Hi friends,
(Today is the first sunny afternoon in a while, over in my corner of the world. I hope you’re all finding some warmth wherever you’re reading this.)
On my drive home from Vermont to Wisconsin a few weeks ago, I couldn’t focus enough to read. Despite my best efforts, my eyes kept wandering, and my brother and I opted instead to bounce half-hearted conversation back and forth like a deflated balloon. We spent sixteen hours this way. I have a tendency to trail off when I end my sentences, mumbling the last few words enough that my brother often gets frustrated, interrupting with a jagged WHAT DID YOU SAY? He likes finality. I’m not always so sure.
This little tangent is my way of bringing up the challenge of endings. How do you all go about finishing your stories–verbally? In your writing? Is there a point when you know you’ve said everything you need to say? Do you enjoy crafting endings? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
—Maia
Dear Maia,
Really good question. Replying a little later than ideal, but I was thinking about this and found it hard to define an ending for myself. At first I thought perhaps it was when the reader has gained something from the writing, but then I realized that one could argue there’s something to be gained at every point along a piece of writing, regardless of where the ending is – is the ending then as early as the second paragraph of the entire piece, when the writer has conveyed something in a way the reader had not thought of previously but will now carry with them? I then thought maybe that the ending was where the reader gained what the writer wanted them to gain, but then does that mean the reader always draws from the book the exact thing the writer wanted them to? That can’t possibly happen every time.
Sometimes it’s easier to identify an ending by searching for the next beginning that comes after it. Life and writing are both full of beginnings and endings, whether those are events, scenes, chapters, novels, stanzas, paragraphs, lines… There isn’t just one beginning and one end. In terms of how to go about ending an entire piece of writing, I think which ending you choose to cut the story off at depends on what angle you want to tell the story from. For example, when writing about a breakup, do you choose to start at the scene of the breakup and tell the segment of the story surrounding the self rediscovery that happens afterward? Or do you start at the first instance where the characters begin to fall in love in order to explore why these two people who were destined to fall apart ever came together in the first place? Both are different parts of the same story but are in themselves different stories and it’s up to the writer to choose which they wish to tell.
I think I’m terrible at ending something. In oral presentations, I’ve noticed that once I’ve said everything I have to say about a certain topic I tend to repeat myself until I notice and stop. My speaking just kind of ends, with no confusion or finality, I’m just done. In writing, I try to be deliberate. I write in such a way that it provides a cathartic release of what the reader has just read. Usually this means some half-hearted attempt at repetition of themes, the ultimately seems WAY too obvious. In the future I want to write with the end in mind. Maybe I should start with the finish and work my way back. I want to write with deliberateness so that the reader feels as though I am in control. An author should be in control of their writing, to some extent.
Hi Maia!
Thanks for the great question. I’m probably exposing myself by saying this, but 99% of the time I don’t know how I’m going to end a piece when I’m writing it (which is to say that I don’t write with a plan). Maybe that’s why I find fiction writing so difficult. I love leaning into the abstract that tangible milestones and concrete endings (or god forbid– graph-able plot lines a la 7th grade ELA) make my head hurt. I can’t write creatively how I write analytically, like an outlined essay. Maybe because one is centered on feeling and the other on logic? There’s more room for ambiguity in the former. So basically, I don’t run with a destination in mind, but I feel like I’ve gotten pretty good at looking around and recognizing if the place I end up in is where I’m meant to be. Or more importantly if it’s not, recognizing whether I need to go further vs. if I went too far. Is this muscle memory? Intuition? A practicable skill? Maybe a good ending doesn’t answer all the questions or underlines the point but gives the reader all the puzzle pieces they need to draw their own satisfying conclusion.
Hi Maia! Hope you are doing well. This question is hard. I think that honestly a lot of times I think about the ending of my story before I even start writing it. I find endings to be my favorite and often the most important part of any story. I think that the ending should encapsulate the driving message behind the story so if you think that message has been delivered properly, you most likely can end the story there. But as I said, many times I think about an ending before I start writing which I personally like because I feel like it gives me more freedom to roam and explore in the middle without feeling lost because I know where it will end up. It makes abstract writing more difficult, however, which is something I am trying to work on.
Hi Maia,
Thank you for such a thought provoking question. Truthfully I was struggling with this idea myself as I was crafting the ending of my fictional piece. I was so passionate and sure of the beginning and middle of my story, yet I found myself leaving my story for hours at a time because I had no idea how I wanted to end it. It is like the characters become a personal part of you, and crafting the end of their narrative becomes a daunting task. In the end, I realized that I was trying to write an end to my story that would please others, or perhaps make more sense to an audience. But I had to remember that ultimately, I was writing for ME. I was writing to heal and writing to discover deeper parts of myself; I finished my story by allowing myself to write something that made me happy or satisfied, not what would make others happy.
Hey Maia,
I hope you’re doing well!
I find this question super interesting and realized while thinking about it that I didn’t really know how I craft endings so I went back to look at some of my writing. What I realized was that for most of my writing, I actually wrote the entire piece with the ending in mind. I think I do this because I personally feel that the ending is the most important part of the story since when everything is done that is what you’re left to think about.
Hi Maia,
I like your question, super interesting. I’ve noticed that I have many different ways of ending pieces. Sometimes I feel it imperative to circle back to something (kinda like in an analytical paper), or make a synthesis. But other times I like ending at the end of the story, not giving the reader more information than the characters of the story have. I think the decision is indicated by how interesting the story is. For me the most important part of an ending is making the reader want more once it is done. Ideally, they think about it after reading. This rule applies really well to music: make a song that people want to hit replay on after listening. This usually means the song needs to be short, but it is more indicative of the content, does it hit?
Hey Maia, glad you made it home safe and hope you’re enjoying home. I have to admit, I think endings might be my favorite part. For me, writing endings has very little to do with finality or conclusiveness, but actually with what come next. I think of endings almost as a summary, like the last paragraph of an analytical essay. You highlight your thesis and your supporting paragraphs, but it’s still a little different. Somehow, the ending should mean a little more. I think that good endings leave space. They leave space for the reader to think about what it was you wrote, they should be satisfied by it, but they should continue thinking about it. It should haunt them in a way; be powerful enough to echo for a little while. I also think that the best endings have a touch of universality, just something that might say “hey this is why what i wrote matters. This is why you should be glad you read it.” I don’t think we as writers have to always think of or expect pieces to be entirely finished, sometimes they tend to unravel the more time we give them.