Nolan Polly: "Dear Vina Jie-Min Prasad: What makes an ending?"

Dear Vina Jie-Min Prasad: What makes an ending?

By Nolan Polly

Warning: Spoilers Ahead!

            The ending of anything is the most memorable part. After reading A Game of Thrones, what do you remember most clearly? The politics of the kings court? How much of an ass Joffrey is? No, you remember how the person you thought was the main character of the series is just offed at the end of the book. Every assumption you have about fantasy goes completely out the window and you can’t think of anything but how Ned Stark’s head isn’t on his body anymore, and what that means about the chances of your favorite character surviving the series.  Just reading a random story can capture your attention for the duration it takes to finish, but not necessarily any longer. But a good ending can hold you in that world for long after you reach the conclusion. Your brain is held hostage by whatever just happened and you can’t help yourself but continue to think about what just happened.

            In my experience, there are a couple of things that lead to a great ending. There’s the twist ending if it’s done well, there’s the ambiguous ending. and there’s the ending that is most common, just the tying together of all the loose ends after an impactful climax. I have an example from each of these to share with you.

            The first ending I will talk about is the ending to Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora. The book ends with Locke killing Capa Raza and escaping through trickery like what you had seen throughout the novel. The climax and the ending being so close to each other makes the end feel incredibly impactful, especially with the tribute to the killed Sanza twins adding additional emotional weight to the ending of the book. When you reach the final chapters, everything is resolved in a way that doesn’t feel like cheating, in a way that is incredibly exciting, and in a way that makes an impact on the reader. It ends in a way common to a lot of fantasy novels, but in my opinion did so nearly perfectly. It set up the remaining books while also working as a standalone book. It made your heart race and made you cheer, and then gave you the feels. It made my mind stay in the world anytime it wandered, reliving the climax of the story over and over, and thinking about the characters and the scheme they were running throughout the novel. It is my favorite ending to a fantasy book.

            The second type of good ending is the ambiguous case. The best example is that of Inception. The final image of the top appearing to wobble but not falling down is one of the most infuriating things I’ve ever seen. When I showed the movie to my roommate he got so mad at the end that he was screaming at me because he didn’t want that final image haunting him. But that was the best possible ending using the criteria I’ve been talking about. Once you finish the film, you can’t stop yourself from theorizing whether the top will fall or not, and you construct the world you want and continue thinking about that world and write your own fan fictions in your head. It is the best example of this type in that it keeps you in the dream world for an incredibly long time and has an emotional impact on the viewer. It is a beautiful ending and an infuriating one at the same time.

            The final ending is that of the plot twist. The best use of the twist ending is that of The Usual Suspects. The constant building of the man that is Keyser Soze, the montage that he is truly Keaton who set up the heist, to the final reveal that he is really Verbal is one that nobody ever expects. The twist is one I didn’t see coming, which is the whole idea, but it wasn’t a twist that felt forced. It is one that made sense and one that gives you a punch to the gut every time you see it. It is an incredible ending that held me for longer than anything else I’ve experienced and is one that made me feel like I knew something no one else did. The twist created my favorite movie ending of all time and cemented the movie as one I will never tire of watching.