Book Talk: On Beginnings and Endings

This week our debut authors answer the question: How did you decide on the beginning or ending of your novel?

Kristin Offiler, THE HOUSEWARMING (July 29, 2025)

The beginnings of my books are always much clearer than my endings. With my first two books (my debut and a book that will live in a drawer forever), I started out with a scene or character that came to me pretty formed, and from there, I followed the story to see where it wanted to go. I had no sense of the ending for those books. Since I was pantsing, I had to try out several endings until the right one clicked, and it took a few major rewrites to get there! For example, when I first drafted THE HOUSEWARMING, the story didn’t even have a missing person in it yet (and now, the entire plot revolves around that). So my initial ending was WILDLY different than the ending you’ll read in the published book, and it took me more drafts than I can count to figure it out.

However, I drafted a third book while I was querying a few years ago, and I wrote it with a loose outline (thanks to Alan Watt’s book, THE 90-DAY NOVEL), so I had a vague sense of the ending as I worked. And this summer, I started working on a new project, and I think for the first time (after writing three other books!) I actually have a sense of where this story will end.

I’ve started to realize over many drafts and many books that the ending is ultimately somewhere in the beginning. They’re like two hands holding opposite ends of a rope. When I feel lost in terms of where to end a story, all I have to do is look at the beginning and think about where the beginning was pointing all along. And vice versa! The end points back to the beginning, so if you’re lost, use whichever one feels more solid to you and write from there.

Penny Zang, DOLL PARTS (August 26, 2025)

Like so many of my fellow debut writers, I also knew the beginning of the book early on; I think I can’t write into the story until I know the beginning. The ending changed so much and was massively revised, but it feels right now. I don’t think I realized in earlier drafts just how wrong the ending felt. It’s one of those things that is so hard to explain. Sometimes, when it’s right, you just know. But I didn’t get there without my agent and my editor.

My original ending may have been more dramatic, more like the ending that I thought a thriller was supposed to have, but it fell flat. In revision, the ending now (the true ending, after the climax) contains so much more heart. The characters reach what feels like a natural ending and each time I read it, it still makes me cry.

Emily Krempholtz, VIOLET THISTLEWAITE IS NOT A VILLAIN ANYMORE (November 18, 2025)

The opening of VIOLET was the first thing I wrote—a prologue that set the scene for me as the writer just as much as it did for the characters and the reader, and which shows one pivotal moment that would drive Violet’s character for the rest of the story. The final version of the prologue isn’t that much different from that initial version.

The ending, however, changed several times. Because the book is a cozy fantasy I knew I wanted the ending to feel satisfying, light, and hopeful. There were a few thematic and narrative elements I knew I wanted to include, and those did make it in, though some of the details surprised me because the characters had grown from my initial outline, and their endings were more nuanced than I’d originally planned (one of my favorite types of surprises, honestly!). The most important thing to me was that the ending served my characters and showcased how far they’d come, while still showing the reader that they had a lot to look forward to ahead of them.

Gloria Huang, KAYA OF THE OCEAN (January 7, 2025)

The beginning of KAYA OF THE OCEAN is set in a vastly different place and time than the rest of the book (Fujian province in China during the 1600s). It was inspired by a short story I wrote several years back, which became the seed for the parallel subplot of KAYA. I actually deliberated for a long time on whether to start the book at this point or at the contemporary scene that follows in which Kaya is introduced, for fear I would lose the attention of the younger readers. Ultimately, I decided I wanted to start the story with the origins of Kaya’s goddess descendancy. Plus, I had faith that my young readers were sophisticated enough to comprehend this unusual opening scene, and that they would be able to connect it with the rest of the story later on.

The ending of KAYA came to me while I was writing the book. I wanted one of the themes of the book to center around the power passed down through generations of women, and I knew I wanted the very last scene to be Kaya seeing a ghostly line of women holding hands along the horizon where the ocean meets the sky. It was also important that the book finish with Kaya by the ocean, given the very major role the ocean plays in the book and in Kaya’s life. Getting there was more of an organic process–I wrote my way there, as opposed to plotting out the details in advance–but I’m really proud of how the story ended.

C.I. Jerez, AT THE ISLAND’S EDGE (March 18, 2025)

The beginning of my novel was the where the premise of my story came from. It’s an idea I woke up with about a young woman and young mother who was serving in the war to heal and is forced to take the life of a young man who reminds her of her son at home. Then came the difficult, heart breaking task of actually writing that scene as it unfolded in my mind. What I set out to write was something that felt immersive, intense, and heart breaking while taking the readers onto the battlefield in that moment when Lina is forced to make the hardest choice of her life.

The ending of my novel has had many iterations. Initially we went full circle and book-ended the novel similar to how it began, but then my agent and I agreed–it wasn’t working. We needed to do something different. I’m not referring to the book’s epilogue, which has been a perfect scene and exactly how I wanted to end the book from the moment I wrote it. I’m referring to the climax and closing of the main novel. I did get some surprises in the rewrite and some readers have shared that the ending scenes are equally as powerful as the beginning scene, albeit very different in nature and circumstance.

I wanted this book to be something that left you releasing a held breath when you closed the cover. A book that would leave you thinking for many days afterward. I hope this was a mission accomplished.

Catalina Margulis, AGAIN, ONLY MORE LIKE YOU (April 29, 2025)

I always knew how the book would begin, and that it would end much the same way, at least for Carmen. I wanted to show her growth but also that life goes on, and doesn’t change all that much, at least on the outside. There is no panacea to life. There is no perfect life. And there is no fairy tale happily ever after. But that doesn’t mean our lives can’t be good, beautiful and right. And that’s really what I think I was chasing the answer to as I wrote this book, and ultimately where I Ianded.

I knew that while this is a feel-good book, with a relatively happy ending, I didn’t want to wrap it all up in a fairy tale bow. Us women get enough unrealistic expectations thrown at us, that I didn’t want yet another happy ending that life never quite lives up to. That might sound pessimistic, I know, but it’s also a key lesson for the characters in my book, and me personally – to appreciate the little things. That happiness doesn’t necessarily come from more money, more fame, a better title or position or even more security. It comes from loving ourselves, and loving each other, well.

Alexandria Faulkenbury, SOMEWHERE PAST THE END (May 20, 2025)
The beginning of SOMEWHERE PAST THE END was always the same. I wrote it initially as a short story, so while it was reconfigured once it became the first chapter, the first line and the basic opening set up all stayed the same.

I always feel like I’m writing toward my endings. I might have some idea what it will be, but it’s never truly in focus until I get there. I thought I was going one place with SOMEWHERE and ended up in a totally different spot. I’ve been asked the question about how you know when your story is done several times and for me, it’s just a point in the writing where the story feels complete. First I have to find my way there, but when I’m there I can usually feel it. And then it’s a matter of looking back at the story I’ve told and making sure I’ve gotten to that ending in the most satisfying way possible, which is usually easier said than done. I often have to delete or restructure large chunks of the story to make them fit with the ending I’ve found for myself, but I don’t really mind that part. It feels like a puzzle and I love it when the pieces finally click into place, like that’s where they were always meant to be.