Happily Ever After
- Janet Bone
- Oct 17, 2019
- 2 min read
It’s October, apples are ripe, leaves are turning, summer is over. As writers we know the opening sentence is important. It is the hook which will will draw our readers in - or not.You can probably quote a few famous opening lines of novels. But what about endings? How many of those can you quote? The only one which comes to my mind is: ‘and they all lived happily ever after'. But did they? Life is always full of ups and downs and a happily-ever-after life might be pretty boring. A romance ends with the happy couple in each others arms - but there is a whole life ahead of them after the thrill of first love mellows. A murder mystery ends with the disclosure of ‘who-dunnit’ - but the victim’s family has to move on with their own lives forever marked by the murder, the detective will have other cases to solve. A fantasy ends with the destruction of the ring of power - but the world has to recover and be rebuilt with new power structures in place. These days, it is not uncommon to have a series of books, so the ending of one has to leave an opening for the next and the characters have to develop over the series. And, although summer is over, a new academic year has begun and many of us will be starting a new project, perhaps even a new novel, perhaps taking part in National Novel Writing Month in November. So, as the autumn leaves are falling but NaNoWriMo beckons I ponder: what make a good ending for a book? Too often I have read a really gripping book only to be let down by the ending. Somehow it’s as if the writer has run out of steam, quickly tied off a few loose ends and typed ‘The End’. What had seemed a real puzzle turns out to be quite mundane, or a neat coincidence which doesn’t ring true. Or, sometimes the book goes on long after it should have ended, filling in every detail, closing off intriguing questions which I would have preferred to be left open to my imagination. For me, a good ending is one which leaves me satisfied that the main action has been properly resolved and I can leave it there, but having enjoyed the book enough to wonder ‘what happened next?’ about some of the characters or situations. And that’s how I want to feel about my writing as well as my reading.
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