Writing a satisfying ending is not easy. Sometimes you just feel it, put it down on paper, and then ‘ahh’, yes, that’s right. More often, for me, it turns out to be more difficult to find the ending than it was to create the germ of idea of what to write about.
I think about endings as having two parts. First, there is the last scene or scenes that make up the final statement of the topic or of the plot. In the movie “Sophie’s Choice” Stingo sees that Sophie and Nathan have committed suicide. That is the end of Sophie and Nathan’s torment and of Stingo’s living relationship with them.
But the movie does not end quite there. Stingo picks up their book of Emily Dickenson reads from “Ample Make This Bed”, as if giving a eulogy. The visuals dissolve to a bridge in Brooklyn and Stingo appears, walking, suitcase in hand. The sky behind him is greyish-blue on one side, fading to pinkish-red on the other where the sun is making its presence known, while the voice-over from the future Stingo talks about Sophie and Nathan, ending with “This was not judgment day. Only morning. Morning: excellent and fair.” The ‘excellent and fair’ comes from “Ample Make This Bed”.
In short stories you don’t always want to tie up the plot. Sometimes you want to leave it open a little, or a lot, and let the reader think about what that means. But you still have to do the other thing; you still have to tell the reader that this is the end and to give them a sense of closure, even if the plot has not closed.
The following is taken from an email I sent to my critique group. During the meeting prior, I had made a comment about wanting more at the end of a member’s 2,400 word story. I had been vague about what I meant and I think they took my comment to mean that I wanted the plot closed up, but I had been vague because I wasn’t clear for myself what I felt. It became clearer to me as a I wrote and tried to explain it.
Do you know the ending of the movie Sophie Choice, where Sophie and her boyfriend are dead and the narrator is crying, watching the sun come up? That’s what I meant, on a smaller scale. Not tying up the plot but a finishing gesture for the story. In music it would be a coda, the tag to tell you the piece is finished. In a short simple form like a Renaissance galliard or courante it might not be written but the musicians might ritard slightly, draw out the notes, or increase the volume so it builds and gives the listener a sense of finish..
Not necessarily the same as a full denouement. I don’t know if there is an equivalent term in writing but this is what I was waiting for in your story, as well as in a number of my own as well. Maybe that last line of dialogue was the finishing gesture, and I only needed a little more preparation (start the ritard earlier) or presence (slightly more volume and length to the final note).
(I had merged the crying with the sun rising in my memory, forgetting the dissolve in between. Hey, it’s been many many years since I watched the movie!)
Sometimes I forget how much better I understand music than writing. Or, at least I think I do. Or maybe some things are, by nature, easier to think about in musical context.
Jazz musicians in small groups know a grab bag of endings that can be used depending on the style and tempo of the performance. Replay the head (the melody) and tag (repeat) the fourth and third to last bars three times, or hold the last chord, or fade out repeating a two or four bar phrase (call a vamp). The choice how to end depends on what feels right.
Restating material from the opening before going to the ending is so common that there are musical shortcuts for doing this. The Italian terms ‘da capo al fine‘ or ‘dal segno al fine‘ mean back to the beginning or back to the sign, and then at the coda sign jump to the coda which is the fine or ending.
The right gesture that gives the right sense of completion is, in my experience, it is not nearly as easy as working out an ending to a piece of music. In music, whether in written or improvised format, I simply hear the music in my head and try different possibilities until it feels right. Because I know how the music feels, I can also feel whether the ending fits. Often, I can simply listen in my head and then improvise right into a natural ending.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t work as easily or reliably with stories. At least not for me. I suspect that this may be due in part to the limited quantity of possible musical endings, or, that music is more forgiving in allowing similar endings. For example, how many times have you heard a song end by fading out? Or how many different recordings of galliards use the same slowing, increasing in volume, sustaining the last note options for endings? Or maybe no one has analyzed and categorized the final gestures of stories to the degree which it is easy to do with music.
The other difference, for me, is that I do not feel stories the way that I feel music. Even music that has no strong pulse nor simple melodies; Webern’s Symphony Opus 21, for example, can have a feel that makes the codas make sense, that feel right.
I’m not so confident about my feel for stories.