Sign up to receive our regular news and events announcements – we send about one newsletter per month.

Open Right

Rowan McAuley: Creative Writing Workshop 3: The Sense of an Ending

Session Info:

No matter how good your story, your reader’s overall assessment of it will be heavily influenced by how it ends.  Knowing how to end — and when — is one of the hardest aspects of crafting your narrative and deserves special attention.  We will discuss the endings of several novels by well-known authors, looking at what makes for a satisfying (or even satisfyingly frustrating) end.

Topics:
  • Are there any rules around how a story should end? (Genre, expectation, the story’s contract with its reader)
  • Is an ending necessarily a conclusion? What must be said?  What can or should be left open?
  • Discussion of endings of well-known authors’ novels. What makes them effective? How do they keep (or break) their contracts with the reader?
  • Ending your story: how will you recognise the right place to stop? Can you start with an ending?  What do you want your reader’s last impression to be?