Dear Authors, Great (and terrible) Endings

it's time for another dear authors video usually trying to do one of these a month but there was such a high request I guess for me to do one on endings after we did the beginnings one and it sounded fun so I we're gonna do it but before we get into all that a quick shout out to today's sponsors Squarespace which is an all-in-one platform that helps you build a website business marketing design analytics it's an easy to use platform that helps you build your online presence and we're going to talk more about them in a little bit all right dear authors we're talking about endings I posted on the community tab yesterday so it's a day later I asked for great endings and things that you love to see whether it's tropes or devices or if you're actually giving examples spoiler free of endings that you've seen and loved I also mentioned that you could also do terrible endings and I have a feeling that there will be plenty of those as well but let's go through it together I will have linked in the corner as well as a description the playlist for the series if you're just now finding this but essentially the point of this is readers getting together and talking about what we love and don't love to see in the books we read oh and I should probably also mention actually I've had a couple people point out to me that I should be saying in these videos I should mention that I also do manuscript critique work so if that interests you at all check out my website it's linked in the description okay let's start this out with the most up voted comment in the thread when the author has an amazing set up and builds up an awesome finale but it turns out to be a dream the whole time to me it's lazy cop-out cuz you just couldn't make him a good payout man man I haven't seen this one in a long time but you have brought back some memories of books that I have loved and been so disappointed by it's true it doesn't just have to be the dream thing I've also seen it happen where some somehow time gets reversed or it was an alternate timeline and they were able to reset it and jump into another timeline or something like that and to me that is that basically if you end the book in a way that makes it so the entire everything we just went through the entire like three to 700 pages that we just read was pointless in the end it never mattered anyway that makes me feel like it was pointless to read the book you want a satisfying ending not one that says all this there was there was no reason for it oh I'm so glad that's not a common trope anymore I hate when the author makes all the main characters end up in a relationship by the end just for the sake of it I do too the coupling up at the end is it's rough especially if you have a large cast of a friendship group a crew of people accomplishing something and either everybody couples up within that group or everybody but one person and then that one person is is it like the one that doesn't need someone to be happy or whatever I guess I don't care a huge amount especially if it doesn't matter if people find their person at the end but the incessant needs a couple of I'm you know I'm gonna name names I'm just gonna do it Cassandra Clare is terrible for this I haven't read any of her recent books I read nine of her books before I finally gave up but it was to the point where not only every main character needed to be coupled up but even the side characters like the servant of the mansion had to find their person by the end of the series otherwise the series couldn't be complete everyone even the random side characters that don't have play a significant role they need to find someone to it's it's it's it just feels so forced and unnecessary especially when when the plots basically done you've you've done the job but there's still fifty pages left and you know those fifty pages are just gonna be used to tie everything up as clean as the author could make it because they don't want consequences in their novel so they couple everybody up maybe they bring someone back to life probably the whole world is you know gonna be fine again I'm gonna go off track here and I'm gonna talk about something that I just like in general and that's just extremely squeaky clean endings if you don't leave me with any kind of trauma from whatever it is we just face because obviously your your novels gonna have drama right whatever book I pick up there's going to be some sort of climax and if I'm left with no trauma by that calm climax nobody dies in the war no one is is deeply and irreversibly injured there's no chaos in the country or the world that the battle took place there's nothing like you you didn't you did the climax and then this is where the ending is but you're gonna stretch it out a little bit longer to really scrub out all the dirt and make it as clean as possible it really will make me a book that I would have loved it will leave a sour taste in my mouth it make me really disappointed I am the type of reader that I just like grit to my novels anyway I like I like authors that go there that aren't afraid to make the reader feel things and if you leave me at the end of your novel just feeling like and then everybody was okay even sometimes I don't want to say spoilers here but I've read a thriller recently and it was so bad because it was such a great thriller but then the in the end the murderer confessed which then led off the the other person liked the person that was gonna be framed oh she was no longer framed and these people became friends even though they were trying to kill each other throughout thought it was just like this is a thriller this is a thriller why are we trying to make everything so clean at the end I want some grit to my ending that was a rant I might cut that best kind of endings in my opinion are bittersweet one my friend the heroes