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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33397
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33397
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

You really should not have much choice of endings. Of course, you have all kinds of choices in the specific details of the ending. But in a larger sense the function of the ending of a story is to prove through action that the protagonist has made the choice that they are shown to have made at the climax.

The denouement follows from the climax with a high degree of inevitability. As a result of what is changed or what is discovered at the climax the lives of the characters are changed (or not) in specific ways. Those ways are a direct reflection and proof of the change or discovery that occurred in the climax. Only a certain ending, therefore, is true to the climax.

If the boy and the girl manage to overcome their pride and their prejudice at the climax of the story, they marry in the denouement because it is only by marrying that they can prove that they have overcome their pride and their prejudice. If they give in to pride or prejudice at the climax, it follows equally that they cannot marry in the denouement.

This might happen in real life, of course, but it can't happen in story. (Which is not to say you cannot have a story in which people marry who shouldn't, but that the that is a different story with a different crisis which will demand a different denouement.)

So, if you have a successful beginning and a successful middle, you should have very little choice about the overall shape of the end. If you feel that things are so open that they can go one way or the other, I would look back and see if you really have brought your characters to a climax. A good climax contains within it the seeds of the denouement, and if the denouement is not obvious, the fault may lie in the climax.

Original score: 4