Have you ever started reading a book and just couldn’t get past the first few chapters? Or maybe you enjoyed the book, but the ending left you feeling empty inside. It just didn’t quite work. Beginnings and endings can make or break your novels.
If you want your reader to finish your book, you’ve got to start well.
You’ve got to hook them in with a beginning that piques their curiosity enough to hold them throughout the story. But if you want your readers to recommend your book to their friends, you must thrill them with a satisfying ending.
When it comes to sales, the ending is perhaps as important, if not more important, than the beginning because word-of-mouth marketing is ultimately what makes a book a bestseller.
How do you make sure your beginning and ending are doing their jobs?
I asked Christy Award-winning novelist Angela Hunt. She’s sold over 5 million books worldwide, and she’s written a few beginnings and endings.
How can you grab your reader’s interest from the start?
Thomas: Authors often write and rewrite the first page over and over. We want that first page to be well-written, but how do we start the story in a way that grabs the reader’s interest?
Angela: Most people begin writing a novel with a major event in mind and want to jump straight into it. If the story is about Susie being kidnapped, they’ll often start with the kidnapping. Writing books reinforce this approach, advising writers to “start with something exciting” or “begin in the middle of the action.”
But if the reader doesn’t know Susie, they won’t care about her. A kidnapping on page one results in little emotional impact. Instead, the beginning should give Susie a small story arc. She needs something she can struggle with, endure, and overcome. By the time the reader has connected with her, around 20% into the novel, that’s the moment to introduce the big event.
When I taught live writing classes, I would have someone walk up from the back of the room and whisper in my ear. Then I’d turn to the class and say, “I’m so sorry. Billy has died.”
At first, they would stare at me, confused. Then I’d add, “Billy Graham.” Suddenly, the reaction changed. The news had emotional weight because they knew him or had grown up hearing about him.
I used to use Queen Elizabeth for this example; but now that she’s passed, I need to find someone new. The emotional impact only comes when people associate a name with a person they know.
If you want readers to care about a major event in your protagonist’s life, you need to spend the first 20% of the book letting them get to know and love that character.
Thomas: LitRPG is one of the fastest-growing genres in ebooks and audiobooks today. In this genre, the first part of the story typically involves someone from our world being transported into another world. Many books rush through this transition in just a couple of paragraphs, getting it out of the way so they can dive into the vibrant fantasy setting filled with magic powers and adventure.
But it actually works better in stories like Dungeon Crawler Carl (affiliate link), where the protagonist goes through a mini-adventure before entering the new world. In Carl’s case, he’s trying to rescue his girlfriend’s cat from a tree in bad weather. It’s a stupid cat, and the task seems trivial; but through it, the reader learns about Carl’s personality, struggles, and how he approaches obstacles. At the same time, without realizing it, the reader is also learning about the cat, which turns out to be a major character in the story. This opening does a lot of heavy lifting, establishing both characters, so when they go on their grand adventure, there’s greater emotional weight to their journey and their losses.
There’s often a loss at the beginning of LitRPG stories. Many protagonists die early on, and the game world serves as a kind of purgatory or afterlife. But when the protagonist dies in the very first paragraph of the first book, the reader doesn’t feel anything. The death has no emotional weight because they haven’t had time to connect with the character.
LitRPG, as a genre, taps into the fourth-turning desire for powerful heroes who conquer great evils. The protagonists in these stories grow increasingly powerful. The genre doesn’t favor antiheroes or weak men. It tells stories of strong men overcoming great odds, much like the legends of King Arthur and the old chivalric tales.
How do you know where to start your story?
Thomas: Most writers feel the obligation to start their novels with a bang. And it’s true that if you start your novel with a birthday party, you may lose people’s attentions if you haven’t already earned it in an earlier book.
How do you know how far back to start your story and still write a strong opening?
Angela: The other day, I was watching the Olympics and saw the pole vaulters. They would pick up their pole, run full speed, take a few small hops, then plant the pole and launch themselves over the bar. This stage of storytelling is like one of those little hops before the big leap.
