Greetings, ladies, gentlemen, and those who hate the phrase ladies and gentlemen. I'm back with my trademark weird ramblings and mediocre writing advice to talk to you about ending a story! Though I don't think this is gonna be the last chapter. You'd better hope it's not :P
This update, we're talking about final chapters! Devastating as it is, you do typically need a final chapter. You can't just keep writing a story forever. Even the mighty must fall. Shoutout to this one guest reviewer, who does not understand the concept of endings and remarked "how the mighty have fallen" because I hadn't been updating a completed story. You are stupid.
Anyway, before writing your last chapter, you're gonna want to decide how much you want to tell your readers. It's a stylistic choice for the exact amount, but avoid telling your readers every last detail, OR leaving them completely in the dark. I prefer having a few loose threads but generally leaving the reader satisfied.
If you wrap everything up with a neat little bow, readers have nothing to wonder about when it's done. So, their minds won't keep coming back to your story. You want them plagued with questions so they keep thinking about you. Even if it's not a major question, more of a "hey, what happened to that side character I'm weirdly attached to?" or "the character didn't achieve all of their goals, will they?" Just enough to peak their interest.
Or, you could totally torture them and leave a completely ambiguous ending. That works too.
A book I just had to read for English class, but was honestly pretty good, is basically the character planning to do something and then contemplating whether or not he should. It ends with "you coming?" and the author has stated that he wants readers to figure out their own ending in their head. I think it takes a lot of skill to do that and pull it off, but like, if you want to... your readers will be pissed but hopefully pissed in a good way.
If you plan to continue telling the story, but in another book, you may want to end with a cliffhanger. Something suspenseful is happening, and the story ends with the readers still anticipating the outcome. The name comes from two characters hanging off a cliff, wondering whether they will survive, and then the story ends. A lot of the time they're just used for shock factor, but also they're fun.
So how do you write a good cliffhanger, you may ask?
Wellllllll...