Story Endings

Hi everyone! 

I am Young Adult and Middle Grade author Barbara Binns, writer of contemporary and realistic fiction for adolescents and teens. As my tagline says, I write Stories of Real Boys Growing Into Real Men - and the people who love them.  



There are writers who write stories for fun. I know a few. Some write so well I used to try persuading them to seek publication. I stopped doing that when I realized publication would take away their sense of fun. There is freedom in writing for only friends and family. They prefer that freedom.

I write for readers. I want my stories read and enjoyed. I want them willing to pay to be entertained. As a result, I consider my opening scene part of a contract I make with my readers, aka my silent partners. I promise to stimulate both my readers' brains and emotions. Those promises are checks that must be "cashed in" by story's end.

Whether I am crafting an ending to a scene, a short story, or a whole novel, I have certain rules I  make myself follow.  The number one rule is that the ending must make sense in relation to the rest of the work. At the same time, it should be unexpected and maintain a level of suspense.  Sometimes I give my readers a surprise or twist ending. Other times, as when I write a romance, I adhere to reader expectations. That means at least a Happy For Now ending, with an h/H getting together, if not riding off into the sunset.  I can always surprise my reader by the path I take to get them to their state of bliss.

Either way, my goal is to first gives readers an "Oh my God" reaction when they reach the end. That should immediately be followed by the realization: "Of course, this is the only way it could happen."

That's how I work to keep readers eager to proceed to the next chapter, and then to grab my next book, eager to do business with me again.

Resolution vs Ambiguity:

I have to strike a balance between these two areas. As I said, managing genre-specific requirements comes first. My first novels, Pull and Being God, were both Young Adult romances where I carefully adhered to romance rules. Readers of detective stories and mysteries expect the bad guys to be vanquished and the crime solved. Science fiction, fantasy and literary stories have more flexibility regarding reader expectations. There readers may accept, even welcome, writers who expect them to do a little of the analysis work regarding the ending.  There are different techniques for making an ending I use.

Types of endings

Happy - These are endings that must be earned by the protagonist. That means there must be the possibility of an unhappy alternative. Happy endings come with a cost, the protagonist suffers greatly and pays for that joy at the end. happy ending. This is the ending I used with my first YA novel, Pull when my hero is forced to choose between two different futures, one of which leads to a scholarship and likely career...if he abandons the people he loves.

Sad - These are the opposite of happy endings. I have done a few of these in short stories, because sometimes sad is the right truth to tell. Even sad endings must be earned, and offer the protagonist the possibility the possibility of happiness, if only...

Epiphany - is another ending that must feel earned. In the case of Being God, I did this by making the character get so low he has  to come to a realization about his life. As a teen alcoholic, his epiphany comes when he realizes he needs help to change his life, and that his father, the man he has considered a weakling, can be a part of that solution. I was at my  most cruel with Malik Kaplan. That was the only way I felt I could make it logical that he would come to that realization and go from thinking he is the most important being he knew to realizing that he needed to reach for a higher power.

Open aka Zero endings happen when a character fails to change after the epiphany, or they miss the point they should have learned during the epiphany. This type of ending allows readers to project their own meaning or reach their own epiphany. I have never tried an ending like this. A lot of skill is required to make this ending work.  (The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison provides an example.)

I will mention one more ending that I have sometimes used in some of my short stories. In the Twist - I work to deliberately subvert what the readers expects to happen at the end.

Finally, there is the Symbolic ending. I'm leaning toward this for my work in progress, using butterflies. With this ending, the story stops on a resonant image, something that harkens back to earlier images and illustrates the story theme.  The feather floating around at the beginning and ending of Forrest Gump is an example of a symbolic ending.

Last, but not least, comes the Epilogue ending. In this type of ending, frequently seen in romance novels, the end is a followup on the characters, usually after a change in time. I sometimes use short epilogues, I'm adding one now to a WIP featuring time travel. It's very short, and as I write it, I keep in mind that it needs to enhance the story theme and/or add a new dimension to be worthwhile for readers. I plan to make sure it contributes to the payback on the original contract made in chapter one.

Another Little Piece of My Heart...

by M.L. Buchman

Oh yeah. Sing it, Janis!

