we all know what it feels like to have the run pulled out from under us, to realize that things weren’t as they seemed.
In my novel Privilege, I did the same thing: my character Stayja has always looked down on her cousin, who she lives with. She thinks her cousin is reckless, irresponsible, and a troublemaker who’s always a nuisance and relying on Stayja to fix her problems.
But at the end, when her cousin dies, Stayja is surprised to discover that she’d been the one relying on her cousin.
It’s a Sixth Sense kind of moment—remember that movie? A child psychologist played by Bruce Willis is treating a little boy who says he communicates with dead people.
They work together for the whole movie, and then, at the end, the psychologist learns that he, himself, is already dead.
Boom.
Doesn’t have to be that dramatic or gimmicky. A character doesn’t need to find out that the entire time she’s been interacting with her boyfriend he’s been a ghost, or that everything was a dream.
But something to surprise the main character can be a killer way to tie everything together. And I’m not saying you need to see it coming, either…I never do.
I’m always as surprised by it as my character is. And that’s part of the fun.
Tip #2: Deliver on what you promise
Ever go to the movies and think by the end, “man, I paid $12 for this?”
That kind of disappointment is the kind that stems from having an expectation that’s not fulfilled, and not in a good way.
Satisfying endings can be surprising and surpass expectations: a reader gets what they were promised and more. What they don’t do is fail to meet those expectations. What do I mean?
Let’s say you’re writing a book about a couple who is getting married. They’re planning a wedding. A whole bunch of the plot has to do with the various things leading up to the wedding. Then the book ends, and we never got to the wedding.
What?!
You just spent most of the story showing us the wedding being planned. So…sorry, but you’re pretty much obligated to show us the wedding, even if it’s unsuccessful.
You could cancel it, sure. But cancel it in a dramatic way, okay? Give us something.
The reader is expecting to see how all of the complications pay off, and if you don’t show the payoff, they’re probably going to be unsatisfied.
It isn’t that hard to figure out what promises you’ve made—just put yourself in the shoes of the reader, and think, what would I be very disappointed if I didn’t get to see happen in this book that I’ve started?
Tip #3: My final tip for you to write a satisfying ending is to embrace ambiguity
I teach the writers I work with in my program the Book Incubator to always nail down what their Big Question is before they begin.
The big question is about what you want to say in your book, what big, thorny, universally human question you’re exploring.
Like:
How do we cope when people don’t turn out to be who we think?
Or: How do we find a new identity when we realize we aren’t who we thought we were?
Or: What’s the cost of ambition?
The big question will always guide your ending—but it’s more about what feeling you want to leave the reader with than you providing some actual objective answer.
Questions like these don’t have an easy answer.
That’s how they’re big enough to explore through an entire novel—that’s why we read 300, 400 pages to try to understand.
You won’t land on a black-and-white answer…that was never the point.
So, in this way, there will be some ambiguity at the end of your story no matter what, and that’s a good thing. But on a more granular level, even if we’re just talking about plot lines, the same is true.
Often writers ask me how many loose threads they can leave hanging at the end of their drafts. I always say…a few. Don’t trim them all up. That’s…too tidy.
Ambiguity—not getting a clear answer to everything, or being somewhat unsure of how some aspect of the story turns out—can add a lot of texture and nuance to your story.
In real life, things usually don’t all wrap themselves up in a bow, and actually tying up every loose end in your story can make it feel contrived, which is not satisfying.
I’m reminded of a quote from comedian Gilda Radner: “Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.”
I love that.
So embrace the delicious ambiguity of life, and don’t be afraid of not having the answers to everything.
Ready to write your book?
If you made it this far, I’m guessing that you are writing a book, or want to write a book. If so, I want to talk to you.
When I’m not writing, my mission in life is to help talented writers write their dream books. I love it. I live for it.
Because before I published my novels, I first had to figure out how to write one. It wasn't easy because none of the writing classes I was taking showed me how to actually write a novel.
Not until I had a newborn and only a couple of hours to write did I come up with a process. The process worked. I wrote my entire novel during my 8-week maternity leave.
Now, I teach it in my program the Book Incubator and it works for dozens of other writers.
If you're curious to know more, I have a free video walking you through my exact process for writing a book. You can get it by clicking below and answering two questions to apply to the program.
You get the video whether you join or not—no pressure to enroll.
Just click below to tell me a little bit about you and your book—you can fill out a form online. I’m so excited to hear from you!
