Living the Ending Before You Write It

People often assume writers know the ending from the moment they begin. As if the story arrives fully formed, waiting to be typed up in a neat, linear line from Chapter One to The End.

But that’s not how it works. Not for me, and not for most writers I know.

Writing a book is a loop. Draft → edit → line edit → re‑read → fix → re‑read again. And somewhere inside that loop, the ending slowly reveals itself. Sometimes early, sometimes late, sometimes only when you’ve lived the lead‑up enough times to understand what the ending means.

The wood for the trees - a winding path to the end.

I don’t always know the outcome when I start. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don’t. And sometimes I think I do… until the characters prove me wrong.

In Thai Die and Connecting Trains, I knew the ending from the beginning. The final scenes were clear in my mind long before I reached them. Those books were about execution — making sure the emotional and logical threads all led cleanly to the moment I’d already seen.

But Aloha Goodbye was different. I wavered on one point of the ending for a long time. I held two possibilities in my head, writing toward both, waiting to see which one the story earned. It wasn’t indecision; it was listening. Letting the book tell me what it wanted to be.

And then there was Lethal Leith Hill, where I didn’t write the final chapters until very late in the process. I kept thinking it could be any of the three suspects. All three made sense. All three had motive. All three had opportunity. I had to live the story again and again before I understood which truth carried the most weight. That book still lends itself to an alternate ending — and one day I intend to write it.

With Don’t Die for Me, Argentina, I know the ending. I haven’t written it yet, but it’s there, waiting. Clear, solid, inevitable. What I don’t know are the loose ends — the “after the ending” moments, especially in my international cases. The emotional debris. The consequences. The quiet fallout that happens once the dust settles. Those pieces only reveal themselves once the whole story is lived.

And that’s the point: You can’t write the ending until you’ve earned it. Not the words — the understanding.

Every draft sharpens the path. Every edit clarifies the stakes. Every re‑read reveals something you missed the first, third, or tenth time.

By the time I finally write the ending, I’ve lived the lead‑up so many times that the final moment feels inevitable. True. Honest. The only way it could ever have gone.

That’s the real work of writing. Not racing to the finish, but circling back through the story until the ending becomes something you don’t just write — you know.

That knowing is so close, I get excited every time I pick up the latest draft. I'm sure it frustrates my beta readers when they get the book without an ending, that I keep a little longer for myself......while I work it out!

Have a great week,

Helen x