What’s at the End?

There is nothing like closing a great book when you’ve finished it. The sense of accomplishment is profound to me. When an ending is great it makes a book even better. They are the final words that the author has for the reader. They should mean something to the story, the author, or the reader, probably all of the above.

Only once something ends do you really get a chance to examine it and determine how you felt about it. Endings give you time to reflect on your journey with the characters. How a period of time that has passed was. What a friendship meant to you. Endings punctuate life, without an ending the journey can seem meaningless.

Endings punctuate life, without an ending the journey can seem meaningless.

I’m not just going to expound endlessly on what endings mean to me. I thought I’d examine how I think endings should be done. This is not definitive and I’m sure my feelings on endings will change in the future, but for now this is where I’m at. I finished a book recently and had a fine enough time with the book itself, but the ending almost ruined the book for me. It tossed any characterization out of the window so the reader could have a perfectly painted picture. The only problem with that painting is that I didn’t recognize anyone in it.

Anything that I thought the characters held dear had been changed in a single moment. Things that I’d been told they cared about no longer mattered. It felt like a bit of a betrayal. I’d given the book my confidence and time and it rewarded me with a confused look on my face. I’ve read a few books in the past that I didn’t love their endings but they still did their job. They provided a satisfying conclusion to everything that had occurred over the narrative of the story. Character arcs had some finality to them and the story that was being imminently told in the pages of the book well…ended.

There are many books with great endings, but some that stick out in my mind in recent memory are Robin Hobb’s Assassin’s Apprentice and Royal Assassin, I’m reading Assassin’s Quest right now. While the first one didn’t conclude every bit of story that had been packed into the book, it still felt satisfying, not to mention it is the only book that has made me shed a few tears at the end. The characters stayed true to themselves even at their own detriment. There wasn’t any last minute magic that came along absolving them of any struggles or problems. How it ended made sense to me.

The characters stayed true to themselves even at their own detriment.

Royal Assassin had one of the most satisfying endings in any book I’ve read. It didn’t hit me in the same emotional way as the first and some of what happened was telegraphed, but it was perfectly done. It concluded with the right tempo and with care to the character’s voices. I’m pretty sure I repeated myself over and over for the next twenty-four hours that it was such a good book, slightly stunned at how great it was. An excellent ending to a story I think we all can agree elevates a book. It is like a good friend wishing you the most pleasant of goodbyes.

I like to think that endings are like presents to the reader. It should be something you promised to give them or a pleasant surprise they’ll enjoy. To take a page out of Brandon Sanderson’s ideas about writing, there should be promises throughout a book. Some of them should be fulfilled in that book and if you are planning a series then it is ok to leave them for a later book. If you talk about an evil lord that rules the land then there at least should be a confrontation with that evil lord. If a character is searching for their long lost father then the character should come to a conclusion about who their father is or how they feel about them. A surprise at the end of a book is certainly a possibility too. You’re still giving the reader something that they want, it is just something they didn’t realize they wanted.

I like to think that endings are like presents to the reader.

I think the biggest take away for my reading and what I will attempt to do when writing, is that a book should feel like it is coming to an end. When you are on a roller coaster the ride doesn’t stop in the middle of a loop, it hopefully, comes to a smooth end where you can safely get off and then jump up and down, and tell everyone about how great it as.