When you reach the last chapters of your book

This week I’ve been advising two writers who are approaching the last chapters of their books. Oh, my goodness me, I’m thrilled for them! They’ve done the work of bringing their characters to life and making us care about them. Now comes a curious temptation: to hurry those characters to the finish line.

I understand. By this stage, a writer may know exactly what happens, perhaps even the final sentence. But the reader has spent a whole book getting to know these people. They need time to feel what the story has done to them, to see how they’ve changed, and eventually to say goodbye.

Word count can make this tricky. How long should a novel be? My agents and publishers have often steered me towards 80,000 words. My contracts for The Promise and Death in the Mountains were each for 80,000 words. Other books called for something different: Naples: A Way of Love was around 30,000 words and Walking Sydney around 50,000. Years as a journalist taught me to work to all sorts of lengths.

Those numbers are useful, but I wouldn’t cut a necessary scene simply to reach a pleasing total. Nor would I keep one because I’d worked terribly hard on it. The danger in the final chapters is that, once we know how the plot ends, we rush the characters there too.

We’ve been working towards each character’s arc from the first page. Every experience, relationship and difficult choice has changed them, even when they haven’t noticed it themselves. The final chapters are where we get to see what that change means.

So I ask: would this character make the same choice they would have made at the beginning? What have they come to understand? What can they still not bear to face? Have I stayed with them long enough for the reader to feel the change, rather than simply be told it happened?

These moments may not look like great leaps in the plot, but they are often where a character’s arc finally comes into view. Sometimes the answer is to cut. Sometimes it’s to slow down and give a moment another page.

Let the characters arrive at the ending. Don’t push them there.

In other news, Florence!

If finishing your book has you longing for time with other writers, The Art of Writing will be in Florence from 9–13 May 2027. There are just seven places around the table, and we’ll spend the week working on the things that make a story hold together: character, your Major Dramatic Question, structure, backstory, memoir and sense of place. We’ll also take our notebooks out into Florence for a walking and writing session.

I’ll be joined by Bernadette Foley for Structure and Plot, Laurel Cohn for Backstory, and Georgette Jupe of Girl in Florence for a conversation about building your author brand. There’ll be a literary agent Q&A too. You can read about the Florence retreat here, or email me for the full programme.

And a little Sydney news

Our Sydney workshop was such a success, and such a blast, that I’d love to do it again next year. I’m looking at 27–29 August 2027, back in Double Bay, surrounded by books and with all the food taken care of. I’m planning a new set of classes, including The Use of AI in Your Book and Finding Your Major Dramatic Question, alongside guest teachers, authors and publishing professionals.

Nothing is on the site yet, but if you missed out this year and would like to hear about the next one, email me and I’ll put you on the interest list.