Kick-O-MATIC
DON'T JUST END YOUR STORIES.
FINISH THEM.
Having trouble finding a good ending (aka kicker) to your story, article, video or other piece?
This website is dedicated to helping you.
Some editors will tell you endings don’t matter any more because the average reader only spends something like 37 seconds reading web stories.
But of course you want people to read all the way to the end. And if your story just peters out weakly it won't leave much of an impression. The ending is your chance to leave an image, an example, a thought, or a fact that lingers with people.
Scroll down and click around for inspiring examples of great kickers, and tips and tools (including the Kick-O-Matic wheel) that will help you more easily finish with a flourish.
The 6-ish Types of Endings to Choose From
Sometimes we get writers block because we feel like there are an infinite number of options, and we can’t choose just one. One way to break that block is to narrow your choices. Think about the endings of your favorite movies, novels, etc. If you start categorizing them you'll soon realize that there are really only about six standard endings:
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Solve the mystery - Spoiler alert! One way to keep readers hooked is to maintain a mystery to the very end and then finish off with the big surprising revelation.
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Climactic Action - Lots of movies or stories end with shootouts, explosions, or crashes.
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Loop back to the beginning (or lede) - It can be very powerful to connect the ending with the beginning.
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Broaden the context - When you've focused on a story on an individual or group, ending with a widening of the angle that shows how those individuals represent a larger community is a great way to drive home the importance of the story.
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Glance at the future - One of the most common kickers, especially in broadcast, is to "flick" or hint at what will happen next. Lots of movies end this way too.
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(Re) Statement of the theme - Endings are a great way to drive home the "moral of the story" or to state (or re-state) a theme that has been developed throughout the piece.
Solve the mystery
Citizen Kane's last scene reveals the one thing Kane loved.
Loop back to the beginning (or lede)
The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind ends with the characters re-starting their doomed relationship - and cavorting on the beach seen at the start of the movie.
Glance at the future
Casablanca's ending hints at "the beginning of a beautiful friendship" and new adventures for 2 main characters.
End with a bang or climactic action
Thelma & Louise end their journey - and movie - spectacularly.
Broaden the context
Men In Black's last scene is a spectacular pullout that puts the earth in a universal context.
Moral of the story or (re) statement of the theme
The Wizard of Oz's ending leaves the audience with the lesson that "there's no place like home."
The 5 ways to write an ending
Just as there are only a limited number of powerful ending choices, there are a limited number of ways (or types of sentences) that can be used to craft endings. Journalists generally have a toolbox containing only 5 kinds of statements we can use:
I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. It's easy.
Hannah Dreier uses an anecdote - a summary of her subject's plans - to end with a "glance at the future" in her Pulitzer- and Hechinger- winning feature on an ex-MS-13 gang member.
Anecdote
The Post and Courier ended the first installment of its Eddie Prize-winning investigation into South Carolina's problematic educational system with a simple, but devastating, statement of fact that glances at the future.
Fact
John Woodrow Cox created an evocative ending to his Hechinger-winning piece on school shootings by painting a word picture of the environment and surroundings of a student whose father was shot.
Scene
Bethany Barnes ended her prize-winning feature on a student suspected of being a potential shooter with a quote that summarized the theme of her story: how the bureaucracy and suspicions harmed the student.
Quote
Ta-Nehisi Coates finishes his prize-winning article on the Obama Administration with a beautiful summary of what Obama's election and presidency meant to him.
Author's voice or summary
