In part 1 and 2 of this series, we looked at the beginning and the middle of effective short stories. Now it’s time to jump to the ending.

All we hope to do here is give examples of the kind of endings you could use. However, whatever you choose will completely depend on the entire context of the story you have written. The list below is quite comprehensive but endings come in all shapes and sizes, so something completely different may better suit your piece. For each ending, we’ll also be using example stories from the latest edition of Firewords.

The twist ending    

This kind of ending is one that takes the reader completely by surprise. Often (though not always!) the success or failure of this kind of story hinges on hoodwinking your reader. Here a real challenge arises...

Those of you who read our article about the middle of short stories and how important it is to keep reader engagement will remember that we touched on the significance of strong verbs. These can be replaced by writers who think it is more effective to use adverbs say, for example, ‘He laughed heartily’, when using one great verb to say ‘He guffawed’ would in fact be far more effective. Like everything in the world of writing, there is no hard-and-fast rule as to when to replace an adverb with a verb but we did think it was an area that was often overlooked and was worth revisiting.

I will firstly make a comparison between well-chosen verbs and adverbs, and then mention why I believe it is important to make the right choice when deciding on the verb to use...