Novelist Ann Bauer ponders the challenge of writing endings:
“We want a novel to swell with a sense of limitless possibility at the start and in the middle,” wrote the book critic Laura Miller in a 2011 article on Salon. “But we also want it to zero in to a point of inevitability as it ends. For this reason, last lines, like first ones, often suffer from a bad case of Trying Too Hard.”
The key is that inevitability Miller talks about, but mixed with a bit of freshness or surprise.
Readers who have stuck with a novel for many hundreds of pages deserve an ending that makes them think and question, but also one that “fits” with the story they’ve just read. The goal is to be inventive but in such way that the closing section feel seamless and organic, as if it’s the only way this particular tale could possibly end.
Bauer highlights a favorite closing sentence, from The Catcher in the Rye:
Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.
(J.D. Salinger, 1951)
This is one of my favorites because it captures perfectly the sweet, lonesome, almost unearthly quality of Holden Caulfield’s thoughts. And it both contradicts and bears out the theme of the novel, which he has just told to everyone.
For previous Dish on opening lines, head here.
(Hat tip: Thomas Beckwith)
The Dish 