Novel Endings

There's a lot of discussion in online forums about crafting a catchy opening line. I've even blogged about it, too, but I'm starting to change my previous assumptions about an opening line's importance. Someone remarked that they've never stopped reading a novel due to their dislike of an opening line, and I have to admit that's true in my case as well. I've certainly read books that hooked me from the first page, but one line? No, not really.

I'm wondering why there is comparatively little discussion of endings. For me endings are much more difficult than beginnings. I've rarely written them to my satisfaction. 

When I'm in the midst of writing my novel, I enjoy all the twists and turns and I especially love the things that happen unexpectedly (at least unexpectedly to me). My current manuscript has the main character taking a literal journey, from the Upper Midwest to the South to the Western US. She's been in Texas, North Dakota, Wyoming, Tennessee, somewhere in Pennsylvania, Iowa and all points in between. And pretty much something significant occurs in each of those places. It's been a dizzying trip so far. But frankly, I don't know how it will all end.

But let's say for the sake of argument that I do know. Okay. So how do I leave the reader feeling satisfied when they close the book? 

I've learned that there are six basic book endings; half of them I can rule out for various reasons:

1. Resolved Ending

2. Cliffhanger

3. Unexpected Ending

4. Ambiguous/Open-Ended

5. Full Circle

6. Epilogue

Personally, I would love to use #3, if only I could pull it off. With all eleven of my published books, however, I've limited my endings mainly to Resolved and Full Circle.

A resolved ending isn't satisfying to write. It feels flat. All these (hopefully) exciting things happen in the story and then..."they lived happily ever after". I don't have the skill to write a resolved ending that resonates. Really, all my endings ever do is tie things up in a shiny bow.

I believe I only wrote a full circle ending once, and that was with Inn Dreams. It was kind of corny, though. When Karen is inspecting the rundown motel she's thinking of buying, she finds the register showing the last guest who rented a room there before the owner passed away. All it shows is the man's name and his town of residence. At the end, when her long goal of restoring the motel finally comes to fruition, the very first guest who shows up turns out to be the man's son, who tells her his dad had recommended the place. The ending isn't technically awful and it was as good a place as any to conclude the story. And I had no place else to go with it at the end. 

Scratch that. I also wrote a full-circle ending for Find My Way Home. The whole catalyst for the main character running away at fourteen was her dysfunctional home life. Her dad was a raging alcoholic who generally ignored her, except for that fateful night when he wanted her to sit in front of the TV with him to watch the moon landing. Instead she accepted a blind date and took off on a cross-country trip with the guy. At the end, after years of estrangement, she and her father are together again and watching a replay of the moon landing on TV.  

I suppose one could characterize Bad Blood's ending as unexpected, in that the main character doesn't bestow upon her dead brother any consecration. I'd forgotten about that ending until I pulled up the manuscript. Guess what? I kind of like it. In the novel he'd tried to end her life at least three times, so now that he was dead, why in the world should she memorialize him? Fuck that. For some reason (that I don't recall) she and her two-year-old daughter set out to find his grave ~ I'm thinking that someone told her she needed closure. But once she finds it, she feels like she's stepped into purgatory. Her daughter utters the words, "BA-MAN" and my MC realizes that she's trying to say "bad man". She agrees, and they leave the cemetery, "never again to cross its (purgatory's) path". Now, that's real. In hindsight, that might be my best ending ever.

I'll never write a cliffhanger ending, because I'll never write a series. I can't even imagine the concept. I rarely have enough material for one book, let alone three conjoined ones. 

And an epilogue? Well, technically one could say I did write kind of an epilogue for The Apple, but really it was just the ending of the final chapter. The novel ended with the main character writing a letter to the priest from the nursing home where they'd both worked before she fled with her mother and changed both their identities. In the letter, she tells him that she's once again working as a nurse and that she's donated her ill-gotten riches to the Alzheimer's Association (in tribute to all the patients she cared for at the nursing home). I just now re-read it and I have to say, it's damn good. Too bad no one's taken a chance on that novel.

With Whispers in the Dark the finale (a novella doesn't have chapters) tended to sum up events, so its ending was resolved. Written in first person, the main character is standing outside the burned building she managed to escape from. The fire is now out and she ponders the things that happened to her and to the important supporting characters. She posits that the villain of the story is now dead; she doesn't know it for a fact, but she's pretty sure. And she's philosophical about the fact that no one in her life was ever able to save her, try as they may. That in the end she had to save herself. As poorly as that novel-turned-novella turned out, the ending is still good.

Three of my books ended with, I suppose, sweet endings about either finding or rediscovering love. Lies and Love and The Diner Girl both follow that formula, and neither of them are bad. New Kaitlyn, too; the only book that ended with the main character's wedding. I guess those may be called resolved endings, and they certainly don't require an epilogue. Who cares what the couples got up to later? They found love; that's it. The End.

I'm not sure what the ending of my very first novel would be called. Resolved, probably. Not exactly full circle. I truly had no idea what I was doing when I wrote Once in a Blue Moon. I don't even know how bad (or who knows? half-good?) the novel is, because the last time I read it was when I was editing it for publication. The ending is sweet; well-written for an amateur. The story involves three generations and one farmhouse, and none of the family members' lives were smooth sailing. But in the end, the youngest of the three women stays up to wait for the blue moon, and as she turns to go inside to tend to her child, she takes one last glance back and swears she sees a couple (who would be her grandparents) dancing in the moonlight. That novel is so unlike any story I've written since. Before I queried it (unsuccessfully, of course) I learned that it was magical realism, since the main character "magically" takes on the personas of both her grandmother and her mother and is transported back to their younger days. Good idea; bad execution. 

I should mention Shadow Song's ending, although it could be the weakest of all, which is ironic since I consider that my best work. That ending, too, would be considered resolved, but at least it's bittersweet, as opposed to "sickly sweet". It ends with the main character scattering flowers over the spot where she'd found her boss's dead body (in the woods), In so many words, she says that now she can move on with her life.

I wanted to make sure I included the endings of each of my books, so now you don't have to read them! (kidding.) In summary, like most novels the majority of my endings would be considered resolved. One benefit from having reviewed those endings is that I realize I'm a better writer than I've given myself credit for. Nevertheless, crafting a good ending is hard work, and just when I want to be finally finished. The good news is, an author can take her time getting the ending right, because that's all that is left to do.