win but at a cost or the heroes get what they want but realize that it's not what they need or it's not at all what they thought it would be and then they go back I love a happy ending but I need it to come at a cost thank you for saying everything I just said a million times better a happy ending that comes at a cost bittersweet bittersweet that is what I want two books that provide true emotion and not just a high note the whole way through plus a tiny little bit of drama with absolutely no stakes involved in the drama so I'm not even scared when the characters are scared that's not satisfying you can you can give me a happy ending while still making me feel things books that actually invoke a strong emotion from me are the books that are gonna stick with me the longest the most annoying endings to me are the ones where the story just takes a total 180 in order to surprise the reader even if it doesn't make sense for the story characters or tone that we've been reading the entire time if you're including a plot twist it should make sense when looking back at the rest of the story 100% I don't have anything to add to that that's totally true don't be afraid to kill your characters if it makes sense for your ending don't be afraid to kill your characters period because it makes sense trust me unless you're writing a romance but even then there are some great romances where characters die it just I like I just like emotion and if you're gonna kill off a character don't make it that side character that nobody cared about that everybody knew from the beginning the your purpose here is to be the one that dies without actually having any consequences for the story at all if you're gonna do that if you're gonna make the twist or the consequence that somebody dies commit to it make it someone that you the author hurt to kill because we we the writers we notice don't we we notice when an author built a character to be the one that dies we can tell but I do agree it doesn't there doesn't have to be a death every time but I do eat that up even if it's one of my favorite characters and it hurts me and I'm mad that that character died I'm always grateful that the author really went there best ending everything ties up and you realize that everything the author did had a purpose maybe leaving some mysteries but the kind feel on purpose and don't leave major plot points unsolved yes I agree with you and that's something that we talked about in the last video when an author really leaves stuff at the beginning that ties in at the end and you can tell like when you finish the book you realize wow the author planned out every moment of this and every every small detail in this story mattered for the final conclusion that's so satisfying when you realize that there have been hints and moments all throughout that you didn't see until you're at the end but oh oh man oh it's good I absolutely hate a time skip example 19 years later I rather see where the characters are at immediately after the fallout or whatever happened and then have the rest up to my own interpretation I don't know I think that it can be done well I've seen epilogues where it's and here's where they are in 20 years I've seen where that works but I agree that it usually doesn't work especially because usually that kind of epilogue is used to make a squeaky-clean ending like usually we end at the ending we in after the big event and and when we're in the middle of the aftermath and all that and then that's where the book should end and the reader should be left in the suspense and allowed to imagine how they clean it all up and imagine what what's gonna happen next like we need readers need to be allowed room to just reflect on what could come we don't need the ending spoon-fed to us does that make sense and bad epilogues are when the book ended where it was supposed to end and then an epilogue was tacked on that basically says and then everybody got married and the world was all better and we all lived happily ever after the end and those are disappointing because when you leave us where you're supposed to when we're left in the aftermath at the proper end it's a really satisfying ending we're left with all the emotion and we're left with being able to build our own how it all comes back together and then when you tack on a and then everything was alright and here's how here's a quick debrief of how it all went down in the in the next 10 years that takes away the emotional impact of the true ending with this false fanservice ending and that is that does seem to how those 19 years later that does seem to be where those usually go so I don't like them either in that context but I've also seen it done well but I guess not very often I usually want the endings to go slower than they do is super quick wrap-up without enjoying the end isn't good to me I don't always need it to be super dramatic and then just finished I want to walk away from the story and characters and pushed out that is really that's a really good point that's something that I think it's it's a really tough balance because we just talked about making taking your ending too far right you have your proper ending and then you have your ending that's meant to be sort of like a fanservice or to make the author feel better that 19 years later wrapping it all up making it too clean we talked about that and that's definitely negative but then there's also the other side you also don't want it to be like hitting a brick wall you don't want you've just finished the the climax you've just come out of it and then it's just over I recently read a thriller and I loved those thriller and I thought it was gonna be on my favorite books of the year last year and it all ended in about a page I was still waiting for the climax I was still waiting for the how did it all play out who did it how did they do