Chapter 10: Creating a Satisfying Conclusion

Endings in young adult fiction are more important to get right than are endings in adult fiction. Many types of endings that may be satisfactory in adult fiction will leave a young adult reader disappointed, unsatisfied, and even angry that the author didn’t “finish” the story the way he expected. Authors writing young adult fiction must at all times take into consideration the experience, age, and emotional and psychological development of the reader. (Even though in recent years young adult fiction is being read by adults, too, we must agree that the target readership of young adult fiction ranges from children at the edge of adolescence through almost-adult late teens.) These traits are different from those of adults, and some research into child and adolescent development will help any writer of young adult fiction.

Great young adult novels are more than entertainment. At the end they should have altered the way the reader looks at the world. Ideally, a great young adult novel leaves the reader better able to cope with his own real-world challenges, because he has vicariously lived similar challenges with the protagonist of the story and gained his insights. Like the protagonist, the reader has faced and overcome incredible obstacles and is now stronger and wiser because of his almost-real experiences. As a result, the impression a story leaves on the reader is determined largely by the ending, making the ending doubly important.

Sadly, the ending is where a lot of YA writers seem to lose the proverbial plot. Either the writer tries to resolve everything in the last few pages or else he has too many endings. So my advice to YA writers is to make the ending powerful—think about what will provide the most satisfying ending for your characters. Let it grow out of the situations you’ve created throughout the book. And, whatever you do, don’t send the book out to agents or editors until you have one that really works.

- ADVICE FROM PUBLISHERS ROW -

Wendy Lamb, publisher of Wendy Lamb Books:

“The best endings are earned, and by that I mean the emotional payoff the reader feels in that last paragraph is set up early in small moments throughout. You should read that last line and have a true, complete, satisfying understanding of the story. How can so few words do so much work? They can’t—their ultimate power depends on preparation.

“Whatever type of book, the author has to prepare the reader for the ending. Build your case for the ending along the way. Subtle moments or details work in a complex, literary book; but a funny wacky book can have a bold wow ending. The wow will work if the story is already full of such moments.”

A good ending serves as the keystone of the story, holding up and giving closure to everything that came before. It’s the part the author wants the young adult reader to take with him from the story, so it must be well thought out and an integral part of the story. Therefore, the story should end at the moment the theme has been clearly, logically, and entertainingly illustrated for the reader. Not before and never later.

The protagonist and possibly other characters recognize that by overcoming the conflict they have learned something important and it will affect their lives.

The author may hint at what the protagonist may do after the climax, but the final interpretation will be left up to the reader. Alternately, the author will leave the protagonist with a number of equally plausible courses of action, and the reader must decide which the character will choose. In this ending the hints and choices must be tightly coupled to the plot and proceed logically from the character.

Ending with a cliffhanger can be done, but it must be approached with great care. The major conflict must be completely resolved, and all of the loose ends except one must be resolved. That single remaining loose end must be selected to generate the reader’s interest for a sequel and at the same time be significant enough to be used to begin the next novel.

In this ending the protagonist returns home to tell of his life-changing quest. Often the end scene is similar or the same as the beginning. This ending is frequently used in fantasy novels.

The story ends with the protagonist wishing for a different outcome of the climax or making promises to himself that will affect his life. This type of ending is common in young adult fiction, but it can be overdone. The promises must be reasonable extensions from the plot that the character can actually carry out.

In a reversal ending a character may start with nothing and end up with everything or begin with nothing and lose it all. What is being gained or lost does not have to be physical objects, such as riches. Love, happiness, friendship, trust, and many other intangible things may be won and lost in the course of a story.

The story builds to a climax where the protagonist either “wins” or “loses” in his quest to resolve the conflict. Generally there are clear winners and losers, but the protagonist does not always have to be the winner.

The protagonist must make a difficult decision and sacrifice something to obtain something else. These endings work well because, as in real life, when a conflict is overcome, there is an element of loss along with the victory. The best bittersweet endings require that the protagonist make a choice among things, all of which are important, and where giving one up will cause him significant pain and remorse.

This ending is a variation on the resolution ending. In this ending a mystery is solved or explained. Usually the reader is enlightened at the same time as the protagonist, but sometimes the protagonist is left in the dark.

