Ending is not the most important part on a good essay, surprising and interesting direction are more important. Surprises are things that you not only didn’t know, but that contradict things you thought you knew. And so they’re the most valuable sort of fact you can get. A good essay never REALLY ends, it lead you to a direction that surprised and interested you, that’s all the purpose of an essay.

Good writing should be convincing, certainly, but it should be convincing because you got the right answers, not because you did a good job arguing. The processing of writing an essay is more like describe the truth to the reader, not arguing it. As the reader get smarter, convincing and true become identical, so if the writer can convince smart readers he must near the truth.

An essay has to come up with answers, ought to tell the reader something he didn’t already know. However, answers never equal to endings, rather read an essay that went off in an unexpected but interesting direction than one that plodded dutifully along a prescribed course.

To surprise readers, the opinions in the essay better contradict things that reader thought he knew. It is a good way to use yourself as a proxy for the reader, things you thought about a lot, who’ve thought the topic a lot, anything you come across and surprise you, may surprise the reader as well.