If you google about “endings” you’ll actually find a lot of links that suggest “beginning is the hardest part”. That’s some reasonable self-help wisdom I guess, but not too helpful for a writer. But I did come across a great quote, by Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad and writer/contributor to zillions of shows :

Endings are the hardest part. I find there’s a great relief that at the end of every episode, every hour of TV you produce, while you want a proper and satisfying ending, it doesn’t have to end The Story, in capital letters.

Frank Herbert said something similar:

There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.

Why is this on my mind? It’s because I’m trying to craft the ending of my work-in-progress novel THE HUNGRY JUDGES and I have to tell you, it ain’t easy. In a nutshell, the story so far has teed-up several possibilities, but choosing between them, and getting a combo that wraps up the story’s many threads in a way that makes sense, and at the same time is both satisfying and engaging is, well, hard. Here’s my take on some famous endings and how reflecting on them seems to be helping me.

Deus-Ex Ending

Almost since the inception of the genre, SF writers have been overly taken by deus ex machina endings – a fortuitous event that comes out of nowhere. An early example is The War of the Worlds, where the ultra-powerful invading Martians are all killed by the common cold, as if these scientifically advanced beings had no idea of the germ theory of disease. As trite as this ending type is, SF authors are addicted to it – cleverness after all is expected in sci-fi books.

Now, these endings aren’t necessarily terrible. Harry Potter books make heavy use of deus-ex, as in The Chamber of Secrets:

• A poisoned and dying Harry is saved in the nick by the cavalry, in the form of a phoenix …
• Whose tears conveniently heal poison …
• And who conveniently carries the sorting hat …
• Which conveniently contains the Sword of Gryffindor.

Truly, an ending of convenience. This sounds dodgy, but in Rowling’s defense, most of this was foreshadowed before it “conveniently” materialized.

My conclusion: It is easy to OD on deus-ex – use with caution.

No-Surprises Ending

If a genre writer is thinking about endings, how can you not consider The Return of the King? After all, this is the conclusion of arguably the best genre work ever. Of course, I know all the ending action pretty much by heart – a lifetime 20-plus read-throughs will do that to you. As I began ordering my thoughts the thing that quickly leapt out at me was, this ending has no surprises. Consider these facts:

• We know the Ring will be destroyed – the book is not titled “The Return of Ultimate Evil”.
• Tolkien drills into us time and again that the only way to destroy the ring is to cast it into the fires of Mount Doom.
• Frodo and Sam do have struggles approaching the volcano, but all along we’re sure they will make it to their destination.
• Back in Minas Tirith, the forces of the West mount a doomed assault on the Black Gate. There some interesting facts there, but at no time do we think Aragorn is in any real danger – again, we know the title of the book.
• Back at Mount Doom, we know there are only three characters involved: Frodo, Sam and Gollum. Is it a surprise that at the last Frodo declines his sworn task? Not really, by the time we arrive here Gollum is a raging fire of unresolved plot thread – of course “even Gollum may have  a part to play”.

What a contrast this is to the Deus-Ex approach of so many lesser works. It seems clear to me Tolkien understood the contract the author has with the reader – that the development and efforts of the characters across the story won’t be betrayed by cheap theatrics. The feeling of justice served when we read  the climactic action in LoTR is profound.

Jack Vance Ending

I’ve written here many times about my high regard for master genre writer Jack Vance. Vance is rightly known for inventive SF cultures, and a voice that is both spare and at times atmospheric. But Vance’s endings too often are given short shrift, taken as sudden or baffling.

I beg to differ. Let’s look at The Demon Princes, a 5-book series often cited for a deflating ending. The premise of the novels: Kirth Gersen, orphaned after a slavers’ raid on his homeworld, is raised by his grandfather to be an instrument of vengeance. At his death, the grandfather charges Kirth with this mission:

… the triumph [of good over evil] consists of two processes: first evil must be extinguished, then good must be introduced to fill the gap. It is impossible that a man should be equally efficacious in both functions … in order to minimize confusion, your work will be the destruction of evil men.

