Why Predictable Endings Kill Good Scripts

Segun Iwasanmi
@iwasanmisegun212159
22 days ago

© Segun Iwasanmi
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If your audience can guess your ending halfway through the film, you’ve already lost them. Nobody spends two hours just to confirm what they knew from the start.

Here’s the secret: a strong ending must be unpredictable but still feel inevitable. Sounds like a riddle, right? But that’s the gold of scriptwriting.

Think about it. The best films don’t end the way you expected, yet when the twist lands, you realise everything had been pointing there all along. It shocks you and satisfies you at the same time. That’s when you hear people say, “Wow, I didn’t see that coming, but it makes perfect sense.”

Most amateur writers fall into two traps: either they play it too safe and end exactly how everyone imagined, or they force a random twist that feels like it was borrowed from another film. Both are weak.

The trick is in the set-up. Every choice you plant, every line, every silence must build toward that ending, even if the viewer doesn’t notice. That’s why when the curtain finally drops, it doesn’t feel like magic,it feels like destiny.

This is one of the things I focus on when I write and edit scripts. An ending that lingers in the heart is what makes a script memorable, not just enjoyable.

Now let me ask you: what’s one film that shocked you at the end, but the more you thought about it, the more you realised it couldn’t have ended any other way?

© Segun Iwasanmi | ™The Man With The Story
Book Writer | Screen and Scriptwriter | Creative Fiction Writer | Book Editor

#Scriptwriting

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