by Paul Ashton
Second:
Great endings feel inevitable – a necessary consequence not simply
of everything that has gone before but of where the story is taking
us from the beginning.
Yet great endings are not predictable or clichéd – the inevitability
must still surprise and grab us with its force or inten sity or wonder
or depth or completeness (rather than with just cheap twists and
turns).
Since these have been key, irreducible elements throughout this book, they
should come as no surprise to you. And hopefully the work you have done
through beginning and middle will be driving towards them rather than
trying to avoid them in the hope they will go away and bother somebody
else – because they won’t.
FUNDAMENTALS
Again, a fundamental necessity about the ending:
You did not need to know all the fine and exact details of the ending
in order to get here – you just needed a strong, compelling sense of
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what that ending must fundamentally, essentially, necessarily be at
its heart.
Or another way of putting it:
The ending is the answer to all the questions you have posed the
characters, and the characters have posed themselves, throughout –
it is the fundamental answer to the question of the story.
Or even this:
The ending is the final, cohering expression of the whole story.
SOME ENDINGS
Put this way, here is what the ending fundamentally means in some of the
examples discussed so far.
Life on Mars: Will Sam Tyler solve the case and get himself back to the
future?
Hamlet: Will Hamlet take revenge and pay the ultimate price that all aven -
gers pay for their ‘satisfaction’?
Merlin: Will young Merlin protect Prince Arthur and Camelot while concea l-
ing the outlawed magic that gives him his strength?
Fish Tank: Will Mia realise her dream to dance and so escape the prison of
the estate and her anger at the world and people around her?
Criminal Justice II: Can Juliet Miller prove she is innocent of ‘murder’ and
protect her estranged daughter without revealing the awful truth behind
her decision to kill her husband?
Bodies: Can Rob Lake become the doctor he wants to be without comprom -
ising his integrity, his colleagues and his patients along the way?
Closer: Will any of the characters find the unsullied love and intimacy they
really need or will the other things they think they want always get in the
way?
State of Play: Will Cal McCaffrey get his story and find out the truth with -
out it destroying his relationships and damaging those around him?
THE END 179
Billy Elliot: Will Billy realise his dream of dancing not in the shadows of
secrecy but under the bright stage lights he deserves without it ruining his
relationship with father and brother?
Moon: Will Sams 1 or 2 ever get home? And what will ‘home’ really be or
mean if they do get there?
‘THE END’
Don’t assume the ‘ending’ means the final scene or moment followed by a fade
to black. The ending isn’t so much the final conclusion and parting glimpse
as the final conflict and climax and crisis – the moment of truth that is the
culmination of everything that has gone before. The ending is not the last
look into the cinematic sunset before the credits, or the concluding TV close-
up before the theme music kicks in, or the parting emotion of a play before
the lights change and the applause starts, or the final noise/silence before
radio credits are read. Rather, it is the final events and actions and deci -
sions and outcomes and fallout that follow on from what has gone before.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet exists in different versions – probably evidence
that he rewrote the play after having seen it in production – that offer sig -
nificantly different codas, but where reaching the ending is fundamentally
the same for the central characters. In one version, Fortinbras arrives to
seize power at the end; in the other, he doesn’t, and Horatio has the final
words of the play. The excision of Fortinbras in the latter version means
cutting earlier scenes, dialogue and references, including one of Hamlet’s
famous monologues, ‘How all occasions do inform against me . . . ’ Yet Hamlet’s
journey going forward is not fundamentally or substantively different –
though it is tighter, more focused, more dynamic. Even after the significant
rewriting of narrative and the cutting of characters, scenes and strands, the
ending is still fundamentally where the story was always trying to get to
from scene one – Hamlet at long last carrying out his revenge.
SIMPLE VERSUS COMPLEX
The fundamental qualities of the various examples above do not mean end -
ings must therefore be simplistic and singular – saying only one thing about
one character. Endings are relative to the number and prominence of the
180 THE CALLING CARD SCRIPT
characters whose stories require and deserve a conclusion. So in films like
Gosford Park, Crash, Short Cuts, Magnolia, and in any serialised drama, it is necessarily a more complex, many-headed thing. And in the case of those
epic tales that span multiple ‘single’ instalments, final endings can become
mini-epics in themselves – part three of The Lord of the Rings trilogy goes
through ending after ending after ending. Or rather, coda after coda after
coda. The ending is Frodo’s. The rest is the tying of loose ends for all those
who have helped him on his way.
