“Unlock the Secrets: How an Epilogue Can Transform Your Story and Leave Readers Begging for More!”
Should You Use an Epilogue?
The answer: if you want to!
When it comes to choosing how to end your novel or memoir, you have two main options:
- End with a final chapter, e.g. Chapter 22.
- End with an epilogue
Plenty of great novels and memoirs end with a final chapter and plenty end with epilogues.
In fact, I did an informal survey of ten of my favorite books on my bookshelf. Two had explicit epilogues, three had chapters that acted as epilogues (in that they jumped forward in time to reveal the fates of the main characters outside the normal narrative structure), and five did not have epilogues. When it comes to writing an epilogue, it’s really up to you.