To be successful, this ending must truly surprise the reader, but the surprise must extend logically from the plot of the story. It should not be a coincidence or “just in the nick of time” random event. This type of ending is hard to write well, and if done poorly it will seem like a punch line to an extended joke.

Unlike many types of endings there is no element of surprise in a train wreck. The protagonist’s life or situation spirals down to an inevitable disaster that readers can see coming but the protagonist can’t. The plot of a story with this type of ending must be carefully unwound because the reader knows the nature of the climax. How it’s presented must follow logically and have its own unique, interest-holding qualities.

Revelation uses rising tension in the form of the choices being continually narrowed until a final choice is revealed that explains all.

In a monologue ending, the protagonist alone comments about the outcome of the climax. These should be short and written to allow the reader leeway to interpret the character’s words. A closing monologue can easily be overdone and turn into a preaching lecture to the reader.

The narrator takes over and wraps up the plot by discussing the climax instead of the characters. Narrator endings should be short and to the point, referring to the characters as much as possible. The reader has developed a relationship with the characters and does not want the narrator to take the story over from the protagonist.

This is a variation of the narrative ending where the narrator thinks about the climax and muses about the characters’ futures. The narrator discusses the climax and plot only indirectly while discussing the protagonist more directly.

Two or more characters discuss the climax and its ramifications. This ending works best when it is kept short. Lengthy summaries of the plot and the climax are counterproductive. The reader should know what has happened and why and does not need the characters to tell him.

In this ending the setting or some aspect of the setting resolves and completes the plot. A common use of this ending is in fantasy novels where the protagonist resolves the conflict by successfully positioning himself in a desired location.

Details described in a setting or a situation represent a meaning beyond the literal one. An author should exercise great caution in this type of ending, because the readers may miss the point altogether if the symbolism is beyond their experience and maturity. This is not commonly found in young adult fiction. If symbolism is used, it works better when coupled together with another, more concrete type of ending.

At first read, this type of ending seems abrupt because it does not have a traditional clear-cut resolution. However, the ending does indicate what will happen to the characters, implying that now that the conflict has been overcome, life will go on as it was before. This type of ending is rarely used in young adult fiction.

This type of ending is not normally found in young adult fiction. If used, it tends to be a summary of the future life of the protagonist and should relate to the consequence of the story. It should be exceedingly brief, because it can tell the readers what would be better left to their imaginations.

There are some endings that really just get under your skin. Granted, these radioactive do-not-touch endings are still being used, sometimes with great success, but such instances are extremely rare, and unless an author has a variation that is unique, exciting, and fresh, he should avoid them. Let’s consider a few and why they aren’t the most effective.

This ending is the author bailing out on the reader. After writing many pages of an interesting, exciting story, the author has run out of energy or imagination. The “waking to a ringing alarm clock” ending is an example of this.

An ending such as this is a bailout by the author similar to the ending above. This ending has been overwritten so many times that it’s a cliché unworthy of a good story.

The “speaking from the grave” ending is old and stretches the readers’ willingness to suspend their logic to enjoy the story. There is a limit as to how much a reader is willing to accept, and this exceeds it.

If a story ends with a population-destroying holocaust or a couple who have crash-landed on an environmentally suitable planet, don’t try to end with this gambit. No one will believe it.

With this ending the downtrodden protagonist extracts his vengeance on the antagonist, regaining his dignity and honor. The nerd on the beach takes the Charles Atlas muscle course to become more than a match for the sand-kicking bully. A vengeance ending can be effective only if it is consistent with the personality of the character that has been fashioned throughout the novel. The reader has had an entire novel to assess and understand the protagonist’s motivations. A revenge ending would have to have been developed and foreshadowed long before the climax, and it would follow logically from the personality and motivations of the character. One of the best examples of a revenge ending in any fictional work is the ending of the movie The Sting. At the climax, the grifters get revenge on the big-time hood so subtly that the victim didn’t know he’d been played as a sucker even as he lost all his money. Most important, the grifters each played roles faithful to their abilities and personalities established from the beginning of the film and took advantage of the antagonist’s weakness. In a vengeance ending the author has to decide if his character has the personality and motivation to spend the time and effort to challenge his antagonist’s strong point as the nerd on the beach would do, or exploit some weakness or flaw in his enemy.

