Fashion and changing perceptions over time, have influenced the endings of many a great story. From ancient time, the storyteller has always striven to enrapture, with tales of horror, intrigue, romance, and mystery.

Romantic novels – where boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back again, love blooms, and they live happily ever after – still have a large audience. Love and desire have always been at the heart of human reactions. These stories are of course variations of the theme. In Shakespeare, we see many a boy meeting a girl, who may or may not be disguised as another boy, and through much intrigue, parental disapproval, and devious friendships, we could see the girl at the end of the story appearing to die from an overdose, and the boy committing suicide, desperate and distraught. Shakespeare’s brilliant story telling is often as relevant today as it was in the middle ages.

In Victorian melodramas, dark deeds, polite and formal relationships, the heavy influence of the Church, and sexually repressed characters, often led to misunderstandings and miscommunications. Novels of this era often ended with disappointments or at best enlightenment through a religious experience.

Detective novels and mysteries of the first half of the 20th Century had complicated plots, twists and turns, class war differences, and brilliant minds in an age of little technology. These stories often ended with a long, detailed explanation in the last chapter, revealing the guilty party and why everyone else was eliminated. All the pieces of the jigsaw fell into place. And, sometimes the “butler did it!” As the 20th Century progressed, we saw the hard hitting, hard drinking, and no nonsense detective stories with strong sexual overtones. The language was tough, smart and clipped. The “good guys” usually won out in the end.

As a novel evolves, the story, characters, beginning and ending can change many times. The author strives to keep the reader interested and uncertain of the outcome.

Today’s novels could incorporate all or any of these past endings, but I believe the more modern approach has been to ask the audience to think. This means that many of today’s plays, movies, and books do not have neat, tidy endings. To some audiences, this can be infuriating. However, others enjoy the experience of putting their own interpretation and ending to a story.

In my novel, “Bear Any Burden,” I have gone for the more modern approach. While circulating my manuscript to many literary agents and receiving many rejections, I realized that some adjustments needed to be made. One particularly well-established New York literary agent called the ending of my manuscript “serendipitous.” Only a literary agent would use such a delightful word, so I set about making some changes.

Accordingly, the end of my book now leaves many questions unanswered. Some say this should lead to a sequel. Maybe so. But the objective is to make the audience think about various possible outcomes for the characters, and not have a “cheesy” ending in which all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place.

What do you think?