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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/32225
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

There's a concept that I'm rather fond of regarding story resolution called " **promises to the reader**"

The idea is that every story promises things to the readers, and failing to fulfill those promises will leave the readers unsatisfied. These promises come from a variety of places - the title, the genre, the events of the book, etc, and while readers may not consciously know what they are expexting, recognizing what promises you make is the key to making your ending satisfying.

For example, the final battle in Lord of the Rings was mostly superfluous from the perspective of defeating Sauron - it was merely a distraction, and it was never made clear if it was a needed one. But from a plotting perspective, it was critical because a war epic like Lord of the Rings promises an epic battle as part of the resolution. Similarly, the character drama regarding whether Gollum deserved mercy promised the reader that he would make a final appearance to resolve the question. Finally, the descriptions of the Ring's power made a promise of a final test of will at the peak of Mt Doom.

_How_ you fulfill these promises is left undefined. In fact, fulfilling them in unexpected ways is a good way to make your ending engaging (see above for Frodo's test of will at Mt Doom). But you do need to fulfill them.

Circling back to your question about mysteries, the answer is that **if you promise your readers an answer to the mystery, then they will be unsatisfied if you fail to give them one.** In Return of the Jedi, viewers would have been unsatisfied had nothing been said about Darth Vader's history. On the flip side, nobody minded that we learned nothing about Yoda. One history was promised, and the other was not.

Now, I have unfortunately little advice on _how_ to avoid promising an answer to the mystery. But as others have said, that promise is generally implicit to the mystery genre, so the more you distance yourself from that the better off you'll be. Also, beta reader feedback is excellent for identifying promises.

I also recommend the [Writing Excuses podcast](http://www.writingexcuses.com/2011/01/09/writing-excuses-5-19-fulfilling-promises-to-your-readers/) from which I blatantly stole this concept.

Original score: 5