Does Your Novel Just…Stop? What Makes a Good Ending

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Your novel’s ending will have more impact than everything that came before it.

Some writers have troubles with beginnings, or more commonly, middles, but for me, it’s always been endings.

I tend to rush them once I reach the book’s climax, and summarize what happens instead of dramatizing scenes to the big finish. I always have to rewrite those last three or four chapters several times before I get them right.

There are two reasons for this—impatience and story fatigue.

When I develop a novel, I reach a point where I’m tired of planning and want to move onto the writing. And that typically happens before I’ve fully fleshed out my ending, so I only know a general sense of what happens. And when I’m drafting it, I hit another wall of fatigue, where I’m so ready for it to be over and I can start revising. Then I rush past the ending I didn’t develop enough in the first place.

It’s a vicious cycle.

Which is why I’ve spent a lot of time finding ways to make writing endings easier.

When you understand what makes a good ending, you have the tools to write a great ending.

Writers often fail with endings because we don’t spend enough time on ensuring they satisfy our readers. We focus on how the plot ends, not necessarily how the story ends, and the book was never really about the protagonist. Or we write the obvious ending readers see coming, so there are no surprises. And then there are the endings that come out of nowhere and don’t resolve the novel’s core conflict—or have a protagonist who changes only because plot told them to.

There are plenty of reasons why an ending doesn’t work, but let’s look at what makes a good ending:

A good ending lives up to its expectations.

Endings start long before the actual climax—the beginning of the novel establishes the problem that needs to be solved. You set reader expectations for what the book is about and what story problem the protagonist is facing. Readers expect you to resolve this problem in an interesting way, and they expect the protagonist to win (in most genres).

You probably have some idea of how you want your novel to end. There’s a good chance it’s part of your one-sentence “this is what my book is about” line. Everything in the story has been building to this moment.

To satisfy your readers, ask these two important questions:

What constitutes a win for your protagonist?

The protagonist has been after a goal and struggling with a problem the entire novel. What is it? What is the conflict driving the plot, the inner turmoil driving the character arc, the lesson driving the theme? What is the one thing that when it happens, the protagonist’s struggle (and journey) is over?

If you’re not sure, look at your beginning. What major problem occurred that set your protagonist on her journey? What has she been trying to accomplish (or avoid) all along? That’s what you’ll need to resolve in some way in your ending.

What constitutes a win for your reader?

This is what readers expect to happen by the end, even if they’re not sure how it’ll unfold. The killer is caught. The evil is vanquished. The couple live happily ever after. The self-destructive behavior is changed.

Odds are, the genre will play an important role here. Romance readers expect a happily ever after (HEA), mystery readers know justice will prevail, thriller readers are waiting for the pulse-pounding excitement—whatever your genre, there is a trope at the core that makes it “that genre.”

The type of book determines what type of ending readers expect.

And you had better deliver.

(Here’s more on It’s Over: Getting Readers to the End and Making Them Glad They Came) 

A good ending cranks everything up to eleven.

Good endings escalate the stakes to the highest point in the novel. The climax is do or die, the protagonist faces their greatest challenge and risks the most they’ve risked all book.

If it doesn’t?

Then the ending just rolls on by and misses an opportunity to keep readers on the edge of their seats. And readers don’t rave to their friends about endings that just…ended.

It’s the ones that keep them up all night they can’t stop talking about.

The first draft of my novel, The Shifter, had this problem. The ending was exciting, but it didn’t raise the stakes any higher from the major event at the end of the third act. Because of that, the ending was just kinda there.

My agent gave me some advice that really changed my thinking. She said to go deeper, not wider, with the story, and to tie it in thematically to my protagonist’s struggle.

It’s easy to add more stuff to make things harder on your protagonist, or to include more people who might suffer a terrible fate, but the stakes aren’t really higher. More lives in jeopardy isn’t high stakes because readers don’t know or care about those people. They care about the characters they’ve been following all novel.

Look at what your protagonist has at stake on a personal level. Look at how that ties into the story, so the ending has more poignancy. Ask:

• What inner conflict has your protagonist been struggling with all along? How can you make that inner conflict butt heads with the outer problem in your climax?
• How might that inner conflict influence what the protagonist needs to do to solve the final problem?
• How might the theme be used to make the ending more powerful, and thus raise the stakes?
• What can you do to make the risk more personal for your protagonist? 

For The Shifter, the theme is “trapped,” so feeling trapped factored into the climax. I looked for ways to trap my protagonist on multiple levels, make it impossible for her to escape with a major sacrifice, and then forced her to make an impossible choice.