This is the “I talked to a ghost and didn’t know it” ending. For some unknown reason, spirits wander the night doing good deeds for people. A common variation is the “I picked up a ghost hitchhiker.” This ending fails because it introduces a new character at the end, a character so important that a short appearance at or near the climax can alter the course of the entire novel. Instead of resolving all the conflicts and bringing the novel to a close, the author has created a host of unanswered questions with a new character. The reader will want to know who this spirit is and what relationship it has to the protagonist that makes him so important. In short, the novel really doesn’t end.

This ending often surfaces in ghost and horror stories where the supernatural being is really a person in disguise. Fiction requires the reader to suspend belief and allow his imagination to accept the premise of the story as reality. In this story the reader wants to believe in the supernatural entity. But posing a human character as a supernatural being so effectively that the protagonist can’t see through the disguise for the entire novel will disappoint the reader and chop off the peak of the tension. A story should maintain the internal logic the author has written into the plot from the beginning. The climax should be the inevitable last sequence of scenes leading up to it. Changing the entire nature of the supernatural being is akin to climbing a flight of stairs and missing the last step, so the reader’s expectations are never fully realized.

With this ending, the reader finds that the tension about who the evil character in the novel is is really just a case of mistaken identity. A variation of this is the stable boy who discovers he is really the lost son of a rich family or royalty who was somehow separated from his family at birth. This ending violates the trust the reader has put in the author to tell a consistent story. By the climax, what the protagonist has to gain or lose must be important enough so that the reader can sympathize with the character’s situation and vicariously participate in it. The reader wants to experience the same emotions as the protagonist. Arriving at the climax and discovering that it was all a mistake or misunderstanding defuses the tension of the climax and makes the protagonist’s quest an exercise in futility, letting down the reader.

If the reader thinks for the entire novel that the protagonist is one creature only to find that he is something altogether different, he will feel cheated. When a reader cares about a character, he is not going to like having that character weirdly transformed at the end of the story. The climax should be foreshadowed throughout the novel, leading up to the climax, and each scene should support and anticipate the next. If at the last minute the plot cuts away from the logical progress of the story to drop a contrived surprise twist on the reader, the reader’s imagination will be jarred and he will no longer believe the reality of the world created from the beginning of the novel.

The entire story is a setup for a putrid pun or a banal play on words at the end. This is most often seen in short stories, but occasionally it will show up in a novel—a trick guaranteed to anger a reader.

If a writer closely analyzes these endings, it can be seen that they all fail for the same reason. After reading tens of thousands of words, the reader is involved and committed to the story. He knows the characters and cares about them, he knows the setting, and he knows the relationships that drive the interactions between the characters. In other words, he has expectations of what the ending will be based on everything the author has given him since the beginning. When the author uses one of the above endings, he derails the reader’s anticipation of the end and creates a huge intellectual pile-up of disappointment. The author has not delivered on the promise he made to the reader at the beginning of the story. From the artistic point of view of the story, such endings are dishonest. If an author has invested time to create a compelling story for the reader, surely by the end of the story the creative well has not yet run so dry that the author can’t create an equally compelling ending.

A general rule is that if you’ve heard it or seen it before, especially in a popular movie, television program, or bestselling story, it’s probably already overused and you should think twice before including it.

When he writes that first line, an author makes a bargain with the reader. In return for readers buying and reading the author’s book, the author promises that the story will be emotionally and intellectually satisfying. To be successful an author must make good on this promise, because the reader will forget the beginning and remember the ending and will evaluate the work on that memory.

How does an author end a young adult novel so that the reader is satisfied and is looking for other stories by the same writer? First of all, consider that the ending consists of the entire final scene of the story, which is often a number of pages. The ending is made up of the last events and character interactions that close the story. It usually, but not always, wraps up the resolution of the conflict and ties up any loose ends. Sometimes parts of the conflict and certain obstacles remain open but are intensified to dramatize the final decisions made by the protagonist. If something is left unresolved, the ending should provide the reader with a sense of how it might be resolved in the future. Whatever strategy the author uses, it must follow logically with the plot, theme, and tone of the story.