Before you plant the pole and send your protagonist into the heart of the story, you need to give them a challenge that reveals their strengths and weaknesses and makes them relatable. This small but meaningful struggle should highlight a special skill or unique ability, but it should also expose their deficits and an obvious problem they are facing.
Beyond that, this moment should subtly reveal their hidden need, which they may not even recognize in themselves. It could be a character flaw or a lingering wound, like being an orphan who has never felt a sense of belonging. The best characters have a flaw; and the key is to simply reveal it, rather than remarking on it.
This first 20% of the story, this initial hop, carries a lot of weight. But by the time your protagonist plants the pole and launches into the larger story world, the reader knows them, perhaps even better than they know themselves.
What mistakes do authors make when beginning the story?
Backstory Dump
Angela: One common mistake authors make is the backstory dump. Most writers know they need to start with a bang, so they open with an exciting first paragraph. Maybe the character is putting out a fire or rescuing someone. But then, in chapter two, they launch into the character’s full history: “He was born in 1975, his parents were…” None of that belongs there.
Explanation
Another common mistake is giving explanations.
I once fished for piranha though I never actually caught one. I was in the Amazon, and they handed me a simple stick with a fishing line and a hook tied at the end. The guide told me, “Drop it in the water; and when you feel the piranha take the bait, jerk hard to set the hook and pull it out.” My friend was catching piranha left and right; but no matter how hard I tried, I never caught a single one.
The beginning of your novel should be like baiting and hooking the reader, not handing them the whole fish. If you write, “Susie looked worried as she searched for her daughter. Her daughter had a tendency to wander away and had been lost three times in the past week,” that’s an explanation dump. Editors will often write R.U.E. in the margin, meaning “Resist the Urge to Explain.”
Instead, just write what’s happening. Avoid explanation and backstory at all costs. Many writers feel like the reader needs to know certain details right away, but they don’t. If it’s truly important, you can weave it in later. The backstory belongs at the back of the story.
Your job in the first part of the novel is to throw out hooks. You don’t want to confuse the reader, but you also don’t want to explain everything. Give them just enough to know who they’re with, where they are, and roughly when the story takes place. But resist the temptation to explain every little detail and circumstance.
Thomas: Think about the last time you fell in love. When you started falling for someone, you probably didn’t know their entire backstory. Some people fall in love quickly, while for others, it takes time. But no one falls in love knowing everything about the other person right away. The purpose of dating is to gradually learn about their background and where they came from. Yet something about them drew you in and made you curious to learn more.
It’s the same with readers and protagonists. You need to make your readers fall in love with your main character. Not everyone will connect with every character. Just as people have different types of relationships, readers also have preferences when it comes to protagonists. As you think about the hooks in your story, consider who your target reader is and what traits will make your protagonist interesting to them.
Personally, I can’t stand stupid protagonists. I prefer characters who are smart; and if I see a protagonist making obviously bad decisions, I often stop reading. For me, that’s a DNF—Did Not Finish.
Other readers, however, have a much higher tolerance for clumsy, blundering protagonists who stumble through the story without being particularly bright.
Think about the specific characteristics you want to highlight at the start. Your protagonist may have a dozen interesting qualities, a fascinating backstory, and plenty of scars, each with its own backstory. Maybe you even wrote a short story for each scar, but there’s a time and place for all that. It might belong in a reader magnet or outside the novel entirely.
You don’t open with everything. Instead, focus on the one or two most compelling traits that will make readers start to like the character. As the story unfolds, there will be opportunities to reveal more.
Angela: Let me tell you what first caught my attention about my husband. I already knew who he was, and I knew he was “old.” He was 30, and I was 21, and we were both in college. One day, I saw him across the gym, surrounded by a group of middle-school kids.
I knew enough about middle schoolers to know they don’t tolerate phonies. If they were choosing to be around him, he had to be genuine. That was my hook. That was the moment I thought, “Who is this guy? I want to know more about him.”
