Beginning / Middle / End / Beginning

Most coherent stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. As with a speech, you don't want to start communicating without having some idea where you are going. Good fiction will tend to have a beginning, a middle, an end, and then it will double back to the beginning to be sure that the opening questions have been answered by the end of the book. It isn't always necessary to tie down every loose end, especially if you want to leave the reader with open-ended questions rather than answers, but wrapping things up neatly yields reader satisfaction and is a sign of good writing craftsmanship. However, if you are writing a series of novels, you may want to use the technique of ending each volume with a dilemma or stimulus that will entice the reader to crave the next volume.