A cold hand fell on Louis’s shoulder. Rachel’s voice was grating, full of dirt.
“Darling,” it said.
Yes, Louis Creed got his wife back.
But . . . uh oh!
The Twist in the Tail
In Writing a Thriller, André Jute describes the twist in the tail as a “secondary, unexpected climax which often turns everything the reader has been led to believe on its head.”
When I started writing, I used to regard these “kickers” in the novels of published writers with great envy, but now I know it is an easier technique than, for instance, the properly placed and controlled flashback. You merely take your second most favorite ending for the story and then go back and plant a few clues to the twist in the tail so that the reader is not cheated, not forgetting at the same time to water down any overly explicit clues because making it too easy for the reader is another no-no.
Jute gives us the technique right there. When you are brainstorming the actual content of your ending (did you catch Brew, Stew, Accrue, Do, Woohoo earlier in this book?) come up with a second, third, and perhaps even fourth possibility. If one of them seems the best, use it. But then use, as Jute advises, the next-best as the twist.
Foreshadowing
Your resonant ending can be rendered all the more powerful by foreshadowing. A good definition of the term comes from the site LiteraryDevices.net:
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which a writer gives an advance hint of what is to come later in the story. Foreshadowing often appears at the beginning of a story, or a chapter, and helps the reader develop expectations about the coming events in a story. There are various ways to create foreshadowing.
A writer may use character dialogues to hint at what may occur in the future. In addition, any event or action in the story may throw a hint to the readers about future events or actions.
When such a hint is finally paid off, the emotional impact is richly satisfying.
Which is why I developed a technique I call the argument against transformation. It is one of my 14 structural signposts. Briefly stated, have your Lead character express, sometime in Act 1, an idea about himself or life that is the opposite of how things turn out at the end.
In Casablanca, Rick argues that he sticks his neck out for nobody. At the end, he sticks it out for Ilsa and Victor.
In It’s a Wonderful Life, what is the life lesson learned at the end? It’s that no man is a failure if he stays in his own home town and lives a life helping his neighbors. But that’s not what the young George Bailey thinks.
In the flashback sequence about his boyhood, we find George working in the drug store. Mary and Violet are there and George tells them he’s going to be an explorer someday, and pointedly says he’s going to have a harem, and maybe three or four wives.
The resonance of the ending is enhanced by this, for he will have but one wife, whom he loves deeply; and one hometown, which loves him deeply.
So, if the character transforms into a better version of himself at the end, have him express the opposite view in the beginning. In On the Waterfront, the classic American film starring Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint, Brando plays Terry Malloy, a waterfront thug for the local mob. But then he starts falling for the sister of a guy who was killed by the mob, with Malloy’s unwitting assistance.
The thrust of the movie is whether Terry Malloy will have the courage to expose the mob to the waterfront crime commission, effectively putting his life in jeopardy. Through the love of Edie (played by Saint) and the murder of his brother Charley (Rod Steiger), he does take that step.
But in Act 1, while sharing a beer with Edie, he argues the exact opposite. Edie says you have to care about other people, and Terry calls her a fruitcake. Then he says the only thing to do is whatever it takes to keep alive, and mix with the “right” people, so you have “a little change jangling in your pocket.”
Edie says that’s living like an animal. And Terry shrugs and says, “I’d rather live like an animal than end up like. . .”
He suddenly realizes he’s about to name her dead brother, and stops. She finishes for him. “Like Joey? Are you afraid to mention his name?”
By the end of the film, Terry has learned how bad the bad guys are, and that humanity demands he stand up to them.
It’s all the more powerful because we know how far Terry has come.
* * *
TWO OTHER FORMS of foreshadowing to consider:
Dialogue
A line of dialogue from the opening pages can come back for a power punch as the last line of the book. One of the most stunning noir novels ever written is Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham, published in 1946. It's the story of Stan Carlisle, a hustler working as a magician in a carnival. The carnival features the grotesque attraction known as "the geek," a sub-human who bites the heads off live chickens.
In the first chapter, Stan asks the head of the carny where on earth he finds such a character. The head guy levels with Stan—you don't find them, you make them. You find a drunk, a real boozer down on his luck, and...
"... you tell him like this: 'I got a little job for you. It's a temporary job. We got to get a new geek. So until we do you'll put on the geek outfit and fake it.' "
In other words, just use a hidden razor to nick the chicken's neck and pretend to drink the blood. (Yes, there really were such "attractions" back in the day.)
The man continues:
"Well, he does this for a week and you see to it he gets his bottle regular and a place to sleep it off in. He likes this fine. This is what he thinks is heaven. So after a week you say to him like this, you say, 'Well, I got to get me a real geek. You're through.' He scares up at this because nothing scares a real rummy like the chance of a dry spell and getting the horrors ... You give him time to think it over, while you're talking. Then throw in the chicken. He'll geek."
