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An article dealing with the importance of having a believable ending in a short story competition setting. A response to a public request.

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The Importance of a Believable Ending

Creating a believable ending is an important and challenging aspect of writing for short story competitions. Part of the traditional narrative contract between writer and reader is that a story should have a beginning, middle, and some form of conclusion; and having been building towards the ending throughout the story the reader expects it to be effective, or in other words, believable. It does not matter how well written or gripping the rest of the story is, if the ending is unbelievable and disappointing a judge is extremely unlikely to consider it a winning submission; the story will be relegated to the rejected pile.

One common reason for short fictions having unbelievable endings is that the writer has misjudged the pace of the piece. If the story takes too long to build towards the ending and then rushes it in order to keep within the word limited it will tend to lose all credibility, appearing to be merely tacked on to the body of the text, an afterthought. This makes for a very weak story and is likely to alienate the reader as well. One way in which some writers combat this is to write the ending first, so that they know exactly where the story is heading and how many words they have to reach this most important element. In this way, combined with a keen eye for pace, a writer can avoid a rushed and unbelievable ending.

Novels and long fiction tend to follow traditional narrative structure closely, having endings in which all sub plots, unresolved mysteries, and loose ends are neatly tied up. While these longer fictions have the length to make this possible, attempting to do so in a short fiction can often appear contrived and unbelievable; there is simply not enough time to do this in a short story. Because of this short fiction is freed to a degree from these expectations somewhat, opening up the possibilities of more unconventional endings.

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Written by: Nicholas Cockayne
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