Non-Epilogue

Today was not a writing day -- it was a Daughters of Utah Pioneers day -- but I managed to get in some writing.

I wrote the final chapter of the book. It's a shorty. No, I am not finished with the book, yet. I still have four heavy-duty chapters to go. I wrote the conclusion now because I want see where each of my three story lines need to end up.

My Webster's Desk Dictionary defines epilogue as it applies to a written work (as opposed to a speech) as follows: 1. a concluding part added to a literary work.

I often read novels with epilogues. An epilogue may tell the consequences of the main story either in the time period immediately following the end, or it may tell what happens decades later. It's kind of like, the story is over now, folks, but just so we don't leave you hanging, we'll tell you how things turned out for the characters in the long run.

The last chapter I just wrote is not an epilogue. There are no concluding parts to add so the reader knows what happened to the characters after the story is over because this novel is only a segment of a larger story. Therefore, for my final chapter, I only needed to tie up a few loose ends.