*Spoiler Alert: I’m going to write about the ending of The House That Wasn’t There at the end of this post. If you haven’t read it, you’ve been warned. I’ll try to give sufficient warning. In any case, I plan to be vague with the details.
Why Is the Ending so Important?
Everyone has either read a book or watched a movie that was good, until it wasn’t. What happened? The ending was ruined. Why does this happen? What is it about an ending that makes you feel as if your opinion hinges on those last few pages? Reading a book is an investment in both time and emotion. We spend a number of hours and several hundred pages with the characters contained within a novel. In that span of time, an emotional connection is made in some form, the strength of which is dependent on the writer’s ability to hook you. No matter the strength of that connection, an unsatisfactory ending can leave you feeling cheated out of your time and wishing the writer had spent more time developing the ending.
What Makes a Good Ending?
As readers, we know when we’ve read a bad book and we know when we’ve thoroughly enjoyed one. What factors go into the best ending for your book? Let’s break down the elements that play a part.
- It should surprise the reader but feel inevitable. The reader shouldn’t see the ending coming. Yet everything should make sense as they look back upon the Main Character’s journey.
- Wrap up all or most of the plotlines from the novel. Unresolved plotlines aren’t a good idea unless you’re writing a series. I say most because leaving the reader wondering about a small, insignificant aspect of the novel isn’t a bad idea. In fact, I’ve done it on purpose. Again, it needs to small, otherwise you risk having an unsatisfied reader.
- Leave the reader satisfied in the journey they’ve undertaken. Reading a novel is an investment in both time and emotion. If you’ve done it right, they’ll look back with fondness on that journey.
- The main character needs to be changed in some way by the events of the story. Who wants to read a story about a character that gets put through the wringer only to end up virtually the same on page 425 as they were on page 1? I’ll skip that, thanks.
- The main character must solve the problem of the novel. The main character spends the entire with a problem to solve. Hundreds of pages are spent in pursuit of that solution. If a secondary character swoops in and solves the problem for the M.C., are they really the M.C.?
*Here’s the spoiler alert.
My Mistake
That last element is what I’d like to focus on. The main character must solve the problem of the novel. I believe John Matthew Fox of the YouTube Channel, Book Fox, was the person that used that terminology (he’s an editor and makes great videos, so check him out if you haven’t). I was watching one of his videos when I realized I messed up.
In The House That Wasn’t There, Conner is trapped in a house only he can see, forced to relive the occasions he committed each of the seven deadly sins. The problem of the novel is obvious, escape from the house. Now, I’m not going to go into specifics about how I managed to break an unofficial rule of novel endings, but I did.
I believe it was also Fox that said, “If the main character doesn’t solve the problem, then maybe they aren’t the main character.” Of course, this would infer that the main character is someone else in the book that did solve the problem. So, If Conner isn’t the main character of the novel, then who is? I guess you’ll have to read it to find out.
Thanks for reading.
Stephen M. Roth
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Stephen Roth
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Stephen Michael Roth 