The rest of the novel is about the rise and fall of Stan Carlisle. He begins a spiritualist act as a way to bilk the bereaved out of their money. The cost to his psyche is too great. By the end of the book Stan is a drunk on the lam. One night he stumbles, bombed and filthy, into the office of another carnival manager. He offers to become a palm reading act, but the manager doesn't need one. Instead, recognizing an opportunity, he gives Stan a couple of belts of booze. The final lines of the book:
The lush was already back in the chair, leaning forward, his hands spread against his chest, elbows on the chair arms, head lolling. "Hey mister, how ’bout ’nother li'l shot ’fore I go?"
"Yeah, sure. But I just happened to think of something. I got one job you might take a crack at. It ain't much, and I ain't begging you to take it, but it's a job. Keep you in coffee and cakes and a shot now and then. What do you say? Of course, it's only temporary—just until we get a real geek."
Images
Visual motifs are powerful in fiction, especially so when used as foreshadowing. My novel Glimpses of Paradise is a historical following two Midwestern high school kids from just before World War I through early 1920s Hollywood.
Zee Miller is a spirited girl from the wrong side of the tracks. Doyle Lawrence is the son of a prominent citizen. According to Doyle's family, Zee is not the right girl for him. But he can't help but be drawn to her.
In the first chapter Zee and Doyle are in the town park, arguing. Suddenly Zee takes off her shoes and climbs a tree. Doyle yells at her to get down. She calls him a wet blanket. He threatens to climb up after her, hoping she’ll relent.
Instead, she giggled, and he saw her reach her arm up toward the sky. It was a gesture of such verve and confidence it froze Doyle in place. The audacity of it! She had no fear of falling, no fear of anything it seemed. Least of all his pursuit.
Electricity rushed through Doyle and he began to climb.
Still laughing, Zee pulled herself up to the higher limbs.
At the end of the book, Zee sacrifices her life to save Doyle from mobsters. The final chapter takes place four ye
ars later. Doyle is back in the same park, with his family, his wife, Molly, and young daughter, Isabel. All’s well, and then Doyle’s sister, Gertie, runs over:
She was shaking her head and pointing. “Doyle, come.”
“What is it?”
“That daughter of yours. She’s up a tree!”
Doyle got to his feet and looked where Gertie pointed. Indeed, Isabel was halfway up a tree. Doyle’s mind surged with remembrance. It was the same tree Zee Miller had once climbed, years ago when they were together in the park. The tree he’d fallen out of right under her nose.
“What are you going to do?” Gertie asked.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? But what if she falls?”
“She’s not going to fall.”
Isabel’s voice sang down from the tree. “Papa! Mama! Look!”
Molly rushed to Doyle’s side. “Do you think she’ll be all right?”
Doyle put his arm around his wife. “I know she will.”
“Look!” Isabel Lawrence chirped, and reached toward the sky.
Try this:
Once you have your ending in place, find a moment in an early scene in Act 1 where the character espouses the opposite of what she believes at the end. The best way to do that is through a dialogue exchange with another character.
Work and re-work your last 250 words, especially the last few sentences. Go not just for the right ending, but the right sound. Break up the last 100 words of your novel into lines of four or five words, creating a poem. Edit the poem then put the lines back together.
Consider an image or line of dialogue to end your novel. Use an image/line from the opening pages, or create it at the end and go back and plant it in the opening.
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AVOIDING COMMON ENDING PROBLEMS
Here are the most common ending mistakes. Avoid them so your readers don’t get to the end and throw the book (or their Kindle) across the room!
Deus Ex Machina
From the Latin, deus ex machine literally means “god from the machine.” As the Encyclopedia Britannica explains:
The term was first used in ancient Greek and Roman drama, where it meant the timely appearance of a god to unravel and resolve the plot. The deus ex machina was named for the convention of the god’s appearing in the sky, an effect achieved by means of a crane (Greek: mēchanē). The dramatic device dates from the 5th century BC; a god appears in Sophocles’ Philoctetes and in most of the plays of Euripides to solve a crisis by divine intervention.
Since ancient times, the phrase has also been applied to an unexpected savior or to an improbable event that brings order out of chaos (e.g., the arrival, in time to avert tragedy, of the U.S. cavalry in a western film).
The reason this is a mistake is that the reader expects the Lead to overcome (or die trying) by strength of will. Having the unexpected and unjustified intervention of another party violates this implied guarantee.
The unexpected can be another character just showing up—or a coincidence that happens—at just the right time.
Which is not to say that another character or force cannot show up in time to rescue the Lead from a terrible situation. It does mean, however, that the Lead must have set in place the circumstances and rationale for this intervention earlier in the book.
When Richard Kimble in the movie The Fugitive is being targeted by the Chicago police, who will shoot him on sight, it is the Deputy U.S. Marshal, Sam Gerard, who gets to him first and saves him. But the reason he does is that Kimble, throughout the last half of the story, has shown Gerard through his actions that he had been railroaded by the Chicago police. Gerard, despite his philosophy of “I don’t care,” can’t help himself. He finds the Chicago cops to be less than forthcoming.
So it was Kimble’s own strength of will, his fighting back, and his inexplicable return to Chicago (the scene of the murder) that creates the circumstances for Gerard to show up and save him at the end.