You need to look back at where the POVs have been throughout. Whose
story is it primarily? Who else’s story is it? Do they conclude together?
Shakespeare was a master of pulling together numerous conclusions into
one big final scene. But it’s much, much harder to do this for radio and
screen because that intrinsic theatricality is much less convincing in any
other medium.
The point is that your ending must fit with everything else. Not
simply all the narrative, plot and consequences of actions that have gone
before, but with medium, form, format, idea, concept, premise, genre(s),
tone, feel, scale and, most importantly, character. However much of the
‘arrival’ at the story destination and the anagnorisis you choose to show,
the ending is where you take the characters, where we go with the
characters – where the characters take themselves.
IS THAT IT?
We have all experienced that cruel moment sitting in the theatre, the
cinema or at home, when the final moment comes and we say: ‘Is that it?’
Where the ending just doesn’t sit right. Where we feel short-changed by an
incomplete story. There is sometimes a curious pause just before the lights
fade or credits roll where we feel this cutting question already falling from
our lips. Sometimes a quick cutaway attempts to prevent the question from
forming immediately. But if the ending doesn’t deliver, the question will come
pretty quick anyway and empty tricks of production won’t stop us asking it.
The very last thing you want your audience to experien
ce is the
detached feeling of ‘Is that it?’ They can come away as hurt, upset, des pair-
ing, drained, challenged and shocked as they can sated, smiling and with a
spring in their step. But dissatisfaction means your story hasn’t worked for
them.
THE END 181
ENDING IS EMOTION
Of course, you can’t and won’t ‘satisfy’ everyone. What works for some will
not work for others, and audiences can violently disagree about endings –
but that’s fine so long as it’s an involved, engaged, impassioned response.
For some, the final shots of the real survivors of Auschwitz in Schindler’s
List was an extremely fitting and moving coda; for others, it was an
unnecessary, sentimental adjunct that eclipsed the integrity of an other -
wise powerful film. But I doubt anyone has ever come away from the story
feeling nothing at all.
Your ending must make your audience feel something – the thing that
your story was always about, the idea that was always at the heart of it.
A FITTING END
Ultimately, you need an end that fits. That coheres. That concludes. That
delivers. That tells the story, expresses the characters and literally realises
the idea.
All great tales need a fitting end that makes the story ultimately
cohere, no matter how obvious or strange that might appear to be. If it’s a
fitting end, whether it’s for the most heart-warming of comedies or the most
heartbreaking of tragedies, it should satisfy the audience.
SATISFACTION
What is satisfaction? Is it simply getting what you wanted? What you
hoped for and expected? What you needed? Or is it more than that?
ENTERTAINMENT
To some, entertainment is a dirty word. To their mind, it means generic and
cheap, slavishly serving up what an audience wants, meaningless, without
lasting worth and value, just ‘fun’ or ‘funny’ with no deeper resonance or
meaning. And it’s true that much poor or just half-decent work across
mediums will be these things and nothing more. But they won’t necessarily
be so – in just the same way that all stories in which the writer is trying to be
182 THE CALLING CARD SCRIPT
serious, deep, meaningful, worthy, genre-bending or audience-chal lenging
won’t necessarily be great drama.
Entertainment is a form of satisfaction and it is only a bad thing when
it is done badly – just as ‘serious drama’ is only good if it is done well. I
would rather come away from a light romantic comedy satisfied and enter -
tained than come away from a purportedly deep and meaningful drama
unsatisfied and annoyed. Entertainment is not really or necessarily just the
preserve of the happy, hopeful and comic. In a way, it is anything that satis -
fies. Yes, synonyms for entertainment do include: amusement, distraction,
diversion. But they also include: activity, pursuit. If we engage with some -
thing from beginning to end, then it is ‘entertainment’. Don’t be thrown by
or afraid of the ‘e’ word. Seek to satisfy by telling your story as well as you
can, no matter how genre-driven and light, or dark and strange, it might be.
FOLLOW THROUGH
Satisfaction doesn’t mean that nothing exists beyond endings or that they
can’t be fraught and difficult. Rather, that they follow through on every -
thing you promised at the start and all the way through.