Over the series Kirth pursues the slavers who ravaged his planet, the notorious “Demon Princes”. Through books 1 – 4, he attacks his quarry in different ways but always is the catalyst of each villain’s demise. In book 5, The Book of Dreams, Gersen pursues Howard Alan Treesong, arguably the most unique and puzzling of all the Demon Princes. I won’t recap all the plot but by the end Gersen has a romantic relationship with Alice Wroke, whose father was killed by Treesong. Gersen is in close pursuit of his adversary, but in the final scene realizes he has been used as a tool by Tuty and Otho Cleadhoe, a married couple whose only son was another of Treesong’s victims. Gersen witnesses the tableau of Treesong’s demise, but that is ambiguous; we the reader are unsure if Treesong at the last commits suicide, or was destroyed by one of his imaginary constructs. Either way, Gerson was a minor and unwitting contributor to the death of the last Demon Prince.

Note how “un-clever” this concluding action is. There’s no deus-ex here, the Cleadhoes were in plain sight all along, but Kirth could not see them for what they fully were. If anything, the majority of the closing spotlight goes to Treesong, via a dialog with his invented band of “paladins”, each one an avatar of a single aspect of Treesong’s persona.

The ending of the book is a spare half-page:

In the Flitterwing and traveling space, Alice picked up The Book of Dreams, then at once put it down again. “What will you do with it?”

“I don’t know … give it to Cosmopolis, I suppose.”

“Why not just put it out into space?”

“I can’t do that.”

Alice put her hands on his shoulder. “And now, what of you?”

“What of me, how?”

“You’re so quiet and subdued! You worry me. Are you well?”

“Quite well. Deflated, perhaps. I have been deserted by my enemies. Treesong is dead. The affair is over. I am done.”

A literal lifetime is left unsaid here. What of Alice, do she and Kirth make a life together? Does Kirth find a new purpose to pursue? Does he revert to being an avatar of vengeance?  Or possibly takes yet another path? We don’t need any of those shown in detail but clearly, after 5 books of connecting with Kirth Gersen, many readers expected something.

Vance’s discipline in his craft is to deny us the trite, the melodramatic, the “Hollywood Ending” in any form. As diverting as The Demon Princes books are, they are about violent vengeance – Kirth must forever carry the burden of those acts. And in a broader sense, Vance is showing us in a powerful way a universal truth. Gersen had the meaning of his life given to him, and when that is taken away he does not know where to turn: Finding meaning for one’s life in a capricious universe is not easy.

The Beginning of the End

Where I am now starts with the main characters of THE HUNGRY JUDGES:

• Irá Norlander: 70+ years old woman in the body of 10 year old, once a specialist in finding technology on dead alien worlds, now the nemesis of the civilization-ending Judges.
• Judd Maddox: Outwardly nihilistic but inwardly Neutral Good protector of Irá.
• Promakos Ariti: Formerly a rootless drifter, now Chairperson of the powerful Hellenic Shipyards corporation, de facto leader of the Earth resistance against the Judges..
• Fabio Silva: Once a child prodigy in theoretical physics, now turned misanthropic after learning too much about the universe.
• Keya: 100,000+ years old alien, denizen of their own pocket universe, his entire life has been a failed struggle against the Judges.

For some time I was stuck, I think because I was being too mechanistic – I was trying to get to some clever structure based on the forces I had set in motion. That yielded some ideas, but nothing that came together.

Then I changed tack, to think about what does each of these characters want, what do they yearn to do? With that, things began to come together, and I resolved just to let each character do what they had to do. I’m feeling very good about that and have done a lot of outlining on 2 key chapters that present the climax.

Of course, you never know till you write it.

Thanks for reading. I’ll leave you all with a great ending, one that I’ve watched countless times and always come away the better for it:

Till next time …