Writing a Children's Book

Lesson 7: Climax and Ending.

Finish Your Book.

Finding a suitable ending for your children’s book is every bit as important as finding a proper beginning. You need to judge the best point at which to draw a line.

Sometimes, the best place to end a story is soon after the climax. If you continue too far past the big scene, you risk an anticlimax. On the other hand, you should avoid a too-abrupt ending. If your readers turn the page expecting the story to continue, then your ending might be too abrupt. The exceptions to this are when the book is part of a trilogy or other series, or if the story is part of a bigger one.

For example, the story of a battle might end fairly abruptly, and the readers would understand this is because the battle is just one in a series that make up the war. Or perhaps your story ends with the discovery of a quest object, and the readers understand the greater quest is still to come.

Another, non-children’s-book, example of this is a romantic novel where the story ends with a proposal of marriage, or with the wedding. This is reasonably abrupt, but in most cases it would be pointless to carry on and stop a month into the marriage, with so many years left to come. You might regard the proposal/wedding as the end of the unmarried courtship.

The actual ending scene or line of a book should be satisfying for the readers. It need not be specifically a “happy ending”, but it should bring some kind of closure. In most children’s books it is still usual to end on a hopeful, or at least a resigned, note. Ending a book with your protagonist is despair is likely to haunt younger readers more than it would adults.

Short books such as picture books or short RS novels usually have a “cap” or “twist” ending. Depending on the tone of the story, the cap might be as simple as; “So that was all right.” or “And they did.” or “He knew that was his last mistake. For now.”

Sometimes, the last line harks back to the first line. Perhaps you recall a JCB mentioned in Lesson 5? The opening lines were;

“When we moved into our new home, I was just an ordinary kid. Now I feel like a hero!”

The last line harks back to this with the cap ending:

“Because of me, that dragon flies around on the purple planet. When I remember that, I feel like a hero.”

Sometimes, a last line looks forward to future activity. An example is the ending of “The Orange Outlaw” when the children are looking forward to co-ownership of Polly the pony.

“Selka” finishes with Mari Gordon agreeing with Selka that she will go away, but promising to come back again. And Selka, having to be satisfied with that, calls the white horses that appeared in Chapter 1. Mari will ride them again. She has got her sea-sight back.

The end of “Alien Dawn” takes Jed full circle back to his reflections on pessimism. At the beginning, if you recall, Jed had “recently discovered what a pessimist was, and decided he was going to be one”. On the last page, he has decided; “Pessimism was rubbish”.

Even “Trinity Street”, which closes with two of the three protagonists stranded in the future and the third presumed dead, ends on a note that looks forward to better times. Gerhardt Watchmen is thinking that now “at least they had a chance.” He speaks telepathically to Tell; “Start walking, teur Estellita, he told her. I’ll meet you in the middle.”

It is worth thinking ahead to work out what kind of ending you want for your book, and then working towards it. Whether the end restores SitNor, improves on it or reverses it, there needs to be a feeling that although this story is ending, the characters will “go on”.

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