A good ending is the second most important element after the lead. It is the final thought you want to leave with the reader. You should be leading up to the ending with the entire piece and it should answer one basic question that every reader has in the back of their mind. . . "Why did I read this piece?" You want to leave your reader satisfied, with a sense of completeness and fulfillment.

How is this achieved? First and foremost comes that old familiar piece of advice: You have to have a single clear objective that are aiming for throughout the article. The foundation of a good ending (and a good lead, really of a good article, period) is a strong focus.

There are also some important decisions you have to make that will help you develop a strong closing. Do you want to leave a sense of conclusion? Or suggest a continuation of the issue? Do you want the reader to be concerned? Elated? Educated? Inspired? Decide beforehand just what it is that you want the reader to walk away with.

Techniques that you use to open your article can also be used to close it. You might opt for mood-setting description, narrative, a summarizing point, a final point, a or a quote. Let's looks at some ending possibilities a little more closely. These are just some of the options you have when concluding an article. After we look at these, we will consider some examples of actual article endings and see where they fit into these categories. You will find often that an ending will combine two or more of these ending strategies.

Circle Ending: Returns to the theme in the lead. It will generally echo a phrase or wording used in the lead to bring the reader full circle.

Summary Ending: Don't think in terms of "In conclusion. . ." or "As we have seen. . ." Be creative, but touch once again on the main ideas, the most important part of the piece that you want the reader to remember.

The Quote: This was by far and large the most often used ending I found as I researched this topic. A closing quote should reiterate the theme and tone of the article, summing it up clearly and succinctly.

The End of Action: Especially in a narrative piece, this ending would leave the reader feeling as though the last act has taken place and events about which the article is written are over.

Poetic: With this ending the writer indulges in some picturesque writing, or even a bit of philosophy, leaving a picture in the mind that the reader will not soon forget. The poetic ending works only if the piece itself has made use of a rich, poetic tone throughout, using vivid imagery to tell the story.

The Echo: As in the full circle ending, the echo ending will repeat a word or phrase, not only in the ending, but throughout the piece as well, leading the reader directly to the conclusion. By way of example of this ending, Don McKinney (Magazine Writing That Sells, Writer's Digest Books, 1994) tells of an article written by Max Gunther about the history and legends of gold. He used the single word "gold" as a one-word paragraph after many of his anecdotes. His article closed with: "It's the bloodstained metal. The metal that can make you rich. Or dead. [new paragraph] Gold."

Straight Statement: This ending would be a single thought the drives home the essence of what has been presented, without repeating it.

Knowing what a good ending does is one thing. Writing one is another. As when you write the lead, you may end up doing several endings before choosing one that fits best. Remember to look for a word or phrase from the lead to repeat. One caution: Don't use the title which is often changed by the editor.

Don McKinney has this piece of advice: "When you've finished writing, and waited a day or two, read your piece over again and see if you haven't gone on longer than you really need to. The best ending may be a few paragraphs back--maybe even a few pages."

We're going to take some time now to look at some article endings that I found and decide what type of endings they are and what makes them work. Since endings are so frequently tied closely to the lead, I will be including the opening of each article as well, and perhaps a sentence or two on what the article actually covered.

After you read each of these, ask yourself these questions:

What type of ending is this? Why does it work? Would you have tried something different? What?

1) From A Perfect Match, by Ann Arnott, Friendly Exchange, Summer 1998:

"Oooh! That body, those moves. When you caught your first glimpse, it was a magical moment. You couldn't wait to get out of there and be alone, just the two of you on the open road.

There's only one problem: You feel the same way about three other cars you've looked at! What to do? How to decide. . . ."

Article naturally covered some points to consider when choosing a car and pointed to some consumer guides. It ended:

"Once you've gathered all the information you can on each of your potential new vehicles, stack them up against one another and see which auto scores the most points.

The rest is simple. Buy or lease your dream car and then hit the road."

