Benefits of Alternate Endings: Pick One

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

It was fashionable in Hollywood, at one time, to produce movies that have alternate endings. Hollywood executives hoped that, by trying out two or more endings for the same movie on test audiences, they could determine which one viewers enjoyed most, which might translate into more ticket sales (i .e., dollars) at the box office.

For short story writers and novelists, however, there may be other benefits to devising possible alternate endings. In doing so, however, authors should follow Aristotle's dictum (and Edgar Allan Poe's advice) that a story's ending should end in a manner that does not destroy the integrity of the rest of the plot.

Devising possible alternate endings to a story can also assist writers in selecting the most appropriate, effective, and memorable ending possible from an array of alternatives.

In addition, imagining possible alternate endings can, perhaps, improve the story, because a new possibility might round out, explain, or otherwise complete the narrative in a more believable or otherwise satisfying manner than the original ending. (We're speaking, now, of works in progress, rather than published, stories.)

Imagining alternate endings could also produce unexpected or better twist endings than the one a writer originally had in mind.

“The Cone” by H. G. Wells

Current ending: Raut, who has cuckolded Horrocks, is doomed when a blast-furnace cone lowers him into the furnace, while Horrocks pelts the adulterer with hot coals.

Alternate ending: Horrocks seizes Raut by the arm, shoving him into the path of an oncoming railway tram. (This incident occurs earlier in the story, but, at this point, Horrocks is terrorizing Raut and, at the last minute, pulls him to safety; revised, the original story would end with this incident, without Horrocks pulling Raut from the tram's path.)

“The Damned Thing” by Ambrose Bierce

Current ending: An entry in Morgan's diary reveals that the creature he hunts is invisible because its color is imperceptible to the human eye.

Alternate ending: Both Morgan's friend Harker, who witnessed Morgan's death and Morgan himself are insane, the former because of his fantastic testimony at the coroner's inquest concerning the cause of Morgan's death, the latter because, in writing of the incident in his diary, he described it in a manner that is consistent with Harker's account of the occurrence. On suspicion of having killed, and possible brainwashed Morgan, Harker is arrested and held for trial.

“Dracula's Guest” by Bram Stoker

Current ending: Horsemen frighten off the werewolf guarding and keeping an English hotel guest warm in a forest and take him back to the hotel; they were dispatched at the request of a Transylvanian count named Dracula.

Alternate ending: The horsemen arrive to find the Englishman's throat torn out by the werewolf feasting upon his corpse.

 

"The Signalman" by Charles Dickens

Current ending: The narrator learns that a signal-man, seemingly mesmerized by something he saw, was struck and killed by an approaching train after ignoring the engineer's repeated warnings to get off the track.

Alternate ending: The train strikes the signal-man, but investigators cannot find his body; on the anniversary of his supposed death, the signal-man again appears on the track and is struck, but, afterward, investigators cannot find a body.