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Someone suggested this topic be resumed in the authors' section, so...

The ending, for me, is critical. I always have an end in mind when I start - sometimes more than one. And everything I do is designed to work towards the end(s).

Further, it is always my goal from the outset to set up a pleasurable expectation in the mind of the reader. I want them to think: Oh yeah...I can see where this is going. This is gonna be good.

I then go all out to give them what they expected, but so much more as well as the scope of the story opens up.

Funnily enough, every one of my novels has seen me have a blinding epiphany as I get to the end of the draft - meaning a completely different end to the one(s) I'd been working towards but so much more revealing and satisfying. It's as though I didn't really get the story myself until I got to the end and it turned me on my head.

These are the kinds of ends I most love as a reader because I love to be tricked. When you're a plot creator yourself it's very hard to be tricked because you're much more likely to pick up on apparently random events and comments that lead a snail trail to what's truly happening.

Adrian wrote: "Funnily enough, every one of my novels has seen me have a blinding epiphany as I get to the end of the draft - meaning a completely different end to the one(s) I'd been working towards but so much more revealing and satisfying. It's as though I didn't really get the story myself until I got to the end and it turned me on my head."

I love this point, Adrian! And I totally agree.
That is what I find most exhilarating about being an author: being surprised by my characters, who end up telling the story to me, not vice-versa...
Is it magical, or what?

Adrian wrote: "Funnily enough, every one of my novels has seen me have a blinding epiphany as I get to the end of the draft - meaning a completely different end to the one(s) I'd been working towards but so much more revealing and satisfying. It's as though I didn't really get the story myself until I got to the end and it turned me on my head."

This is my standard method of writing. I never have an ending in mind when I start, but I often get one as I go. By the time I get there, the whole story has turned upside-down and the ending never means what I had in mind when I started. With one book I had to force it to end, and then 2 weeks latter had that epiphany, and rewrote what I'd done so it followed that logic. Sometimes I have to do it wrong to see why it's wrong, and then do it right.
And yes, my characters always tell me the story. They're the ones walking through it, not me.

Giovanni wrote: "Is it magical, or what?"

It is. This is why such inspiration is compared to being touched by the gods. The story is writing itself through me.

Even my historical novel based around the Battle of Hastings (of which everyone knows the ending... or do they?) had a blinding epiphany for what happens to the fictional characters - and then how that affected the historical characters.

Deeply satisfying.

Something else I always do is leave a few ambiguities or unresolved questions.

Partly because I deeply dislike everything being too neatly wrapped up with nothing left to ponder...

And partly because dealing with those unresolved questions is a great way to start a sequel.

I have some end in mind when writing, and I guide the story to that end, but the path is down to spontaneous ideas, as long as they align with my goals. So I improvise on the go and some characters end up differently than I anticipated. The discovery and following the story as the characters tell it is part of the joy of writing for me.

I tend to agree with some of the previous posters, sometimes an ending comes organically by letting characters and plots mix and come to a conclusion. I think the hard part is bolting down the ending. After reader feedback or even my own critique sometimes I have to readjust things that came before, which changes the ending and how it plays out.