In preparation for the 2020 RMFW anthology, I’ve covered three critical elements of the short story: plot, character, and setting. These are the building blocks of short fiction; conquer them, and you’re guaranteed a good story.
But a great story? A tear-in-the-eye, punch-in-the-gut, knock-it-out-of-the-park story? That requires a killer ending.
In my opinion, the ending is the single most important part of a short story. Of course, the rest of the story must be strong enough to carry the reader to the end—but once they get there, the ending is the last thing they experience before leaving the world of your story. A killer ending can elevate a mediocre story to a great one; a lame ending can knock an otherwise promising story down a couple stars.
Here are a few tips to take your endings to the next level.
- Know where you’re going before you begin. You don’t need to have every detail planned out, but you should have a rough idea where the story is headed before you start drafting. This will ensure you don’t write yourself into a corner, and save you countless hours of revision. Once you know your story’s central conflict, determine how it will be resolved before you wade into the first draft. Speaking of which…
- Provide resolution, whether positive or negative. Think of your story as a boxing match: Your protagonist goes through round after round of pain, sweat, and struggle, and then the match is over. Whether she wins or loses, there is no more fighting to be done. The conflict is resolved. Readers like resolution, no matter what form it takes. The character may achieve her goal but at great cost. She may fail but gain something else, such as personal growth. She may win the battle but realize the war has just begun.
- Give it emotional resonance. Powerful endings draw their power from emotion more than anything. How to achieve this emotion? Start with change—change in the main character’s life, heart, or mind. Show the protagonist learning something, overcoming a flaw, or seeing the world in a new way. Show how the events of the story change her life irrevocably.
- Give the reader something to think about. Great endings not only have emotional impact, they also have a theme or message. No need to be heavy-handed with it—in fact, the most powerful messages are subtle, even conflicted. Give the reader a question to ponder, an ethical dilemma, a difficult sacrifice to be made. Make the protagonist’s conflict gray rather than black-and-white, and let the reader think about whether she made the right choice.
- Give it a twist. Some of the most memorable endings I’ve ever read have been twists. They knock readers’ socks off by surprising them, by revealing some element of the story isn’t as it seemed. The murderer is the one person we thought we could trust; the main character was lying to us all along; the villain turns out to be a good guy. But not all twists need to be so dramatic. It can be as simple as the protagonist succeeding where we thought she was doomed to failure. Maybe we expected her to succeed, but she does so in an unexpected way. Surprising endings are memorable ones. Just be sure to…
- Make it unexpected, not unbelievable. If your twist is too out-of-the-blue, readers will feel confused and cheated. To avoid deus ex machina, make sure the ending flows logically from everything that came before. Have your protagonist use tools, knowledge, and allies gathered earlier. Lay subtle clues in the beginning and middle. These clues may go unnoticed or misdirect the reader at first, but they’ll make the twist believable when it happens. When the best friend lied ten pages ago, we assumed it was to cover up his drug addiction—but not we realize he was covering up the murder we never imagined he could commit. Of course!
- Give it time. Don’t rush through your story’s ending; slow it down and flesh it out. Spend more time revising it than the rest of your story. I don’t mean tweaking a word here and there, but performing open-heart surgery if that’s what it takes. Try a few different endings to see which works, then get feedback from critique partners—and be ready with the scalpel.
How does your work-in-progress end? Happy, sad, ambiguous? Big twist or small? What theme or message are you going for?
Whatever it may be, I hope to see your work in our inbox—submissions open May 1st!