Tips on how to put a strong ending on your article.

By Peter P. Jacobi

A beginning is what we use to tempt the reader into a story. An ending is what the reader will remember if, of course, we found a way to get him there and if we've shaped an ending worth remembering.

The memory of an article is what we strive for, so that a strong, suitable ending becomes a key factor in the development and construction of an article. It is an article's moment not to be wasted.

To end, to complete, to finish, to wind up: stories, articles require endings as much as they required beginnings.

-- A final twist.
-- A quote.
-- A summary.
-- A quip.
-- The last symbolic anecdote.
-- A return to the beginning.
-- Something that tells the reader it's over.

But more than that -- something that the reader will remember, go away with. And something that leaves a flavor of the article. Something that makes a lasting impression.

A good ending requires work, not so much perhaps as a beginning, but it does require work. It requires planning, so that what precedes leads naturally in its direction.

The reader should be left satisfied, feel he's read something finished, something with a point clearly made, something with a unity that has moved the reader from start to finish almost in a circular manner.

It should give the reader something to think about or something to do.

Good Quotes/Memorable Endings

The quote can end. Lincoln Barnett's classic piece for Life magazine, dating to 1952, "The Earth Is Born," deals not only with creation but destruction, not only with how it all began but how, very likely, it will come to a finish. Here's Barnett's final paragraph, leading into a potent memorable quote:

When the fatal day arrives, the sun will hurl forth the outer layers of its incandescent atmosphere, disclosing the fearful white flyers of its core. The first flare of light and heat will bathe the earth in deadly radiation just eight minutes after the initial explosion. Two days later the atmospheric gases blown from the sun's surface and tumbling outward in all directions at a speed of 2,000,000 mph will envelop our doomed planet in veils of fire, melting the rocks and enkindling the very air. The end is best pictured in Revelation in another of the striking parallels between Biblical and modern scientific prophecy; "And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun.... and men were scorched with great heat ... and the cities of the nations fell ... and every island fled away, and the mountains were not found...."

The right quote can do wonders for any part of an article and certainly for the end.

Future Endings

Some articles do not end, even though they do. The writer must stop, but the subject, we know, goes on. David Blum suggests that in his New Yorker profile of the cellist Yo-Yo Ma. We picked his article up at a concert given by Ma and pianist Emanuel Ax:

As Ma and Ax play, this melody embraces them in its gentle folds of purity and devotion. They are eavesdropping on the soul of the composer. Time and space lose their particularity. A spirit, set free from the past, tends us with its power of consolation.

After the concert, Ma and Ax host a dinner party for a few close friends at the Hôtel Baur au Lac. The food, deliciously but outrageously expensive, is accompanied by endless jokes, mostly Jewish, some Chinese -- all outrageously bad. The dinner ends at one in the morning. In the darkened lobby, Ma embraces everyone in farewell. He must be up at seven to catch a plane to Paris, where Jill, Nicholas, and Emily are awaiting him. There, later in the week, the Beethoven performances will be repeated -- not repeated, but renewed.

Space prevents Blum from going on. As does a deadline. We can imagine Ma, however, traveling to Paris. The subject is not finished. In this case a life goes on.

A Twist of Finality

Finality can mark an ending, too. The New York Times' Andrew H. Malcolm, long ago a student of mine at Northwestern University, wrote years ago of "The Ultimate Decision." It concerns a painful decision to remove his mother from a respirator and of her consequent death. He had begun his piece for the Times magazine, "This is the story of my mother's last fighting days and the deal I made to let her die in peace, I hope." Malcolm moves us, through his tears and hours, to these last paragraphs:

At one point in a bedside conversation I saw the nurse's eyes dart over my shoulder to the monitor. "It won't be long," she said. I whirled. The pulse was 44. I had been afraid it wouldn't happen. Now I was afraid it would. Wait. Stop. Don't go! Oh, God, I thought, give her peace. And me, too, maybe. Please. Someday.

Minutes later, the doctor appeared. He checked Mom. The pulse was 40. "She's ready, Andrew."

They left the two of us alone, then. And at some point, Mom left, too. The pulse went from 38 to 24 to 0. There were irregular heartbeats for a while. I didn't know when exactly she died.

The death certificate said Beatrice Bowles Malcolm, the white, widowed daughter of Harry and Jenny Bowles and the mother of Andrew Malcolm, died at the age of 75 that day at 1710 hours.

It gave the cause of death as respiratory failure.

Description can hold a reader to the end.

Now, as this article ends, it ends with a final twist. Part II will continue my narrative and examples for ending a story.

A classic article from a past issue in tribute to the late Peter J. Jacobi, longtime EO writer and author of The Magazine Article: How to Think It, Plan It, Write It.

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