Planning the Ending to Your Story is Vital

Readers want a feeling of satisfaction on reaching the end of your story. It should work out 'right', or at least have a sense that justice has been done, even if your hero is the one on the receiving end. To get it right, planning is needed.

Here are four ways to arrive at how your story will end:

1. Just do it.

This is where you start writing from page one and hope it will all turn out right in the end. Fingers crossed.

Some writers deplore this approach, others find it works for them.

You've got an idea for a story and maybe the main characters are coming alive in your head. You've no idea how it's going to turn out, but you want to go for it anyway. And with luck and a dry wind you may well get there. So go for it. Only time will tell if the creative tide is flowing strongly enough to get you to the promised land or not.

The danger here is that your story might get stuck on the sandbank of I-don't-know-what-to-do-next or totally shipwrecked on the rocks of This-is-a-load-of-rubbish. If it's the first then you might just get rescued. Read your story and jot down the main events so far. Now put your thinking cap on and decide seriously how you want it to turn out. Then do 'what ifs' to find a path into clear water and on to landfall.

2. Bare bones.

This is where you write down the beginning, middle and end of the story, but otherwise leave it to develop itself.

Not a bad plan this one unless you're writing a mystery or detective novel and you need to plan things out more thoroughly than that.

For short stories it should work well.

3. The whole caboodle

This is more applicable when writing a novel or a very long short story.

Write a detailed synopsis, maybe broken down by chapter or section, so that you know exactly how it's going to work out in the end.

Some authors use the 'cover-the-wall-with-A4s' method. Take a sheet of A4 for each chapter and write on it what is going to happen in that chapter. Then stick them on the wall in chapter order. This makes it easier to see at a glance what's going on and how everything links up. Use different coloured pens if you want to follow say a subplot through so that you don't forget anything.

This has the advantage, providing you've got the wall space, of being able to change things quickly, add, delete or merge chapters as you go along. You could use Word for Windows and read it all on screen, but it's just not the same.

4. Suck it and see.

Get the first chapter down on paper to give yourself an idea of whether you can visualise it running on to a satisfying conclusion. You may or may not know what that is to begin with.

This method is good if you have a novel in mind and don't want to work out a detailed synopsis to start with.

When that first chapter is finished and it excites you, gives you goose bumps or simply that yeesss! feeling then you may have got a winner and it's now worth putting in the effort to get the whole plotline sorted out.

Conclusion

From personal experience this is what I think works:

Methods 1 and 2 work well for the short story; 3 is best for the longer story or novel, and 4 works OK for either.