Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/45368
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I’m putting together this story and its formative stages are almost complete. However, I am genuinely interested as to how the ending would appear to the reader.

My protagonist is a skilled character whose powerful traits allow him to succeed continuously throughout the story. He is challenged by foes along the way, but he eventually overcomes them all. By the end, he encounters the main antagonist, his worst nightmare. This is where the plot twist comes into play. The protagonist begins to overpower the antagonist, but in a shocking turn of fate, the protagonist is defeated. This is not a plot twist in the sense that the protagonist turns out to be a “bad guy” all along, but rather one where the protagonist is clearly expected to win until the very last second where the antagonist wins by luck, so to speak.

So I am wondering, is this in general a poor way to end a story, or an effective one? Would this kind of ending make sense, or would it be too sudden and immediately turn off the reader? Should any instances of foreshadowing be implicated in order to ever so slightly predict the protagonist’s eventual demise, or would it best go down as a surprise moment?

Original score: 26