A big thank you again to those who sent in their responses. We appreciate everyone’s participation, as it helps to keep this group running! Here were your methods on writing endings…
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Mitchell-Thompson
The conclusion is always the most important and one of the most difficult parts. Endings should be as long as they have to be and only full of the necessary pieces for the reader to use to piece together everything. One can create suspense by adding suspicion and describing the initial feelings (usually anger, hatred, disgust, maybe even sadness) in the final confrontation before revealing the twist with great impact. The twist however should never compromise the meaning and purpose of the text. As for less dramatic pieces without twists, they should be more reflective and the ending should be a resolution to a conflict or a recap and final feelings about the subject - followed by the moral or the point of the story as a final statement.
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BraenuunMy ending's come about when I have exhausted all reasonable paths, tied up all my loose ends, left great emotion, and am able to put my pen down, which is hard. Death can be placed at the beginning for a plot, in the middle to increase suspense and draw out emotion, or at the end to help solve some of the story's plot. I keep the endings from being to flat by dragging back emotion into the trailing words and paragraphs that are mellowing the ending out, so that way those who read will remember what happened earlier and why all the characters did was relevant and important while making sure they'll remember the racked up emotion that rolled like a coaster through the whole ordeal. (I like emotion!) The ending is the last thing they'll hear and will stick in their head the most, so apart from a good start to suck people in, the ending should be the best.
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TygerGurlThe ending I think is very important because it's the last thing people read and one of the things that sticks around with them most after they're done. I don't like to end with the death of a character, I think it's too depressing, but I do like to end on somewhat of a cliffhanger, something that makes the reader go 'ah ha!' or something similar, I like the endings of my stories to be as memorable as the beginnings. To keep the ending from dragging on, I keep it short and simple, wrap up loose ends and explain anything that needs to be explained, a lot of details in the ending isn't a good idea. Likewise, you have to put some action in the ending to keep it from being boring.
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Batpig-SexgodI always know my endings at the beginning of every story I write. Sometimes, I start from the end of the story and work backwards in order to find my beginning so that I can write it all down. I usually consider the ending to be the most important part of any story; a good ending can really make an otherwise boring story turn heads, and a bad ending can ruin what was a wonderful tale. As far as "when" to put the end, there comes a time in every story where you just have to sit down with your timeline as an writer, and say, "This is getting ridiculous. We need to trim it down and wrap this baby up." Once I put the plot to a calendar and count the days or weeks that the story is contained in, it usually seems fairly obvious to me when and where to put the end.
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ForsakenProdigyThe most important thing about endings is that they are satisfying to the reader. Reading a story with a badly-thought-out ending seems like a waste of time. Yes, they should draw all the different parts of the story together in one climax and resolution.
Do I like to write cliffhangers? Not particularly. I'm more of a short story writer. If I was going to write a novel or something I might put a cliffhanger between chapters, but with as short as my works are, it seems inappropriate.
The next Writeaway’s Style will be our last. After that, we’ll summarise all your responses and put them into one deviation for you to refer to. So, for our last journal, we would like to know about editing…
Do you
enjoy editing? Can the idea of editing your work be off-putting?
Do you get someone else to edit your work as well just in case?
Do you simply edit your grammar and spelling? If not, what else?
What happens if you discover that you have “too much” to edit? Do you change your work bit by bit, or do you scrap the whole piece and start again?
How essential is editing?
Any other points?
We look forward to hearing your responses…
Zest
Optimism
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