How to Write the Ending of Your Novel
Imagine spending three years writing a novel based on a premise that is so mind-numbingly groundbreaking that the moment someone picks it up, they have to put it back down to tell anyone within arm’s length.
Now imagine that they read this riveting novel, with its genre-breaking, earth-shattering premise, and they’re on the edge of their seats from the first to the last page. Except after they finish that last page, they keep going, expecting to see another page and another page after that. Instead, they’re left wondering why the book just fell off a cliff and ended where it did.
They’re understandably disappointed. They dived into a book that moved them to their core, only to be left unsatisfied with where you left them.
Now your brilliant premise is meaningless, because the last thing they read was the ending and to their consternation, it didn’t work.
How should you have ended it? Here’s a six part formula to set up a satisfying ending, using the “Save The Cat!” method by Jessica Brody.
1: Gathering The Team
Before the finale starts, where your hero proverbial (or literally) “storms the castle,” there should be some gathering of your A and B characters who will take part in the finale. If your character is going at it solo, the ‘gathering’ will be a gathering of the material goods or objects they need to fulfill their plan.
Some of these B characters may no longer be on speaking terms with your hero, so you’ll want to mend those fences and rebuild alliances. Your hero has a chance here to admit they were wrong or stupid, which will work towards the transformation of your character that will come along later.
The characters will then come up with “the plan,” which serves to set up the reader’s expectation of an ending.
2: Executing The Plan
The plan you have established should have some sense of impossibility to it. The reader will believe it, because they’re reading this novel (or watching this movie), and so what will be exciting is seeing how your characters complete this seemingly impossible plan.
The team will make progress, and what once seemed impossible will now start to seem like a real possibility—perhaps almost too easy.
In this beat, you’ll also want to have b characters have their story-moment or redeem themselves through some sort of literal or personal sacrifice.
3: The Surprise Obstacle
Everything up until this point in the plan seems to be going well, too well. That’s when you should interrupt the plan, throw it off, and set your characters on a secondary course, with a revised plan.
Think of the classic video game Mario Bros. The hero (Mario) storms the castle, only to find that the princess isn’t there. Surprise!
This serves as a last minute twist, which will push your hero to the edge, and force them to dig deep one last time to achieve their end goal.
4: Finding New Strength
This is where, when your hero is pushed to the edge, something clicks and your hero discovers something about themselves that will help them solve or push past this newfound barrier.
It should be the theme of your story, the flaw they’ve had all along, that they now know how to overcome, and which they would never have overcome if it wasn’t for the preceding events of the story.
It’s why the story exists in the first place, to discover this one thing!
5: The New Plan
Now that your hero has discovered how to solve their major flaw, how to push forward and conquer their demons, the reader is on the edge of their seat, waiting for them to triumph (or fail, if there are still more lessons to be learned in the future).
That’s because you have, if you set it all up right, put your hero through hell to get here, and they deserve to succeed, now that they’re here. The reader will come to expect it after all that work, and if you don’t provide it, you better have a good reason.
As the reader, we’re satisfied with an ending that is deserved and unsatisfied with endings that are undeserved.
6: Life After Change
The final beat should be a mirror of the first image you established on page one, but it should be altered because your character is inherently changed. It should show how, while the setting is the same, your character’s place in it is forever different.
It’s a full circle image, ending where you started, and the reader gets to see their new-found change in practice, in a familiar setting, contrasted with how they used to be in this same setting.
With this formula, you can be confident that you’ll have a satisfying ending that readers will enjoy.
But that’s not to say that every novel has to have these six parts. There are plenty of novels with great endings that don’t have a surprise obstacle standing in their way or don’t have a ‘gathering the team’ beat.
What rules like this allow you to do, however, is when YOU are feeling unsatisfied with your ending, and you can’t put your finger on why, try to map out these six beats onto your ending, and if you’re missing one or two, workshop ideas to implement them into your story.
Does it help the story? Does it present a more satisfying ending?
Like all things in writing—if it works for you, don’t change it. If it’s not working, try and break it down and discover why it’s not working.
Ian Canon is the author of It’s A Long Way Down (2018) and Before Oblivion (2017). His second novel What We Do On Weekends is forthcoming. His stories have been featured in The Creative Cafe, Montreal Writes, The Junction, The Sunlight Press, The Spadina Literary Review, Found Polaroids, and he’s been profiled for Vue Magazine.
