In a post on Killzone, PJ Parrish shares tips for writing a strong dénouement that ties up all the strings of your plot. “It’s the part of the story that comes after you’ve built up your conflicts in a rising arc of tension, and blown up your plot in a giant fireball of gun fights, car chases, lovers’ quarrels, dying zombies or melting Nazis,” she explains. “The dénouement is where you the writer have to tie up those loose plot ends, slap on some salve, leach out the suspense and resolve things into a nice satisfying conclusion.”
In Romeo and Juliet, the young lovers’ deaths serve as the climax and Shakespeare uses the dénouement to shame the Montagues and the Capulets and make it clear that their feud caused them. In Psycho, a psychiatrist explains what’s happened to Norman Bates. Willy Loman’s funeral is the dénouement set piece in Death of a Salesman. It’s the part of your story where knowledge is shared, secrets revealed, and deserts earned.
“The denouement usually takes places immediately following the climax and resolution; an epilogue is usually separated by time — week, months or years later,” she says. “Sometimes it hints at a sequel to come, or it serves as a commentary of sorts on what has happened.” Good dénouements are subtle. You should have resolved most of your story threads in your climax; the dénouement merely tidies up the rest.
But do you have to put a bow on everything? No. “I love ambiguity in endings,” Parrish says. “I want to figure some things out for myself. And I crave some messiness in my fiction. Not all stories are neat; not all storytellers color within the lines.”
