: Re: Not resolving the main / significant conflict I am occasionally slightly frustrated by how neatly stories wrap up the major storylines. Mostly because life rarely ties things up in a bow for

@Jessie137

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Easiest answer I can give you is that the journey to the lack of resolved conflict has to be satisfying. There needs to be some emotional payoff to the reader. Otherwise, we get pissed that we've wasted our money and time on YOUR book. In fact, I've read stories which went ker-blooey at the end in terms of any form of satisfaction, and I usually never read that author's works again.

For example, if Hamlet simply died without exposing his father's killer, what's the point? But (not in Shakespeare's version of the story...) what if at the end, we discovered that the uncle was tricked into poisoning the king, but chose to profit from it anyway? It's still satisfying even though Hamlet's dead because the corrupt new king got whacked, but... the conspiracy is still out there. There's just no one left to figure out who the trickster was.

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