I like stories with ambiguous endings. I also like sad endings, and often the two go hand in hand. Is Deckard a replicant? Which survivor is the Thing? Does Offred escape Gilead?

A lot of readers hate ambiguity. They want the writer to show them an orderly world. They want reassurance and closure. When the status quo is disrupted, they want to follow a hero who creates a better world.

But ambiguity is unnerving. It’s disorderly. The ambiguous ending refuses to answer the story question, forcing the reader to reach their own conclusion. Who was behind the door: the lady or the tiger? Sometimes there is no answer.

Sometimes there are two answers and the reader does not know which would be better or simply less worse. Most often, the very act of pondering raises more questions. With an ambiguous ending, no one tells you what’s right or wrong, or even if anything is either right or wrong.

It’s all so…lifelike.

Ambiguous endings are the opposite of escapism. For me, that’s the appeal. I have questions about life that have no answers, or that may have 100 answers, if only I could choose one. Why are we here? Why are humans cruel to people we love? If you got what you wanted, why are you still sad? I want to hear what others think. I want to ponder these questions.

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is often cited as a classic of ambiguity, but in this case, it’s not the ending that’s vague. Rather, the entire story is opaque. In fact, the ending provides the only clear answer in the story: the reader knows exactly what happens to Tessie Hutchinson.

It’s the rest of the story we don’t know. What is the purpose of the lottery? How did it begin? Whose idea was it? Why is everyone so sanguine about it? Why are other towns stopping the practice? Why are the people in this town continuing it? We are never told.

The true ambiguity is Jackson’s meaning behind the story. Was she critiquing the Holocaust or McCarthyism? Religion? Without an in-story explanation, the reader is not allowed to feel superior or complacent. We can’t say “This can’t happen here” or “We’re not like those people.” Instead, confronted with a story of average smalltown America, the reader is left asking not if, but how this happened. We wonder how or whether we would stand up to our community, if confronted with our own lottery. We may wonder how close our nation is to starting one.

Tana French’s debut novel, In the Woods, also unsettled readers, because a number of in-story questions are never answered. Warning: Spoilers ahead. In the Woods is a fantastic novel, so skip a few paragraphs if you want to read it.

The central mystery of the novel is the murder of a young girl, whose body is found in the woods of a Dublin suburb. The lead detective assigned to the investigation – Adam Ryan – has a shocking connection to the case: when he was a boy, he and two friends went missing in the same woods. Adam was soon found in a catatonic state, slightly injured but covered in blood. Adam has no recollection of what happened in the woods, and his friends are never found.

Fast forward 20 years, and Adam and his partner do solve the murder of the girl, but we never find out what happened to him or his friends. While the reader anticipates a connection between the current murder and Adam’s assault, there is none, other than the location. French laid out this subplot not to resolve the earlier crime, but to explore the longstanding trauma suffered by her protagonist. The incident is what inspired him to become a detective, and the similarities in the cases naturally bring up bad memories. The investigation triggers emotional reactions that lead to multiple bad choices throughout the novel.

The novel was popular, but reader reaction was split. Readers are trained by genre expectations to anticipate a resolution to the protagonist’s mystery. It’s fair to assume many thought the same perpetrator had committed both crimes, and that Adam would receive some closure by finding the person who killed his friends. At a minimum, they may have expected to learn some information about what happened to the boys, such as through recovered memories triggered by proximity to the original scene.

But boldly, French didn’t give readers that closure. I was shocked that she didn’t wrap up Adam’s backstory, but loved that she was ambitious enough to leave that shadow in his past. In addition to subverting the reader’s expectations, she left them with unsettling questions about the lingering effects of trauma, the need for closure, and whether the police can protect us and our children.

I previously wrote about one of my brushes with traditional publishing, when a reputable market for short fiction came close to publishing one of my stories. The story hit a roadblock with the editors in part due to the ambiguous ending.

The story focused on two college friends – one gay, one straight. Both have had long-term relationships that are ending as the story begins. The narrator – the gay guy – reflects on how they’ve changed over the years, how their philosophies have evolved and their passions dimmed, the natural result of maturing past one’s youth.

But as the two reconnect as single adults, the narrator discovers that his friend has not lost his passion for writing and philosophy. He had maintained a piece of his youth, a spark the narrator had allowed to dim as he became involved in a more mundane life. The narrator is confused and hurt that others knew this side of his friend, while he did not. They had lost their connection and he feels left behind. Without the anchors of either his relationship or his longtime friendship, he feels adrift.

The friends sleep together, something the narrator had long desired. After many years, his love is finally requited. But in the end, now that he’s gotten his wish, he finds himself at odds. Who was this person in his bed? Did he know his friend at all anymore? Had they connected in one way only to learn they’d grown too far apart in others?

The story questions reflected what I was thinking about as a younger man – Can we hold on to the passions of our youth? How do we maintain important friendships when everyone is changing? How does it feel to obtain something you’ve desired for a long time, but only after you’ve evolved past the point of wanting or needing it?

Questions without answers. Or rather, a different answer for every person.

That was the story rejected by the people who preferred fiction about guys pooping on each other.

Not that I’m still bitter about it.

Some readers can’t stand ambiguity. Maybe it makes them uncomfortable. Maybe they feel cheated out of a proper ending. Maybe they don’t want to sit with the emotions and questions raised by an ambiguous ending.

In “The Lottery,” we’re left wondering why the townspeople are happy to stone a neighbor to death and if they even know why they’re doing it. We wonder what we or our neighbors would do in a similar situation.

In In the Woods, we are unsettled that a murderer goes free.

At the end of my story, a reader might reminisce about past friendships or the dreams they’ve abandoned. They might consider the difference between what they want and what they need to feel fulfilled.

As a writer, the question of ambiguous endings reaches back to your purpose. Do you write to comfort or entertain? Is your goal to communicate? If so, you probably don’t want to leave your story questions open. If you want to point your reader in a specific direction, you need to make your point.

On the other hand, do you want your reader to come to their own conclusions about your theme? Do you want to leave your reader contemplating an element of the human condition? Do you want to leave them feeling unsettled? Do you want to horrify them?

If it’s the latter, leave them with questions.

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