Twelve Story Ending Twists That Don't Work

By Rayne Hall, @RayneHall

Part of the Focus on Short Fiction Series

JH: Some twists have been written to death. Rayne Hall shares 12 endings you should avoid.

Certain short story endings will almost inevitably lead to rejection. What are they, and why should you avoid them?

1. "And then I woke up. It was only a dream."

You've created an exciting story, and your readers sit on the edge of their seat to await the outcome... and then you reveal that none of it happened. What a let down!

In my role as an anthology editor and contest judge, I've received quite a few of those, mostly from novice writers who are submitting their first stories. Other editors and writing contests judges are fed up with them, too. Often, when I chat with editors and judges, one of them says, "Today I got a big batch of 'it was only a dream' submissions," and the rest of us just roll our eyes and groan in sympathy.
 
The ending should always be more exciting than what came beforehand, not less.

(Here’s more with The Difference Between Tricking Your Reader and Surprising Your Reader)

2. It was only a game, a computer simulation, a rehearsal, a drill.

This is similar to the 'dream' ending, because it invalidates the story and delivers disappointment instead of excitement. A better variation has the readers (and the characters) believe that that it's a game, and they discover that the danger is real—but this twist has also been done many times already.

3. The supposed monster is harmless.

The writer leads the readers to believe that the main character is being pursued or threatened by an evil creature, a serial killer or a zombie... but in the end, it turns out to be a harmless stranger, a fellow police officer, Grandmother, the neighbor's friendly dog or the narrator's own shadow.

I still remember a wonderfully exciting story I read as a contest judge twenty years ago. A young woman was walking alone down a street at night, and realized she was being pursued. The author built the suspense with such skill that I felt my heart thud in my throat and was convinced that I had found the winning story. Then the character turned around discovered that the pursuer was the neighbor's friendly dog. How I wished that this author had used her writing skills to craft a powerful ending instead of using a cop-out!

4. "Their names were Adam and Eve"

This is an over-used ending especially in the Science Fiction genre. A man and a woman in a spacecraft—usually the only survivors of a cataclysm—land on a habitable planet. The final sentence of the story reveals their names: Adam and Eve.

This twist would be clever and funny if thousands of writers hadn't thought of it already. Some science fiction zines even state in their Guidelines for Contributors: "No Adam and Eve stories, please."

(Here’s more with Do You Have a Story with a Twist, or a Twist That Thinks it's a Story?)

5. The gibberish death

In a journal entry or letter, the character narrates how he tries to avoid a problem (usually a disease, radiation, parasite or pollution threaten to affect the brain). He believes he has been successful in evading the danger, but his writing becomes increasingly garbled. In the final paragraph, it's pure gibberish and ends abruptly.

This is a great story idea—but unfortunately, thousands of writers have had the same idea already.

6. The character has been dead all along.

The reader follows the story in which the narrator tries to avoid getting killed. The final paragraph reveals that he has been dead all along.

Readers can usually guess this twist long before the end.

7. The bite-hider

Two close friends or a couple of lovers struggle to escape from a hoard of zombies or vampires, and experience hair-raising danger and several near misses. At the end of the story, just when they can finally feel safe, one friend turns to his companion, opens his mouth—and bares fangs. He's been bitten and turned into a vampire/zombie himself, but hid it successfully until now.

Fantasy editors get a lot of bite-hider stories.

8. He's a she, or she's a he

Told in first person, these stories use gender stereotypes to fool the reader. The narrator talks about working as a nurse, picking the children up, cooking dinner for the family. Naturally, the reader assumes this is a woman, but the final paragraph reveals that the character is a man. Sometimes it's the other way round, and the firefighter/builder/army general turns out to be a woman.

Using short stories to challenge gender stereotypes can be a good strategy—but a 'ha-ha, fooled you' ending achieves nothing but irritation.

9. God is a computer

In science fiction stories, a group of people or a whole society worship a god who tells them what to do. Obedience repeatedly saves them from disaster, and they practice complex rituals to keep the god's favor. In the end, the main character comes face to face with this god—and it's a sophisticated computer.

The first of these stories were published 100 years ago. Nowadays, computers are so common that many writers think of this twist, and readers are no longer surprised.

10. The computer becomes a god

In a variant of the 'god is a computer' story, the characters are aware that the omniscient entity is a computer—but in the end, it becomes a god.

Stories of this type boomed for a short time in the middle of the twentieth century—then readers grew tired of them. Don't try to flog this dead horse.

11. "The next day, I read in the paper that my friend had died"

The narrator has a weird experience involving a far-away friend or relative. He shakes off the hallucination—and the next day he learns that the friend had died at the exact time of the communication.

This plot twist was a staple in Victorian ghost stories. If you use it now, it will elicit a mere yawn.

12. And then everyone died.

After struggling valiantly to survive (a pandemic, a terror attack, a zombie apocalypse), everyone gets killed anyway.

For the readers, this is frustrating, because they have rooted for the characters for the whole of the story, so it's a let-down to learn that it was all in vain.

Novice writers often seek to shock readers with this ending. I confess that when I was new to fiction writing, I penned one of those stories myself, believing the ending to be clever and profound.

Have you read one of these endings?

Do you wonder why you haven't read any of these endings in published stories? That's because editors usually weed them out, so they don't see the light of publication, and you are spared the deluge of disappointing and overused twist endings.

Have you written a story with one of these endings, and wondered why every editor has rejected it?

Do you know of any other over-used short story endings? Tell us about it in the Comments.

Rayne Hall is the author of over seventy books, mostly fantasy, horror and non-fiction. Her books have been published by several publishers in several countries, and translated into several languages. A trained publishing manager with more than thirty years’ experience in the industry, she also publishes her own books and champions indie-publishing for authors. She is the editor and publisher of the Ten Tales short story anthologies.

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