From the course: Is There A Book In You? Learn to Create Your Own Masterpiece

How do you want your story to end?

From the course: Is There A Book In You? Learn to Create Your Own Masterpiece

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How do you want your story to end?

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- So let's talk about the ending of your book. How do you want your reader to walk away? And this is something you actually need to think about. Do you want them to walk away thinking, "Oh, isn't that just gorgeous, now that was a chocolate box ending". Or do you want them walking away thinking, "Oh God, I wonder what would happen next?" Are you opening yourself up to sequel or are you just happy to leave the story open to the reader's interpretation of what's going to happen at the end? Or are you going to leave them with a bang or are you going to do something completely unexpected? So that really is up to you. How do you want your story to end? How do you want the reader to close the book and feel, do they feel completely satisfied? Are they thinking, "Oh God, I wonder if?" Or are they dying to see what happens next and hoping for a sequel or are they thinking, "God, I wonder why she did that, I wouldn't have done that, I would have done this." So really that's completely up to you, but it's lovely to have the option to do what you want with the end. It's funny, actually, in some books, I feel there needs to be a complete resolution for all the characters. And this other book that I've written, I kind of like to leave it open-ended because that just feels the way the characters should finish the book. And I feel that it's up to the reader to figure out what happens next. So really it depends again on the story and how it's going and how it's flowing. I've just finished reading a book actually and the very last line was an absolute clincher. Waited for the whole book to figure out what was going on and she kept it until the very last line. And that was really, really clever. And everyone's talking about the last line. So people will often talk about the first line of a book, but the last line can be just as effective and powerful. So you need to figure out what you want to do with your ending. And do you want it to be wrapped up in a bow or do you want to leave it open-ended or do you want to shock your reader? It's up to you, but you need to figure that one out.

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