Letter to a Friend - Open and Closed Endings
Letter to A Friend: Open and Closed Endings
Dear Olisia,
How are you? I hope all is well. So I was talking to your brother, Max, the other day and he was telling me how you have decided to come to Leaside High School for your high school life! I am honestly so happy that you have chosen this pathway! I remember you telling me you enjoyed English very much from a young age. Well, I am currently taking my 9th grade English course and I thought that maybe you would want to be ahead of the game and know about one concept my class has been focusing on so far this semester. You could use this information and show your teacher “you da girl.” First impressions always last!
Anyways, so in this letter to you, I will be explaining what open ended stories and closed ended stories look like and how they relate to readers.. You know, the difference between stories that end with cliff hangers and stories that end with an ending that resolves everything. I will provide you with definitions, explanations and even two versions of the same story. By the end of this letter, you should have a clear and thorough idea of the difference between these two types of endings. So let’s get started!
A closed ended story is a story in which all tension and major complications are resolved. It is basically the “and they lived happily ever after” type of story, where we know exactly what happened to the characters. Just in case you didn’t know, the tension in a story is basically when suspense is created in between characters. The tension usually causes most of the climax in a story. In a close ended story, the author resolves tension and complications by answering all un-answered questions readers may have.
Here is an example to provide you with a thorough understanding of how this type of resolution for a story works.
For the examples in this letter, I will be using the story “Taste of Melon” written by Borden Deal. The story is set in the past, in the flashback for the narrator. It
Dear Olisia,
How are you? I hope all is well. So I was talking to your brother, Max, the other day and he was telling me how you have decided to come to Leaside High School for your high school life! I am honestly so happy that you have chosen this pathway! I remember you telling me you enjoyed English very much from a young age. Well, I am currently taking my 9th grade English course and I thought that maybe you would want to be ahead of the game and know about one concept my class has been focusing on so far this semester. You could use this information and show your teacher “you da girl.” First impressions always last!
Anyways, so in this letter to you, I will be explaining what open ended stories and closed ended stories look like and how they relate to readers.. You know, the difference between stories that end with cliff hangers and stories that end with an ending that resolves everything. I will provide you with definitions, explanations and even two versions of the same story. By the end of this letter, you should have a clear and thorough idea of the difference between these two types of endings. So let’s get started!
A closed ended story is a story in which all tension and major complications are resolved. It is basically the “and they lived happily ever after” type of story, where we know exactly what happened to the characters. Just in case you didn’t know, the tension in a story is basically when suspense is created in between characters. The tension usually causes most of the climax in a story. In a close ended story, the author resolves tension and complications by answering all un-answered questions readers may have.
Here is an example to provide you with a thorough understanding of how this type of resolution for a story works.
For the examples in this letter, I will be using the story “Taste of Melon” written by Borden Deal. The story is set in the past, in the flashback for the narrator. It