In the same way, as a writer, you want to reveal character without explaining.
First Lines
Your first line has to throw all hooks. The elements of a great first line are a person and something that raises a provocative question.
A lot of people want to start their story with a description of a landscape. Snooze. A detailed account of a room and its furniture? Snooze. Poetic language about the changing seasons? That may have worked 100 years ago, maybe even 50; but today’s readers are products of the video generation. We expect stories to move at a much faster pace.
What you really need in your first sentence and first paragraph is a character and something that raises a provocative question. One of my favorite opening lines of all time, which I wish I had written, comes from a Jodi Picoult novel: “Ross Wakeman succeeded the first time he tried to kill himself, but not the second or the third.”
I had to keep reading. Why did he want to die? How did he survive the first attempt? Why didn’t he succeed the next two times? That one sentence hooked me, and I was in for the whole novel.
Thomas: Or think about Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” You have character, action, and setting all in one sentence. It makes you want to know more about all those things. You want to know more about this God, His creation, and the heavens and the earth.
So, you start reading, and pretty soon, you’re deep into Genesis. By contrast, the Gospel of Matthew starts with a genealogy. You have to earn the right to open with a genealogy.
Angela: When I read Genesis 1:1, my chief question is, “Why did God create the heavens and the earth?”
Thomas: I think that’s probably the best question to leave your reader with. Of all the question words like who, what, when, why, and where, I think why will keep readers hooked the longest. It’s the deepest, core question.
What are your thoughts on including a prologue?
Angela: Some writers feel compelled to include a prologue, but my question is, why? Often, their reasons are weak. Many times, writers can’t think of a gripping opening, so they take a scene from the end of the novel, stick it at the front, and call it a prologue. It’s the same trick used in TV shows where they start with an exciting moment, then flash back and say, “24 hours earlier,” before picking up the story.
But in a book, that’s cheating. You can come up with something better.
Another common type of prologue is the backstory dump. Instead of putting it in chapter two, they shove it into a prologue. But if the reader doesn’t need to know that information right away, and they usually don’t, then it’s just a turnoff. Move it back.
That said, there are a couple of cases where a prologue can be useful.
In murder mysteries or thrillers, the prologue might show a murder, with the main story opening as the detective arrives at the office, banters with fellow cops, and gets assigned to the case.
The other valid use of a prologue is to record an event that sets the tone for the story. It might be something that wouldn’t naturally fit elsewhere but establishes an important mood or theme.
For instance, my book The Note (affiliate link) is about a reporter who investigates a plane crash, and it opens with a short prologue about the people getting on the plane. It’s told from an omniscient point of view, so there’s no personal connection for the reader yet, but it sets the scene. These are the people on the plane and it went down. Then the book starts.
If you’re writing a prologue, determine why you’re writing it. If it’s to give information or to cheat, just because you can’t think of anything more exciting than the end, then skip it.
Start with chapter one.
Thomas: I sometimes see prologues used in epic fantasy, and they’re fairly common in the genre. They’re often written from an omniscient, historical perspective, serving as a way to introduce key background information. A typical example might be something like, “Three thousand years ago, this ring nearly fell into the fire; but it didn’t. Instead, it was lost, and no one has seen it since.”
That’s essentially the prologue from the movie version of The Lord of the Rings, not the book version; but it illustrates a common technique. Sometimes, there’s no natural way to weave this kind of information into the main narrative, but the reader needs to know it from the start. In these cases, a prologue helps plant the necessary seed before the main story begins.
Brandon Sanderson sometimes writes prologues that don’t make sense until you’re three books in. He withholds their meaning for a long time; and while it works for him, I don’t recommend trying to replicate that unless you fully understand why and how he’s doing it. It’s a risky approach, and you have to earn the right to bend the rules.
A good rule of thumb is, “When in doubt, leave it out.” But there are times when a prologue is the right solution for a specific storytelling problem. That said, I often find prologues to be dull. They delay getting into the action and feel indulgent for the author, rather than necessary for the reader.
