I feel like Im just wrapping up the plot points and stopping! I cant tell if there is a sense of satisfaction and completion now that the story is over. It doesn't help that since its about my own characters they obviously still exist and have a life past the story in my head. I just… I don't know what to do. I answered all the questions and finished every plot line… how do I make it so that the reader gets that feeling of "its over and that's sad but its a good ending and i'm satisfied with it"?????
I hope this makes at least some sense.
This will probably be very unhelpful, but the books I remember the best are the ones that aren’t wrapped up and tied with a bow. My favorite stories are the ones that leave you wanting more, you know? I guess what I’m trying to say is that the feeling of incompleteness might not be a bad thing ;)
I saw the Doctor Who reference…. You could leave it on a cliffhanger and write a sequel, if you feel that works? I dunno. Sorry I'm not much help.
For me, the endings that are the most satisfying are the ones where there's closure. It doesn't have to be an "everyone live happily ever after" kind of ending, but personally I really dislike really vague and ambiguous ending when you aren't sure what happened to the main character (kind of like the movie Inception).
I feel like the best way to do it would be to end it in a way where the main problem has been solved, but to present a small problem that could be used as a premise for a sequel but isn't a huge cliffhanger that will leave the reader feeling frustrated.
If you need an example of what I mean, I think that the Jasper Dent series by Barry Lyga is a good example. The series is about the son of a serial killer, who helps the police solve murders as a way of proving that he won't end up like his dad. In the last book, his mother (who is kind of also a villain character in the 3rd book) ends up in a coma. The story ends with the main character contemplating how easy it would be to kill her, but ultimately deciding not to. It's satisfying as a reader because there are no loose ends, but as a writer it's just enough that another book could be written if that was what the author wanted.
For a more mainstream example, the Incredibles. At the end of the movie everything is resolved, the villain is caught, etc. But then at the very end you have this Underminer character introduced and the characters are about to go after him. It's more of a cliffhanger, but you at least know that the characters are alive and well and that they succeeded in their initial quest to stop Syndrome.
That's a good idea, thanks for the help!
What you need is an epilogue where maybe the main character has a flash back of past events for example, "I miss the way we used to smile together without a word, immediately knowing what each other were thinking," i would then lead this into the character writing or texting that other character and finish it with, "As he/she sent the letter, he/she sighed in relief and the smile returned to her/his face, as he thought satisfied and thankful for someone as understanding as——.
