An Ending Is Easy, But Endings Are Hard; and some good news, and jokes

Thoughts about what endings mean, plus I freak out about being nominated for a Nebula Award

Today I want to talk to you about what endings mean. I'm gearing up for a historic snowstorm in my region. Liberal estimates suggest two feet of wet snow and we're basically guaranteed a power outage. It’s got me dwelling on what we take away from the endings of stories—

TELL THEM GOOD NEWS

Yes okay, first let’s talk good news.

The Locus Recommended Reading List came out relatively recently, and I was flattered to have *two* stories appear on it. Both "D.I.Y." from Tordotcom and "The Coward Who Stole God's Name" from Uncanny Magazine made it onto Locus's list of notable short stories of the last year.

This means both are automatically eligible for the Locus Award for Best Short Story. Voting is open now, and is unlike many major awards, is free to everyone who is willing to take a short survey. The Locus Awards are a great way to show support for your favorite writers, and for all the fiction that helped you get through last year.

But then I got even more good news: "D.I.Y." is also a finalist for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story! This marks my third year in a row as a finalist for the Nebula for Best Short Story, which genuinely blows me away.

There are so many great works on both the Locus Recommended Reading List and the Nebula Ballot. It’s a genuine honor to be in the company of such writers. And thank to you to everyone who shows my little stories support and love.

NOW ONTO THE ESSAY. TELL THEM ABOUT ENDINGS.

Let me talk to you about good endings.

Not a good ending. Any ending could be a good ending for the right story. If you slay the evil wizard at the end of your D&D campaign, everybody’s happy. If you slay the evil wizard at the end of Gone Girl, everyone looks at you weird.

There are a lot of kinds of “an ending.” There are sad endings and tragic endings, designed to rob you of catharsis, or to hurt you in some way that creates tears. There are endings that confirm our worst doubts about the characters, or that say the dystopia is inescapable. Sometimes these are profoundly honest. Those ones where the tragic ending is perfect at the ones that hurt the worst to read.

And of course there are happy endings and triumphant endings. Endings where the right two people become a couple and kiss and ride off into their Happily Ever After. Endings where the killer is caught and innocent lives are rescued. Endings that tell us resistance can bring real change to our lives and the lives of those we love, or that show us we are more resilient than we knew that we can survive towering challenges.

In the battle between Happy Endings and Sad Endings, I was always more attracted to complicated endings. Endings that ask us to wrestle with them, and that don’t give us mere heartbreak or joy. Lord of the Rings ends with Sauron’s ring destroyed, sure. But it also ends with the Shire being destroyed. And the Shire is rebuilt, and a good man is king, and Sam has kids. But also Frodo is so broken that he chooses to ride off to (let’s be honest) the afterlife because he can’t stand another day on Middle Earth. Some heroes are celebrated and become legends, Gandalf is leaving our world, and two best friends will never see each other again. Lord of the Rings ends inviting you to wrestle with its deeply mingled feelings of relief, and longing, and defeat, and insecurity, and optimism, and brokenness. That sort of ending sticks with me longer than rocks falling and everybody dying. It echoes because its feelings are bouncing back and forth, like sounds off walls, off of positives and negatives. It’s a good ending because it works for that trilogy.

But the ending of Lord of the Rings is just an ending.

What about endings? Plural?

A good ending is the culmination of a good story. But what does ending after ending after ending mean? What does consuming so many conclusions do to us?

Consider some of your favorite writers. What are the commonalities between all the endings of their works? How has the sequence of their endings affected you? What do those endings do to your definition of them as writers?

A mystery writer whose novels always end with the detective duo figuring out the truth, exposing it, and bringing everyone to justice gets a certain reputation. After three or four such books, you might even come to expect that every mystery they write will end that way. You might want it. You might be upset if the next mystery ended with the characters confessing that there’s no way to solve it, and they have to move on with their lives, recognizing the limits of human reason and their abilities.

If you liked that author’s solidly formulaic books, how would you feel about that fateful one where the characters said it was unsolvable?

Stephen King and the Twilight Zone got to me when I was impressionable. Both King’s stories and Twilight Zone’s episodes were frequently about characters struggling mightily with their circumstances, and in both, the endings were never certain. King might let everybody get out alive, or he might kill them, or leave just a couple characters alive and grieving and broken. Twilight Zone might do all that, or something way weirder. Sometimes Twilight Zone would end the story completely unresolved; the plane that flew through a portal in time and jumped from era to era is just trapped that way, with no climax at all, and maybe it flies forever. So Twilight Zone said come watch our next story, but know it might have a happy ending, a sad ending, a shocking ending, or no ending because endings aren’t real.

When I was young, this hit me as the model of how endings should work. If all Horror stories end happily, then we’ll gradually believe less in their peril and stakes. You should have at least enough Horror stories ending grimly so that all your future ones have teeth. I don’t want to be certain about an ending of a Horror story. Horror endings, all put together, should make me hope enough to worry, and worry enough to hope.

Ironically the current wave of prestige Horror films from the likes of A24 and Annapurna and Neon have so many bleak endings that bleak endings have also lost their power for me. Many of these movies are still great; I’m in love with Under the Skin and Hatching and It Comes at Night. But if I expect a story is hopeless, then there’s no tension. There’s no dread for me in certainty. There’s only resignation.

Which is a funny way of saying: if you want to break my heart, you have to give me a fighting chance.

All of this makes me question my own catalog of stories. Do I write the same ending all the time?

Honestly, the answer is up to you. You can decide if I write the same endings, or have the same effects on you. You also get to decide if that’s a good thing.

But when I write certain kinds of stories, I want certain things in my endings. If I write a story about very heavy lived experiences, like the trauma of an abusive relationship, I don’t want to end it in a way that trivializes those matters. The heavier or more meaningful the subject, the more the complex ending appeals. In fact, I want my audience to expect that I will do justice by any heavy matter that I bring up to them. Which is an argument for consistency, of a stripe.

When I look at my own catalog, I see a lot of different endings. Some of these stories end on betrayals and horror; some end on friendships being forged, or existing friendships being deepened. At least two of these (I won’t name them) are comedies that end on jokes.

And, if you’ll flatter an old man, you’ll agree that some of these endings are complex. If you think one of my stories has the “complex” type of ending, please drop a comment on which story does that for you. I’m so curious.

The complex ending is not objectively the best. Fiction has many forms and uses. I have an E.R. nurse friend who tears through Paranormal Romances for the fun and erotic release. If they didn’t end in satisfying ways, they wouldn’t help her relax enough to keep doing her incredibly stressful job. The formulaic ending does her a service.

But then I have friends who are absolute junkies for bleak fiction, who just can’t enjoy themselves if things don’t end disastrously, with blood dripping out of their Kindles. They’re not wrong either.

So consistency in endings can be very useful to readers, especially ones with specific needs.

And sometimes deliberately inconsistency works on other readers—like me. I want to be on my toes, wondering how this all could wrap up when there are only twenty pages left in my right hand. And I never forget an author who can keep me uncertain, ending after ending.

Who are some of your favorite authors who have mastered the ending? What about their endings keeps getting you, over and over?

OKAY THAT’S ENOUGH ENDINGS

Thank you, bold text. But how do I end a newsletter about endings?

GIVE THEM FUNNY THINGS

Can do!