Opening and Ending: Why These Two Parts Are the Hardest to Write

If you ask creators which part is the hardest, the answer is usually the opening and the ending. The reason is not hard to understand: these two parts carry the most complex functions. The opening has to do two contradictory things at once: “establish information” and “keep people watching”—information needs to be given gradually for people to stay. The ending has to both “wrap things up” and “leave an aftertaste”—too closed and it feels bland; too open and it feels scattered. This article looks at the functions of these two parts and common ways to handle them.

1. The Opening Dilemma

The contradiction in an opening is this: at that moment, the audience knows nothing about your work and has no patience. You need them to understand the background, characters, and situation, which means a lot of information, but you do not have much time to establish it—because they can leave at any moment. This contradiction creates two kinds of failure:

1. One is prioritizing information. You spend several minutes explaining the background clearly, and the audience loses patience.
2. The other is prioritizing attraction. You open with a stimulating image, but it has nothing to do with what follows; after the audience stays, they realize they have been misled.

A reasonable approach is to first give one solid point, then unfold from it. This point must have two qualities at the same time: it is attractive in itself, and it is related to the main content.

2. Several Ways to Handle an Opening

1. Enter Directly

Start from the story’s current state without setup. Background information is revealed naturally in what follows.

• This is the most modern and also the most commonly used method. Its advantage is that it wastes no time; the difficulty is that the “background reveal” must be arranged properly and cannot leave the audience confused all along.

Suitable for: fast-paced genres, or content that is inherently suspenseful.

2. Build the World

First show the rules and atmosphere of this world, then enter the specific story.

• Its advantage is that it gives the audience a cognitive framework, so later content does not need repeated explanation; the cost is that it takes time, and if the “world” itself is not attractive enough, the audience will not wait.

Suitable for: stories with a distinctive worldview, or content where atmosphere itself is the selling point.

3. Raise a Question

Open with a question or suspense, letting the audience continue watching with that question in mind. This question will be answered later.

• The key is that the question must genuinely be answered. If it is raised but never answered, the audience will feel deceived.

Suitable for: suspense, mystery, and exploratory content.

4. Atmospheric Opening

Open with an emotional passage that does not contain much information, relying on image and sound to establish a feeling.

• This is the riskiest type. It places extremely high demands on the quality of image and sound—because the audience’s attention depends entirely on sensory stimulation.

Suitable for: emotion-driven or art-oriented content, as well as projects supported by sufficiently strong audiovisual material. The four methods can be combined, such as starting with atmosphere and then entering directly, but there can only be one core logic: what keeps the audience there.

3. Four Ways to Handle an Ending

The function of an ending is “completion”—but “completion” does not mean “closure.”

1. Closed Ending

All suspense is resolved, and the story returns to a stable state. The audience gains a clear psychological sense of completion. The advantage is that it is safe; the cost is that it leaves less aftertaste.

2. Open Ending

Leave unresolved questions for the audience to imagine on their own. This requires caution: an open ending requires the preceding content to have already built enough tension, otherwise it will feel “unfinished.” The difference is that a good open ending makes the audience feel “it was deliberately left unsaid,” while a poor one makes them feel “it was forgotten.”

3. Twist Ending

Reveal a piece of information at the end that changes the understanding, allowing the audience to reinterpret what came before. It is powerful, but it places strict demands on the earlier content: all clues must already have been planted. If there was no setup earlier, the twist will feel abrupt and cheap.

4. Lingering Ending

Instead of emphasizing the outcome of events, it stays with a certain emotion or image. It suits emotion-driven content. Its principle is to let the audience digest things in the blank space, rather than being pushed along by the conclusion. This kind of ending usually needs room to breathe—sound fades out, the image lingers.

4. Echoing Between Opening and Ending

A practical technique: make the ending echo the opening. The echo can be visual, such as the same scene or the same composition, or structural, such as the same action with a different result.

• The benefit of doing this is that it strengthens the sense of completion. The audience will feel that they have “returned to the starting point,” but this return has changed—and that may be what the story wants to convey.

In production, this kind of echo needs to be arranged as early as the material stage.

• NadouPro’s 首尾帧生成 uses specified first and last frames to constrain the starting and ending images of a video—if the opening and ending are different states of the same scene, such as the same table empty at the beginning and full of people at the end, using first and last frames to control the images at both ends can ensure the accuracy of the echo.

Similarly, the editing stage is responsible for choosing what to keep or cut in each segment.

• 剪辑节点 carries out editing operations such as integrating, cutting, and editing materials including images, videos, and audio—the adjustment of opening and ending content, as well as increases or decreases in duration, are all completed at this step.

Sound treatment has a major impact on these two parts. If you want to leave a lingering aftertaste, the ending is usually handled by “subtracting”—removing the music, leaving ambient sound or complete silence.

• NadouPro’s 伴奏与背景音乐生成 can produce music based on descriptions of style, mood, or scene; 自动匹配音乐 can match music according to video content—it should be noted that what it provides is a solution for “laying in a piece of music,” while openings and endings often need deliberate blank space, so do not let music cover everything without interruption.

5. Several Common Misconceptions

• Misconception 1: Using the opening for setup. The audience does not have the patience to wait until the setup is over.
• Misconception 2: Using images unrelated to the content to attract attention. The people who stay will leave later, and the viewing experience will be worse.
• Misconception 3: Trying to “say everything” at the end. Explaining everything clearly can instead destroy the aftertaste.
• Misconception 4: Having an open ending without tension. It is not “deliberately left unsaid,” but “there is nothing to say.”
• Misconception 5: Having a twist with no setup. Dropping in a surprise at the last minute will only feel forced to the audience.
• Misconception 6: Having no echo between opening and ending. This misses a low-cost way to strengthen the sense of completion.

6. A Self-Check List

1. What does the opening use to keep the audience? Is it information, suspense, imagery, or atmosphere?
2. Is this point related to what follows? Is there any misdirection?
3. Is background information given naturally? Is it piled up at the beginning?
4. What type of ending is it? Closed, open, twist, or lingering?
5. Is the twist set up? Have the clues already been planted earlier?
6. Is there an echo between beginning and ending? Is there a loop in the visuals or structure?
7. Has the sound at the ending been handled? Is there space left for digestion?

Finally

The reason openings and endings are difficult is that they are constrained from two directions at once: the opening has to establish understanding under the condition of “insufficient information,” while the ending has to maintain impact under the condition that “tension has already been released.” This also means there is no standard answer for these two parts—every method is about finding its own balance between two requirements. And there is a simple standard for judging whether that balance has been found: after the audience finishes watching, do they want to know what comes next, or think back on what came before?

Contains AI-generated information that may be incorrect. Please verify independently.