Does a story have to have an ending?

Question

Can a story writer leave the reader wanting for more in the midst of a plot? What do you call such stories?

Answer 1

an ending has relative meaning and that relativity depends on the author. basically stories without endings are called complex and failures. i think by nt giving an edning you intend to leave the end to the ccreativity of the reader. such books and stories are out there but dont find any readers.very rarely ppl venture to read such stuff.give it a smart ending rather than a usual one. end it where u want it to end. if u ont give your story an ending then it wont work.a story is all about how wel you end it.or try it the ekta kapoor way of never ending it lol

Answer 2

Whether you write a series of stories there is always an ending. It does not have to be a "the end story" so to speak but that wraps it up and says that's it. It leaves the readers wanting more but feeling they've read a complete book. You want a good beginning that grips the reader, you want to keep the readers attention by not getting to boring or to much going on in the middle that they forget what the book is about, and a good ending, not always showing "the end" but shows it's the end of the particular book by showing something happening or not happening. If you write the ending well enough, you will leave the reader wondering if there is going to be another one.

Answer 3

It is often a good device to stop when the reader expects more; it will make the story more resonant and interesting, to some, because they can theorize about the true ending, about why the writer left them hanging, and so on. No, there is not a name for it, that I know. Invent a good one!

Answer 4

most stories have an ending as we al like to resovle some issues and we need closure...but some stories do not need an ending,as in our life stories,which have no ending till we die...so we can have open ended stories where the novelist /the author can leave it to the audience to draw the conclusion...usually this kind of thing works in mystery /horror novels or even stories on life where the character has to make a decision and the story can end where a new chapter could begin with many possibilities...

Answer 5

Absolutely. I can't rememeber the name of the book/short story. But in the end, the woman, who is facing all kinds of problems, walks to the egde of a cliff. Does she jump? Does she just stand there? It was the subject of much discussion. It's one of the stories I feel that's better without resolution. I still think about it to this day, 10 years after reading it. Anyone know the name?

Answer 6

if you want to achieve results in the long term an end is expected and happens either or not it is told. If a story begins with a dream, it might not have an end provided the narrator or dreamer are awake later and they are thinking of the dream as in past tense.

Answer 7

Of course! Those are called "mysteries" and a lot of them end by not actually "ending" on any certain fact. You either end up useing your own imagination as to what happened, or you find the sequel to that book on another shelf, Part two, so to speak. Did that answer your question?

Answer 8

Not exactly. Some books are "open-ended"; they leave scope for an alternative, and thus never really seem to have ended. And is it not the "in thing" for movies to end with "the beginning", instead of "the end", like they used to earlier?

Answer 9

You can leave your audience wanting more - HOWEVER in order for SOMETHING to technically be a STORY - it must have a BEGINNING - a MIDDLE - and an ENDING. What it does not have to have is an ending that wraps everything up in a neat-tidy-little package.

Answer 10

The only way to really end any story for one person is death. Then others involved with that person go on.