: Re: How to tell if my story is finished, or needs more? Slightly obtuse title, let me elaborate. I'm writing my first screenplay, and I'm trying to keep it simple while making it simultaneously

@Bryan361

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There are two classic good, satisfactory approaches to ending a story. Let me call them "Less is More" and "Afterglow."

"Less is more" ends before the key point - possibly seconds or hours before it. The text built a rich story in the reader's head, there were many threads that converged towards one single point. Then the explicit story, the one told to the reader ends - but only technically so. All the rest was written - by establishing directions of the threads, their interconnections, expected results - and so, when the text ends, the story continues in the reader's head, imagination builds upon the created foundation and events unveil in a very satisfactory train of thought, taking us through various possible outcomes and getting the results quite right. In essence: the last chapter is missing. You're a smart reader, think it up yourself.

"Afterglow" is the opposite. All pending minor threads get resolved - sometimes through one-sentence solutions like "X got sentenced to 7 years of prison", sometimes through extended scenes. It's an epilogue that lets us enjoy all the fruit of the prior struggle, observe all the fallout and collateral damage and really appraise the extent of effects as the author helps us take a step back and observe the entirety of the scene. It's an additional chapter added after the last chapter. "The story was awesome, now let's sit and reflect on it before we say good-bye."

There are of course less satisfactory endings: "cliffhanger" where the plots do not lead to clever resolutions but leave us with nagging questions, "And they lived happily forever" - ending right after the climax with a generic promise that it's all, or weird, memorable and interesting but not really satisfactory "non-endings" where the story didn't have a climax, explicit nor implied.

I guess I skipped a bunch of others I can't recall off top of my head, but unless it's a part of a series (where a cliffhanger would be acceptable), you will want either of these two, and choosing between them is fairly easy:

If your story has a surprising, unexpected, wild twist at the end, a bunch of side threads that served as tools at certain points but now are left hanging, unsolved answers - go for "Afterglow" and simply wrap up all remaining threads by simply switching "Fast forward" on - telling what happens in a year, in ten years or so. In sceneplay it can be done by narrator, by the characters making plans for the future or by retrospection by characters advanced in time - much older. (or by a dozen other methods...)

Now if your story built enough momentum to carry you directly to the climax, which doesn't contain any surprising twists but only a quite satisfactory "it went according to the plan", go for "Less is more" and cut it before the climax. Sum the rest up with single sentence at the very end. "It went all according to the plan" is an example of such a sentence.

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