As one looks at perfect stories, there is nothing that is “required” for the ending. The tale doesn’t have to leave the protagonist in a better state than when it started. Some fine stories actually leave the protagonist emotionally and intellectually ruined. Nor are there any devices that must be used. A perfect story doesn’t have to have a revelation that throws the entire previous story into stark relief. It doesn’t need to have a reversal at the climax.
However, I’ve mentioned this before, but perhaps it is worthy of a final mention: a perfect story lingers in the reader’s memory long after the tale has been told.
There are a couple of reasons why this is true. First, a perfect story keeps the reader enthralled. The author’s choice of words, images, and plot points tend to combine in such a way that the story is more intense than ordinary life.
I have pointed out before that when we write stories, it is often an attempt on the part of the author to communicate more perfectly than common words allow. Perhaps because of this, there is an intensity to a created story that normal life doesn’t match.
As learning theorists point out, we tend to easily forget information that we gain outside an emotional context. That’s why testing is so important in schools: the fear that the test engenders actually makes it easier for a student to gain and retain information. However, that same emotional context—a heightened sense of danger—will also come out in a story. Thus, information gained while reading a story is more likely to stick in a reader’s long-term memory, and is more often to have an effect upon the reader.
However, just because a story is enthralling doesn’t mean that it will stick. Much of the value of a story is that it is also repeatable. The stories that we love the best we tend to revisit. When I first read Lord of the Rings, I enjoyed it so much that two days late I began to read it again. Over the next four or five years, I read it half a dozen more times. I spent hours trying to imagine what a hobbit looked like, and so on. The result is that my memories of that novel are especially vivid, enough so that much of what else happened at that time of my life pales in comparison. The same thing happened as a teen when I first saw Star Wars. I liked it enough so that I watched it half a dozen times. Then, when I had it memorized, I watched it another twenty times trying to figure out exactly why I loved it.
Indeed, a perfect story almost begs to be reexamined. Very often my wife will look on the television and discover that there isn’t much worth watching. She’ll ask if I want to watch some old movie. If I’m tired enough, I just might. But inevitably the question that I have to ask myself is, “Is this story worth revisiting?” Far more often than not, the answer is no. But once in awhile there will be a rare gem that I actually look forward to watching once again. Those are the stories that tend to stick in my memory, crowding out the lesser fare. Those are the stories that become part of me, affecting the way that I think, sometimes even directing the way that I act toward the world.
Hopefully, those are the kinds of stories that all of us aspire to create.
