All stories eventually come to an end, which is why the best endings are bittersweet. You’ve invested your time and attention getting to know the characters, setting, and story, which is why you’re you’re both pleased and sad when they’re finally over.

Different endings will leave you feeling different emotions, but they should always be satisfying. Lousy endings will forever taint your memory of an otherwise enjoyable narrative.

6 Different Types of Endings

In some ways, a story is all about its ending. Everything that happens leads up to the conclusion, and it’s often what people will remember the most. Below are six possible ways to end your story.

Spoiler alert! We’ll be talking about endings from actual books that you might have not read yet.

1. Resolved Ending

In a resolved ending, all questions are answered and no loose strings are left untied. They have no room for continuation as everything has already been clearly presented to the reader.

This is perhaps the most common ending in literature. It’s frequently seen in fairy tales, which typically end in “and they lived happily ever after.”

A resolved ending is not necessarily a happy ending, though. What matters is that the story provides readers with satisfying closure. Just take a look at the original versions of fairy tales and you’ll see that you can have a resolved ending that isn’t always happy!

The Twilight Saga features an exaggerated version of this. All of Bella’s problems are solved and she goes home to a happy family. And despite several battles throughout the series, none of the main characters die.

Not only is the final chapter titled “The Happily Ever After,” but the series actually ends with “And then we continued blissfully into this small but perfect piece of our forever.”

2. Unresolved Ending

Unresolved endings leave the audience with more questions than answers. There is some degree of resolution but the audience is largely left wanting more of the story.

The most popular version of this is the cliffhanger. Book series go for this kind of ending as it motivates the readers to continue reading into the next book.

The Harry Potter series frequently uses this kind of ending. The Half-Blood Prince is perhaps the most significant. After the battle that kills Dumbledore, Harry discovers that the Horcrux they recovered is fake, taken by an as-of-yet unnamed Death Eater.

The final scene has the trio vowing to find all of the Horcruxes, signifying to the readers that the protagonists are now the ones going on an offensive against Voldemort.

3. Unexpected Ending

An unexpected ending is one that catches your audience by surprise. Some are subtle and clever, while others will make you shake your fist at the pages. What matters is that it’s something that they never suspected would happen.

Twist endings are good for playing with your audience’s emotions, but they also come with significant risks. People will appreciate the effort it took for you to conceal the ending, while still leaving enough details in the plot to justify it. But, it could also just ruin the story for them.

Ian McEwan’s Atonement is an excellent example of this. You’re taken into a tale of two lovers separated by a mistake, who finally have a chance to be together. In reality, they die without seeing each other again. The whole book is revealed to be written by the person guilty of their separation.

4. Expanded Ending

An expanded ending, also called an epilogue, depicts a scene that is beyond the events of the story itself. Often, it jumps forward in time, explaining what happens to the main characters years later.

Writers use it to make a final comment. Sometimes it’s to answer a question that can’t be answered in the main storyline. Like whether the protagonist’s severely ill daughter survives and graduates college.

Other times it’s to reward the reader by showing them the fate of the characters they’ve grown to love. It tells them that the battles these characters went through were not in vain.

Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief does this. An air raid kills everyone in the book except the young Liesel. Years later, she dies an old woman, surrounded by family and friends. Death comes to collect her soul and they converse briefly about the nature of humanity.

5. Ambiguous Ending

An ambiguous ending merely suggests how the story possibly ends. It leaves just enough details for readers to imagine for themselves what happens after the final scene.

There is no right or wrong answer, as readers can arrive at different conclusions. It all depends on how they decide to explore the given information. As such, they can ponder how things might have ended long after they put down the book.

It’s similar to an unresolved ending, but rather than having the readers waiting for answers, it leaves things open to interpretation instead.

Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar ends this way. Esther undergoes shock therapy to treat her depression. The book ends just as she steps into a room with her doctors, who will decide if she’s ready to be discharged. The final line simply reads: “I stepped into the room.”

6. Tied Ending

A tied ending is one that comes full circle, ending where it originally began. Simply put, it reveals the ending before filling in the details on how this came to be. Writers can state this explicitly or hide the reveal until the last second.

