Finishing things is a lot harder than starting them, but the more you finish things, the better you get. Where starting projects is easy, because you are “Creator” and probably have a million ideas you can draw from to build the world and everything in it, finishing it means you have to tie up all the loose ends and bring the ending together with purpose and a sense of satisfaction.

If you start a project without a clear ending in mind, it can make the endings that much more difficult, because you find yourself with all these little pieces that need to be brought together and often no clear vision of how to actually do that.

But if when we start a project we consider what the ending will be, it makes it easier to reach that ultimate end goal. Even if the ending is something that comes to us later into the project, that’s okay too obviously, as long as we get there. The point here is to finish, and the more often we do that, the easier it gets. Why?

Finishing projects exercises different thought processes than starting them. It’s a form of problem solving that, rather than spawning ideas off of ideas, you must learn how to tie them together. The more practice you get at it, the easier it will be, and the better you will get. It’s a skill like any other within the craft of writing.

Good endings can parallel beginnings, or draw off of themes established throughout the story. They can answer all the questions, or leave a few. Good endings deserve a post all their own, but the point is that they provide some degree of resolution for the events that transpired throughout the story. Figuring out how to do that – and do it well – is a learned skill.

How can you get better at endings? Get there and write them. Draft short stories with lower word counts and simpler plot lines that make it easier to accomplish, and you’ll begin to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Write nonfiction articles or travel memoirs and consider a meaningful ending for those. While the development will be different for fiction and nonfiction, the practice of drawing those ideas together to a satisfying close is absolutely transferable.

With practice, you may even find that the more comfortable you are with writing endings, the easier they are to reach even with longer, more complicated projects. Once you develop a clear understanding and techniques for rallying the ideas/concepts together, it gets easier to conjure impactful, meaningful ways to write endings.