What Makes An Ending Good?

I’ve been mulling over some comments lately and it got me thinking – so I figured I’d ask and see if I could gather a consensus from a broader audience than the people who live in my head (after all, they pretty much do whatever I tell them to, so it’s hard to get them to disagree with me…though they try.) The question is, really, exactly what it says in the subject: what makes an ending good?

For me, if a novel wraps up in such a way that I can close the cover and think to myself, “Okay, the immediate problem is solved. Sure, there’s more that will have to happen at some point down the road, but that’s for another day – whether or not there’s another book in the series planned.” Then I’m good. And that’s what I always aim for at the end of my books – romance or not. If you can close the cover and know that, at this moment, the characters are in a good place based on the struggles they just went through and that if there was never another book, you could assume that they ended up happy, then I’ve done my job. That’s what I did in Hope Deferred – and I’m sorry that there are a few people out there who feel its ending is a manipulative cliffhanger. To me, a manipulative cliffhanger would be not explaining the outcome of the medical procedures that the couples went through – just have the phone ring, find out it’s the doctor and then…end. THAT’S a cliff hanger. But if you decided not to read Love Defined when it comes out in December, with the way things ended in Hope Deferred, June and July are in a good place, it’d be a good ending, for both of them. Still, that’s the beauty of books – loving them (or hating them) is incredibly subjective.

Regardless of that, I thought I’d run through in more detail my thoughts – cause they do change, somewhat, depending on the genre.

In romance, this is a super easy to answer question, at least for me. Romance requires Happily Ever After. I know some people are okay with Happy For Now, but I don’t even love those. I want a ring on a finger, so that I can daydream about their wedding and kids and all that other great stuff that goes into the HEA.

But that doesn’t have to be the case for non-romance genres.

In thrillers, the good guy needs to prevail against the immediate villain, but if there’s a larger peril – something that stretches through a series and is the ultimate reason why the hero does what s/he does – that can still be outstanding. Maybe they discovered a clue of some sort that’s getting them closer to a solution, but you can’t tie up every loose end at the end of every novel or it’s hard to have a coherent series.

With mysteries or suspense, it’s kind of like a thriller in my  mind. The primary mystery needs to be solved, but there can still be larger forces at play that aren’t all tied up. Otherwise you’re stuck with needing your hero to be a PI or police officer if they’re going to continue in a series, lest you end up with the Jessica Fletcher syndrome where you feel sorry for anyone who becomes a friend of the hero because it means they, or someone they love, is about to die.

In speculative/sci-fi/fantasy (I’m old, I’ll admit I’m having a hard time going with “speculative” instead of the sci-fi/fantasy I grew up on. But I’m trying) you start to get a little more leeway. Yes, there needs to be some sort of quest that you’ve at least made good progress toward, but it doesn’t have to have a complete ending. I’m okay with a cliff hangerish ending here – provided the novel doesn’t just stop because it reached a certain length. (I’ve read a few that did that – hate that.) There still needs to be some kind of resolution and wrapping up – just maybe with fewer answers and an introduction to the next quest that will be undertaken. Or, it can go the route of larger quest still at large, smaller chunk of journey complete.

But what about women’s fiction (or literary fiction)? If it’s a stand alone, then obviously there needs to be some sort of conclusion – though for these two they tend not to be as happy all the time (at least in my experience). But if it’s a series…can it still follow the “wrap up the immediate arc but have a larger arc that spreads the series” formula? I would tend to say yes, but what are your thoughts?

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