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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/12886
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/12886
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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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