Janis Joplin singing that Emma Franklin (Aretha's Sister) song just rips out my guts every time. The emotion that woman could pack into a song just gets to me...far above and beyond any mere meaning of the words. (A funny side note: despite making my living as a wordsmith, it takes me a long time to become aware of a song's lyrics. It's the emotion that takes me every time. Occasionally, I get incredibly embarrassed when I discover that a song has very different lyrics than the emotional delivery. Rocking out to Pat Benatar's Hell Is For Children in the early '80s comes to mind.)

Anyway, this month I gave up another little piece of my heart (Keep singing it, Janis!). I finished a whole series.

When I finish a book, there is a celebration, absolutely. I created a good conclusion to a story. I found the story's ending, happy if it's a romance (as this one was) or at least satisfying (like a thriller or SF). And I achieved another book, which is still a surprise every time.

There's also a sadness. Those characters who I've come to know and love during the course of the book, their story is done. They'll now move into the background of future books, or perhaps depart entirely. This is also true of a short story, but I've only spent days or perhaps a week with those characters, whereas a novel I've often spent months with them on a daily basis--on occasion even a year if I've struggled with their stories. So there is sadness mixed with the pleasure.

But to end a series? That is an effort that spans years. In the case of Henderson's Ranch, it has been four years. In that time, I've spent five short stories and three novels roaming the hills of the Front Range under Montana's Big Sky. Emily Beale (my Night Stalkers and Firehawks series heroine) has retired there. And, as Emily always does, she has attracted an amazing group of woman around her. (And, as amazing women do, the men are pretty freaking awesome as well.)

More about Henderson's Ranch

In Big Sky Dog Whisperer I felt that I finally really understood what I'd been writing about all along in this series. I was writing about family. Not the family of romantic love between a couple, or even couple and kid(s). Henderson's Ranch is an eight-story homage to family of the heart. To belong we don't need to be perfect or pretend we're undamaged. It is a place where we're embraced as we are for who we are.

To say that I cried while writing this book...well, yeah, in a number of places. There's a lot of me in every book I write, but with Stan and Jodie this was especially true. No, I was never a battle-injured dog handler and they both were, but there's a lot of my personal doubts and fears in them.

Then halfway through the book, I realized that this was the end of this particular series.

Sometimes I know and it's planned that way. Midnight Trust was book #4 of my Delta Force series and the last book, at least for that team. But this was a given because in book #1, I set up a four-person team who book-by-book find true love.

Sometimes they end in an unexpected way. Firehawks was originally a six-book series. Then I decided that my #5 hero and my #6 heroine were perfect for each other, so it would be a five-book series. And they were perfect for each other, except for a few complications, like the arrival of another heroine on the scene...which is part of what makes writing so much fun.

But Big Sky Dog Whisperer caught me completely by surprise as a series ender. The funny thing was that my characters knew it long before I did. (Like music, I was tuned into the emotion of the story and wasn't really seeing the story of the words even though I was the one writing them.)

I suddenly had characters who I didn't think had any place in the story insisting on a cameo. What had started as a romance, with a few friends and a mentor for the heroine, bloomed into a view of the whole Henderson's Ranch world. Half again longer than the other two novels in the series, the story and characters spilled across the pages.

And when the book was complete, there was a sudden aching void in my chest. Henderson's Ranch was done. The characters had told their tales and would now live on their lives without me. I know some of what their future holds, but their written story is complete.

How do I know this?

I know it because now some part of me is also complete. Family has always been a challenge for me. But I've now been married for a third of my life and we're closer than ever. My kid...well, I'm one of those parents, so don't get me started. I also have a family of friends, some who've known me for decades. And discovering that family as part of writing about the dogs and handlers of Henderson's Ranch, has somehow healed the part of me that made this series happen in the first place.

So it is with a deep mixture of joy and sadness, of self-discovery and satisfaction, of understanding one more piece of the joy of family, that I say goodbye to that world.

Discovering family is what drove me to write that entire series, though I didn't know it at the time.

What drives you to write? If you're like me, its far deeper than you realize.

M.L. "Matt" Buchman has over 60 novels, 70 short stories, and a fast-growing pile of audiobooks out in the world. M.L. writes romance, thrillers, and SF&F…so far. Three-times Booklist "Top-10 Romance Novel of the Year." NPR and B&N "Best 5 Romance of the Year." RITA finalist. As a 30-year project manager with a geophysics degree who has: designed and built houses, flown and jumped out of planes, and bicycled solo around the world, he is awed by what's possible. More at: www.mlbuchman.com.