Angela: In a fantasy scenario, the author is setting a unique, invisible, make-believe story world. The prologue serves as an introduction to a fictional world. It’s setting up where the story takes place.
How do you know where to end the story?
Thomas: In many stories, the endings and the beginnings often rhyme, so to speak. In a chiastic structure, the satisfying ending calls back to the beginning, but that doesn’t have to happen. So, how do you know if you should end where you began?
Angela: First, define a chiastic structure for us.
Thomas: A chiastic structure is a storytelling technique where the story is structured around a central pivot point. The story follows a pattern that can be described as ABBA or ABCBA. The story progresses to a certain focal point and then mirrors or reflects back in reverse order. The peripety is the pivotal moment that changes everything in the narrative. It’s a technique that can be applied in sentences and larger narratives, including novels, movies, and even speeches, to create a compelling and memorable effect.
For instance, it can scale down to a sentence: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” The statement begins and ends with “country.”
The chiastic structure can extend across a long story or even an entire series. A great example of this is the relationship between Bilbo, Frodo, and Gollum.
In the middle of The Hobbit, there is a pivotal moment where Bilbo, wearing the ring, comes up behind Gollum in an underground cave. Instead of killing him, he chooses mercy, leaps over Gollum, and escapes. This act of compassion sets events in motion that will echo later.
At the very end of The Lord of the Rings, a similar but reversed scene unfolds. This time, Frodo is the one wearing the ring, deep underground in a cave, while Gollum comes up behind him. But instead of showing mercy, Gollum bites off Frodo’s finger to steal the ring. In doing so, he unintentionally saves Frodo from ultimate corruption by ensuring the ring is destroyed.
Bilbo’s initial act of mercy is mirrored in Gollum’s final fall into corruption. Yet, paradoxically, that corruption leads to saving Frodo.
By using similar scenes, it begins and ends in the same place, so to speak.
Often, in chiastic structures, there is a cataclysm at the center of the story. This is sometimes called the mirror moment or, as I prefer to call it, the peripety. It’s the pivotal event that changes everything.
In The Hobbit, this turning point happens when Bilbo, who begins the story as a passive and whiny protagonist, finds the ring. That moment transforms him into an active protagonist, which shifts the trajectory of the story. From that point on, Bilbo begins stepping into his role as a hero.
The chiastic structure is further reinforced by how the story begins and ends in Hobbiton. But when Bilbo returns home, he is no longer the same hobbit who left. His adventure has changed him in profound ways. The chiastic structure provides structural symmetry.
To learn more about chiastic structure, check out my episode on How to Write Enduring Bestsellers with the Two-Act Chiastic Structure.
Angela: Whether you’re writing a three-act novel or a two-act story with a chiastic structure, readers always feel a sense of completion when your character goes on a journey and returns to the place where he started, but he is changed.
For example, in The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy starts the story in Kansas. She then travels to Oz, experiences her adventures, and ultimately wakes up back in her bed in Kansas. The ending mirrors the beginning.
I just finished writing a book on Sarah, and I included an emotional statement near the beginning that says something like, “I had never been more confused.” Then, at the very end, I echoed that same idea with a slightly altered version of the sentence. It’s an echo of the beginning at the end.
If your character ends up in a different physical place because their starting place no longer exists or they simply can’t go back, you can still create this echo in other ways. It can come through dialogue, emotions, or a meaningful symbol. Maybe the character finds an object from their past life, or they reflect on an earlier moment in a new way.
This technique brings the reader back home in a subtle but powerful way. When they read the beginning, they don’t realize that something will be mirrored in the end. By the time they reach the final pages, they may not consciously remember that first moment; but on a subconscious level, it creates a sense of completion.
Thomas: A good example of this structure is The Three Little Pigs. The story begins with the pigs in a place of safety, living with their mother. She sends them off to seek their fortune; and in the first part of the story, each pig builds a house—one of straw, one of sticks, and one of bricks.
