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Q&A How to end a story without reaching a new status quo?

Any story that has an open-ended ending essentially does this. Star Wars is a great example. At the end of the first movie, most of the personal plotpoints are fairly well wrapped up, but some ar...

posted 5y ago by Ryan_L‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T10:34:59Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/41270
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Ryan_L‭ · 2019-12-08T10:34:59Z (over 4 years ago)
Any story that has an open-ended ending essentially does this. Star Wars is a great example. At the end of the first movie, most of the personal plotpoints are fairly well wrapped up, but some are left to sequels. Yes, the rebels won this battle, but what about the rest of the war? What happened to Luke's parents? What will Darth Vader be up to? Clearly, Star Wars; Episode 4: A New Hope does not end with a new status quo.

Lord of the Rings does something similar. Yes, the Ring gets destroyed, Sauron gets defeated, but Middle Earth still has a lot of problems. The Entwives are still missing, orcs still exist and still hate everything, Melkor is still out there somewhere trying to corrupt things, and the elves are still fading away. Again, not a status quo.

So basically, the key is to not wrap up every plot thread. Just wrap up a handful of major plot threads.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2019-01-14T01:04:16Z (over 5 years ago)
Original score: 0