Resolution and Dénouement

Plot’s big finish. Located at the plot triangle’s bottom right corner, resolution is the event where protagonists face a main obstacle. If resolution fails to somehow involve the protagonist, a work is anti-climactic. Many mistakenly think a long denouement—that part of fiction that happens when the action is over—is an anti-climax. In denouement, theme, character change, relationships and sub-plots are drawn to proper conclusions in a way that should satisfy ones reader.

Clarksworld magazine editor and convention co-panelist Nick Mamatas puts it best. He rejects submissions with poor endings out-of-hand because authors may get lucky and open a story well, but authors who can’t end a story are still learning the craft. So how does one stick the fiction landing in a way that will please the editorial eye?

Like a framed house’s wiring and pipes, plot merges into main lines, the resolution, then lead to a source in the foundation. Denouement is that source: a fuse-box, or water-main. All of a piece’s threads are funneled to, and end at these points. End in a way that’s as obvious and dramatic as a big fat insulate copper cable, or large fat pipe, alive with voltage and pressure, supplied by some great literary-creative-artistic instinct hydro-plant.

Resolution should grab readers, and denouement should leave them thinking. You’ll know you have a good ending when the words the end are unnecessary.