Then comes the peripety, the arrival of the Big Bad Wolf. The second half of the story mirrors the first, as the wolf destroys the house of straw, then the house of sticks, before reaching the house of bricks. The story ends with the surviving pig, or all three (depending on the version you chose), safe inside the brick house.
While they don’t return to their mother, they do find a new place of safety; and they’ve learned an important lesson about hard work and building with durable materials.
As the author, you get to decide which elements of the beginning will be echoed at the end to give it that chef’s kiss that brings it all together. The reader may never consciously notice it; and you, as a reader, might not realize a story is mirroring its beginning. But on a deeper level, that’s what makes the ending feel satisfying.
It’s the sense of returning home, where the characters come back, but they are changed because of the adventure. That transformation is what makes the journey meaningful.
How do you strengthen your ending?
Angela: You need to put a hint of the beginning at the ending or a hint from the ending at the beginning. It’s really a simple thing to do.
Once you’ve got the story structure down, just look at your setting, symbols, and dialogue; and find something that you can echo in one place or the other that will bring it full circle.
Thomas: How do you know which element to choose?
Angela: Consider the theme and emotional core of the book. What is the emotion you want the reader to take away? If there isn’t already a line of dialogue that carries emotional significance, I would create one. I’d have a character say a version of it near the beginning and then have the protagonist repeat or reflect on it at the end.
Take The Wizard of Oz as an example. Dorothy famously says, “There’s no place like home,” at the end. I don’t remember if that exact phrase is used at the beginning of the movie; but if I were writing it today, I would make sure it was. Perhaps Auntie Em could say it when Dorothy runs away; or maybe Professor Marvel could use it while looking into his crystal ball, telling Dorothy he sees a woman crying for her. That would make the phrase feel even more powerful when it is echoed at the end.
Thomas: If you’re writing the first book in a series, how much do you wrap up the ending? You want people to keep reading the sequel; but at the same time, the ending still needs to feel satisfying. How do you balance that with a “to be continued” feel?
Angela: Readers hate cliffhanger endings. The trick is to give your protagonist a complete plot structure so they have a clear goal and either reach it or not.
Thomas: Or it could be a tragedy where the protagonist doesn’t always have to succeed.
Angela: Right, but even if they fail to reach their goal, they usually learn something from it. That’s why people say all endings fall into one of two categories: Happily Ever After (HEA) or Sadder But Wiser (SBW). One way or another, the protagonist’s journey should feel complete in some way.
The trick to writing a series is to leave either a thread hanging or a character’s fate unresolved so you can pick up that storyline in the next book. However, the main plot still needs to come full circle. The protagonist must either achieve their goal or reject it.
I ran into trouble with some readers in my last book. The story follows a young woman in ancient Rome whose goal is to be a good wife and lead her Roman husband to Christ. In the end, she succeeds, and her husband converts. But then she faces trial and is told she must go to Rome to stand before the authorities. To me, that was a perfectly complete ending. It wasn’t a happy one because she was heading to prison, but she was at peace because she had fulfilled her goal.
However, I also had her sister literally jump off a cliff. Readers called it a literal cliffhanger. To me, it wasn’t a cliffhanger in the traditional sense. But in any case, that storyline will be resolved in book three. That couple isn’t the focus of the next book, but they will have a fate in book three.
Thomas: The classic way to write a satisfying ending while still leaving room for a sequel is often seen in mystery or thriller series. The detective solves the case by the end of the book, bringing the killer to justice; but in the process, he uncovers a shadowy organization or a deeper mystery that set the crime in motion. While the immediate case is resolved, the larger mystery remains, providing a natural thread for the next book.
A great example of this is Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes. Moriarty isn’t the one pulling the trigger in each crime; but as Holmes solves cases, he begins to uncover Moriarty’s influence in the background. It allows each book to stand alone with a fully resolved mystery while weaving a larger storyline unresolved.
