Today’s guest post is by writer, editor, and book coach Karmen H. Špiljak.
As an avid reader of short stories, I’ve always been curious about what makes some of them linger. Once I started to analyze them, it became clear that short stories offer a complete emotional experience in a condensed form. They do everything a novel does: manifest change, reveal character and deliver emotional payoff. Except, they need to pull it off on a much smaller canvas, where mistakes are bound to stand out.
This becomes especially clear when it comes to endings and delivering the emotional impact the story has been building towards. Here, the short story gives writers a little more freedom. While novels favor resolved storylines with few to no loose threads, short stories are more flexible as to how and when to end.
Some of my favorite short stories, in fact, end without resolution. Daphne du Maurier’s “The Birds,” Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” and Steven Millhauser’s “Miracle Polish” all have ambiguous or unresolved endings, and this felt somewhat counterintuitive. For most of my writing life, I was taught that resolution is an essential part of the deal. Building up the tension, escalating conflict and resolving it were what storytelling was supposed to be all about.
So, how come these stories continued to live in my mind years after I’d finished them? Didn’t they fail to deliver the one thing they were supposed to?
The more I analyzed it, the clearer it became that lack of resolution isn’t a bug, but a feature. The very fact that the ending was left open made me engage with the story’s main theme, question or dilemma.
“The Birds” got me wondering what caused the attacks, “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” made me question the existence of justice while “Miracle Polish” drove me to reflect on the boundaries of an obsession and whether we can tell that we’ve crossed them.
The pleasure, I realized, came from my own engagement with the story, almost as if it was a puzzle to solve. I loved the complexity of the process and all the questions it triggered in my mind. The lack of resolution transferred the story from the page into real life, giving me a chance to design an ending to my liking.
Sometimes this meant asking uncomfortable questions, like what I would do if I was born and raised in Omelas? I knew what I wanted to do, but would I still think the same if I had grown up in Omelas? For me, this revelation resulted in a much more powerful payoff than if the story had ended with a resolution.
As a reader, I loved having agency over the story ending and wondered if the authors intentionally gave up their control over how the story ended.
When I published a few short story collections, I found out that not all readers enjoy this experience as much as I do. Two local book clubs read Dark Chronicles and some readers wanted to know what happened after the final line: they wanted a clear answer. I could see their point: we often turn to fiction to experience something we don’t always get in real life, things like resolution for example. Unresolved endings leave the tension with the reader, which means more work for them.
So, how can writers make sure their open endings don’t frustrate readers?
The secret to making open endings satisfying relies on three things: the story’s core, its meaning and the promise.
The story’s core is the heart of the story. It tells us what the story is about, like overcoming regret, dealing with loss or establishing a sense of justice. The story’s meaning comes from its core, a message the story is sending to the reader. The story promise, on the other hand, is the emotional contract with the reader that sets their expectations and hints at the reward. It mirrors the ending and primes the reader for the payoff.
Shirley Jackson’s “The Summer People” (spoilers ahead!), for example, opens with a detailed description of the Allisons’ country cottage. We learn the nearest town is seven miles away and the cottage has no heat, running water or electricity. The Allisons never needed it, because they only stay there for the summer. So, when they decide to stay past Labor Day, we sense the trouble ahead. Shirley Jackson doesn’t resolve the plot, instead she leaves us with the knowledge the Allisons are on their own with no gas or food, or indeed other people.
Like many of Jackson’s stories, the core of this one is about transgression. The Allisons are summer people who don’t belong to the countryside: they don’t know how things work and are oblivious to their own naiveté. When they realise their mistake, it’s already too late.
How does Jackson make the story satisfying without telling us how it ends? With a careful choreography of three things: fulfilling the story promise, completing the transformation/character arc and delivering the story meaning.
The story promise and its core are not only essential parts of the payoff, they can guide writers in deciding how and when to end. At the very beginning, Jackson primes us in the direction the story might take, so even readers unfamiliar with her work sense this can’t end well. The Allisons’ transformation is complete when they realise their mistake: they shouldn’t have stayed unprepared, they don’t belong to the countryside. They’re summer people. With this, the story meaning lands and sticking around would only dilute its impact.
Similarly, in Millhauser’s “Miracle Polish,” we never find out if the protagonist ever got to buy another bottle of the product. Using Miracle Polish has transformed him and ruined his life. We can assume he continues down the same trajectory and that daunting thought is more powerful than following the rest of his downfall.
Resolution, then, isn’t the only legitimate way to end a story, or even the most powerful one. Withholding resolution hands the story and its tension over to the reader and gives them the pleasure of co-creation that can lead to a shift in thinking or a revelation. The key to writing a short story with an impactful ending is to nail down the core of your story, offer the payoff that delivers it and craft the story promise that sets the reader’s expectations. When all three align, the ending can amplify the story’s emotional impact and leave the reader engaged long after they’ve finished the story.
Those who’d like a little more guidance with their short stories can grab Short Story Blueprint, a tool derived from Jennie Nash’s Blueprint for a Book method. It offers a handy framework to help you define key elements of your story, map out any grey areas and guide you towards the kind of payoff that best serves your story.
Karmen H. Špiljak is an award-winning author of short fiction and the culinary mystery series Cooking with Cyanide, a fact that continues to terrify her dinner guests. Her short story has been featured on the LeVar Burton Reads podcast. She works as a developmental editor and certified book coach for fiction, helping writers craft stories with impact and get from doubt to done.
Right on. The same goes for poetry. Because poems can be a bit abstract, some poets believe they have to clarify or summarize their poems–they want to tie it all up in a pretty bow. That drives me crazy, because the poet has then denied me the joy of internalizing the poem and figuring out for myself what it means in terms of my own life experiences. Keeping this post. Thank you!
Thank you, Karmen and Jane, for sharing with finesse this clearly written and helpful instruction.