Today we are talking about conclusions. Otherwise known as the end of the book. No, not the climax, or the moment that the hero wins. The conclusion is also the called the resolution, the moment after the hero wins. When the journey is over, the task is completed, and everyone is either saved or dead.
The conclusion is what will stick with the reader long after the book has been placed back on the shelf. It is the last taste in the cake that is the novel. Mess it up, and readers will be left with a nasty taste in their mouths, and never want to pick up one of your books again.
Yes, I have written another blog post a while back on endings. (you can find it here) They are my favorite part about stories, so I ain’t apologizing.
So, how much resolution is too much? The tension is over, all the questions have been answered, there is nothing left to keep the story moving. Unless of course you wait to wrap up a side plot until after the climax, which I think is an excellent strategy, but I digress.
What you want to avoid is the after climax winning stretch. The battle has been won, love has conquered, and the story keeps going, and going, and going… Until the reader is bored to tears and skims the final few pages.
However, I have also read novels where the resolution was too short. The climax happened, the good guys smile at each other, and then ‘The End’. To be honest, this happens more often in movies than in books. I am starting to dislike the words at the end of a movie that fill in for a great resolution scene. I don’t want to read about him living happily ever after, I want to see it.
The first ending leaves the reader feeling bored, and that the story was much too long. The second ending leaves the reader feeling unsatisfied. We, as writers, don’t want either, obviously.
But it still leaves the question, how much is too much? How much is too little? I am a reader before I am a writer, and I will say that the best endings that I remember are ones that directly correlated to how long the story was.
No one, unless you are an illiterate heathen, complains about the Into the West resolution at the end of Lord of the Rings. It is technically a long resolution, but nobody cares. Because we have spent hours caring about and adventuring with those characters. We are deeply invested in them, so we want to know what happens to them.
I once read a series that had a really, really long resolution. There was a wedding, and a coronation. Chapters upon chapters of stuff happened after the climax. You might think that it would have been boring. It was not. I loved every minute because I had spent hours wishing these characters a happy ending, and now I finally got to see it.
Contrast that to a rom-com. Nothin’ much happens after that last kiss, or proposal. Maybe a quick voice over, maybe them turning around to smile at celebrating friends. Short is the rule. Why? Because we only spent ninety minutes caring about these characters. Not very long in the grand scheme of things. So in all honesty, most of the time our interest ends when the tension ends. After that we all move on with our lives.
If I wrote a short story, my resolution would be one, maybe two lines. If I wrote a novel, a few pages would suffice. As for an epic series, one chapter showing everyone’s future might be nice.
When writing your story, ask yourself this question. If you were reading this story for the first time, what would you most want to know about the characters after the battle ends? When you answer that question for yourself, write it out. The resolution exists because readers care about characters. Give your readers the satisfaction of knowing that everything was okay after that, and they will love you forever.
Shaina Merrick
The Beauty of a Story 