it what happened and I was left with one page of a third party character writing our main character a letter telling them here's how it all went down here's who did it here's how they did it here's why they did it and here's how the murder happened bye and I hated that ending so much that this book that I thought was gonna be a new favorite I don't even really want to talk about anymore because how do you recommend a book that has such a disappointing ending not only did we get tell instead of showing we were told what happened we didn't even get to watch everything get revealed we were told how it was revealed but it all happened in just a quick short letter and then we were done and truly when that kind of thing happens when you don't when you don't end in the right spot it does leave a sour taste in your mouth for the bug so it's true you can you could take it too far it's easy for books to go too far and to try to give us too long of an ending try to clean it up too much for us try to make it too pretty for us instead of ending where it should end and then you have the opposite problem where it feels almost like the author ran out of time in their deadline and so they just wrote a quick ending and then we were done and that's so unsatisfying - and it is hard to say like here's how here's the right spot for a book to end because depending on the genre and depending on the story itself it's it's gonna be unique for the story but rushing it and trying to wrap it all up really fast and slowing it down and trying to cram too much closure and do it both of these things can be really hard okay I like this comment I'm gonna condense it a little bit I love an ending that brings the story into a furrow up into a full circle the ending is literally told in the prologue with a different wording in some places but you didn't realize it before you read the ending the ending literally uses sentences from earlier in the story and everything feels complete although nothing is being explained to you it ends where it began and only when you're back in the beginning do you realize that it was the ending and where you began this is true I haven't seen it executed very much I know one of the books that I'm currently reading does that because people talk about it so you know I've known it from the start but whether you know it going in or you find it at the end and you realize that man the first line in the last line they connect or they're the same or they're practically the same and you realize that from the start you've had the answers and then it comes full circle I agree I like that a lot - that is really satisfying when a conflict just gets solved out of nowhere through some lazy plot devices I mean we all know it's bad but we still see it essentially don't make it easy I mean it's obvious we don't we don't want it to be easy we don't want the character in a struggle struggle struggle struggle and then something happens and now everything's fine it mmm I have thoughts yeah don't make me read 360 pages waiting for a fight between a hero and the big bad wolf that ends in that last 10 pages can i name names here I feel like that's acceptable right in this one because all we're saying it's not a spoiler I don't think I'm gonna name names it's vicious by ve Schwab I really enjoyed vicious I did not like vengeful but the the story is about a hero and a villain and them facing off that's that's the description of the book we know from the first chapter that this book has to end with them fighting and we spend about 360 pages building that up and it was a really interesting build-up and the fight was over so fast and it's like we've been waiting for this from the start this is the thing that we've been waiting on and it's just like we done we talked about an ending going too far with the 19 years later or to clean that sort of thing we talked about it being too abrupt this kind of fits in there so I should probably mention it too and I absolutely hate a cliffhanger or unresolved endings we shouldn't have to be the ones to decide what happens at the end authors please resolve your endings so open endings some readers do love that but I don't think it's a very popular ending among readers I think that that falls under the category of not quite ending in the right place we need some resolution we need some answers so having a bunch of open threads and then not closing most of them is a problem there are certain things where we can be led to believe there's a resolution but we don't actually watch the resolution go down and that's great ending the book before the ending is frustrating some people some people do enjoy it though some people do like open endings I don't okay so here's a positive one and new people would lean toward the negative those bad endings they really stick with us don't they when like half the cast is wiped out in the final battle and you're left feeling emotionally drained but still feel satisfied these are the sort of endings that I love and that stay with me for a long time so I really agree with that again we're back to consequences when when and I know someone mentioned in my last video that a lot of these a lot of the comments that we discuss are really tailored more toward like fantasy and sci-fi and dystopian and that kind of thing and not really more towards like romances and stuff and that's honestly just because this is the sort of stuff I read and so and the stuff that a lot of my viewers read and so I don't I don't really have a lot of insight on how to do romance well but I also I mean this stuff pertains to thrillers and that's I'm sorry I'm sorry if you're a writer and you're watching this and this doesn't pertain to your genre I'm sorry but anyway back on topic um if you have a big climax no matter what genre you're reading if there's a big climax and there are consequences and and it