Several of my writer friends were kind enough to look over the product of last week’s writing binge. It looks like I addressed a goodly chunk of the issues that they had with the book’s ending. It had felt abrupt; there were too many questions unanswered. I’m definitely sensitive to that charge since it was one of the complaints about my YA mystery SUSPECT. But perhaps the greatest challenge was figuring out how to resolve a tension between what I thought my main character wanted at the end of the story and what a goodly percentage of my critique partners wanted for her. I did manage to come up with a set of circumstances that worked for her, me, and the readers.
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Kristin Wolden Nitz 
Congratulations on a job well done! It can be so hard to create an ending that is true to the story and leaves the reader satisfied especially if it isn’t the happily ever after ending. Thank you for inspiring the rest of us to give it another try, to work on and create the ending that works all the way around.
–SueBE
Stephen King provided some great advice on feedback in an essay: “If your critics are all telling you the same thing about some facet of your story–a plot twist that doesn’t work, a character who rings false, stilted narrative , or half a dozen other possibilities–change that facet. It doesn’t matter if you really liked that twist or that character; if a lot of people are telling you something is wrong with your piece, it IS.”
In this case, it wasn’t so much of a “happy ending” issue as that they wanted to see my character step up and embrace something on a personal level. Happily I could see a reason for her to do it that fit in with the logic of the world. That’s important for us engineering types.
I agree with Sue! Thanks for the inspiration!
Congrats on finishing. Ending are hard. Especially after the climax but it’s not quite done yet. It must feel good to be done.
Thanks, Stephanie!
Natalie, you are so right about the difficulties of dealing with the action after the climax. I’m looking forward to your blog interview with Cheryl Klein.