Tonight we did a writing exercise that Sally brought in by the Magic Violinist called How to End a Story.

Before we started we identified that we all had our preferred types of endings. ‘Ambiguous’ was popular within our group, as was ‘bittersweet’. We agreed we rarely write tragic or happy endings. The exercise intended to challenge ourselves by writing an ending type that we wouldn’t usually do.

The exercise talked about 4 different types of story endings:

1. The “happily ever after” ending
2. The tragic ending
3. The ambiguous ending
4. The bittersweet ending

We started all our stories with the same phrase: “The lizard was enormous, at least three feet long. It also wasn’t in its tank.” We had to write the ending first, in a style that challenged us. Then we had 10 minutes to complete the exercise.

Image by http://maxpixel.freegreatpicture.com/Animal-Scale-Iguana-Lizard-Watch-Reptile-Dragon-2039719

We learnt that we often gravitate towards a preferred…