Happy or not happy endings ... thoughts?

[Luiglin]

Hey. Hey. Hey. Don't be including the Alamo. It wasn't a hopeless case.

Neither were the others when you look at the result of the consequences ...well except for the stupidity of Gallipoli (worth a read about if you like historical mess ups) and the Charge of the Light Brigade (see Gallipoli).

Taken out of the greater whole though they were hopeless situations but ones that had to be done at that moment in time. That's how I've always seen them ... maybe I'm just a doomed heroic romantic ;p

That and deaths of characters in books should always have meaning.

Maybe I'm not explaining myself well enough, or maybe we coming to the same point from different angles As they are characters in the story their deaths will always have either a purpose or a consequence. What I'm trying to do is add in that slice of realism where in battles people die, fact. Characters shouldn't be excluded from that happening.

I don't read fantasy to be made miserable.

Same here really. I just wanted to go for a story where as a reader you don't feel safe about any of the characters. Hopefully I'll manage to portray the tale for the stupid doomed heroic situation I'm aiming for, maybe not. I'm enjoying writing it all the same and so far the proof reader has enjoyed it.

Cheers for the replies folks. It's always good to get others take on stuff. Sometime I'll take the leap of faith and post an extract in the critique area

 

[C. A. Mitchell]

I expect losses and pain along the way, but ultimately I want to be satisfied. If I've invested in a character - particularly over a series - and I like this character, I want them to have some sort of happy ending.

For me, reader satisfaction is everything. This is where I felt let down by the Hunger Games. As for HP, if he'd died after suffering so many losses, I would have been pretty depressed (although the epilogue still makes me queasy!).

I only hope GRRM remembers his readers have been through a lot. I want a happy ending of sorts, or at least one of promise (and some surviving main characters!)

 

[Phyrebrat]

As the title says what are peoples thoughts about how stories should end. I deliberately not used not happy, rather than sad as that encompasses other negative endings.

...

Would this be too much for the genre?

Hello,

I am with you on this - although we are lucky inasmuch as novels and so on can afford the reader far more power in terms of painting a picture to the author's words, than if we were all filmmakers (my pet peeve on that count is the epidemic of schmaltzy feel-good endings that soil the movie industry over the past 15-20 years).

There are books that circumnavigate this where the main characters have a soulful resolution but the evil they have been fighting is reborn elsewhere to bother someone else. Also, in stories like The Dark Tower, the ending does not fit a conventional good/bad scenario and we are left to make our own decisions (although, I appreciate that ending has been debated back and forth, and I have my own take on the end of the DT).

The only kind of sad/not happy ending I do not like is one that is nihilistic. It is so easy to write that way and is very student-y or teen-angsty as far as I'm concerned.

So, give me tears, give me smiles, I don't mind, just don't give me thankless and cheap endings that kick me in the ...

pH

 

[Kylara]

The original 70s film of The Stepford Wives springs to mind...excellent ending...I've never read the novel, but have had it synopsis-ed for me...

 

[ctg]

There's also an intense ending, something that can only come out from a conflict, possibly a major one, that can be extremely satisfying to the audience. And that itself can set the cliffhanger that makes the readers to acquire the next piece.

 

[Grimbear]

I want variety. I want to read some books that have happy endings and some that do not. I don't think that's too much to ask.

I like scenarios where, although the world is saved/apocalypse averted/deaths of billions avoided, there is a personal cost to the protagonists relative to the size of the doom that was hanging over them all. But then that can be done too often too.

Variety! woohoo! Yeah!

 

[Brian G Turner]

A few years ago I would have said unhappy endings were better - simply because I wanted to see people move away from sickly sweet endings. Luckily the fantasy genre at least has been maturing nicely.

In which case, the point of an ending is that it must feel like a satisfying conclusion - all major questions asked, and if relevant, some characters dead and others alive because of the deadly physical aspect of the conflict they faced.

Funnily enough, I was dissing Stephen King recently among conversation - we all agreed he was a great writer, but he tends to have a problem ending his novels satisfactorily.

 

[Phyrebrat]

The original 70s film of The Stepford Wives springs to mind...excellent ending...I've never read the novel, but have had it synopsis-ed for me...

Yes, a good example. And similarly - although this is drifting into movie territory - I read an interview with StepHen King recently where he said he wished he had written the ending of The Mist, the way Frank Darabont portrayed it in the movie. I had to agree; although I liked King's ending for a novel, the movie had to modify it. And the ending they shot is one of my all-time favourites. So that completely negates what I said above about nihilism

Hex, I'm intrigued to hear what it is you don't like about tragedy. Why does it break your heart? Do you like Macbeth, or...? Some non-tragedy stories get me depressed in the way that - say - a lovely deep fall of snow melting does. For example in Howards End there's this inevitable progression of machinery and technology, and utilitarianism at the (suggested) expense of the more rural and dainty aesthetics of the eponymous house. That really got me sad.

pH
(so, little red spellcheck dots under the words 'movie'?)

