Ways to End a Story

Concocting a good ending can seem like a daunting task. It’s the final beat, image, or idea a reader will get from your story. An ending is so important that many, including me in our article on things to do before writing a story, would suggest having it in mind before you even begin writing. With all that said, we can’t let the worries of not sticking the landing stop us from finishing, or sometimes even starting, our stories. So here are some classic story-ending ideas that can hopefully help you figure out what your story needs to leave a lasting impression that has readers wanting more. 

Close a Circle 

One of the most satisfying types of endings is one that feels like it was right in front of the reader the whole time, but they didn’t see it coming in a way that feels boring. When thinking of your ending, think back to your beginning, or even your middle. Have the climax or final pages payoff something that was setup or maybe just mentioned unceremoniously at the start of the novel or somewhere in the middle. 

This will make it feel thematically circular, like there was a clear throughline or vision. You can even do this backwards. Once you know how your story ends, consider what elements, locations, items, characters, etc. play a pivotal role in the ending. Then consider, is there a way to highlight one or multiple of these elements in your story’s start, or in a random section of the story? Ideally the reader doesn’t even realize your planting a seed. 

It’s also important, if you got this route, to do the set-up early enough that it doesn’t feel forced. You don’t want to introduce the vital artifact or location in chapter 11, only to pay it off in chapter 12. You want your reader to have just barely forgotten it, so that the call back hits them as hard as possible. 

Fully Resolve the Main Story 

If you’re truly stuck and maybe even overthinking how to end your story, consider writing the most closed up neat and tidy ending possible. Even if you don’t like it as an actual ending, this is an unbelievably helpful exercise in finding your actual more subversive ending. It can’t be stated enough that twists, open ended stories, and cliffhangers are all great, unless they come off forced and included just to attempt to make a story more interesting.

Shoehorning some kind of overly vague or gimmicked ending in will always come across worse than just a simple effective attempt at wrapping up all the plot threads. Look at your core cast, and maybe even side characters. Give them all a clear ending that feels finite. Solve your mysteries and cut off hanging threads. Then see if it feels off and try to figure out why. It might even feel satisfying and conclusive. 

Worth noting that resolving a story does not mean your characters succeed or find their happy ending. The closure can be dark or live somewhere in between success or failure. 

Leaving Your Story Unresolved 

It’s only fair to follow the resolved tips with unresolved. Often a more artistic approach to story endings, this is where the reader is left pondering something about the world where this story took place. A detective hasn’t solved the murder, or two rivals never squashed their beef. 

Unresolved endings are one of the riskier moves in narrative storytelling, as they can be unbelievably frustrating to a reader if they aren’t done well. It’s important that not resolving your plot is somehow thematically relevant to it. Your should be sending a message or trying to convey a bigger point via not wrapping up loose ends. It shouldn’t feel like you just ran out of story. 

A core idea here is to put enough into the bulk of the story that your reader knows the story elements well enough to come up with their own fun guesses at what would happen next. There is a difference between trying to imagine what the next steps are for our heroes, and having no idea what happened or what happens next. 

Ambiguity 

Different from unresolved story, ambiguity can allow you to wrap up a story, but still leave room to let your audience come up with their own fun ideas about what happens next. In the first John Wick, our character is bleeding and it is unclear if he will bleed out. 

In The Thing, the last two characters left are out in the cold and it’s unknown if they will survive or if they even killed the monster that has been terrorizing them. These endings are fun because we can speculate about what’s “next” without feeling that what we just saw is unfinished. 

John Wick killed every villain he was after, and the entire crew from The Thing are dead. The stories we came for are complete, even resolved despite the main characters’ fates remaining unknown. Having ambiguity exist despite finishing the main plot of your story is a fantastic way to live between resolved and unresolved.

Who knows, maybe you even leave a touch of space for a sequel down the line. 

Twist Endings 

Remember when I said unresolved endings are the riskiest? Okay, well here’s your second riskiest. A good twist ending can payout like a slot machine to a reader, but a forced one will make them groan so loud you’ll somehow hear it wherever you are in that moment. 

A twist basically means finding a big unexpected change or reveal of information that completely overhauls the story. The narrator was lying, or the main character was actually the killer even though he’s been trying to solve the murder! Anything that recontextualizes the story and changes the way the reader feels about it in one fell swoop. 

It’s impossible to just say do a twist or don’t, as many great narratives are built on or strengthened by one. There are some elements that make a twist more effective. It’s important that a twist reframes the narrative as it currently exists, instead of rewriting it. A great twist means that a reader could reread and the story would still work, and be even more satisfying to work through with the new information. 

A bad twist is one that feels completely counterintuitive to the story we just read, or one that if you were to reread, creates a ton of plot holes or logic issues. If you do come up with a great twist, consider planting seeds, or just going back through and making sure the previous work all makes sense even with the twist information. You want to shock the audience, but trust me, it’s better that some readers see it coming than if no readers see how it could even be possible. 

Epilogues 

The final type of ending to discuss is epilogues. These are addendums to the end of stories that often jump ahead in time, switch to a new perspective, or take place in a new location. Imagine it as a DLC for your story. An opportunity to jump ahead and show the future of your characters, or a chance to jump laterally and show how your main story has affected this world. 

Stephen King often uses these in his works. For example, in The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, a young girl lost in the woods evades a demonic monster, only to find out later that it was a bear, and the monstrous appearance was her imagination. The story is told first person to allow you to be in her head and experience the terror. Then, the epilogue switches to a new character’s perspective for the first time in the story. It retells the ending from this new character’s mind, revealing that he also saw the horrible monster.

Another example, Salem’s Lot has one that shows what the main character’s life is like years after his run-in with vampires. It offers a brief but fascinating look at how these traumatic events changed him. It also ties back in to the first section of the book, revealing that you were already reading the thoughts of this new version of the character, but you didn’t know it because he’s changed his name since the story took place. That’s right, it uses its epilogue to close the circle. Just like I am doing on this article.

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