Bringing Your Plot to a Good Resolution

As mentioned in the Fleshing Out Your Plot article, you should let your story end when the action comes to a close. You want to have a graceful dénouement after the moment when Detective X dodges the bullet, saves Rookie, and captures the crook, but let it be short and sweet, tying up any loose ends that remain and coming to a tight, solid close. Perhaps he stands on a bluff and scatters the ashes of the friendless victim, laying her to rest. Resist the urge to go on about how he marries the D.A., has six children—all of whom become detectives or lawyers. The story is over when the case is solved.

Your story doesn’t have to end happily. Your young man may not find the girl of his dreams. He might realize that his scheming and trickery is not the way to romance and decide that he needs to work on knowing himself before dedicating himself to knowing others. Whatever the outcome might be, Character X must bring it about itself. The police detective must be the one to catch (or not catch) the murderer at the end. There is no satisfaction in watching him struggle through clues and danger only to have someone ride in at the last moment and snatch the case out from under him. The young people looking for love/themselves must make their revelations on their own. Having a parent sit down and spell it out for them will leave the reader deflated. Don’t have the Marines come barging in to save the day. If your character has had the fortitude and leadership to be worthy of the role of protagonist in your story, she or he deserves to be the one that brings everything to its conclusion.

The “paper dragon” (where something looks very real and frightening but turns out to be made of paper) is the most frustrating ending of all. If at the end it all turns out to be a dream or the character comes to realize that his wife really does love him and was late getting him a Christmas present because she needed to work one more shift at her secret second job as a department store elf to buy him his enormous flatscreen TV and all his sneaking around to catch her cheating was all for naught, your readers are going to want to track you down and give you a good slap up the side of the head. The “idiot script” is immensely popular in movies and may be entertaining enough for ninety minutes of viewing, but leave those kinds of stories to the movies. Spending several hours reading about the ridiculous jealous husband’s bungling is bound to get tiresome. If he hasn’t been bungling and the reader is led to believe the wife really has been cheating all along, having that drama turn out to be nothing is frustrating. Don’t waste the reader’s sympathy. If you’ve given your character a serious problem to solve, let him or her solve it in a serious way.