Of course, how this works varies by genre, but the principle remains the same. Each book needs a satisfying resolution.
The science fiction or fantasy version of this follows a similar pattern. The hero defeats the big monster, but it turns out the creature is part of a larger organization. Or perhaps they’ve successfully fought off an alien race, only to discover that an even greater threat is on its way.
By leaving hints about what’s to come, you create curiosity.
Ultimately, your characters keep readers coming back. Readers want to spend more time with them and follow them on new adventures. They want to explore the galaxy with Captain Kirk or journey alongside Frodo.
If readers truly love your characters, the specific adventure matters less. When your characters are compelling enough, you don’t have to rely on cliffhangers to keep people reading.
Angela: It’s like a literary version of Whack-A-Mole in that there’s always a new challenge, a new case, or a new enemy popping up. But what keeps readers engaged isn’t just the revolving mysteries or conflicts, it’s their connection to the detective, sleuth, or main character. They want to go along for the ride with someone they love following.
My husband and I watch a lot of TV series, especially British ones. Some shows invest more heavily in the main characters’ story arcs than others. We’ve noticed that we quickly lose interest in those that follow a strict case-of-the-week format. After a while, those start to feel repetitive. What keeps us hooked is wondering whether the two investigators will finally get together, fall in love, or drive each other crazy because of their differences. We become invested in the characters.
What mistakes do authors make when writing endings?
Thomas: What causes books to be thrown across the room?
Angela: One storytelling mistake that drives me nuts is the deus ex machina when something sudden, amazing, or coincidental happens and magically resolves all the problems. This term comes from ancient Greek theater, where playwrights would create intense tragedies but struggle to find a satisfying resolution. To solve the plot problems, they would literally raise a Greek god onstage using a crane or platform; and the god would decree justice, set everything right, and bring the story to an abrupt conclusion.
Too often, writers fall into this trap. They have a character say, “Oh, I just happened to have the antidote for the poison you just drank right here in my pocket!” Suddenly, the protagonist is saved. Anything that feels like a forced coincidence comes across as unbelievable and unsatisfying.
A few years ago, I was talking to my writer friend Al Gansky, and he pointed out that Christian fiction is one place where God can’t act like God. If God works a miracle in the story, readers see it as a coincidence or a cheap trick. But there is a workaround.
If you have a character who can work miracles through prayer, you need to establish that ability early on. Show it happening at the beginning, remind the reader in the middle, and then when the big climactic moment arrives, he can pull out all the stops.
One of the best examples of this is Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River. The story follows a hardworking, hardscrabble man. It’s narrated by his young son, who watches his father perform small miracles throughout the book. The father works a miracle at the beginning, another in the middle, and then a profound, story-defining miracle at the end.
So it can be done, but you can’t have a character who goes around working miracles all the time. It’s just not believable.
Thomas: I’ve been reading a lot of Robert E. Howard recently. He’s best known for writing the Conan stories; and with Conan soon entering the public domain, he’s about to become a major figure in modern literature. Most people are familiar with Conan the Barbarian; but after Howard finished writing Conan, he created another fascinating character named Solomon Kane.
Solomon Kane is a 1600s Puritan who fights witches, zombies, and brigands. Imagine a pilgrim with a sword and a gun who has no problem slaying evil. He’s not advancing good. He’s destroying evil.
What makes him particularly interesting is that while he is deeply righteous and heroic, he isn’t religious in the traditional sense. He doesn’t spend much time praying; but throughout the stories, seemingly miraculous things happen around him.
The first time I read these stories, I thought, This feels like a lot ofdeus ex machina. But then I realized that it wasn’t just a coincidence. It was God’s subtle hand at work in the life of a man who, despite being a devout Puritan, isn’t particularly religious. He slays witches, but there are still supernatural things happening around him.
It’s a bit like the biblical book of Esther; the protestant version doesn’t mention God but still demonstrates supernatural occurrences. It’s very different than the books of Samuel or Kings, where you see dramatic miracles and lots of prayer.
