1142: The Value of Unhappy Endings

Sometime in the mid-1980s, an episode of Cagney and Lacey blew my mind.

Actually, I was furious. The writers DIDN'T bother to finish it!

Inexplicably, we got to the end of the episode WITHOUT getting to the end of the story. The bad guy wasn't caught. Justice wasn't served. It was a ridiculous, shameful mess.

... and I COULDN'T stop thinking about it.

Maybe that should have been a clue, but I've always been a little slow to work things out.

Humans hate loose ends.

In storytelling and copywriting we call them open loops.

In the hands of great writers – or even slightly above-average ones – they can be a ruthless engine of tension.

Earlier this week, I got a note from someone who'd finished one of my novels. She loved it, but complained that she couldn't get anything done while she was reading it.

I'd love to tell you it's because I'm a once-in-a-generation kind of thriller writer, but really it comes down to the relentless layering of open loops – 120,000 words of questions that need answers.

We've seen that stories get more attention than facts, but the the science goes way deeper than that.

Studies show that audiences focus more and remember more when they have to work for it.

This insight is not just for storytellers, by the way, it's for anyone who creates content.

Hemmingway famously finished each day's work in the middle of sentence.

Smart guy.

He'd learned that the best way to drive his attention back to the blood-soaked typewriter was to leave the sentence unfinis