SPA Girls Podcast – EP78 – How To End With A BANG!
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We did beginnings last week, so we thought we’d pay tribute to endings this time around… 🙂 Many authors rush through the ending of their book, because by the time they get there, they’re sick of the whole concept… But your ending is what will lead readers onto your next book, so you need to spend as much time on your ending as your beginning! If you write a fizzer that ends too quickly or doesn’t deliver on your promises throughout the story, you’re not going to get lifetime readers who follow your every move.
With this in mind, we talk about chapter endings, and endings for the whole book. We give some ideas on what we do to make sure our endings are as good as we can make them, and give a few tips and tricks on creating the best ending you can!
What’s with Cheryl writing the ending before she gets there! Odd right? It’s not all that uncommon surprisingly. Plenty of writers do it! Remember, no one shoe fits all in this game.
The ending is vital because it is what will make your reader want to buy the next book. You must leave them feeling like they want more!
HEA = Happy Ever After ending. Marriage, life-long love, yadda yadda
HFN = Happy For Now ending. No actual promise of happily every after, but the reader is left with a happy and uplifting note.
Remember the ending is the payoff for the rest of the book. It must make sense to the reader. The characters can’t turn around in the last few pages and do something completely out of character from their behavior in the rest of the book. It has to tie in, and the end is the culmination of all those things, like internal and external conflict, finding a resolution.
Remember, know the rules of romance, if you want to break the rules!
DON’T DISAPPOINT YOUR READER.
We want to relate to the characters also. We want to know that whatever hell we the writers have put them through, they will resolve it and continue to do so in their lives.
Leslie Wanger the writer of Writing Romance for Dummies says – too often the real story ends with the last chapter, but the author adds an epilog just to show the characters have married and their lives are fine. I find this to be anticlimactic.
Wendy sometimes writes her endings on the second draft.
Chapter endings are also important. They will make your reader keep turning the page. Use things like;
Climax, changing viewpoints, dialogue, cliff hangers, and emotional tension.
But remember, what you want to achieve is the need for the reader to keep reading!
-If you are not happy with a chapter ending, then look at changing to another person’s point of view. Sometimes it’s best to use the character who has the most, emotionally, to lose.
Links
Leslie Wanger – https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Romance-Dummies-Leslie-Wainger/dp/0764525549
