So what makes for a good ENDING or RESOLUTION?
Although what makes a good ending is dependant upon the specifics of the story, here are a few tools we can utilize:
INTELLIGENCE
STRENGTH (PHYSICAL or SPIRITUAL)
MAGIC
LUCK
FAITH
These are, alone or in combination, the fundamental ways in which your protagonist can win the day. He can be smarter than the bad guy, stronger than the bad guy, have some special magic on his side, he can get lucky, or he can call on his faith. He may even call directly on his deity, like Thor might call on Odin.
Now, I’m sure the creativity cops are up in arms over these little beauties! Okay, if you’re writing a literary novel about three generations of hard-headed Newfoundland fishermen, and the myriad ways in which they are dysfunctional, though possessed of a deep rooted love for each other and the sea, you may not want a tidy resolution. (Although you’d be surprised at how many stories of that ilk do!) You may want something more like real life, which often has no clean resolutions.
But hey, this is COMIC BOOKS for heaven’s sake. Even in a more realistic mag like The Punisher, (That’s Frank Castle, not the weird little robot in the FF comics.), things are highly exaggerated and archetypal. We want things to wrap up as neatly as possible. Some kind of JUSTICE must be visited upon the bad guy, which is something we’ll discuss in the next entry.
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