Don’t wrap up everything too tidily.

No matter how electrifying or beautiful your story is, if it has a weak ending, it will slip away from your reader’s mind and become utterly forgettable. And ending is probably the second-most important part of your story, after a beginning: it’s your absolute last chance to show the reader what this story is all about and why it’s important AND entertaining. So why do so many good writers fudge their endings? Entirely too little time is spent thinking about them. I completely understand — personally, my weak endings are often due to exhaustion. If the story is due that week, I’m often just marching through until I can get to the end and am ready to collapse, not revise, when I get to the final page. But there are a few ways you can leave the reader with a bang instead of a whimper.

1. Save one secret for the end.

Beginning writers often betray a certain anxiety about their own ability to tell a story. They line up the big nuggets of information they want readers to know, and then they spill them out eagerly, often too eagerly. Sometimes we’ve learned about the suicide attempt and the secret lover all on the first page. Really, it’s wise to hold just one piece of this information back, giving us a reason to keep reading to the end. The main plot may be resolved before you get to the last paragraph, but there should be one final surprise — not too gimmicky — that keeps us gasping.

2. Keep us wondering.

Another trap many writers fall into is the desire to wrap everything up neatly. We’ve worked hard on this story and we have our own ideas about how everything should work out, so we wrap everything up and tie it with a bow. In case you were worried about that one character, don’t, because he ends up getting married and living happily ever after. That other character does get the job we see her interviewing for in the last scene. Everything is known.

The problem with that approach is that as soon as everything is known, it stops resembling real life, which has untidy events and no clean beginnings or endings. It makes the story feel pat, artificial, and dead. Nothing can suck the life out of a story like a bad ending; so leave things loose. Keep us wondering how it all works out.

After the jump: one more way to tighten up your ending.

3. Give us a shattering truth.

Most stories shouldn’t have too much analysis. It’s bad form to do all the figuring out for your reader. But if there’s one place where a single, succinct observation or judgement can add punch to your story, it’s in the ending. Here’s where one observation that perfectly captures what’s been happening can really blow your reader out of the water. Let your reader finish your story feeling stunned by insight, and you’ll have a lasting fan of your work.