 

[Phyrebrat]

ahh! I-Brian, that is a coincidence you mentioning Stephen King - you just beat me !
pH

 

[Grimbear]

Re: Stephen King. Agree he can set up imaginative plots and some good characters but often messes up the ending. Often his endings either come shockingly fast so they feel like an anticlimax, or they drag on for what feels like years until your sick of it all and just want it to end, any way at all, because at that point you've stopped caring.

I read the Gunslinger, enjoyed it - and the next three, but then got to Song of Susanna and gave up halfway through. Still don't know what happened to them all.

 

[Dante]

As with everything in my life, I like my endings bittersweet. There should be enough resolution for readers to feel satisfied but at a cost to the characters that does not leave them unscathed or unscathed by the trials they suffered.

 

[mithril]

Happy, though I can cope with some bittersweetness. Tragic I don't really like much -- I won't read a book again if I know the end is tragic. Why invest in the characters again if the story's just going to break my heart?

I don't read fantasy to be made miserable.

Agree with Hex. The most striking example of me not being able to pick up a book/series again was with GRRM's 'A Game of Thrones'. Call me unrealistic but I was really disappointed by how good 'never' seemed to win in that book (That might not be factually true, but that was the overall impression I got). I did finish that particular book and bought 'A clash of Kings'. However I've yet to muster up enough courage to go beyond the first chapter. Not to say the story wasn't engrossing and the writing is not excellent, coz it was and it is (whatever that means ) but my point is that unrelenting bleakness throughout puts me off. If the things are somewhat balanced with the good winning some and the not-good winning some.. then I can deal with bittersweet as well though I prefer upbeat endings.

I did kind of run on though didn't I

 

[Nesacat]

I'm very satisfied with either sort of ending so long as it fits the way the story has been flowing. Sometimes an ending seems false, forced or abrupt and spoils my enjoyment of the whole story.

You get to the end and feel as if you've fallen into some alien story, slammed into a wall or just plain let down.

Stephen King comes to mind as has been mentioned already and so does Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian.

 

[kshRox]

Pandoras box.
Pensive endings.

Not all is as we would have it in happily ever after . . .
We are brought up against the buttressed edge or harsh reality.
An ideal or two may have been abused and a few dreams have some tarnish that wasn't there before

Our hero/ine has experienced pain and loss . . .

Our integrity however for the most part remains intact

As we look towards the sun low on the horizon . .
We hear a scrabbling noise within the box and realize hope still lies waiting for us to choose whether or not we set her free

 

[Kylara]

Another poor writer of endings in Canavan...sudden, clichéd, and weirdly "happy"...they annoy me greatly, they seem very much - the end, ooh has to be happy, and must annoy people as much as possible...

 

[Boneman]

I love tragedy.... but not at the end... if 'resolution' is defined as happy, because 90% of loose ends are tied up (even if there's an air that life will be different, but DOES go on) then that's for me... I hate ambiguous endings, and sickly sweet endings - the end of Dune was perfect - they'd won, were going to get what they wanted, the bad guys were dead or punished but... you knew greater problems were ahead, and that is just like life...

The Omega Man was almost perfect... Good guy dies, but hands on hope to the other survivors.

And I agree with Kylara - I've stopped reading Canavan because you KNOW how it's going to end, which takes so much away from what you can invest in the journey as a reader.

 

[Kylara]

Haha I was thinking please don't do it Canavan, please don't do it...oh you did it -_- well that is just stupid at the end of the Black trilogy, I had high hopes for the ending of the White trilogy, then massive disappointment...

The Mistborn trilogy has possibly the greatest ending ever for what happened. He felt no need to shy away from the, to me "correct" ending, and it gave so much more impact...truly masterfull...

 

[Luiglin]

Do you mean the Charlton Heston version of I am Legend? If so then that and the Will Smith version have such cop out endings for me. The whole point of the story, as I read it, was that by the end the survivor realised it was him who had become the monster, the legend.
On the other hand what was a complete shock was the ending to The Mist. Very un-Hollywood like and far more satisfying as a result.
Another Matheson novel, What Dreams May Come, has a great tragic but uplifting ending.

 

[Abernovo]

I'm a sucker for a happy ending, but the realist in me likes something a little bittersweet, sometimes even a little melancholy. I'm not always convinced by the books where everybody comes through great troubles alive, healthy, happy, and in one piece.

Suffering is good for the characters' souls.

 

[EricWard]

I have to agree that a rosy ending where everything is neatly tied up takes me out of the story.

Personally, if I write something that ends happily, there's usually a lingering "but" somewhere. But I guess as long as the characters went somewhere or their death had a meaning and purpose behind it, I could go either way.