Raise the stakes to the stratosphere and leave your readers breathless.

(Here's more on  Raise Your Novel's Stakes by Narrowing the Focus)

A good ending pushes past the obvious.

Predictable is a book killer—especially in an ending. Endings readers can see coming a mile away bore them, but the fact is, they pretty much know the hero is going to win in any book they pick up. There is only so much mystery you can squeeze out of “will the protagonist win or not?” The tension and wonder will come from how they do it and what it will cost them. This is why personal stakes are so critical.

It’s also why we need to surprise readers yet again before the novel is over. The protagonist needs to act in a way that is unexpected, and how they solve their problem is a surprise.

“Wait!” you say. “You just told me readers expect certain things and I need to meet those expectations.”

I did, which is why endings can be difficult.

Readers know (and expect) certain things common to the type of book they read. But it’s how the protagonist resolves the problem that will surprise them, and what price is paid in the end to win.

Defy expectations by giving readers what they expect, but not how they expect it.

Here are some fun tricks for creating twists in your ending:

• Is there anything your protagonist swore they’d never do in the book? Force them to do it in order to win.
• Does your protagonist have a strong belief that defines them? Force them to betray that belief, or have their actions to win shatter it.
• Is there a line your protagonist refuses to cross? Shove them across it.

Catch the killer, but make it cost a sacrifice by the detective. Bring the two lovebirds together, but expose a secret that changes their relationship. Save the world, but do it without banishing the evil. 

The greatest sacrifices happen in the ending, so look at all the ways your protagonist can lose something they hold dear.

(Here's more on An Unpredictable (and Fun) Trick to Keep Your Plots Unpredictable)

A good ending builds the thrill.

It takes time to heap enough horrible onto your protagonist so they’re willing to throw it all away for the win. Pacing is critical here, because speeding up the story helps build that breathless on-the-edge-of-your seat feeling.

It’s also a great time to revisit past failures:

• What mistakes might come back to haunt the protagonist?
• What previous problems can exacerbate?
• What lessons haven’t been learned?

Let your characters worry more and think less. Which will help lead them into trouble. Let plans go wrong and cascade into more and more trouble. Everything they try fails or makes things worse. Put your protagonist on a slippery slope, and don’t give them a lot of time to catch their breath. Let them struggle. 

This is not the time for a lot of self-reflection or long-winded speeches, but action and reaction. 

(Here's more on Plotting for the Thrill: Making the Most of the Worst That Can Happen)

And then it slaps the reader in the face.

Memorable endings throw in one last shock before the problem is resolved. Just when readers think it’s over and it can’t possible get any worse—it gets worse.

Yank the rug out from under your protagonist. Force them into a position where they really have to think outside the box, find something unexpected and crazy to do just to survive that no one will see coming.

Push them beyond anything you’ve done so far. Making the protagonist (and the reader) feel that it’s all or nothing, do or die, will put them right where they need to be.

And it forces you to think of over the top, last ditch efforts for them to succeed that will wow your readers.

(Here's more on the Anatomy of a Showdown) 

The ending is more than one, single moment in the story.

The ending is only as good as what’s come before it. The entire story builds to this moment, and everything your protagonist has done will be put to the test in some way to solve this final problem.

Thinking about “the ending” as more than one moment is what finally (mostly) solved my own ending problem.

I finished a draft last week where I only summarized the wrap up chapters, and the last three chapters took a single revision to get right. It’s the first first draft I’ve written where I didn’t hit that story fatigue and desire to just be done already.

Because I thought about what made a good ending for this novel before I tried to write it.

And it worked.

A good ending makes readers glad they picked up the novel.

EXERCISE FOR YOU: Take five minutes and review the ending of your current manuscript. Identify which of these elements it has, and if they pass muster. If you discover you’re missing some (or even all), then brainstorm ways to revise and craft an ending readers can’t stop talking about.

What do you feel makes the best endings?

*Originally published March 2011. Last updated October 2020.

 
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Janice Hardy is the award-winning author of the teen fantasy trilogy The Healing Wars, including The Shifter, Blue Fire, and Darkfall from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins. The Shifter, was chosen for the 2014 list of "Ten Books All Young Georgians Should Read" from the Georgia Center for the Book.

She also writes the Grace Harper urban fantasy series for adults under the name, J.T. Hardy.

When she's not writing novels, she's teaching other writers how to improve their craft. She's the founder of Fiction University and has written multiple books on writing.

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Originally posted during the Blue Fire blog tour at Abby Annis.