When you're at the beginning of a story, and you've reached the point where the plot begins to fall into place, there are usually at least two potential outcomes that become clear. One of these will be the sad ending - the worst possible resolution to the story, which only comes to pass if everything goes terribly wrong. The other will be the happy ending, in which everything goes right.

This post isn't about sad endings, so I won't address them here, but a writer should be wary of writing the happy ending that seems clear when they start their story. Instead, a writer should try to write a story where everything still does go wrong, yet the ending somehow emerges as an unexpected victory, a happiness that was unimaginable at the story's beginning.

The circumstances created by the story's calamities should lay the groundwork for a previously impossible happy ending to take place. Rather than drawing a straight line from beginning to end, with a tidy and pleasant resolution, the best happy endings are a kind of swerve, a last-minute curlicue of grace borne from misery.