Writing Your Last Chapter First

On my road trip, I’ve been reading. We’re about to leave our friends’ property, where we’ve been camped all month, and head back north to home soon. I’m happily making my way to the bottom of the bag of books we brought. I’ll keep a few of them to reread and I’ll donate the rest to one of the free libraries we pass on roadsides or in campgrounds.

The ones I keep, the ones I read again, usually have endings that really delight me. Something unexpected is offered there, something I can track back later—looking through the chapters I’ve read for planted clues—but which delights me with what I didn’t fully yet realize. Endings are so important to a reader’s satisfaction. When I got my first trade reviews for my upcoming novel, Last Bets, publishing next month, more often than not, the reviewer gave a hat tip to the novel’s ending. That pleased me to no end (pun intended) because I put a lot of stock in how a story finishes.

There are a handful of key images in the story, metaphors for the characters’ emotions, really, and they come together at the end in what (I guess, from the reviews) is a satisfying way.

I learned this concept of writing towards a key image from novelist Roxanna Robinson, who taught at a conference in Connecticut many years ago and encouraged attendees to write towards a key image. This can create an entire book’s momentum and greatly inform which ending you choose.

Some of my road trip reads had deeply unsatisfying endings, even though I loved the book. The ending felt too pat; it wrapped up too quickly to do justice to the emotions developed in the story; it was too mystical.

But writing the last chapter isn’t a cake walk for most writers.

Writing your last chapter first

For over ten years, I taught weeklong writing retreats for Madeline School of the Arts in Wisconsin and other locations. The week was focused on learning to structure and develop a book. On the next to last day, I offered the most challenging assignment: draft your book’s last chapter.

I got astonished looks, real concern, almost rebellion some years. Especially if the room was full of beginners who hadn’t yet dreamed up their story’s trajectory, much less how it ended.

It’s not rocket science, I told them. You can write terrible drafts. The only goal is to play with Robinson’s idea of finding a key image and make notes about the last chapter based on that key image. 

We all went back to our rooms for the night. I prepared myself for disappointment the final day. Sometimes, nobody tried the assignment, but usually I walked in to lit-up faces, breakthroughs, and drafts of some very good chapters.

Those who braved the assignment felt more confident about their books actually happening someday.

If you know where you're going, even sort of, you may get there.

Questions about your last chapter

I always gave the writers six questions to start with. They are the prep for the draft. Even if a writer already had a last chapter—they were in revision, for instance—the questions helped them test the effectiveness of their choice.

I asked everyone to respond to the question in the order below. Don’t overthink it, just jot down ideas that come. Try not to discard anything. And if nothing comes, go on to the next question.

• What feeling do you want your reader to have as they read the last page?  Immediately tell a friend, "You've got to read this!"?  Quiet, introspective pause to think about the intricacies of your story?  Motivation to change something or try something new?  Characters they can't forget?  An action plot that keeps them puzzling it out?

Like I found with the road trip reads, the feeling I had as I finished the book meant everything to my satisfaction as a reader. Sometimes, the book gave a call to action and that ending gave me the enthusiasm to text a friend or post a little review. Sometimes the ending left me thinking about the story for days, reliving it in my mind. Sometimes, as I said above, I was so intrigued with how the writer had achieved this ending, I read back to track the clues.

The feeling equaled my engagement. It’s important to leave a reader with some feeling about your story, not just a flatline.

• Where might the last scene of your book take place? Describe the possible location. Then write a few ways it connects to the location of your first chapter.

There’s a technique I’ve worked with for years: creating a loop between the opening chapter and the ending chapter, via this key image. In my classes, we often analyzed published books. What location repeated from beginning to end? It was fascinating to see how often the story returned to—or cameoed—the opening location in the last chapter. It creates a very satisfying sense of closure, without being too neat or obvious. Check this out yourself, with your favorite books.

• Who is in the last chapter?  Who is telling the story at that point?  Is it the same person as began the story?

Writers who lose the main character halfway through are risking reader disengagement. We invest. We want to follow through. I personally appreciate having the players onstage at the end whom I’ve gotten to love.

• How has the opening conflict or dilemma resolved? What are possible scene ideas to show resolution or change in the character? 

There may be many questions still to ask and answer, but consider what will be wrapped up or at least addressed by the end. The road trip reads I won’t read again did not do this—they left too much hanging. I’m not talking about Hallmark endings; just closure to the primary question the book started with.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

If you’d like to try this, consider the questions above. Take twenty minutes and go through them, noting whatever you get.

Then, read through your notes and see if any image comes through as repeating, or primary.

Alternatively, if you already have a draft of your opening chapter, consider what the key image might be and whether you can loop it into the last chapter--a view, a smell or sound, a certain object that the person is holding or looking at, a kind of movement or gesture. 

Give yourself time to sketch out a very rough outline or scene(s) using what you played with above.  Write badly; that’s not as important as capturing some ideas on the page. Let yourself explore.