John Hewitt’s Writing Tips: Earn Your Ending
November 24, 2005 by J.C. Hewitt
I am not opposed to happy endings. When you spend the length of a movie or a book rooting for one or more characters, you want things to work out well for them. That is human nature. You are invested in the characters. An unhappy ending, however, is preferable to an unearned ending. Nothing spoils a story for me more than seeing things work out (or not work out) for a character because of random events or manipulative reasons. Even if I’m rooting for the character, I don’t want them to succeed because of some lucky stroke of fate at the end.
When looking at your ending ask yourself the following questions:
- Is the ending the result of the actions taken by my central characters?
- Were the actions they took logical for the characters?
- Does the ending in some way resolve the central conflict of the story?
- Is the ending earned for all of the characters?
- Does the ending feel real?
If you can answer yes to all five of those questions then you should feel good about the ending, whether it is happy, sad or indifferent.
I am currently writing a Mystery/Horror story. Is it dangerous to write a story in this Genre without having an ending planned? Because although I’m not sure exactly where I want to take this story, I would like to start writing it. However I wouldn’t want to write myself into a corner.
Sometimes the only way you find out the ending is by writing the story. Maybe experiment a bit and see what works for you: planning a story or jumping in or a combination of the two.