Sometimes you have to begin at the end.
Although most writing prompts are opening lines, there is a unique challenge to be found in composing backwards from a closing line. With that in mind, here are 21 totally original final story lines to pique your sense of creativity. Best of luck and let me know what you come up with!
“Our thoughts, our dreams, our inner things: we whispered too loud and Life overheard.”
“All her life she’d believed the world was a stage. Now she wondered what lay out there, beyond the footlights.”
“And I know somewhere in time she is waiting. And she is smiling.”
“We both heard a call; we both followed a path. Would that they had both led in the same direction.”
“I smile and keep it to myself because I know they’ll think I’m crazy; but I’m telling you, I’m there. Somewhere in the timeline I’m already there.”
“But maybe, maybe if we all keep dancing, leaping, turning, feeling, loving; swimming through the music, painting with the symmetry, maybe everything else will settle down. Maybe everything else will stop and just watch the show for a while.”
“We are laughing. And that is the victory. Because no matter what comes; what trials, what tears, what burning skies; sometime, somewhere, we were laughing.”
“In that moment, in this forever, we are the kings. We are the rich. And all the wealth is owned by us alone. Because in this moment I have you and you have me.”
“Those who sit and those who stay; the naysayers and the critics, they are not free. Liberty belongs to the moving. Freedom belongs to the runners.”
“Tomorrow we’ll work and strive and groan and toil; but for tonight let’s clap like fools and cheer like children and not be ashamed.”
“It’s not the blood or the bombs or the ripping or the screaming. War is terrible because it’s a game and always has been.”
“His heart melted as he saw their faces, their happy, longing, hopeful, loving, thoughtful, living, beautiful faces. He stood watching them, a sea of life, a swirl of voices. Before now he’d seen nothing more than a world of flitting shadows and rustling papers.”
“With that, he touched his cap and turned away, walking swiftly up the street, a wide grin on his face. At that moment, happiness was a wave from the mailman. Contentment was recognition from another human being.”
“Someday she would write them all down and look at them; all the forgotten dreams and unlived plans. All the unspoken words that stuck in her throat.”
“Sometimes I look at them boots and I smile all alone to myself, but I don’t tell no one; like it’s a secret just to me. ‘Cause when I see all them cracks and smears and nicks and I think ‘bout all the miles they seen I know those boots didn’t move one step without me.”
“She made up her mind right then and there to never be ashamed. From that day on she would block out all of the jeers and all of the laughter and she would dance along to the music that only she heard.”
“At the end of it all she decided that caring was what hurt most of all. The love of a friend was like music to the soul; but the tears of a child burned like fire.”
“Even to the last of his 98 years, after his limbs had grown frail and his eyes had dimmed; when the spring breeze came through just as the crocuses were beginning to bloom, he’d swear if someone just opened the window he’d spring through and go climb the crab apple tree by McAllistor’s pond, just like he’d done so long ago.”
“That’s who we were: the dreamers, the wanderers, the explorers. Where everyone else saw stop signs we saw spring boards into new worlds.”
“Well Jenny,” he said, leaning up against the fence, “I guess it’s true what they say: it’s too good to last forever, but boy, I’ll tell you,” he shook his head, “there’s a big part of me that wants to give it a shot.”
“Because that is the nature of stories: they end. And those friends we have made and those friends we have loved; we do right by their memory by closing the book and letting them live happily forever between the covers.”
Jonathan Vars is a Christian fiction writer from New England, and founder of the writing website voltampsreactive.com. His latest novel “Like Melvin” is currently available on Amazon and Google Books. In addition to writing, Jonathan enjoys running, hiking, and trying not to freeze to death in the winter.
