The best advice I ever heard about writing endings was this:
“If you can’t write your ending, read your beginning.”
Do yourself a favor and refresh your memory on the first couple chapters, especially the opening pages of your novel, and ask:
Where is this taking place? Does your character need to return here for the story to feel complete?
What was your main character thinking? Are those thoughts different now? Revelant, irrelevant?
What was your main character’s problem? Is it resolved? Has your MC gained a new understanding and acceptance?
Did an external event throw your character’s world out of kilter? Is a “new normal” established, and has the passing of the old normal been acknowledged.
Not every question will be relevant, but a couple of them should be. You don’t need to think too hard about these, just ask them and answer them quickly. Let your creative mind ponder them.
The direct answer isn’t what you need to write. They just give you the loose end of a thought thread you can follow to your ending.
Readers don’t keep track of plots as a whole. But just as you have a creative mind, they have a simulated world in their subconcious mind. It knows when an ending is lacking, even if they can’t say what. It’s just a feeling.
Often that sense of incompleteness is because one of the above questions wasn’t answered clearly enough. Those questions are posed in the beginning of the story, so go find them and answer them.
You might be surprised, once again, to discover your accidental genius was already planting the seeds you now need to reap.
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