A strange thing happened to me the other day: an old lady who lives in my apartment building asked me to bring some groceries up to her room. Normally, in a situation like this, I would pretend I don’t speak English, or if I suspected she knew I spoke English, I would say I have horrible diarrhea and sprint past her. But I was feeling charitable so I agreed.

Unfortunately, I soon realized this was a ruse. Once I got the grocery bags into my hands, she quickly spun around and opened the stairwell door to let in a younger man holding a pistol. I was being mugged. The old lady dug her hands into my jean pockets and became frustrated when she realized I didn’t have my wallet or a phone. I told her I left my wallet at work and that my therapist suggested I stay away from phones as lately I’d been cold calling my second wife just to hear her voice on the other line. In fact, the only thing she found in my pockets was a $20 off coupon for all D&E purchase orders exceeding $500. She asked what kind of people spend five hundred dollars on books in one go, but I was too scared to say that it was basically her demographic.

I was frozen in a panic. I thought of letting them take the gun I keep in my ankle holster, but worried that if I mentioned I was armed, that might escalate things. With my demise so near the horizon, my whole life flashed before my eyes. Is this how my life ends, I thought to myself? I knew that my realtor suggested this was a possibility before I closed on my apartment, but I never thought it would happen to me. I always figured I would die during a Pulitzer Prize acceptance speech or from a shark attack while Cindy and I made love in the Caribbean.

But it also made me reflect on how to end a story. If someone were writing the story of my life, ending it this way would infuriate the readers. Surely someone as important as me deserved a more satisfying pay off. In today’s video, we’ll look at some common mistakes new and even seasoned writers commit when trying to finish their stories. We’ll think of much better ways for me to die on this edition of Stories’ Matter.

Bad Ending One – An Outside Source Saves the Day

Imagine if someone burst into the stairwell at that moment and took out my assailants in one fell swoop. That would seem cheap and if you knew my neighborhood, it also wouldn’t make sense.  People step over dead and dying bodies the time, and to be fair, I’m guilty of that myself. I stopped trying to help after the time I once gave a neighbor some Narcan when he actually needed the Heimlich because he was choking on a piece of steak. Anyway, I knew at that moment I had only myself to rely on.

This is basically a deus ex machina, which we’ve talked about before. And most readers hate it. In the 1978 film version of Superman, Superman saves Lois by flying so fast around the Earth that he reverses its rotation which somehow causes time to reverse. Anyway, try not to use bullshit ways to resolve your conflict.

Bad Ending Two – The Predictable Ending

The most predictable thing my assailants could’ve done is gun me down. After all, it’s happened two other times in my apartment complex this year. And I was voted by my high school class as most likely to be gunned down. So basically the readers of my life would’ve been expecting this since Chapter Three.

Of course, this is not an easy thing to do as a writer. A story needs to be a surprise, but it has to be something that’s earned. You have to be smarter than your reader, as a man who has met many readers, most of them are smug, self-satisfied nerds always out to prove you wrong.

Bad Ending Three – Unearned Happy Endings

Now, all of my former wives have told me I don’t deserve to die happy. But I have to assume that’s just frustration with how good my divorce lawyer is. Still, imagine if the story I told you ended with me throwing the grocery bags at my assailants, removing the ankle gun from its holster, blasting the old lady and her partner to kingdom come and then, after getting the key to the city from the mayor for ridding my town of its two worst criminals, I get a call from Cindy telling me she’s ready to take me back. Certainly, that was a scenario I was playing in my head while I was at gun point, but readers would’ve felt that cheap and unearned.

Movies like Signs, The Rise of Skywalker and Arthur have all been accused of having unearned happy endings. Your character’s victory, whether it’s something big like saving the galaxy, or something unimportant, like saving the life of a dog, should come at a cost. Maybe, for example, you have to euthanize your cat so you can transplant its liver to the dog.

Bad Ending Four – The Dragged Out Ending

If you’re still watching this video, you probably wish I’d just shut the fuck up and tell you what happened in the end. You may think this is some trick to get pushed more by YouTube, hoping that if all viewers wait until the end of the video, it will boost visibility. Like maybe I would use this time to go into more detail about what my assailants looked like. Or I might use this time at the end to talk about what was in those grocery bags. Was it prop food? Would that be cheaper than real food? This isn’t a good time to bring that up, we want to know what happened. Why is this story just going on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on…

Bad Ending Five – The Abrupt Ending