Bruce Ballenger

English 524
March 3, 2024

Notes on Endings in Personal Essays

We have a language for beginnings, or leads. We talk about the purposes of leads—to
engage the reader, to make promises, to establish voice and tone, to suggest the writer’s emotional
relationship with the subject and reader, and so on. We even have terms to describe leads:
anecdotal, scene, turning point, announcement, profile, and so on. But what do we say about
endings?
“I loved it but I don’t know why”
“There’s something wrong with it”
“It’s satisfying”
“It’s unsatisfying”
We need a language of endings. We don’t need rules to follow. But we do need to be more
articulate about what endings might do, and which seem to work and which don’t. Here’s my
attempt at a taxonomy of some endings; please add to it.

A Taxonomy

 The Snake Biting ItsTail Ending. The formulaic but sometimes effective technique of finding
a way to end by returning to the beginning.
 The Eureka Ending. The revelation that explains almost everything. This fails when it’s
obvious or a cliché and succeeds when it’s a surprise.
 The Dead Horse Ending. This is conventional school essay ending—say what you already
said. Only makes readers pity the horse.
 The Dallas Ending. It was only a dream.
 The Seam Tightening Ending. Reaches back into the essay and seizes some significant
detail, image, or idea and with a final yank the gaps close and the essay makes sense.
 The Breakfast to Bed Ending. If the piece began with an alarm clock it probably will end in
bed. An ending that is a predictable conclusion to the chronology. Can work if it’s somehow
isn’t so predictable.
 The Escape Ending. This is the I-can’t-stand-writing-about-this-anymore ending. Or the I-
don’t-have-time-to-finish ending. Seems to end in mid-breath.
  The Trailhead Ending. Seems to open up on a new subject, or new question, but one that
seems logical given the material that came before it.
 The Open Door Ending. It’s ambiguous, a willful decision not to answer the question or
perhaps to complicate things even more, and to leave the reader wondering. Risky.
 The Joltin’ Joe Ending. Relies mostly on surprise, often using the last paragraph as the pitch
and the last line as the crack of the bat.

Technique

Endings bear incredible weight. Writers feel the burden of resolving their own confusion
about intention and meaning: What am I trying to say? What cannot be said? In the end, what is it
that I understand now that I didn’t understand before? Then there is the weight of reader
expectations: Narrative tensions should be addressed if not resolved, questions should be answered,
meanings should be clarified. At the same time, an ending should seem to emerge logically from
what came before. What are techniques for accomplishing all of this? What aspects of craft do we
turn to?

 Shift to now-narrator. It seems natural to resort to the present-self to provide the

retrospective that clarifies meanings, arrives at new understandings, or simply surrenders to
uncertainties.
 Resurface telling detail, image, moment. Returning to significant particulars from earlier in
the narrative illuminates and reinforces their meaning. It can allow writers to revisit what
wasn’t fully understood earlier and address it with new understanding.
 Revisit significant event. Narratives attempt to examine unresolved meanings that arise
from significant events, typically involving reasons and consequences for the narrator.
Endings invite a final rereading of what happened.
 Cut to final scene. Essays built on the backbone of a single experience naturally lead to
endings that complete the dramatic narrative. But these scenes aren’t just any scenes. They
are ripe for reflection since they are also a culmination of the writer’s narrative of thought.
 Restrained reflection. Since the meaning of essays is cumulative, there is a danger of
overloading an ending with abstraction or forced conclusions. Good endings are more
restrained, either by resorting to more implicit meaning, especially metaphor, or avoiding
extended exposition. Insights may also be tentative and uncertain.
 Freight the last line. Obviously, the most important line is the last. It typically carries the
most meaning, and so must be crafted with particular care. The language should be precise
and evocative, and burnished with some new understanding that arises logically from what
came before, even if it’s a surprise.
The Ending as a Rhetorical Situation

Some writers say that they write the ending first (these usually aren’t essayists). Other
writers say that the “right” ending is usually one or two paragraphs before the one they wrote.
Some say that an ending simply feels right, that there is nothing particularly rational or analytical
about where to end. I don’t think this can be completely true because all writers are aware that
there are decisions to make. But what are they?
Consider the situation: you’ve played out as much of the narrative as you want to in the
draft, or perhaps you feel that you’ve got only a paragraph or two to finally clarify the meaning of
what came before. You also know that the expectations of readers rise at this moment. They want
some resolution to the narrative—what, after all, really happened—and particularly in nonfiction
they want to understand, finally, what the writer is trying to say about all of this.
How might writers respond? Generally, they decide their position on implicitness or
explicitness. Will they say what they mean or will they merely imply it? But they must also judge
whether they are finished with the material, a more personal question. Ending an essay requires
writers to decide whether they know enough about what they want to say to say it, or suggest it, at
the end. If not, they know the ending will be incomplete and unsatisfying for them, even if readers
like it.
Writers, too, need to decide how they want their readers to feel at the end of the piece. In
literary nonfiction (and fiction as well) endings usually must arouse some feeling. What should it be?
Sadness? Delight? Emptiness? Puzzlement? Relief? Epiphany? This is a decision that is linked to
how the writer felt when closing the piece, or when moving up the mountain of reflection
throughout the essay, or possibly during the narrated experience itself. I suspect that endings which
feel right to writers best match how they feel about the persona that speaks last.
Most writers also know that crafting the final paragraph of a piece usually comes down to a
single sentence—the last one. It is this line that is always worked and reworked. It’s the one that is
likely to do the most work emotionally. It must be just right.