This is the lastest instalment of How Not To Write A Novel, a series that began as a review (of sorts) of a book that was too terrible to be named, broken down into all the things it did that you Really Shouldn't Do. The series is broadening to encompass the howlers in other books I've read in the meantime, but to keep things simple (and avoid unnecessary tact and diplomacy) I'm going to refer to all of them as Nameless, as identifying which books are Doing It Wrong isn't really the point, here. Previous instalments are listed here (the early ones are down the bottom of the page).

The ending is the most important part of the book. Oh, sure, the first fifty pages will get your book picked up and purchased, but the ending is what you leave your reader with. If you nerf your ending, you have one very grumpy reader, who feels that the hours of their life they just entrusted to you were wasted, because the book all came to nothing. They're unsatisfied, they don't have closure to the emotional journey you put them on, and they may even feel depressed or angry without necessarily knowing why. But they almost certainly won't pick up or recommend any of your books.

For the moment, I'm not talking about epilogues - they're slightly separate to an ending, and I'll deal with how to muck them up in another post. But there are a lot of ways you can screw up your book's ending, but they mostly boil down to any, some or all of:

End your book at the wrong moment

The best example of this is actually a film - anyone who's seen The Return of the King has a foggy memory of the ending, or rather endings. The film culminates in about 5 or 6 endings (possibly more), each seemingly closing the story, fading to black and signalling to the audience that the story is over, before lifting the curtain once more to say - oh, wait, no, not yet! The result is a confused mess of emotion, as the audience keeps feeling that this is the final moment of tying things together before being reminded - but wait, there's more! 

Books can have run-on endings as well - endings that seem to just not get to the point, or perhaps find the point and hammer it into oblivion. But even worse is the book that ends before it's ready. Think back to Return of the King - what if it ended as soon as the ring was destroyed? No rescue mission for Frodo and Sam, no wedding or coronation, and even more importantly - no moment where the hobbits run the rangers out of the shire, proving once and for all (and to their own people) that they are heroes in their own right. (That ending had to be cut from the movie because it would have mucked up the pacing. That's why they have Aragorn and the entire coronation assembly bow to the four hobbits - it achieves the same emotional meaning of the hobbits having earned respect for themselves and their race.).

Nameless did this - ending the story three-quarters of the way through a train journey back to the character's home town, where she would have to finally face the choice and love triangle that's been plaguing her the entire novel. Instead of the character showing how she's grown and changed through her story, the story ends just before that moment (because the author wanted to save that final moment of change for the series ending, instead of the book ending. Unfortunately, she naffed that one up, too, but in a different way.) The result is a story that just stops, rather than ends. It feels cut off, like the transmission ended, rather than closing, and the reader is left looking for the point of the story.

Don't close the chief storyline

 A novel typically has two main storylines - the external one (Frodo's going to destroy the ring) and the internal one (Frodo's struggle with the ring's power). An ending has to tie up and close both of them - not just finish one and hope the other sort of works itself out. Internal stories are the most-often neglected here, where the character starts to grow and change but get stalled partway through when the external story takes over. All that's really missing are a few key scenes where the character can demonstrate their change, but instead we're left with a complete external story and a half-baked internal journey. 

The problem is, it's the internal journey that's the point; the external one is just the impetus for change. The real story is people; external stories are just Stuff That Happens, and it loses all meaning if the People It Happens To story peters out halfway. Imagine if Frodo carried the ring all the way to Mordor, through all the trials and tests, scaled the mountain struggling, then just dropped the ring in with a sigh of relief. Boooorriiiiing. That story has power because Frodo's character is inverted. He struggles with this mighty task, doing his best and taking the hard road because that's what will lead to completing it, and then at the critical moment, he fails. He can't give up the ring. This pure and good person has succumbed to temptation, and all is lost. The fact that Frodo's character has changed gives testement to how incredible his task and journey is - that's why we care. But he also needs to be redeemed from that moment - we need to see that once the ring has been destroyed, the goodness of Frodo returns. He can never be as he was - his innocence is destroyed in that moment of failure - but he can be reborn into something new.

Taking shortcuts to get to the ending

This is how the Nameless book above stuffed up the entire series. It's very similar to not closing the chief storyline, but the omissions happen before the story ends. In Nameless, we have a character (B) who has fought the notion of love for the entire three books. Love is dangerous, it makes you vulnerable, and she's not sure who she loves, how she loves or whether she's even capable of it. And that part of her character is pretty firmly sketched - she's clearly not someone who really understands love or herself terribly well. 

The ending of the series has her finally (apparently) loving one of the partners (A) from her love triangle, and him loving her back. But the problem is that these feelings of love occur over about two pages. We have two people, one of whom has been broken and brainwashed quite recently, and the other who's been broken the entire series. Not twenty pages ago, character A was arguably insane and trying to kill his former beloved due to brainwashing. And said beloved is utterly emotionally broken over the death of her sister and the gruelling journey she's been through, and never seemed to understand or accept love in the first place. But in the space of two pages, they're lovers and happy together.

It doesn't work because the key character change (learning to love for character B, redeption (from his insanity) for character A ) happens off-screen. It's told, it's summarised, and so it rings false. We don't believe it.

Crucial moments of your character's story must not be skimmed over. I find that series thoroughly depressing to read, because what I take from it in the end is two people who are irredeemably broken pretending to love each other because they don't know how to put themselves back together, in a world that's utterly shattered. Which is not, I suspect, what the author intended.

If we had seen evidence of their change - actions, rather than just words - it would be a different story (hah), but you must show the moments of change that your story relies upon.

Not following the character arc

 This is one that, I must admit, I kept running into when trying to plan my own novels. The ending works, drama-wise, but it's just not in keeping with the arc of your character. Imagine Frodo has spent all his energies fighting the ring's temptations and battling to get to Mordor, and when he gets there he has to fight with Sauron himself. Very dramatic, yes, but ultimately not really where the character arc was headed. Frodo's arc was about resisting temptation, staying true to yourself, doing the right thing despite fear. While you can fit 'battle giant evil lord' into that, it has too many aspects that weren't foreshadowed.

The climactic moment of the story should distill the internal journey down to its core - nothing but Frodo and the choice to keep the ring or destroy it. Otherwise your key moments are lost in the noise.

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