: Should the opening of a short story mirror the ending? When I was in school, my English teacher told me that a short story's beginning should mirror its ending, or at least the conclusion

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It's very hard to guess what precisely your teacher meant, but here's the closest piece of advice that I know: A story's ending should mirror its beginning, because otherwise, you have probably begun or ended you story in the wrong place.

Consider: where is the best place to begin the story? Usually you want to begin it with the introduction of the central conflict. Otherwise you're just marking time until the conflict actually begins.

And where's the best place to end the story? Pretty much as soon as the central conflict is resolved. Readers won't stand for you ending the story before you resolved the primary conflict, and if you continue for long after its resolved, then the main tension is gone and the reader doesn't really understand why the book keeps on going when the story is over.

Add to this that the reader will generally understand the first conflict presented as the story's major one. It would be very confusing to begin a murder mystery with a scene focusing on a romantic relationship, or a romance with a scene focusing on solving a crime - while these would be fine as secondary plots, whatever you introduce first is usually what the reader will understand as being the more important, central conflict.

So we could phrase all this advice as: Clearly set up your primary conflict in your opening, and clearly resolve it in your conclusion. You don't always need to follow this advice to the letter and down to individual line - but particularly if you're talking about short fiction, which needs to be very concise and free of flab, it's a very good guideline. And making the mirroring very explicit is a good tool to make the conflict and its resolution clear and powerful.

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There are many types of endings. The one your professor is referring to is just one kind. What I really want to know, though, is what he means by should? If should means it should be like that so the story is successful, then no. For a story to be successful it has to grip the reader. So the opening sentence has to be gripping. If by should he means it should be like that so the story becomes a classic, then no again. There are many classics with open endings, or with endings that have nothing to do with the opening. It all depends on the meaning of should. In my opinion, the most important purpose of the opening is to hook the reader. What good is a story if no one wants to read it?

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Yes.. That is one type of writing style. Some stories have the concept at the endings as they have at beginnings as you said. This is because to tell the truth or concept whatever it is strongly to readers.

Assume that you want to say something in a story, which is right. But, the people in the society do wrongly. So, You need to add this concept at a incident in the story wrongly at either the beginning or middle as the people do. Then, at the end of the story You should mention the same concept correctly that the people will change the habit of doing something wrongly.

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