I am constantly reminded that endings are hard. Just the other day, as I was walking, I thought of the ending of a play I’ve been kicking around in my head for a few years (yes, years). This makes me very happy. I feel like I can actually start writing the play now.
Endings are hard because they must be satisfying, and as we all know, you cannot satisfy everyone. So, of course, that means they must satisfy me. And I’m hard to satisfy. They should be both surprising and inevitable, two (sort of) mutually exclusive qualities. They should spring from the beginning and the middle of the story, so they should bear out some clues that have been planted.
A current play I’m working on involves two women having an argument. The argument builds and increases in intensity as their emotions get more and more inflamed. The results of the argument are not going to be happy, really, no matter what. So the ending hints at a resolution that is probably the best we can hope for.
Here’s to (not happy, but) satisfying endings.