Recently, we published a conversation about the origins for our stories, or “where does one begin”: plot, character, theme, conflict? This begs the question, then: after taking the reader through a journey including plot, characterization, emotional resonance, and many other craft techniques, how does a writer end a story? More importantly: How does a writer give a story the ending that it needs? The Kernelists share their takes on endings below.
Sarah: Recently, in my graduate fiction workshop, a fellow writer explained that she never knows how her stories will end when she begins them. In fact, if she already knew the ending, she would be too bored ever to begin. I’ve heard this anecdote before from other very established writers, but it always surprised me. The ending is usually the first thing I know, it’s often the starting point for the story I want to tell, and the whole interest for me, in writing the story, is to figure out: How can I get there?
Shelby: Yes, I totally understand that fear of boredom killing a story before it has a chance. I knew rather quickly how my novel would end, and I wondered if that would affect my writing it. But I love my protagonist and this story so much. For me, the fun has been in writing my way to a deeper understanding of my protagonist and figuring out the best way to tell this story. The ending is just the natural point of where the reader exits her life, but it’s not the end for my protagonist.
With that said, I don’t have the words quite right yet. Originally, I knew what the last sentence would be, but that was when my story was in past tense. I’ve since switched it to present tense and that sentence just doesn’t make sense anymore.
Neidy: It’s hard for me to conceptualize how I come to endings, because I don’t touch the page until I have the entire shape of a story in my mind. I do think it’s fairly early in my idea-generating phase though. There’s a spark of some plot event that gets me interested in a story, and then the ending—in the most vague sense—is usually what I think up next.
I know how the plot events will lead to that ending, but its significance is always a matter of revision. In revision I realize what subconscious themes were propelling everything toward the conclusion and I put in the work to bring those themes to the forefront.
Natalia: My friend reminded me of a saying that has been attributed to Aristotle and Flannery O’Connor: a good ending is both inevitable and unexpected. I love this and while surely, like every rule, it can be challenged, I think it’s a good reminder for me as I develop a story. I almost always know what I want the message of my story to be and oftentimes this means knowing the ending or at least the crux or plot point on which the story hinges. However, I have also realized that I am incredibly flexible with how my endings are realized. Similarly with my beginnings. As I get deeper in I often completely change endings and beginnings while remaining true to my original thematic points, though of course a changed or developed ending does make it richer or more nuanced. My character could have a near-death experience, want a near-death experience, or die in the end and my point would stay the same. Maybe this is a weird way of answering the question of how do I approach endings, but the more I write the more I have come to accept the familiar discomfort of extreme certainty and fealty to an ending only to easily toss it aside when a better one presents itself.
Sarah: Recently, for a flash story I wrote, I knew I wanted the story to end on a note of joy, with one of the protagonists acknowledging that their long ramble of a day had in fact been one of the “best days.” Joy was a really hard note for me to find in my own writing—and in the writings of others. But I surveyed fellow writers who put me onto a handful of short stories that were ultimately about a moment of joy. There aren't very many! One thing all of these stories had in common was that they were not about very pronounced moments of conflict. This was really different from how my stories are often structured: hinging on a moment of extreme conflict. It really upended how I thought about structure and caused me to ratchet down the tension of my story to land on a quieter moment of joy. Reading other writers and rethinking my entire structure allowed me to find the ending I was looking for.
Neidy: I agree that there is a serious lack of joyful writing out there! I think your note about lowering the tension rings true, because people tend to believe ending high stakes stories with joy is saccharine or “too neat.” I know I’ve received that feedback before. At the same time, I’m not someone who hates an unrealistically positive ending. There are so many books I’ve finished that leave my heart aching from the pain of it, but just as many that leave my heart aching because I know the characters are off to live a good life, and my role in it is done. But how do you find the balance? How do you decide whether a story has “earned” a joyful ending? Or, when you know readers will find it unbelievable, how do you choose joy anyway?
I think ending on a joyful note, and choosing an ending in general, is really about committing. One of the early lessons of letting others read your work is acknowledging that you cannot and will not please everyone, but readers seem particularly opinionated when it comes to story endings. It can make it feel impossible to commit to an ending.
Sarah: I’m sure every writer has a story they just can’t finish. For me, this was a complex, multi-POV story about a family’s day at the beach, where the characters are forced to confront their relationships, their mortality, and the mortality of the planet. No small task for a short story! When I started writing, I already knew the beginning and the ending of the story, I just couldn’t get from A to C, despite multiple redrafts. I tried every technique I knew, including printing the entire story out, cutting up the manuscript with scissors, and moving the pieces around on my living room floor, like a giant jigsaw puzzle. After several months, I gave up.
Flash forward two years, and I took a graduate literature course on Southern Ecology in Literature, and the critical readings in this class gave me the framework I needed to understand what my protagonists had been so disturbed by that day at the beach—to understand the flaws in their thinking and possible avenues for more productive, reconciling thought about the future. In other words: I found my middle. Two years felt like a long time to wait, but I needed the time, I guess, to grow and change my thinking.
Shelby: I don’t always know how a story is going to end when I set out to write it, but I never worry about an ending eluding me. Usually, I get there. A couple of times, I’ve brought story drafts to our workshop for Neidy to comment that maybe my story ends several paragraphs prior to what I shared as the ending. Those comments are always helpful. Sometimes I have trouble letting a story end—I’m always searching for that perfect blend of cadence and emotional weight to signify my story’s completion that I forget a story can end on a simple sentence, that it can just be done.
Sarah: I’ve talked to several very experienced writers, who tell me they have a number of stories they just can’t end. And these stories sit in a folder, and every few months, they take them out and read them again, to see if they’ve learned enough to crack the code of the ending.
One of my favorite anecdotes of this, is Lauren Groff’s admission that the right way to tell her incredible short story “The Wind,” eluded her for almost twenty years. “There are parts of this story that I have tried and failed to tell for over two decades,” she wrote in an author’s note in The Best American Short Stories 2022. Her editor read a dozen versions of the story, each time sending it back, “ever so gently suggesting that I unhook the story and let it swim away to grow for a bit longer.” It wasn’t until a confluence of external events—including the pandemic, a summer of protests, and months of isolated parenting—”made this story swim back to the surface, having at last grown so large it was impossible to ignore.” Even the best writers struggle to find an ending, apparently.
Our kernel of advice: It’s impossible to rush a story if it just isn’t ready to be finished.
Inspiration, Information, & Insight
As research for a project in her creative nonfiction workshop, Sarah read Shame by Annie Ernaux. It’s about how a single event—her father’s attempted murder of her mother when Ernaux was 12—was swept under the rug by both of her parents yet had repercussions for the rest of her life. Here, as in her other memoirs, the Nobel Prize-winning Ernaux proves she is a master of the pertinent detail and the excavation of memory.
Shelby devoured an advance copy of Laura van den Berg’s forthcoming novel State of Paradise. While the content is very different from Shelby’s novel-in-progress, the structure is similar, and she’s using it as inspiration to fine-tune hers. She can’t wait for others to read van den Berg’s weird, speculative story, which releases July 9.
This week Neidy read the first two books in The Empyrean series by Rebecca Yarros, Fourth Wing and Iron Flame. She also read First Base by Ally Wiegand.
Natalia started listening to The Fraud by Zadie Smith on audio and reading The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon with two friends. She is slowly but surely getting back into her reading habits.
i am obsessed with this entry of yours and will probably come back to it many times!! thank you :))