What Writing A Book Has Taught Me About Life: The Ending

Creating a good story arc in a book can teach us a lot about how to interact in our every-day lives. In this article, I'd like to talk about the ending of the book.

In the ending of the book, there should be a sense of closure. The different threads of the story all get tied up into a nice, enclosed finale, where the event being written about comes to its final resting place (unless it's a cliff-hanger). There aren't many situations in normal life where events get such a polished sense of closure... so why is this type of story ending so popular?

It's popular because people like to have closure in their lives: because leaving something open-ended gives them stress. It's another thing they have to try to remember or even worry about. Giving people a cliff-hanger in a book can sometimes be effective, but a lot of the time, people can resent you for giving them the stress of not having closure.

What can we learn from this for every-day life? Have a finishing message with your interactions that signify closure with that action. This finishing message could take many different forms, depending on what the action was. I recently helped someone out with a task, but didn't receive a thank you. I wasn't particularly bothered about "not being appreciated" - I'm sure I was - rather, I was actually worried I hadn't done a good job. The lack of closure that I take from not being told, "thank you", leaves that action open-ended for me.

You've got to think about what was meant to be accomplished with each action. Another example is the dating scene. What is the reason for going on a date (let's say: first date)? To see if you like someone enough to continue seeing them. So at the end of the date, saying, "I really enjoyed this, I'd like to see you again", gives a sense of closure.

On the other hand, saying, "my schedule is pretty busy, I'll see if I can fit you in in the future", gives a big cliff-hanger for the other person. Will you see them again? Won't you? The door is left open, and a lot of people struggle with that. I think that some people consciously use this sense of non-closure, because by leaving it open means that the other person (person two) is forced to go back to think about that unresolved issue, in hopes of closure. This means that the person two almost feels compelled to think about person one every now and again.  From there, it could go one of two way: down the path of increased energy being input into the relationship, or closing the door emotionally to gain some form of closure.

Another form of not finding closure is in earworms. Earworms are songs that get stuck in your head. Scientists believe that they get stuck in your head because you might know the chorus and first verse, but you can't remember the middle and end of the song enough to finish it. In this way, earworms get stuck in your working memory, the part of your brain responsible for holding information on tasks that aren't complete. If you can finish the song, your brain may deem the "task" complete and the song will be forgotten. Another line of research that scientists have gone down is getting rid of earworms through other methods. Interestingly, researchers have found correlation between doing anagrams and removing earworms. This is because it is believed that we have limited working memory and a five-letter anagram is usually the perfect size to use up most of our working memory: forcing out the earworm.

In the end, whether closure has been found is how the two phrases, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder”, and “out of sight, out of mind”, can still be resolved without being contradictory - depending on whether good closure has been found: either two possibilities could be true.