Now kids, every series has to come to an end. Even a series that's seemingly gone on forever will end someday. But what's important is not the 15 years you've spent enjoying a series. No, the only thing that matters is the ending.
It doesn't matter how much love and care and effort was put into a series or how popular or beloved it was. Nope, just the ending. In fact, before you think of what type of series you want to make, think of the ending. I mean, Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle was just an above average fantasy series with a great plot twist driven arc that they ruined the potential of for most of the last 1/3 of the series. But since the ending was when the title's meaning was revealed and that last volume was great, it is a truly great series. So here are a few steps to get you started on making an ending so that you can begin to make a truly great experience.
Now most of these are closely tied to each other so forgive me if I end up being slightly redundant.
1. Build it up to impossible expectations: Now often your fans will do this instead but just in case, make sure you know how it's gonna end and that they know that you know how it's gonna end. The hype will come naturally.
2. Don't worry about how you get there. Oh sure, you might have to pull stuff out of your ass to get to that ending. However, logic and good writing need not get in the way of your vision. It's your idea for an ending so the entire rest of the series doesn't matter anyway, so just do whatever, give the villians new powers to delay and contradict previous information. All irrelevent, who cares?
3. Dark turns. Now you may be thinking, "but my series is optimistic and nice, why would I do this?" My response is, oh you silly slut, pretending the world is a good place. But let me humor you with your nice series with likeable characters. What you need is:
Murders, suicides, politics, sex, tragedy, gore, Lifetime original movies, those terrible lifeless modern day light rock bands your mother listens to to pretend she knows what's "hip".
These are all things that are truly adult and must be added to your story's ending. Stop with your silly attempts at enjoyable endings. Even Barney the Dinosaur would have been better with a tragic murder-suicide, and you know it.
4. Sudden turns. This is very simple, go against what the series is about. Everything you knew was wrong, your ending was right all along. Be very vague because anything is ok after that. Bonus points if any strong female characters you've had have been deconstructed and let the "real" heroes (men) do the work in the end. Or bonus points if you make sure women look better than men. Sexism sells.
5. Make it memorable. This is perhaps the most important part of all. If you have followed the other steps, this will be memorable. But just in case, add tons of unnecessary vagueness and lots of symbolism to make sue it's "deep". Now, after all of this you might be wondering, "but what about quality?" But that's the genius of it all. If you make sure your ending is memorable, it doesn't have to be good. People will keep talking about it for years to come, which is all that matters in the grand scheme of things. And the best part of all is, if a series will continue regardless of your involvement and you are forced to work on the same series forever despite how much it hurts...or I guess if you don't want the series to end, that's what the vagueness is for. You can pretend something else happened, retcon it all and even make a more boring well written ending. Your series has now won.
Now, I hope you have taken this all into consideration. If you follow these guidelines I am certain you can make the ending of a series and than begin to make a successful series. I hope you've enjoyed this lesson in modern day writing. Thank you.