2) From Born to Sail, by Terrence Petty, The ExpressLine, June 29-30, 1998

"Out on the sun-shiny blue Pacific, a boy named Briac climbed sleepy-eyed from the cabin just as his wooden sailboat crossed the dotted line that separates the northern and southern hemispheres."

The article is about a 5-year-old French boy who, sailing with his parents, has logged 56,000 miles in a 37-foot vessel. Briac and his family sail aboard the Spray of Briac, a replica of a yawl that Joshua Slocum sailed around the world 100 years ago. They have completed their journey, and are heading to Portugal for the World Expo, after which they will "settle down." The article about Briac's adventure closes like this:

"But Briac likes the idea of living on land for awhile. When his thoughts drift, he imagines a man at the wheel of a ship.

The sailor is Briac Bernardin, captain of the Spray of Briac."

3) From A Pilgrims Search for Relics of the Once and Future King, by Caroline Alexander, Smithsonian, February 1996. It begins:

"Hidden in a thicket, I drew my coat around me and peered into the darkness. It was Christmas Eve. The night was clear and still and without moonlight. I had positioned myself beside a muddy bridle path that winds down a hill between the trees and was quietly awaiting the thunder of hoofbeats. The hill behind me is known as Cadbury Castle, for centuries regarded as the most likely site of King Arthur's Camelot. According to legend, on Christmas Eve the ghosts of Arthur and his knights gallop out of the castle's fallen gates on silver-footed horses."

The article brings the reader along on Caroline's quest to bring Arthur's legend into reality. She ends at the site where Arthur's last battle may have been fought in Northumbria in a place called Camlann, which is believed to have been called Camboglanna at the time of it's existence, a Roman fort at the western end of Hadrian's Wall. The article ends like this:

"Eventually I walked an outline of fallen stones, all that now remains of Camboglanna. To the east and to the west, the Roman wall--already centuries old by Arthur's time--stretches to the horizon across rolling pasturage, green even in midwinter. Arthur may have died fighting for this fort, or he may have fallen somewhere beyond, in the perpetually green fields. A dramatic loop of the Irthing River flows through a glen below the fort, and it may be that he was finally lost in its swift, dark waters. It says much about the power of the Camelot myth--and my own romantic susceptibility--that even at the end of this quest I continued to believe some tangible proof of its reality had eluded me only because I looked in the wrong places. Now, at what may be the site of that "last, dim, weird battle," I couldn't help but think that if it was ghosts I was after, it was here and not at Cadbury Castle that I should have kept my midnight vigil for the once and future king."

4) From Should the Lights be Dimmed? by Bernard Gavzer, Parade, July 26, 1998. Begins:

"Each year in the U.S. 400-600 premature, low-birthweight babies are blinded by a disorder called retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), often while in neonatal intensive-care units. In 1995, researchers seeking the cause of this disorder undertook at $1.2 million "Light-ROP" study, in which light-shielding goggles were place on premature infants. The goggles were used to test whether exposure to the fluorescent lighting found in hospitals caused the disorder. The study's results, published in the May 28, 1998 edition of The New England Journal of Medicine, have heightened the controversy. "We found that light reduction does not reduce the frequency of retinopathy of prematurity in infants at high risk for this disorder," the study's author wrote."

The article discusses a second study that contradicts these findings, as well as some reasons why the results of the first study were skewed. It also told how some neo-natal nurses decided not to wait on studies and began using covers over the incubators to shield the babies from excessive light and noise, with good results.

The article ends with these words:

"H. Peter Aleff's response to this question echoes the frustrations of other parents of children with ROP: 'Let's make the nurseries more friendly to babies by reducing light and sound. Surely no one says that is dangerous.'"

Homework: When you're reading, continue to take note of the way authors close their pieces. Stop and ask what makes it effective. Or what might have made it more effective. Remember "last is first"--the last thing a reader reads is likely the first thing he will remember.

So now that we've discussed leads and endings, come back next time to talk about what to do with that middle stuff! <G>