Story Endings

Endings are, I think, the hardest part of writing a story. They are also the most crucial thing to get right.

Your ending is your reader's reward for reading your story.

Your ending will make or break your story. A great ending will leave the reader feeling satisfied. A bad one will make the reader feel cheated.

 I always decide what my ending will be before I start writing a story. I need to have a destination in mind, or I get lost along the way.

Your ending should answer your main story question.

 If you're stuck for an ending, ask yourself: What does your character want more than anything? How do they go about trying to get it? Do they succeed?

For example, in Harry Potter, Harry wants a family more than anything. It starts with him suffering with the horrible Dursleys, and the series finally ends with Harry getting a family of his own.

Exercises

1. Take the story beginnings from the Beginnings section. Pretend you're the author of these stories, and write a sentence or two that might be a good ending for the story.

2. Take the story beginning you wrote, and write a paragraph that might make a good ending.

Advanced Exercise

Take one of the following endings. Write for ten minutes, finishing your story with the sentence you have chosen.

1. I hope I never see him again.
2. She still doesn't know it was me who did it, and I'll never tell.
3. The baby was okay, and that's all that mattered.
4. I had decided which one I wanted to kill first.
5. I watched it burn to the ground.

 Just like a good story opening, each of these endings contains at least one character (the narrator) and the resolution of a problem. Who the character is and what problem is being resolved by this ending is up to you to decide.

Story Beginnings

The purpose of a story’s beginning is to make readers want to read the rest of the story.

Beginnings need to do three things:

1. Get the reader’s attention.
2. Get the reader asking questions.
3. Let the reader know what kind of story it is.

Good Beginnings

Here are the first sentences of some well-known novels.

• Can you tell what kind of story each one is?
•  Can you tell what the story's going to be about or who any of the characters are?
• What questions do these beginnings raise in your mind?
• Do they make you want to keep reading?

The monster showed up just after midnight.
- A Monster Calls, by Patrick Ness 

The Whips, as silent as hunting cats, surrounded Blood Burrow in the hour before sun-up and began their sweep as the morning dogs began to howl.
- Salt, by Maurice Gee. 

Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.
- The Fault In Our Stars, John Green. 

The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say.
- The Knife Of Never Letting Go, by Patrick Ness 

"Sir?" she repeats. "How soon do you want it to get there?"
- Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher 

I'd never given much thought to how I would die - though I'd had reason enough in the last few months - but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this.
- Twilight, by Stephanie Myer (Preface) 

When I was little, my Dad used to tell me, "Will, you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose."
- Will Grayson, Will Grayson, by David Levithan and John Green 

Beginnings To Avoid

Waking Up or Dreaming

A lot of people start their stories with waking up. Unless there is something unusual about the waking, this is usually not where the story should start. It's been over-used, especially if you start with waking after having a bad dream.
HOWEVER, if there is something unusual about the waking to make it interesting, then it can make a good story opening.

Bad: My eyes opened and I yawned and stretched, then I got up and went downstairs to eat breakfast.

Good: When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.
- The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins 

Starting Too Early

Figuring out when your story should start means deciding when the first bit of action or conflict starts and starting with it.  If you start earlier, your story beginning will drag.

For example, say you were writing a story about someone surviving an earthquake.  You would be better starting just as the ground was beginning to shake, or only slightly before then, rather than the day before, or even hours before.

Too Much Description / Setting

Description is important to make the story seem real, but it slows down your story. It's better to start with action or dialogue or your characters thoughts.
Also it doesn't raise any questions.

Bad: Sally was fifteen years old and she had brown hair and brown eyes and a round, friendly face.

Bad: The sun rose over the water, splashing reds, oranges and pinks across the sky.

Removing the Tension Before You Start

Compare these two beginnings:

Bad: Last year I was in an earthquake and I was scared I might die.

Good: The earthquake hit with a roar, shaking me so hard I fell to my knees.

The first example has far more tension than the second.  In the second example, the narrator is telling us straight away that he or she survived, so we know that before the story starts.  The language is distant and passive.  The first is action, the second is description.

The Weather

Compare these two beginnings:

Bad:  It was raining, the wind was blowing and it was cold.

Good:  Sally hunched down against the icy wind and drew her battered coat tighter around her. Freezing rain pelted her face, making it hard to see the road ahead.

Instead of describing the weather, show how the weather is affecting your character, and we suddenly have a reason to care about the rain.

With a character experiencing the weather, your opening raises questions in the reader's minds. What's Stephanie doing out in such horrible weather? Why is her coat battered? Where is she going?

