Narrative Closing Conventions

Leland Ryken in a recent volume on biblical narratives notes that there are six kinds of closing conventions in narratives.

• A brief recapitulation of the main action
• A summary of the immediate results of the action that has been narrated
• A summary of the long-term effects of the action
• An account of the fortunes that later befall one or more of the characters in the preceding story
• Some echo or reminder of what happened earlier, or the issue that began the plot
• Narrating the physical departure of one or more characters to a new place, thereby drawing a boundary around the preceding action

Leland Ryken, How Bible Stories Work: A Guided Study of Biblical Narrative (Wooster, OH: Weaver, 2015), 89-90.