Story Endings

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Story Endings
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ENDINGS

• Aims
• To consider what makes a good ending.
• To learn what cliché endings are and how to avoid
  them.

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Endings

• Q. What makes a good ending?
• Task 1
• In pairs look at the three endings you have been
  given. They are possible endings for a story
  called The Heroes.
• Put the endings in the order of best to worse and
  talk about why you think they should go in that
  order.

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• Task 2
• Put these statements on what is essential for a
  good ending in order of importance.
• 1.The ending ought to refer back to the beginning
  in some way
• 2. Everything should be sorted out in the ending
• 3. The ending should be exciting
• 4. There should be a twist something
  unexpected should happen
• 5. The ending should hang we should be left
  to work it all out for ourselves
• 6. The ending should be a cliff-hanger it
  should feel like the beginning of a new story

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P.S.Sorry I forgot to give you the mayonnaise.

• Your Task
• Pick one of the last lines below and explain why
  its a good way of ending a story!

The knife came down, missing him by inches, and
he took off.
Dont ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you
start missing everybody.
We shall never be again as we were!
Alex stood where he was watching it until it had
disappeared in the dying light.
Tomorrow, Ill think of some way to get him
back. After all, tomorrow is another day.
Alrite Sis, wrong mountain, thats all
He has to take this one chance to be happy.
After a while I went out and left the hospital
and walked back to the hotel in the rain.
Very softly she sang, half hummed a song as her
grandmother used to sing to her when she was a
little girl.
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Cliché Endings

• Q. What are Cliché endings???
• Examples
• that he understood the full, real horror of the
  situation. At that point he awoke and it had all
  been just a dream.
• With that they all lived happily ever after.

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How to end?

• Your story should remain consistent! Remember the
  story line.

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The Cliff Hanger

• Where we have to wait until the final moment
  until we know. For instance, the spy who manages
  to stop the bomb two seconds before it explodes.

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The Twist

• Where we are fairly sure about something, but in
  the final part everything changes. For example,
  we then learn that this is a fake bomb, and the
  real one is hidden somewhere else and will
  explode in five minutes.

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The Unfinished Ending

• Where the story stops, but we aren't sure what
  has actually happened at the end. For instance,
  the bomb is defused and everyone is safe. But
  then an army commander reports the theft of
  another bomb... only this time twice as powerful.

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Unhappy, Sad Ending

• Tend to be more interesting than happy ones and
  full of emotive impact so long as it is not
  overdone!

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Narrator addresses the reader directly

• Giving them a piece of advice arising from your
  story, making them feel included. Is there a
  moral you want to pass on?

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Introduce a mystery

• Something that is unresolved so the reader has
  something to think about when they have finished
  reading.

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WHICH?

• What is your favourite kind of ending?
• Why?
• You always need to be thinking about impacting
  the reader!

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DONT

• Try to wrap up your story too quickly.
• Read it through check it all makes sense.
• Avoid the trick ending He woke up and it was
  all a dream.