Howard has an interesting way of working in those supernatural elements. I think it may be worth studying that if you want to see another way of handling the supernatural. Robert E. Howard has been very influential in literature for the past hundred years.
How does your worldview affect your story’s ending?
Thomas: Your ability to end a story well is determined, in part, by the quality of your worldview. If you don’t have a good worldview, and if that worldview isn’t baked into your book, you won’t be able to craft a satisfying ending.
A lot of secular books have frustrating endings because their authors have a postmodern worldview, which often leads to deconstruction, rather than resolution. When taken to its natural extreme, postmodernism inevitably leads to nihilism. Since postmodernism rejects absolute truth and meta-narratives, everything becomes about power, which makes it difficult to create a meaningful conclusion.
This is why Game of Thrones struggled to end. The worldview that shaped those books made a satisfying resolution almost impossible. From a commercial standpoint, it was better not to end it at all than to conclude it in a way that left audiences frustrated.
As a Christian author, you have a real advantage because our worldview is one of hope and optimism. It acknowledges the reality of evil but also affirms that good ultimately wins.
Some Christians believe that things will only get worse and worse until Ragnarök comes, bringing total destruction before everything is remade. I honestly don’t know how those Christians write satisfying endings. Maybe their stories carry a longing for Ragnarök; but most Christians see Christ as victorious, not only at the very end, but in our lives right now. Christ wins everywhere, all the time. Even when we don’t fully understand what’s happening, he is still the victor.
That belief gives us hope, even in the darkest moments, even in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. As writers, we can reflect that in the way we end our stories. It used to be that songs would always end on a major chord, rooted in the deep understanding that hope is central to life.
As a Christian author, you have the opportunity to bring that same sense of hope into your stories.
Angela: I’m glad you brought that up because it’s so important. I remember once reading an award-winning young adult novel. The writing was beautiful, and I loved the protagonist. But in the end, the lesson he walked away with was basically that life stinks and you just get through it the best you can.
I was revolted. I thought, Life is wonderful!
On the flip side, I once wrote a novel, Uncharted, where a group of people wake up and realize they are in Hades. The protagonist, a woman, figures out they are dead; but no one believes her. She finally proves it to them. But when I was writing the story, I got stuck. How do you end a story like that? There’s no hope. Hell is the next stop on their journey. That’s pretty bleak.
Then I wrote in her teenage daughter. The mother clings to the idea that if God is real and if there is any mercy in the world, He will help her get a message to her daughter. The characters are stranded on an island, and bits of debris from their past lives keep washing up onshore—empty two-liter bottles and torn-out pages from books. The mother starts using her own blood to write messages to her daughter, stuffing them into the bottles and throwing them into the ocean.
This was one book I did open with a prologue. It shows a teenage girl finding a bottle on the beach. Just as she’s about to open it, someone yells for her to put it down because it’s dirty. The story then jumps into the main plot.
At the very end, the book returns to that scene. In the middle of the night, the girl sneaks back down to the beach, finds the bottle again, and reads the message.
At the very least, we can offer hope because Christians do have hope.
Thomas: That sense of optimism is so important. But it’s not a Pollyanna-style optimism that ignores evil, nor is it the kind of superficial positivity you find in a Hallmark film. In those movies, there’s no real brokenness or wickedness. There are misunderstandings and miscommunication, but no true evil.
Christian fiction, however, can fully acknowledge the reality of evil while still holding onto the hope that good will triumph. It affirms that justice does prevail and that good is stronger than evil. This is a crucial distinction because there’s a common idea that good and evil are evenly matched and that the deciding factor in any situation is the individual’s choice of which side to push toward victory.
But that’s simply not true. God is infinitely more powerful than the forces of evil. The idea that evil is equal to good is one of its greatest deceptions; and it’s not a lie we should be reinforcing in our fiction, especially in our endings.
What other mistakes do authors make with endings?
