Results May Vary from James W. Ziskin

How do you find a balance - if you try for balance - between the overly neat bow at the end of the book and the potentially unsatisfying open end. Is it easier in crime fiction than other genres? 

Great question this week. I believe the answer (s) depends (depend) on the work you’re writing. There are times when we crave the restoration of order in the fiction we consume. Other times, we like to be left hanging, perhaps as a come-on for a sequel. Or maybe just a murky conclusion that gives us pause. Makes us think about the complexities of life, justice, and neat bows. I like that sometimes. Like Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. Or my Puccini portrait below.

In my own books, the ending definitely depends on the story, the mood, and the message—if any—that I’m trying to write. If it’s a puzzle mystery, I will probably want all the loose ends tied up and no questions left unanswered. After all, who would want to assemble a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle on their dining table, only to leave the last five pieces in the box? We want closure in a mystery novel or story, otherwise it’s like an itch that we don’t get to scratch, a piece of bubble wrap that we don’t get to pop, or a dream from which we wake too soon. A mystery story that doesn’t resolve the mystery is like a championship game without a winner.

A love story, on the other hand, might survive an ambiguous ending, especially if there’s a promise of more lovin’ an’ kissin’ in a sequel down the road. And what about a literary novel? It’s not high art if it’s simple, is it? It has to be confusing and oblique or it’s offal. And awful. Yes, ambiguous, unresolved, incomplete are the hallmarks of true genius. No pedestrian happy endings, no thank you. The same way we don’t want our eyeglasses to give us clear vision. 

Or maybe murky endings are just poetic. We like poetic, don’t we? Poetic is deep. Much better than pat, I aver. Or is it…. (See how I created ambiguity there? Brilliant!)

When it comes to endings, one can make the argument both ways, of course, just as sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t. It could be that something deep inside human beings desires variety and change, not always order. A little bit of chaos, too. That’s why we don’t read the same book over and over. Or eat the same meal again and again. Even your favorite food gets dull if you never give it a rest. And NOBODY can listen to the Kars4Kids jingle once—let alone multiple times—without begging for Death’s sweet sting to get that f^@%&! tune out of your head.

But again, what about my own novels and stories? Thinking back on my Ellie Stone books, I’d say they have “satisfying” conclusions to the main plot lines. Backstory and secondary concerns may be left dangling, but never the question of whodunnit. My Bombay Monsoon thriller, however, leaves the reader to draw some conclusions about how things will play out after the curtain has fallen. In fact, I started to write a sequel to that book in order to deal with the aftermath, but I eventually abandoned it. I felt the continuation of the story would only dilute it.

My next book, THE PRANK (July 2026) has an ending that… Oh, no. I’m not sharing that yet. You’ll have to read it when it comes out. But I will say it would be a perfect example for discussion of this week’s topic.

And short stories? Mine tend to wrap things up tidily. But other writers? Results may vary.

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