Exercise

Choose one of your characters from the previous exercise and write a story beginning.

Plot

Plot is what happens in your story.

Plot usually consists of something bad (or lots of bad things) happening to your character.

There's an old saying that as a writer your job is to chase your character up a tree and throw rocks at him until he works out how to get down.

This is especially true when you're writing comedy.

Comedy is when you chase your one-legged character up a tree and drop boulders on him from a great height, then set fire to the tree. 

In comedy, especially, the hero or heroine will usually face exactly the kind of challenge that is most difficult for them.

• Indiana Jones is afraid of snakes, so he falls into a snake pit.

• Shrek is a horrible ogre, so he falls in love with a beautiful princess.

• Nemo is a tiny little fish with a stunted fin who gets captured and taken to Sydney. His over-protective worry-wort of a father has to go on a long and dangerous journey to find him. He's helped to find his way by Dory, a fish with no memory, who forgets everything right after it happens.

Exercise

Look at your characters flaws, their biggest fears, and the things they'd most hate to have happen to them. Think of a plot where their flaw, fear, or most hated thing is exactly what happens to them.

For example: If they get bad hay fever, they get sent to live on a farm. The most unusual their flaws are, the more interesting the situations you can come up with. Come up with your best one and read it out.

The Importance of Character

Question: Why do we read stories?
Answer: We read stories because we want to connect to other people.

• We're interested in people, we want to understand them. To see through their eyes and walk in their shoes.
• We have a need to connect to and understand others.

A friend told me that when he was younger and he'd read a book, he'd make himself something to eat and grab a drink, but he'd just put them beside him and not touch them, unless the character in the story had something to eat or drink. When the character he was reading about took a bite of food, he'd take a bite of his sandwich.

That's pretty extreme, but when we read, we all do that in our mind to some extent.

• You can't write a story without a character. If it's an animal character in the story, they have human emotions, human traits so we can connect to them.

• Story is character, and especially funny stories.

• Real people have both strengths and flaws. It's both their strengths and flaws that make them interesting. Comedy characters especially.

• The better the characters are described and the more interesting we find the characters to be, the easier it is to get engrossed in their story.  We're either rooting for them to succeed or hoping they get their comeuppance.

• As writers, it's our job to provide readers with characters they want to spend time with.

Exercise 1

Choose one of the names below and write a short description of the character. Use your imagination and make your character as unusual or as ordinary as you like.

Create a character you're interested in: the more interesting you find your character, the more interested it's likely your reader will be.

Use specific detail to describe your character. Don't give a straight description - brown hair, brown eyes - but a description based on who that person is. I'm more interested in hearing about what things the character likes and doesn't like, and why, rather than their hair and eye colour.

• Bletcher
• Hala
• Rayce
• Mannard
• Stig
• Reign

Exercise 2

Pick one of your characters and write down the answers to the following questions.

Write as though you are that character. So for example, if the first question was What are your hobbies, you might write down I build model cities from toothpicks, or I like to play with matches and razorblades on busy highways.

Be as creative as you like. Your imagination is a muscle you need to exercise, so think of this as taking your brain out for a run.

The object of this exercise is to really think about your character, so you have to be true to that character. You can't say a ninety year old woman likes to climb mountains on the weekend, unless she's a supernatural being or has superpowers. But while remaining true to your character, let yourself go and try to make your answers interesting. You might find some of your answers spark ideas for stories.

1. If you found a genie, what would you wish for?
2. When was the last time you cried? Why did you cry?
3. What is your most annoying habit?
4. What frightens you the most?
5. What's your favourite way to spend a day?
6. What's your biggest flaw?
7. What are the 5 things you'd most hate to have happen to you?

How To Write A 500 Word Story

To write a good short story, plan your story before you start writing.

Think about these 3 things:

• The Story Idea
• The Action
• The End

The Story Idea

• A 500 word story should be about one main idea.
• The idea should include a main character with a problem.
• Try to limit the number of other characters to just one or two (or none), if you can.

Example 1: When his cousin comes to stay, a boy is forced to share his bedroom and lose his privacy.

Example 2: A girl has to pass a test she hasn't studied for or she will be held back a year.

The Action

• Your character should do something to try to fix their problem.
• What they do should make the problem seem worse.
• It should naturally lead to the ending.

Example 1: The boy decides to get rid of his cousin. He offers to go with him on a bush walk and tries to get him lost, but they both get lost together.