The lesson is simple: No coincidence can get your Lead out of the final battle. Nor can another character, unless the Lead has put the right circumstances into place.
Loose Ends
It’s not uncommon for a writer of mysteries or thrillers—especially if said writer is of the pantser species—to get to the end of a manuscript with some dangling loose ends. For example, let’s say you’ve written a mystery with lots of clues and red herrings. At the end of the book the detective or sleuth reveals the answers, except for something that happened to a character earlier in the book. He doesn’t have the means to know that information.
What do you do? The solution is quite simple. In her book, Dynamic Characters, Nancy Kress counsels that for loose ends you work backward, through your secondary characters. You can have a minor character from another part of the book make an appearance and deliver the information. He could say, “Did you hear that the accountant who was hiding the books jumped off a building?”
Or you can work the other way. Just create a brand-new minor character in the climactic scene, then go back in the plot and plant that character in a scene or two just so that he can come in and clean up the plot thread at the end.
You know who did this all the time? Charles Dickens.
Think about David Copperfield. All those characters. One narrator. How to keep track of what happened to everyone?
When we get to the last fifty pages, there are two characters in particular we want to know the fate of: Little Emily and Wilkins Micawber.
So Dickens gives us the penultimate chapter where David and his wife, Agnes, get a surprise visit from Emily’s father, Mr. Peggotty.
“And now tell us,” says David, “everything relating to your fortunes.”
Talk about giving a minor character license to wrap things up!
Mr. Peggotty gives a brief account of his current conditions. “What with sheep-farming, and what with stock-farming, and what with one thing and what with t’other, we are as well to do, as well could be.”
And then David asks, “And Emily?”
Mr. Peggotty gives the bitter-sweet tale.
David asks about two other characters—Martha and Mrs. Gummidge.
Mr. Peggotty delivers the news.
Finally, David asks about Mr. Micawber. Wise novelist that he is, Dickens doesn’t give us another verbal response from Mr. Peggotty. Instead, he hands David a newspaper from his little town, where Mr. Micawber happened to have settled. David reads a notice aloud, which begins:
The public dinner to our distinguished fellow-colonist and townsman, WILKINS MICAWBER, ESQUIRE, Port Middlebay District Magistrate, came off yesterday in the large room of the Hotel, which was crowded to suffocation. It is estimated that not fewer than forty-seven persons must have been accommodated with dinner at one time, exclusive of the company in the passage and on the stairs. The beauty, fashion, and exclusiveness of Port Middlebay, flocked to do honour to one so deservedly esteemed, so highly talented, and so widely popular. May he never leave us but to better himself, and may his success among us be such as to render his bettering himself impossible!” The cheering with which the toast was received defies description.
And because Mr. Micawber was so great a part of David’s life, and vice versa, there is more. Mr. Peggotty points to another part of the paper, where Mr. Micawber placed a personal letter to “David Copperfield, Esquire, the Eminent Author.” It ends, “Go on, my dear Sir, in your Eagle course! The inhabitants of Port Middlebay may at least aspire to watch it, with delight, with entertainment, with instruction!” and is signed Wilkins Micawber, Magistrate.
But that’s not all. Dickens (wise novelist again!) gives us a resonant ending to the chapter:
We talked much of Mr. Micawber, on many other evenings while Mr. Peggotty remained with us. He lived with us during the whole term of his stay,—which, I think, was something less than a month,—and his sister and my aunt came to London to see him. Agnes and I parted from him aboard-ship, when he sailed; and we shall never part from him more
, on earth.
But before he left, he went with me to Yarmouth, to see a little tablet I had put up in the churchyard to the memory of Ham. While I was copying the plain inscription for him at his request, I saw him stoop, and gather a tuft of grass from the grave and a little earth.
‘For Em’ly,’ he said, as he put it in his breast. ‘I promised, Mas’r Davy.’
Only a Dream
Perhaps the greatest mistake of all, and the biggest letdown, is the It was all a dream ending. It’s so bad that it doesn’t seem to happen much anymore. But there are variations.
Instead of a dream, the reason could be a vision before death, as in the movie Jacob’s Ladder. (I recall a local movie critic who thought most of the movie was gripping, “Until the ending, which, frankly, stinks.”)
Or the “dream” could be the result of some high-tech operation on the brain. But if it’s left to be revealed at the end, with no way for the reader to figure it out beforehand, the result is the same—massive disappointment. This happened with a novel by a master of Twilight Zone-esque plots, Richard Matheson (who wrote some of the best Zones, and many famous stories that were turned into movies or TV episodes). His novel 7 Steps to Midnight is a page-turner of the how can this possibly be happening? variety. But then, as Kirkus put it in their review, “all this nearly arbitrary mayhem [is] explained away in an absurdly far-fetched premise.”
Interestingly, these types of endings can work in shorter forms of fiction. The “vision before death” story was made famous by Ambrose Bierce in “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” And many a Twilight Zone had a story-altering twist ending, such as Matheson’s own script “A World of Difference,” which has a plot that resembles 7 Steps to Midnight. The ending works in the shorter version because it was consistent with the design of the show.
The Last Fifty Pages Page 6