What do you like to see after working? What do you like to see after you buy your plane tickets? Watching a sports championship game? You would like to see a payoff. Quickly let me remind you that payoffs can be both negative and positive. Maybe you would be looking for a villain a negative payoff and your hero a positive one. The important thing there must be one.
You have audiences reading a book, watching a movie and they expect people “what’s coming to them”! On an adventure theme, the hero must make it to the end. On a tragedy, death. What I’m explaining can be part of a conclusion but not necessarily THE CONCLUSION. For example maybe in act two, chapter 12 a character dies because he is a snitch. The payoff for that particular character is dying because he told something that he shouldn’t. Can that be the end of the book, maybe? Maybe it is just an engine to increase tension or move forward to the scene.
Back to the payoff. Let say you are writing a romance, there must be a kiss or even a sex scene before you reach the end of the book. That could be the payoff for the characters involved.
You don’t need to get a payoff for every single character you write. You will have player characters, secondary characters that are not important to the story. Maybe your heroes sidekick doesn’t get a payoff, just be part of the winning team on good vs evil. Your hero needs a payoff. Your villain needs one as well, if not what was the point on this battle.
How to choose your payoff. Various things to consider. Ask yourself, what you want the audience to feel? Rage? Happiness? Sadness? The last laugh? Answering that question you can choose that payoff. Remember, you want your viewers to come back for more or to voice that your story needs to be read. Let say you have a Romance novel and the love interests don’t even kiss or hold hands, you could have on your hands a letdown. So you need to be careful about choosing the right payoff for the characters that need otherwise it will create discomfort on your viewers. Then again some payoffs that are discomforting bring audiences back. Those thrillers, unexpected twists make a burst of adrenaline shoot to the reader and maybe creating a memorable experience from a negative payoff.