Do you want clear answers at the end of a story, or do you prefer doing a little investigative work and close reading to unpick the clues, or do you dig story endings that are wide open, where you can chew over the story and make your own interpretation? I ask because I got another email this week from someone who’d read my story, The Stormchasers, and wanted to know what the hell is going on in it. Seven or eight readers so far have taken the time to write to me wanting to know what’s really happening in the story and it’s concerning me.
I think one of the most important things you need to do in a story, ideally from the first line, is to create a need to know in your reader. If they don’t want to know what’s going on, they’re not going to read on, and if you tell them the whole story in the first paragraph, then they’ve got no reason to read on either.
So some kind of mystery or withheld information helps to pull in a reader and keep them going to the end. But there has to be a pay off at, or close to, the end – you’ve teased them along, and the reader needs to be rewarded for his or her attention.
While there’s plenty of room in a novel to perform a big narrative arc and then gently bring the reader to climax, there’s no such luxury in a short story. Conclusions and denouements and neatly tied bows are fiendishly difficult to pull off in the short story. The risk of doing it clumsily is great.
IMHO, the ideal is to give the reader just enough information (and give it as indirectly as possible) to be able to give his or herself the payoff without the writer having to spell it out – to bring themself to climax, so to speak. But how much is enough? Maybe there are as many different readers as stories and for some you’ll give away too much and for others not enough.
I don’t know. What do you think? Open or closed or ajar? If you have an opinion on this, feel free to comment in the box below.
PS. 20 Oct 2015. If you’ve read The Stormchasers and felt frustrated by its ambiguity, here’s a spot-on analysis by Charles May in his round-up of selected stories from The Best British Short Stories 2013.
This is a great question, Adam. Personally, I’m a big fan of an ending in which the reader is invited to supply the ending – but then, that has resulted in rejections because there isn’t a satisfying enough resolution! But I do think that reading is a dynamic process, a contract really, between writer and reader. That isn’t to say it doesn’t happen when an ending is more closed; but I think a more open-ended narrative leaves more space, more possibility….
Thanks Rachel. I like your idea of the contract. And yes, space and possibility are good things for me too! When it works for the reader, it’s an interactive experience, not totally passive.
I think it all depends so much on the story. I read The Stormchasers and I loved the ending, loved it. I didn’t know what to expect – it was such an delicate little beautiful thing that ended up being this terrifying, anxious storm that you’d never want to be in the middle of. It didn’t need any more than that. Good short stories often don’t need to explain. I don’t know if I want to be fully satisfied with the endings of short stories – I don’t think that’s what they’re there for. There’s an art to ending a story and I think that if you do it right then either way it’ll be satisfying – whether that’s ending it with a thud or leaving the door wide open. Personally, I like a little room for interpretation, but I think you can do that at the same time as not frustrating a reader.
Thanks very much Carlotta – that’s reassuring. Yes, I think it’s true that it depends on the story too – as soon as you start making rules and assumptions, there’s always another story that breaks that rules and still works. That’s one of the things that’s so great about them – they won’t fit neatly in boxes.
I’ve read that the age of ‘spoiled identities’ (Jarvis) is slowly disappearing; my aim is to bring about more of that utopian optimism of the 70’s in my characters and that completely dysfunctional period and messed up 3-day working weeks that were resolved by angry feminists in dungarees with V-signs on. I like my protagonists to have that moody, emotional quality (think throwing your toys out of the pram) its fun, and for me reassuring, and like Adam say’s – they won’t fit neatly into one box.
Thanks.
Open, closed, ajar – I like them all if they are well written. A closed ending story can still be very powerful and resonate with the reader long after they have finished and make them want to re-read it again and again just as much as an open ended one. A good collection should have a bit of everything like a good album. Certainly there should always be something mysterious and unfathomable about a story but as every reader will have a different take on the same story there always will be. I think you do this very well in your stone thrower collection as I’m always re-reading those stories.
Good point Lawrence. And I think about collections as albums too – very useful to think this way when choosing the order of the stories. And thanks so much – there’s no greater compliment than to be re-read. Makes me very happy to hear that.
Loved ‘The Stormchasers’. It’s perfectly paced and full of so many vivid details – the snails being blown across the patio, the very loving portrayal of the child (‘We are real stormchasers,’ he said – that really made me laugh). And then there are these two lines: ‘Even her voice sounds wounded’ and ‘Another thing he gets from you’ – both of which reverberate very differently once we’ve read right to the end.
In terms of open or closed, I think your other commentators have got it right: it’s just got to be good. What I find tiresome is the kind of ending that you can see lumbering towards you for several paragraphs – or even pages – waving flags. I want to be both surprised and convinced when I read something – and that is SO difficult to achieve. But Stormchasers is a good example of an ending that gets it right.
Thanks so much Vicky 🙂 I love your image of the bad ending waving flags pages before its moment – so true. Yes, an ending should be smuggled discretely under a coat. And yes – surprised and convinced, that’s a great little checklist for whether an ending works or not.
As readers of short stories we often apply our own schemas, reading in or discarding information in order to reconcile the author’s ‘meaning’ with our own values and lived experience.
Our short story reading group (made up mainly of writers) recently read ‘The Stormchasers’ and there was considerable debate about whether the husband was an abuser or the wife a self-harmer. My feelings are that as writers we should be prepared for our stories to take on lives of their own after we’ve written them, touching our readers in unique and individual ways that aren’t always as we imagined.
Personally, I prefer short stories that leave a little something for the reader to mull over, and often find these kinds of stories resonate with me long after I’ve finished reading them. I love your stories, Adam, and as I’m looking at the domestic in short fiction as part of my PhD thesis, I’m finding them excellent literary fodder as well!
Thank you Rhoda – I’m thrilled that your group had a debate on The Stormchasers. Yes, I agree that once your story is out in the world you have to give up your control of it and allow people to see things in it you might never have seen or imagined. It’s a strange feeling – like seeing your kids being independent of you for the first time.
And thanks so much! Good luck with your PhD.
I always enjoy a neat ending to a story, loose ends all taken care of, I feel quite satisfied. Generally speaking these are from my guilty pleasure, “romantic comedy books”. I also love the sudden twists and surprising endings in your stories Adam. I have long moments of great enjoyment thinking back over the story and finding the conclusion for myself.
I am a great fan of all well written stories however they end and thoroughly enjoy going along for the ride the writer has created.
Thank you for many hours of enjoyable reading.
Thanks Sam 🙂 Yes, I think an open ended romantic comedy would have people throwing their books at the wall in frustration!