Endings
So, I'm reading The Best American Short Stories of 2005 and in the authors' notes, one of the authors says:
What made the fictionalized version of interest to me, in the end, was the turn that comes in the final paragraph--which has nothing to do with my friend's real-life account. Without that final turn, the story might be simply ordinary and predictable. With it, everything that precedes it suddenly shifts into a new conifguration. That turn still surprises me, and I hope it surprises readers too.
But it doesn't. It is totally and amazingly predictable. Because, for one thing, she completely gives away the ending in the title of the story, 'A Taste of Dust.' And even if she'd managed not to spoiler her own story with the title, it's not that surprising an ending. It's like she said, well, it could be either this or that and pickedthat without ever trying to see if there was a third or maybe fourth alternative. The writing's nice and all, but I'm beginning to think that endings are not the strong suit of the lit crowd (okay, if you only read certain SF/F stories, you'd probably conclude that endings are not the strong suit of the SF/F crowd either).
I am very picky about endings (which is very snobby of me considering that I have only recently begun to achieve even half-decent endings to my own stories). A bad ending can ruin a good story for me and even a 'blah' ending can negate most of the great writing, world-building, and characterization that have gone before. But a good ending...wow, it makes everything else worthwhile.
Things that I think make a good ending:
- Completely surprising and totally predictable at the same time
- Resonates with and completes the beginning of the story
- Is fully earned by the characters in the story
- Makes the story make sense in a broader way
- Arises organically out of everything that has gone before
- Completes an emotional arc in some way
A good ending makes me happy to have read the story, whether it's a happy ending or not.
A good ending doesn't have to be happy, but it has to be right.
Of course, none of this says anything about how to write a good ending. Mostly for me, I think it's knowing exactly what the story is about narratively and emotionally.
Thoughts?