One night, after dropping the first shoe, the man suddenly remembered the complaints and put the second shoe down gently. In one way or another, every plotted story makes us wait for the other shoe to drop. We are waiting for the resolution of a conflict, or the solution to a puzzle, or the explanation of a mystery, or just the completion of a pattern, and it is this anticipation, as much as anything else, that makes us read on. If you can build such a series, you can plot. In a plotted story, the ending may take the form of a resolution, a revelation, a decision, an explanation, or a solution.
Resolution is the end of a conflict by the victory of one side or the other.
Revelation means the exposure of something previously hidden. In a decision story, the ending comes when the central character makes up her mind about something important and difficult. Explanation , obviously, provides the ending for a story about a mystery, and solution provides the ending for a puzzle. In order to discuss this, we must talk about an ideal structure that is seldom found in its complete form in short fiction. Miss Thompson is a raucous prostitute, forced by a quarantine to stay over at Pago Pago on her way home from Honolulu to Apia.