Novels end. It’s a sad fact of life. And an even sadder fact is that writing the ending of a novel can often be the hardest part. You’ve built such a big world over the course of the last 50,000 words – it’s time to show your readers the door, but how can you possibly tie it all together in a package small enough to fit through it?

Well, I don’t have all the answers – this happens to be one place where I struggle a lot too. But here are a few things I’ve figured out that help.

You don’t need to resolve everything

Endings are about resolution, but it’s okay to leave some questions unanswered. Some readers actually prefer it that way, and for some stories, it might genuinely be the best choice. Leaving things open-ended does take a particular kind of story, though, so if simply leaving things open isn’t an option for you, that’s okay too. But if it seems like it might be, don’t be afraid to go for it.

Cool it with the exposition

The time to explain things is long past. Your last chance for major exposition, I would say, was probably in the lead-up to the climax. I’m sorry, but you are done explaining how your magic system works and describing the floor plan of your protagonist’s house. If we don’t know where we are by now and how this place works, then you have bigger problems than how to write your ending, my friend.

If you get to the ending and realize you need to explain something to make it make sense, make a note to yourself to move that explanation earlier in the story. In general, the later in the book the explanation becomes necessary, the earlier it should be explained.

Focus on emotions more than action

Your characters shouldn’t really still be doing things in the denouement, or end portion, of your novel – not big, action-packed things, anyway. Now is not the time for fight scenes, car chases, or dramatic confrontations. But it is the perfect time for big emotions.

The denouement, as we talked about briefly last week, is about bringing emotional resolution to your story. This should be the last thing to happen in your book, because by and large, it’s the thing that keeps people reading. Think about it: how many people walk out of action movies just after the climax because they’ve seen all the uppercuts and roundhouse kicks and they feel like they’re done? Nobody, that’s who. You stay in the theatre because someone just died, and you want to know how the other characters will go on, or because you know there’s a tearful reunion in store, or because you’re waiting to see if the main character is finally going to get the hint after the love interest saved their life like, seven times in a row.

Emotion drives storytelling. You don’t get to end your story until there are no more emotions left to feel.

Don’t neglect setup

If you’re planning on a sequel, then you might have some actual setup to do here. But that’s not what I’m talking about. Even if this story is one-and-done, the world the characters live in presumably is meant to endure for long after the story ends. That means your setup skills are just as important here as your ending skills.

At the end of the book, in order to feel a sense of closure, readers should have a sense of what would happen next. Priming the reader to realize that so-and-so lived happily ever after is much the same task as priming them to wonder if so-and-so might be doomed, which is what you were doing way back at the start of your novel when you set up the book. A good ending often feels like the start of something as well, so keep that in mind as you wrap things up.

This has been our last Story Structure Sunday! I hope you’re feeling some emotional resolution to this journey we have been on. Good luck with the end of your novel, and congratulations on making it far enough to need this post at all.

Happy writing!