Solving the Protagonist’s Problem
Angela: I almost made this mistake when I wrote a children’s book about a boy who wanted to buy a watch chain for his grandpa’s birthday. The family lived in the country. And throughout the story, different people came down the road and made trades, but the little boy never managed to get a watch chain for his grandpa.
In my first draft, I had written that the grandma suddenly got an idea, ran into the house, grabbed scissors, cut a piece of the horse’s tail, braided it into a beautiful watch chain, and said, “There, now we have a gift for grandpa.”
My editor stopped me and said, “No, that’s not how it should work. The protagonist has to solve his own problem.”
It was an easy fix. I just had the little boy come up with the idea himself and braid the watch chain on his own. But that change made all the difference because every story, no matter if it’s a children’s book, a novel, a play, or a movie, is ultimately about the protagonist learning a lesson and making a decision. The main character has to be the one to solve the problem.
A common mistake new writers make is having someone else swoop in and fix everything. The moment that happens, the story is no longer about the protagonist; it’s about whoever just saved the day.
Imagine if The Wizard of Oz had ended with Glinda the Good Witch coming down, waving her magic wand, and saying, “Poof! You’re back in Kansas.” That would be completely unsatisfying. Dorothy had to learn her lesson, make a choice, and take action to make the ending work.
Thomas: Sometimes, when an author is struggling with the ending, it’s a sign that there were major issues earlier in the story. One of the biggest mistakes I see Christian authors make is writing passive protagonists.
This often stems from broken theology. It’s the opposite of good being stronger than evil and God being more powerful than the devil. Some writers take the mindset that God will do everything, and the characters are just along for the ride. But that’s not how it works.
When God gave the Promised Land to the Israelites, that didn’t mean they just walked in. They had to fight for it. They fought battle after battle, war after war. Every city had to be conquered. It was a long, grueling process that required action and perseverance.
The same is true in storytelling. A protagonist who simply waits for things to happen isn’t compelling. Characters, like real people, must take action, struggle, and fight for what matters. That’s what makes a story and its ending satisfying.
We are here to work, but we’re not working for God. As Martin Luther said, “God doesn’t need our good works. Our neighbor does.” We work on behalf of our children, our communities, and even ourselves. Our actions matter. They have a real impact on the world around us.
If you don’t believe that, I don’t know how you can craft an engaging protagonist. Readers want protagonists whose actions affect the story. If you hold the view that our choices don’t matter, that everything is preprogrammed, and that life is just a simulation or a predetermined clockwork system, you are essentially embracing a form of deism where free will is meaningless. And that is a deeply unsatisfying way to tell a story.
A worldview that denies the importance of human action will hold you back from writing stories that resonate with readers. People want to read about characters who make choices and take risks. Even at the sentence level, an active sentence with a strong subject is always more engaging than a passive one.
What encouragement or tips do you have for writers struggling to make their beginning and ending work together?
Angela: That echo between the beginning and the ending is crucial. Make sure your reader feels emotionally satisfied. Don’t just have an abrupt ending where the protagonist reaches their goal and the story suddenly stops. Instead, include a scene or two that shows how they have changed.
Whether they return to their ordinary world or step into a new one, their mindset and perspective should be different. Show that the lesson they learned has now become a part of who they are. This gives readers a sense of closure and makes them feel that the character has grown and survived and that all is right with the world.
Readers take that lesson, that transformation, and carry it into their own lives.
To learn more about crafting strong beginnings and endings, check out Angela Hunt’s book Beginning and Ending Your Novel (affiliate link). It’s part of her popular Writing Lessons from the Front series.
Beginning and Ending Your Novel is a quick and practical read, complete with writing exercises to help you develop these skills.
Related Episodes
- Show *AND* Tell With Angela Hunt
- Crafting a Career: How to Become a Professional Author With Angela Hunt
- Beyond First Drafts: How to Master the Art of Revision With Angela Hunt
- How to Tighten Your Writing With Angela Hunt
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