It was a dark and stormy night, and our heroine sat typing away furiously on a Remmington Streamline typewriter. The keys click-clacked one after the other, as steadily as the raindrops beat down on the window outside.

Page after page piled up on the desk until, at last, she paused, added a few blank lines, and typed THE END all in capital letters. She pulled the last sheet from the typewriter, arranged the pages in order, and straightened the stack. Then, she left the office for the night.

The next morning, when she returned, she read through the story only to discover…

The ending was gone!

She looked everywhere in the office, but the last three pages were nowhere to be found.

At last, she sighed a deep sigh, opened up the telephone book, and found a detective she could hire to help her locate the Disappearing Conclusion.

Cue suspenseful music ;-).

Overly dramatic? Hardly. See, when your article lacks a conclusion, all your work is for naught. After all, what reader wants to be pulled along by carefully crafted sentences that build to a well calculated… fizzle?

No, your readers want drama, intrigue, and a payoff that crescendos at the end. A satisfying flourish, that delivers them to a place where they’re wiser and more knowing.

So, how do you deliver them precisely to this wiser “stop”?

With a carefully crafted, complete conclusion, of course.

And how, exactly, do you create such a thing? That’s not nearly so obvious (or what would be the point of this article?).

These five guidelines will help you write stronger, more effective conclusions:

1. Begin with the ending in mind.

Writing the conclusion is always easier if you started the article knowing where you wanted to end up. Before you begin a piece, jot down a few ideas, including your main points, and your conclusion. That’ll keep you on track and help you build evenly to the concluding paragraphs.

2. Keep things balanced.

The conclusion is always easier to write if your entire article has a balanced structure throughout. You probably know when the balance of a sentence is off without even thinking–it’s generally an intuitive feeling. But, the balance of an article can be harder. Key in keeping the balance is to keep all of your points intentionally similar or dissimilar in length.

3. Emphasize the important points.

While you’re keeping things in balance, remember that those points with more words will seem more important to the reader. So, use this to your advantage. You might start an article with your most important, and longest, point, and crescendo into the shortest point. Or you might stagger your points in length. Perhaps most importantly is to simply keep in mind that longer points will feel weightier to the reader–and will attract more attention than shorter points.

4. Mirror me this.

One of the easiest ways to write a conclusion is to mirror your introduction. So, if you began with a quote, wrap up with a reference to that quote (or to another quote that expands on the first). If you began with an anecdote about a client, conclude with how that client ended up. The mirror approach makes an article feel complete, plus it saves you the stress of building both an introduction and a conclusion from scratch.

5. *Never*, ever summarize badly.

The worst writing advice I ever received was that you should, “Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them.” See, readers aren’t stupid. They don’t need all that repetition. At least, not in an obvious, heavy-handed way. Using this basic structure in your articles, well, it actually takes a lot more skill than the mirror structure. I’d recommend against it in all but the most straightforward of articles.

The conclusion of your article is more important than you might think. Sure, it’s the introduction that hooks the reader, and the middle that keeps them engaged. But, it’s the conclusion that gets them to contact you (or not).

So, the next time you’re banging out an article on a dark and stormy night on that old Remmington of yours, make sure you don’t fall victim to the conclusion thief.

Drive readers through the article with attention to word choice, taut stories, and fabulous advice. But, make sure to deliver them, full stop, at the end, wiser, and on the edge of their seat for more.