People love to ask writers this one: if you could rewrite any book’s ending, which would you choose?
I’m not keen on rewriting another author’s work. What inspired them was truly unique, and for me to second-guess their words would be awfully presumptuous. Who am I to think my ending to their story would be any better than the one they lived and breathed into existence?
Take Stephen King’s Carrie. Should the prom’s scream queen not retaliate? Should she not hate her mother to the point of death, and suffer that same tragedy in return?
Would it even still be a Stephen King thriller if Carrie showed up to school the next semester, clean and fresh, ready to start over? Who wants to read a horror thriller with an ending like that?
Or what if Carrie simply left town, driving off toward an unforeseen future in some new city? Duh duh duh!
Another swish and a miss. Why mess with perfection?
An author gives everything to write the story their imagination demanded. To truly do a new ending justice, I’d have to rewrite the whole book around it. That’s not a revision. That’s a hijacking.
So no, I would not choose to write a different ending to any book, whether it screamed for one or not. I’m not the appropriate authority. Only the author holds that privilege.