This can take away some surprises for the reader, but it makes them curious about how a character came to be in a certain situation. As details are revealed, they begin to form a coherent picture of what has happened.

In some ways, this kind of ending is easier to write, as you already know the direction the story is going. But the events in the middle must be enthralling enough to keep the audience reading a story they already know the ending of.

Arthur C. Clarke’s short story The Star makes use of this. In the beginning, you’re introduced to a group of space explorers studying a destroyed planet containing remnants of an advanced civilization. One of them is a priest currently having a crisis of faith.

In the end, his crisis of faith is revealed to be because the star that destroyed the planet is the same one that heralded the birth of Jesus.

Tips on Writing the Perfect Ending

As a writer, it’s in your best interest to write the ending that fits your story. But ending a story is as difficult (maybe even harder) than starting it. Here are a few tips you can use to create the perfect ending for your story.

Discover your central question.

At every story’s core is a question that it seeks to answer. Will the two lovers have a happy ending? Can the hero save the world? Who killed the victim and why?

This is the driving force behind your plot. It starts the conflict and leads the characters on a meaningful journey that ends in success, defeat, or change.

Remember, the beginning of a story makes a promise; the end is where it delivers. Answering the central question ensures that your readers feel that it was worth it to stick around until the last page.

Make sure events lead to a believable ending.

What readers hate most is a ridiculous ending. They spend time reading through events they believe to be significant to the story, only to be blindsided by an ending that doesn’t fit.

An ending that seems to come out of nowhere just isn’t believable because there’s no basis for it to happen. This is a deus ex machina, a forced attempt to resolve the conflict and end the story. The events of the story are disregarded in favor of an artificial resolution.

So make sure that your plot will mean something. Anything that happens inside the narrative must build towards a satisfying ending.

This applies to all kinds of endings, even unexpected ones. The trick is to pull off a surprise that seems inevitable in retrospect. People might just slap themselves for not realizing things sooner.

Pull out all the stops.

In some ways, the final chapter is more crucial than the first. It’s where you make a lasting impression on your readers.

Brandon Sanderson’s books often involve multiple viewpoints and plot threads. The closer you get to the end, the faster the pace seems to get. Eventually, the events converge into high-paced action sequences that culminate in explosive endings. Fans have termed this “the Sanderlanche.”

Think about the emotions you’ve been building throughout the narrative. Consider the events leading up to the finale, and ask yourself what the readers will feel and remember after finishing your book.

Make sure you leave your readers with a powerful image. Often, this image answers the central question in your story.

Don’t cram.

If you add too much information in the end, your readers will find it difficult to make sense of them. Scenes start to drag, dialogue becomes boring, and the resolution loses its excitement.

Leave some things unsaid and let the readers reach their own conclusions. By not including all of them, you free up your narrative from things that can bog it down. You now have space for the most important details of the ending.

Also, make sure to wrap up your subplots just before the main plot’s resolution. This way, you avoid cramming everything into the last scenes.

Don’t use a cliche ending.

Some genres demand a specific kind of ending. Romance concludes with a happily ever after, horror with the protagonists defeating the evil, and mysteries with identifying the killer.

It’s what your audience expects and there’s nothing wrong with giving it to them. But cliches aren’t necessarily what your readers want.

More accurately, the audience wants a specific ending, presented to them in a way that’s different from the other stories they’ve read.

Innovate by using a cliche as a base and turn it into your own ending. You want to make it familiar enough for the reader but different enough that they’re not able to guess how things happen.

What’s In a Great Ending?

Great endings linger in the mind. They leave readers in a state of catharsis that can last days after they’re done with your story. It’s one of the reasons why people end up with book hangovers.

Essentially, a great ending has three things: a resolution, an element of surprise, and a transformation.

It must resolve the central conflict you introduced in the beginning. People should feel that the story is complete once they get to the last sentence. if you’re working with a series, think of each book as a story arc. Each arc must be done before moving on to the next.

Satisfying endings must also always have some degree of surprise. If you write a predictable ending, you won’t be able to build the necessary emotions that make scenes memorable.

And lastly, the story must end with the characters having undergone character development. They must no longer be the people they were during the start of the story. This change signifies that the journey they went through had an effect. Whether it’s good or bad entirely depends on you.

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