Reader Question: What are some tips for figuring out the ending of a story?

Question via Twitter from @WrittenbyKendra:

What are your tips for creating the ending of a short film/screenplay in the outline phase?

Let’s start with Billy Wilder who said this: “If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.”

A screenwriter needs to think about the ending as being grounded in the story’s beginning. Do your work up front and you’ll find your ending.

By “work,” mostly I mean digging into your characters. And almost invariably, the key to the ending will come by working with your Protagonist.

What do they want?
What do they need?

If you can determine the Protagonist’s conscious goal (Want), that will inform what’s going on in the Plotline / External World.

If you can determine the Protagonist’s unconscious goal (Need), that will inform what’s going on in the Themeline / Internal World.

You work with the Protagonist — their Conscious and Unconscious Goal — in the context of the story’s other characters, and brainstorm what is the possible resolution between the two.

That dynamic tension is at the core of the Protagonist’s metamorphosis.

Ovid wrote, “The seeds of change lie within.” The Protagonist almost always needs to change. If you can identify the arc of the Protagonist’s change, that should inform your understanding of the end point of the story’s psychological story.

Hopefully that will suggest a set of events that build to some sort of climax / Final Struggle, one that is imbued with emotional meaning tethered to the Protagonist’s metamorphosis.

Which leads to this question: Why does this story have to happen to this character at this time?

There is a kind of destiny for movie characters and in particular the Protagonist. Call it their Narrative Imperative.

Again if you do the work you need to do with your characters, particularly your Protagonist, where they begin the story should indicate where they will end it.

A great resource on this comes from screenwriter Michael Arndt who created a wonderful presentation he calls: “ENDINGS: The Good, the Bad, the Insanely Great.” I posted about that here.

Other considerations include brainstorming events that build the scope and size of the ending, bringing into play whatever Nemesis / oppositional characters you have in the story to do their part in the ending, considering what type of ending the story requires: upbeat, downbeat, happy, tragic, resolved, unresolved.

But mostly, it’s about the characters and in particular, the Protagonist and their narrative destiny.

What about you, readers? What advice do you have on this subject?

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