Example 2: The girl decides to cheat by writing all the answers on her hand in invisible ink, then taking a lemon into the exam room so she can rub it on to get the ink to appear.

The End

• Decide before you start writing what your ending will be.
• End your story when the original problem is fixed.
• The problem may be fixed differently to how your character (and the reader) expected at the beginning.
• Try not to use this ending: "And then I woke up and realised it was all a dream."

Example 1: By the time they eventually make it home, they boy and his cousin have become friends. His parents call the boy a hero for saving his cousin and the boy is happy to share his room with him.

 Example 2: The girl is so nervous about cheating that she sweats all the ink off. But she finds that writing all the answers down on her arm has made her remember them anyway.

Polishing Your Story

A story isn't finished after the first draft.  It's important to go back over your story and try to make it better.  Simple things can make a big difference!

1. Try reading your story aloud.  Is there any sentence that doesn't make sense? 

2.  Do your sentences all have full stops to end and capital letters to start?

3. Is your spelling correct?  Do a spell check.

4. Sometimes by changing the order of words in a sentence, you can make it clearer.  For example:
  •  Okay: "She likes going to parties on Saturdays at night."
  •  Better: "On Saturday nights she likes going to parties."

5. Be specific about details.  They help make your story feel real.  For example:
  •  Okay: "She walked her dog to the shop."
  •  Better: "Her doberman fought the lead as she walked him to the dairy."

6. Using a lot of description can sometimes slow your story down.  Look at what you've used and see if you can really need it, or if leaving some out will make your story punchier.  For example:
  •  Okay: "He looked at the black, shiny gun which the man pointed at him.  He was so scared he gulped and his knees felt weak."
  •  Better: "He looked at the gun the man pointed at him and gulped with fear."

Types of Humor

Slapstick

Physical humor. Your character slips up, literally.
Not funny if anyone gets seriously hurt (except in cartoons)!

 Examples:
• Someone slips on a banana peel
• Homer Simpson falls down a cliff and hits every rock on the way down.

Character-Based Humor

Your character is funny because of who they are. Quirks of their very individual personality are played on. This can include sight-gags, similar to slap-stick humour.

Examples:
• Shrek pulls the wax out of his ears and makes it into candles.
• Fiona sings and a small bird explodes when she hits a high note.
• In Finding Nemo, Dory thinks she can speak Whale.
• In Toy Story, Mr Potato Head's limbs sometimes fall off. When he leaves his eye behind he can still see through it.

OR

Your character does something that is funny only because of who they are.

Example:
A scene from The Simpsons in which Marge and Homer are fighting because Homer bought a snow plow.

Marge: "I can't believe you bought that plow. We can't afford it."

Homer (angrily): "If you're going to get mad at me every time I do something stupid, then I'll guess I'll have to stop doing stupid things."

Marge: "Good!"

Homer: "Fine. I'll never ever do another stupid thing. Goodnight."

Homer turns around and walks face-first into the door.

Marge: "Oh Homey, didn't that hurt?"

Homer (muffled by the door and in obvious pain): "No."

Gross-out, Cringe-worthy Humor

Your character does something disgusting.

Examples: 
• In Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, a very drunk Caroline picks her chewing gum out of the toilet and puts it back in her mouth.
• In 99 Flavours of Suck, Kane has to kiss Mrs Fruple.

Situational Humor

Your character gets him or herself into a funny/crazy situation.

Examples:

• Bart sells his soul to Milhouse for $5. He thinks it's a joke but then his dog, Santa's Little Helper growls at him, automatic doors won't open for him, and when he breathes on the freezer doors at the Kwik-E-Mart, no condensation forms.

• Homer buys a cursed hammock and finds every time he lies in it, it makes a clone of him. Homer makes lots of clones and uses them to do all his chores. Of course he soon loses control of them.

Practical Joke

Your character plays a trick on another character.

Examples:

• In John Green's Looking for Alaska, the students play a hilarious practical joke on the school.

• Bart Simpson keeps making crank phone calls to Moe's Tavern. He asks for I.P.Freely, Al Coholic, Oliver Klozoff, Jacques Strap, Mike Rotch, Bea O'Problem, Amanda Hugginkiss, and Hugh Jass.

Verbal Humor

Used in dialogue. Used to suit character and situation.
• Banter
• Sarcasm
• Wise cracks
• Puns
• Wordplay

Homer: "Listen, we swore we'd never go to sleep angry at each other."

Marge: "I'm not going to sleep."

Homer: "Well you didn't have two beers with your lunch."