ARWZ :: Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Discussion Forums

Violanthe · Webmaster Joined: 24 Jul 2003 Posts: 5903

Do you write happy endings? How important is a happy ending to the marketability of a book?
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Nik · Senior Member Joined: 07 Dec 2006 Posts: 805 Location: UK

Life is unfair, but resolving enough of the plot should be reward enough...

Mervi · Warlord Joined: 29 Aug 2006 Posts: 1119 Location: Finland

As happy as the story needs.

Violanthe · Webmaster Joined: 24 Jul 2003 Posts: 5903

How do you determine how happy the ending should be?
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Mervi · Warlord Joined: 29 Aug 2006 Posts: 1119 Location: Finland

I have quite often some inkling of what I want the end to be or how it all should turn up. Also, if I want to use some characters again, I shouldn't kill them off or give them too much misery.

Violanthe · Webmaster Joined: 24 Jul 2003 Posts: 5903

But don't miserable characters provide more interesting places to pick up a new story?
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Ian · Posted: Sat Nov 08, 2008 4:29 pm

I write the ending I want/the ending that fits the story/material.

Richard H. Fay · Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 1:38 pm

It completely depends on the story. Often times horror stories have endings that are far from happy. Fantasy stories may have more happy endings than horror.

Even the stories in my poetry, when my poetry tells a specific story, have different types of endings depending on the circumstances. I've ended some of my horror pieces with suicide, murder, or other sorts of death. I've ended some of my fantasy and science-fiction pieces on a much more positive note.
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mephisto · Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2010 12:46 pm

I prefer happy endings, or sad and poigniant endings. Like Captain Kirk, I don't believe in the no-win scnario, but sometimes "winning" requires sacrifice. And things have to have some logic and make sense.

I recently watched "Ghost Writer" with Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan and directed by Roman Polanski. It was excellent up until the ending. Their whole idea was to make the sequence of events throughout the story be very logical, and it was, up until the high-school antic of passing a note to one of the bad guys to let on that he had solved the mystery that people were getting killed over, and then he runs outside and is immediately hit by a speeding car before the message reciever had an opportunity to let anyone else know he had figured it out, let alone plan a "handling." If he was smart enough to run, he would be smart enough not to tip-off the bad guys he was on to them before running. In their efforts to avoid the Hollywood ending and do things differently, they botched the ending of what otherwise would have been a great story.

I don't read to be depressed, so I avoid depressing endings and I don't write them. But again, sad and poigniant works too; as long as the "unhappiness" serves a purpose in the minds of the characters. But don't make it unhappy when there was a pretty easy and logical way to end it happy if your characters hadn't suddently got stupid or fatalistic.

Nik · Senior Member Joined: 07 Dec 2006 Posts: 805 Location: UK

I prefer upbeat endings providing they're the logical conclusion of the story's arc, not a 'deux ex machina' or equivalent , eg a 'with a leap, he was free'...

It's the little things, sometimes: Saving the galaxy is hard to keep credible, but having the hand-built kiln fire its first pots *and* getting a salmon run on the river would do nicely...