How to Pair Your Book’s Beginning and Ending to Satisfy Readers

Okay, fair warning—what you’re about to learn in this article might spoil movies, TV shows, and books for you forever. BUT—as a writer, you have to peel back the mechanics of story to understand how to make your book awesome, so even if you hate spoilers you’re going to love having the inside track on this one.

The secret you may or may not have ever noticed is that many times, the beginning and ending of stories are paired or mirrored in some way. The untrained audience or reader doesn’t notice that the story is complete. That it’s come full circle. They just know they like it. The good news is, applying this technique to your novel isn’t that difficult, and can mean the difference between a reader finishing your last sentence with a solid “meh”, or experiencing a profound emotional payoff, leaving them thinking about your book for days and weeks after, whether the ending was happy or sad.

Let’s look at how beginnings and endings work, why pairing them is so effective, and the steps you can take to craft your own.

What Makes a Good Beginning or Ending?

The beginning of your story is more than just the opening scene—it’s a contract with your reader. In those opening pages, you establish:

• Your character’s current world and worldview
• What they want most and what’s at stake if they don’t get it
• The tone, style, and genre of the book
• Key themes that will be explored

In genre fiction, your opening scene needs to pull the reader into a specific moment that demonstrates the above with your amazing showing details. This is why backstory gets a thumbs down from readers; it doesn’t show us what will be in your story, only what came before. Long descriptions, or action that’s disconnected from the above points won’t draw readers in, either.

Instead, pick a scene that shows us what ride we’re about to get on. You may have to revisit your opening scene many times as you write your book—that’s normal. But not to worry, it’s because the opening is so important that you have to get it right. Not every scene in your book has to do this heavy lifting, and won’t require the same amount of effort.

When readers meet your main character in a scene that shows them something important about them, such as their misbelief about the world, or their “wound”, and hints at how your story will challenge them, it’s a great place to start.

Your book’s ending is the resolution of that contract. It:

• Shows your character in their new, changed state (or possibly locked in their inability to change)
• Resolves conflicts and questions raised throughout your book

A great ending also “feels inevitable, yet surprising” — a phrase often attributed to Aristotle that leaves many writers shaking their heads. Yes, it’s a tall order to both leave readers wowed by your dazzling ending they didn’t see coming, yet also with the feeling that there was no other possible way that your story could have ended.

Mirroring your beginning and ending in some way can create this sense of inevitability that readers crave, while still leaving room for your creative twists and turns. Human brains are wired to look for patterns and closure. When they recognize an echo from the opening in the ending, it gives them the satisfaction of a closed loop.

How This Works in Movies, TV, and Children’s Books

My kids groan when we watch TV or movies together, because I can often predict from the opening scene what will happen in the end. I can’t usually guess the whole resolution, but I’ll notice a quirky detail in the opening scene that feels deliberate, and will make a great mirror in the end. Most times, as predicted, that detail is echoed somehow in the closing scene, eliciting even more groans from my family, and maybe the occasional pillow thrown at my head.

The average watcher doesn’t notice, but skilled screenwriters insert these details all the time. For example, if the show opens in a hospital, I predict that the closing scene will end up there as well. If a show starts with a woman feeding her cat, I might guess that the cat isn’t going to make it to the end of the show for some reason, and the same woman would be shown missing her cat at the end (I’m sure you can see why I’m wildly unpopular at movie night in my house).

Now, not everything about the beginning and ending of your book can be the same, of course. That would be too obvious, not to mention superbly unoriginal. But choosing a setting, an activity, or an interaction with a particular character to mirror allows the writer to show how much has changed in the world and about the character since the story started, using lots of juicy showing details such as dialogue, actions, reactions, inner thoughts, and setting (want to learn more about how these elements work together? Get more info HERE)

The beginning and ending of children’s books almost always work this way, too. These picture books are compact, so the pairing is easy to see. Here are a few examples:

Dr. Seuss’s Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

Beginning: “Congratulations! Today is your day. You’re off to Great Places! You’re off and away!”

Ending: “Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So…get on your way!”

The phrasing isn’t identical, but the end echoes the opening sentiment that the reader is destined to go places.

Chris Van Allsburg’s The Polar Express

Beginning: A young boy listens for Santa’s sleigh bells

Ending: The boy has grown older, but he can still hear Santa’s sleigh bells, when others can’t—cementing the theme of belief.

Choosing Your Beginning and Ending

Using this technique when you’re planning can give you bookends for your book’s outline. But if you missed the opportunity and you’ve already started writing your book, you can tweak your beginning and ending during the revision process instead. Comparing your beginning and ending scenes can also help you see where you’ve done a great job of mapping your character or worldbuilding arcs, or where you might need to focus some attention.

When choosing how to mirror your beginning and ending, get creative, looking for ways to repeat or invert elements. Explore using:

• A similar setting
• A repeated object or symbol that means something different to readers by the end of the book than it did at the beginning
• A change in a character’s role in a similar situation
• A repeated line of dialogue that was used in the beginning that now has new significance

You also want to make sure that your satisfying ending wraps up any threads or questions you’ve opened along the way. So, before you end your story, go back through your scenes and look for threads you may have dropped (forgotten to wrap up!) along the way, and address them. 

• Any conflict, tension, or mystery
• Any characters introduced but then forgotten
• Any relationships that were growing or changing
• Any wants that your character had. Did they find success, failure, or something in between?

Addressing these open threads doesn’t mean you have to tie everything up neatly with a bow. It also doesn’t mean that you have to give away material you plan to introduce in future books in the same series. But it does mean you should give readers an answer for now, even if it turns out there’s more to the story in future books, so that they leave this book feeling complete.

You can’t ever be sure that every reader is going to love your book, but pairing your beginning and ending is a powerful (and invisible) technique you can use to make sure you’ve delivered a satisfying story. When your opening and closing pages work together, you create a sense of closure that will resonate long after your reader closes your book.

And now, every time you open a book or watch a movie or your favorite episode of Grey’s, you may curse me for pointing this out to you, but you’ll suddenly understand why a great ending feels so good, and your loss of innocence will be worth it. You’re welcome.

Want to work with me to make sure your book will satisfy readers? Take a look at my Editing and Book Coaching services HERE . Ready to get started? Fill out my intake form and we’ll see if we’re a match!

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