PRESENT TENSE: Suspense, Mystery, Thriller Craft and More

PRESENT TENSE: Suspense, Mystery, Thriller Craft and More

Finding the Ending: Not a How-To

Guest-poster Deborah L Williams helps us think about bows, piles, circles, and the trickiness of audience expectations

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Deborah L Williams
Sep 25, 2025
∙ Paid

From Andromeda: Thanks to Deborah for launching us on what will be a multi-post conversation about endings, and what makes a good one! Thanks also to the many readers who answered our survey. Your answers were so helpful (and often, quite surprising.) The #1 thing you want, by far, is craft of writing posts. And what a coincidence, because we have a new…

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Deborah L Williams's avatar
A guest post by
Deborah L Williams
Deborah Williams: professor, writer & ex-expat, in NYC after 11 years in Abu Dhabi (no, I didn't wear a veil). Essays in Markaz Review, The Common, Brevity, Lit Hub, NYTimes, etc. Author of The Necessity of Young Adult Fiction (Oxford 2023)
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