Ideas to Begin Writing the Conclusion

You can’t conclude until you’ve started to end

Train by Casey Horner on Unsplash

If you have to write a conclusion and don’t know how, it may well be that you feel pressed for time. Thus, I’ll be brief. Here are three ideas—or perhaps they are three ways of posing the same idea.

What’s The Bigger Picture?

In nonfiction books, “conclusions often end up short and short-changed because writers feel they have nothing left to say,” says Nina Amir. But your conclusion is important. It helps the reader to understand “the bigger implications of your story, the next steps they can take, or the lessons that they can learn from what they’ve read.” Amir suggests trying to answer at least one of these questions about your subject matter: Where are they now? Why should we care? What do we do now? If the facts are unresolved, you can try an “artsy cliffhanger,” but be sure to address the lingering So what?

It Matters Because Why?

It’s probably good to devote some of your conclusion to summarizing what you’ve already written, but the so what is indeed important, as Smekens Education Solutions affirms with a handy graphic (see their webpage). “Explain the significance. Why does it matter?” You can “return to the opening scene” if it helps.