The precursors of a satisfying ending are found at the beginning of the story. Somewhere near the first few pages of plot, an incitement event takes place. This event causes a chain of other events to occur that will eventually lead to the climax and the ending. These events are linked with cause-and-effect relationships, and one event follows logically from the next as the protagonist and other characters react to each situation. At the end, the reader must be able to look back along the length of the chain of events of the plot, see the beginning, and say, “Oh, I get it.” On the other hand, the author should be able to look down the chain from the beginning and see the ending as the last link that effectively ends the story. Many authors write the ending of the story right after the beginning and then fill in the middle. In this way both ends of the chain of cause and effect in the plot can be seen and are firmly anchored.

A formula for a satisfying ending for a story has four parts, although all four may or may not be used in a particular novel, depending on the plot.

At the end, the reader should be able to look back and see the chain of events that placed the protagonist in his current position. The reader should understand how the protagonist got there and, more important, why he’s there. The events of the plot, the theme, and the resolution of the plot should all add up to the message that a reader will take away from the experience of reading the novel.

In young adult fiction a change is brought upon the protagonist. He has been through great challenges, and the reader must believe that what has transpired has significance. The reader is sympathetic to the main character and wants to see the effects of overcoming the conflict in the behavior of the character—if only briefly. Deep emotions colored and shaped by the conflict should be on full display at the end.

3. The Impact of the Decision Made by the Protagonist to Resolve the Conflict

To have a good story the outcome of the conflict must be important to the protagonist. In the same way, the decision made by the character must reflect this importance so that when the decision is made it will have a powerful effect. Young adult fiction should reflect real-life choices made by the readers. Seldom do we get exactly what we want. Often, young adult readers must choose among alternatives, all of which may be desirable. They want to see those choices reflected in the books they read.

Given that the protagonist has made a difficult choice, how will he fare in the future? In the final lines an author may wish to hint at possible other conflicts or satisfying scenarios that the character may experience. Some authors add an epilogue to give the reader a peek ahead, but these are not particularly well received by readers who would rather use their own imaginations to plan the character’s future.

The following are some suggestions that can be used to design a satisfying ending.

Successful endings often have multiple layers with more than one thing going on at the same time. In this way, no single character or action has to carry the entire load of wrapping up the story. Throughout the novel, the protagonist shares the experience with other characters in different scenes. The ending should be shared as well.

If the characters have shown their personalities in a particular way all through the story so far, don’t make a dramatic change as a device to end the story. The reader should have great sympathy for them by now; don’t take that away by creating a new character’s personality in the old character’s body.

Now that the characters have completed the story, there’s nothing wrong with leaving some uncertainty as to what the future will bring, as long as the main conflict has been wrapped up.

If the plot has moved along a brisk pace through the story, don’t drag the reader down into a leisurely, lengthy narration or conversation at the end. Keep it moving.

Avoid introducing new information, characters, objects, scenes, and so on. The story is wrapping up, and everything the reader needs to know to close the story should be on display by now.

The conflict is exceedingly important to the protagonist. For the entire length of the story, the author has tried to link the reader’s emotions to those of the characters in the unfolding plot. When the ending is trite or banal, the reader will be disappointed and dismissive of the theme and message.

Although young adult fiction often has a message for the reader, the ending of the story should be as empty of the direct personality and opinions of the author as possible. The end should be the final demonstration of the theme and the end of the story, pointedly carried by the characters in the final message scene, not in the narrator’s or protagonist’s voice.

The climax and ending should have the maximum impact on the reader, but avoid melodrama. The tone of the end should follow directly from the tone of the story. Unnecessarily ramping up the emotional content to heighten the impact will be easily recognized as faux tension. There is a fine line between maximum impact and fatal impact, and crossing it will turn the reader off.

Through the editing process, an author may keep adding more and more layers to the ending scene. This isn’t necessary if the story has been told well. Trust the readers: they’ll understand and remember the meaning without having it told to them again.

Give the ending as much space as it needs to get the job done, but not too much. Not every detail has to be discussed, nor should the plot be summarized. Take into consideration what the reader knows from the story and build on it to bring it to closure.