Flip the Script

Use contrast to create a killer ending

I’ve spent September's 30-day Craft Challenge: Beginnings and Endings turning over all the endings that have haunted, echoed, and enarmored throughout my life. This post breaks down one way to nail a great ending and a prompt to help you do so.

I carry the final line of Kim Addonizo’s “To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall” in my pocket, like an in-case-of-emergency $20. “Listen I love you joy is coming,” has stood the test of time, kept me company during dark months, and offered comfort through even longer nights. Whenever I read it that last line feels like taking off a pair of too-tight jeans, like dawn busting through the windows, like waking up panicked to realize it’s Saturday the emails can wait. 

Why? There is no wild language or odd, unforgettable image that sticks out. The answer is simple.

Danez Smith once gave me the piece of advice that “any poem that is all dark or all light falls flat.” I heard Matthew Olzmann reference the same thing in an interview with American Poetry Review (sadly not online). And in examining beginnings and endings, the power of contrast and its ability to create tensions has become clearer and more vital.