Shawn

I think a good ending would be someone walking off into the sunset until you can't see them. Then you hear "pssss..." and a puff of smoke rises into the air.

Other than that. The one where someone abruptly dies and the event has no real importance to the plot.

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thatsanovelidea

I personally don't think the dream ending can work without readers giving a massive *groan* as it really has been done to death.
Cliche happy endings are great though, because as Mike C hinted at, it only needs to be able to satisfy the reader's expectations. A book about a forbidden love or two people that just cannot get it together has to finish with them making it or it just won't satisfy. Eg, the Princess Bride, Lord of the Rings, etc etc
The ending needs to satisfy the theme of the book.

aspiring

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie, published 1926.

Domino_Gray

I dislike endings to begin with. The Neverending Story should be sued for fraudulent advertising

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Anarkos

Read The Bridge by Iain Banks. If that's cliche and cliche is wrong, I don't fucking wanna be right.

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Banzai

That's what I always thought...I'm sure that in the world of today someone could make a good case for that, and as a child I remember being heartily unimpressed when it reached the end.

And I think the dream ending can work perfectly well, in the right situation (for example, if the story is inside the mind of a man in a coma, and is somethingb of a subconscious struggle for his own awakening- which is just something I imagined up then, and is quite probably already a story).

My own view on endings is that for my own stories I tend to find endngs which are contrary to the 'happily ever after' school of thought- purely because I don't believe that such things happen like that in reality.

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Mike C

I don't think that's counter to what I'm saying. Rehashing isn't inventive or innovative. It's a cliché in itself; in fact, it's how cliché becomes such. But you can take a cliché idea and make it real, just like you can take a great and original idea and make it suck. It's all down to how you handle it.

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Mike C

Amen.

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Foxee

Never really thought about cliched endings. If an ending is satisfying and fits the story that's all I care about even if it is a sort of 'happily ever after'. I do enjoy creativity and twists in endings as much as anywhere else. What I really notice is when an author seems like they have gotten tired of writing the book and just sort of rush the ending and tie it off abruptly.

Now that I've been writing for a little while and have discovered how difficult endings can be to write I have more sympathy for this...but it still doesn't mean that an ending should be weak.

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Corwin

The ending for "The Princess Bride" by William Goldman takes a nice twist on that ending, if you have ever read it.

RichardHeimer Schmitt

I love Princess Bride. And I probably should have read Mike C's post clearer (sorry!). I think any ending can become cliche, but really if the ending fits the story, than use whatever ending you want. If, after a really horrible experience, you think your characters deserve a happy ending for forever after, then give them a happy ending. I think worrying too much about what your ending is going to be and trying to make it original actually leads to a much worse ending than if it were cliche; because it would be sort of thrown in there as a "Ha, this is a really clever ending!". I don't know if I'm making sense. Basically, I think that any ending can work, and that if you spend enough time writing the story the ending should just come to you.

MichelleWritesStuff

You make an terrific point (at my expense. )

Perhaps I should have said, a cliched ending has me rolling my eyes and saying "of course." It leaves me with no delight. A story that has excellent foreshadowing or characterization will have me smiling, and thinking, "Of course! Well played, (insert name of author)!"

Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island gave me the latter feeling. At the end I realized a lot of things were hidden in plain sight, and that the ending while initially seeming out of left field, now made perfect sense.

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Mr. Blix

I think the biggest problem with it was all a dream endings is that most people don't do it right. It's one of those things where it better be damn good for a reader to accept it. (sorry if someone has said this before)

missmoopants

Hmmm, my least favourite ending happens in my favourite novel: Jane Eyre. How can she say "Reader, I married him" after being such a strong, independent woman? I really dislike this ending, even though it seemingly gives her what she's missed and wanted all along: love and happiness.

Strangely, my favourite ending is pretty horrible: Kate Chopin's The Awakening, where I totally got into the character's frame of mind about suicide.

I guess it all just proves that it has to be plausible and believable.

cbrmale

And when it comes to cliche, or cafe, or other French-derived words, don't forget that the accent should not be attached to the e, as we don't have accents in English. For a French-speaker, the accent on cliché has a specific reason to be there, a raison d'être, and that is to pronounce the 'e' as we Anglos pronounce it, because in French 'e' is pronounced differently to how we do it in English, and a trailing e is generally not pronounced at all.

But there is no point in accenting 'e' (if we had accents), if the accent is telling us to pronounce 'e' the way we would otherwise pronounce it! But we don't have accents in English in any case, so make sure with your writing you don't fall into this fashionable trap.