Still Revising

The Wise Reader, my dear sweetheart, finally finished his read-through of what I thought was my final draft (pending revisions upon publication) of "The Story of After."  His conclusions:  the curse was interesting, the plot twists were even more interesting, the relationships were realistic and deep, the romance was tolerable (for a guy), but the ending, while mostly satisfying, lacked something... something which I am going to fix today. 

I have blogged about the importance of endings before,  but it's well worth the blog space to mention again that no matter how amazing the rest of your story is, if the ending falls flat, fails to wrap up loose ends, or doesn't deliver on a promise that you gave the reader at the beginning, the huge feeling of dissatisfaction is primarily what a reader will remember.

 The problem that my husband had with the ending, had to do with the fact that he felt like he was given a promise at the beginning of the book that I hadn't realized that I gave.  I thought I had given a promise to keep Izabella alive, help her end the curse, and give her a deep and abiding love, which are the bits of the story that are either universal or have a more female bent.  Apparently, I had also promised to let the readers get some measure of satisfaction in seeing her abusive father get his due.  Being a good husband and father (to two daughters that he's very protective of), Ryan was a little disappointed that that bit of the story happened off-stage and was only reported on later.  He made his case very well, I thought, and I will be revising that this afternoon. 

I am hoping that I can create the perfecting ending for the Izabella's story. 

What stories do you think have perfect endings?

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