hurts it hurts the reader but it's still satisfying because you still got your end and certain things are resolved and certain things go well but but it hurt to get there because that's the way it goes actually I think an unkindness of magicians does that really well where we don't necessarily need key hmm we don't need a lot of the things that we've been talking about how do you do it how do you do it there were consequences it wasn't the ending I was expecting but there were consequences enough that I felt like I hurt but it was so satisfying does that make sense how do you talk about endings anyway yes I agree if you leave me in an emotional yet satisfying note those are the books that I'll stick with me you could have I can read a book that is beautifully executed awesome characters amazing plot wonderful story altogether but the ending doesn't really leave me feeling much and I'm still gonna love that story but I'm gonna talk about the story that leaves me with intense emotions more the story that wasn't executed as well but left me feeling a lot satisfied yet hurting those books are the ones that I'm going to remember even if they weren't executed as well as the one that was maybe written perfectly but didn't really have any consequences again readers are individuals but I do feel like that's how a lot of readers feel oh I like this one personally I'd like to see a different perspective in the end of the book I mean you follow the main character throughout the whole book and you see them achieving their goal fighting against the villain but I'd like to see an outsider's perspective how would a person who doesn't know as much as I do because I've paid a ten to each and every move of the hero judged the main characters actions decisions what do Outsiders think of how everything ended I like that I don't think I've ever seen that done and I'm not sure I think that would be a tricky thing to execute well but I really like that a lot because ending on a perspective that isn't your protect unless you killed your protagonist ending on a perspective that isn't the perspective that you followed the whole time is a risk especially if you're in first-person narrative but I think it could be executed well if you're in third-person the whole time I would love to see that done I think it would be tricky but I could see how it would work and I think that would be really cool especially especially if we follow the hero the whole time and we're convinced they are the hero and then we get the final chapter or two from the perspective of someone on the outside and we see that maybe the heroes works weren't quite so heroic I would love to see it like the sacrifices that the hero had to make to accomplish the end actually hurt the people more than helped them and the ending wasn't the ending that the hero was fighting for wasn't quite what the people were looking for oh I like that this is a good one this is this is one that happens a lot in thrillers and probably mysteries too but I don't read a lot of mysteries endings where there's a big twist that's so dramatic and unexpected too unexpected some authors get very caught up in creating a surprise ending and sometimes the decisions characters are making and the things that have supposedly gone on behind the scenes just don't make sense and it ruins the whole book and then Megan goes on to explain that also there can be too much for shadowing where the big twist is super obvious and we guessed it from the get-go so essentially big twists are great but you know find your balance I really want to hone in on that first one though because this is something that I see happen in thrillers fairly often where the big twist is something that the reader had no chance to guess I don't mind guessing the twist if it's subtly laid out and I just picked up on the clues and then we get to the twist and I watch it play out and it's like yeah I saw that coming it was still really fun to play it out and it was really satisfying to have guessed it I of course prefer to have not guessed it but the clues are laid out perfectly so that when we get to the big reveal I'm I see all the groundwork that was laid and I see all the little clues that I missed and it's really satisfying because I could have guessed it if if I if I had been a little bit more clever but I wasn't and I just missed it and that's the most satisfying but it's also satisfying when I just happened to be clever enough to pick up on the little subtle clues that's fun too you can't you can't keep the mystery from absolutely everybody if you're if you're laying down hints right so it's okay if readers if we guess the ending as long as it works it was subtle nuances that we just happened to pick up the problem the biggest problem is when an author super doesn't want us to guess the twist so they just give us no chance I read a book and I'm not gonna say which one cuz that would be a big that would be a spoiler but I read a thriller that was really enjoying and I felt like I knew where it was going or at least had an idea of the general route it might pursue and not only was I wrong but the big twist was the most outlandish ludicrous thing and it was even three man fossils in it like didn't actually line up with the thing didn't matter didn't matter the point is it was so outlandish and we were given no reason to ever suspect anything within that realm that it made me so angry because you can't just you can't just like lead us in this direction and then at the end say you've been facing the wrong way the whole time actually this character the whole time has been doing this other thing and everything you thought you knew about them was all alive a whole time that is so unsatisfying alright I think I've gotten through almost every single one of these comments at this point and once again we have a lot of repeats just like in