This is at the heart of why Robert Towne’s original conclusion for
Chinatown wasn’t the right one. For Jake Gittes, ‘Chinatown’ is a place
where only bad things can happen. For Evelyn, it’s hard to see how an
emotional life so damaged by the childhood abuse at the hands of her father
could end positively. In the corrupt world of 1950s Los Angeles, people like
Noah Cross get away with very bad things. It isn’t a glorious heroic tale of
good winning out against evil. It is a sullied tale of anti-heroism where
realising the truth and trying to fight it simply comes too late. Jake helping
Evelyn and her daughter escape remains a possibility in the story, a real
enough hope to make them try at the end. But if it was a truly realistic hope
then that’s where the story would have started and would have always been
heading. It would have been Evelyn’s story of recruiting a shady private
detective to help her. But it’s not. It’s Jake’s story of realising too late that
he has the potential to do the right thing, no matter how wrong he gets it
along the way or how wrong he has got it in the past. Polanski’s ending
follows through on everything that Towne’s story has promised all the way
through. It took him a long time and a disagreement with Polanski to come
to realise what the right ending and coda was for his story.
THE END 183
If your idea and story and characters are strong, then even if it takes
a long time to get to the right conclusion or coda, you should never need to
‘come up with an ending’. Writers do try to come up with endings – to tack
on a twist of events or a major catastrophe or a revelation of information.
But if the ending doesn’t follow through, the audience will be able to see the
join and the glue and the sleight of hand. It’s pointless. Don’t make it hard
for yourself – do the hard work at the start and the ending will necessarily
come, as it necessarily did for Chinatown.
THE STORY BEYOND
The contradiction about the endings of many a great story is that the
fictional world does not necessarily stop turning once the story ends. The
power of great characters and stories is that in our engaged mind and heart
they have a life beyond the curtain call or credits. I’m not talking about
sequels. I’m talking about what we don’t see. All the way through the story,
there are things we don’t see – the rest of the life from which the story
elements are drawn and selected. Great characters make us feel that this
unseen life still exists even though we don’t see it and don’t need to see it
(and, of course, even though it is a fiction). Likewise, great characters make
us feel that this unseen life will continue on after the ending.
The exception to this is absurdist and surrealist drama, in which the
events of the play are the only reality – or the events play out again and again
as a repeated reality, a dramatic nightmare in which the characters are
trapped. These are few and far between – usually either plays from a parti -
cular movement /era of twentieth century theatre, or the preserve of TV
anthology shows such as The Twilight Zone or Tales of the Unexpected. (Many would say the truly absurd and surreal has had its day – or rather, the seis -
mic times that inspired them have long since passed.) Even in the very
strange worlds of Charlie Kaufman, the characters absolutely have a life
and story beyond – in fact, that is the story of Eternal Sunshine of the
Spotless Mind.
OPEN ENDINGS
If satisfaction is delivering, following through and (God forbid) entertaining,
then what is the opposite of satisfaction? An open ending?
184 THE CALLING CARD SCRIPT
Aspiring writers often presume the ‘st
ory beyond’ means the same
thing as an open ending. But it doesn’t. If what we have seen in the story has
had a meaningful effect on characters – if it has been momentous rather
than momentary – then we will guess and presume and hope and maybe
fear for what will come after the story has finished. This does not mean the
ending is open – rather that it concludes one stage and precedes the start
of the next stage, the next journey, the next story for the characters.
Open endings are where there is no closure, no clarity, no complete -
ness, no follow through. Open endings are a poor excuse for not telling the
story properly. They are unsatisfying. I don’t really know of any truly great
works with truly open endings.
OK, so there’s The Sopranos. Theories abound about the final scene,
the way it cut short and didn’t follow through a final, ultimate conclusion.
But the final scene wasn’t the ending – it was the final scene. The ending
isn’t open. The coda was a blank, black screen. The conclusion, in one sense,
is Tony, his wife and his son (his daughter is outside, trying and failing to
park her car) sitting together in a diner about to order food. Which says a
lot about the whole show. It’s not just a gangster show about mobsters
getting whacked. It’s a show about Tony, about his family, about the semb -
lance of normality in a world where extreme things happen. It’s not an open
ending. It just doesn’t deliver a neat conclusion.
OK, so there’s also Twin Peaks. At the end of season two, we think
we’re going to find out who killed Laura Palmer. Yet we don’t. But maybe
that’s because the show is not about who killed Laura Palmer – maybe it’s
about ‘what’ killed Laura Palmer. And we do see what killed her in all its
dark, twisted mania in the final scene.
The point about these two examples is that they are the final scenes
from TV shows, one lasting two seasons and the other lasting six seasons.
They are not single, finite, closed stories. But they are also not ‘open
endings’. They are just not easy endings or simple endings or neat endings.
They are complex conclusions to complex stories, and in both it is clear