the beginning video the first several videos the first several dear are authors videos I did we had so many different ideas but I guess I guess when we're talking not about tropes not about stuff we love and hate to see but we're talking about how to start a book and how to end a book I guess readers do kind of all fit into certain camps and you can kind of summarize generally what seems to work amongst us at least amongst my audience it seems so once again I've read through most Lee's comments I've been sitting here for an hour doing this video so I'm gonna summarize I'm gonna summarize what everybody seems to be saying first of all let's talk about stuff that people repeatedly are saying that they love we love endings with consequences where it's bitter sweet that seems to be a big theme there's happiness there's resolution but it hurt to get us here I feel like I've read about a hundred different comments saying that exact thing in different ways now let's talk about all the things that people don't like because there were a lot more answers for that and they all also kind of seem to be the same a lot of people are honing in on the 19 years later or wrapping everything up in a nice pretty bow or coupling up which is all basically the same thing we're talking about making your ending to clean and I agree it's no good the other thing that a lot of people have talked about our cliffhangers abrupt endings open endings a lot of people have repeatedly said that they don't like those so basically when we're expecting 50 more pages and then it turns out to be five and it's not a satisfying end it's just like hitting a wall we don't like it oh and then also endings that make the whole story pointless that's been brought up a ton it was all just a dream time-travel solves the problem of everything who I read a thriller like that recently and I was so mad not only mmm not only did these characters repeatedly keep dying and then they just bring each other back to life through time-travel so there was a big world war happening at the end of the book and I was bored reading it because these characters kept dying and then kept bringing each other back to life throughout throughout the war through time-travel and it was just like there's no there's no tension here there's no risk happening I'm not scared even a little bit for these characters and then we're gonna use time travel again after to get ourselves out of this big world war that's so terrifying we're gonna use time travel again to get us out of that and then to resolve the whole plot and why did we why are we here anyway what what I'm talking about is it was all just a dream time travel some sort of something that basically erases the 400 pages 500 pages 600 pages that we just read and then none of it none of it mattered none of none of it mattered oh and then really outlandish unpredictable twists give us some foreshadowing show us that you actually planned this out and give us an opportunity to see it coming or at least in hindsight see how much work was put into building this up yeah it seems like there's not a lot of stuff about I wanted this character to end up with this person or I wanted the war to resolve differently or things like that that kind of stuff doesn't really seem to stick with us as much as too much or too little too clean or too abrupt these are the things that seem to be the most offensive to the majority of us once again I'm surprised at how similar we all seem to be in what we're wanting but it's awesome I'm loving it and I agree with it I agree with the consensus we we all seem to be feeling about the same way anyway no let's talk about Squarespace as a photographer that transcends the art form it's very important for me to have a website that allows clients to schedule sessions with me very easily through my Squarespace website they can see my availability and reschedule with ease well I'm a very important influencer obviously you probably recognize me as an important blogger it's important that Squarespace has great blogging tools so I can share my stories photos videos that are important to me and I can even schedule a post to go up on my website whenever I'm ready they also have social sharing so all of my followers are able to share my posts from their social medias Tumblr Twitter Linkedin Google+ you name it they make me famous so in all seriousness Korey and I actually both use Squarespace for our websites and they're not they're not as bad as the fake ones I've put up a minute ago we love Squarespace they're really easy to use it's really easy to adjust if you're going to change the structure of your website it's really easy to do it quickly and all yourself if you're not super tech savvy like me I'm saying I'm not tech savvy I highly recommend them so be sure to check out the link in the description where you can get a free trial as well as get 10% off your domain name whenever you're ready to launch but that's the whole video we have talked about endings that we love that we hate I love these videos and I'm really glad that you guys have been loving them as much as well be sure to keep chatting with me about more endings that you like it dislike in the comments I want to keep this discussion going if you agree or disagree with any of these I suppose videos every Sunday Tuesday Thursday Saturday 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Channel: Merphy Napier

Views: 220,730

Rating: 4.9706745 out of 5

Keywords: dear authors, tropes done right, tropes done well, tropes i hate, tropes i love, read, reads, reader, reading, doing tropes differently, book, books, booktube, booktuber, starting your book, great beginnings, endings, writing endings, writing advice, authortube, how to write, how to write a book

Id: u_dTHrO_YKs

Length: 29min 42sec (1782 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 14 2020