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All I want is a happy ending…

Posted by Ann Godridge on March 7, 2010 · View Comments 

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One of my recently rejected stories came back with a suggestion that it was just a little bit too bleak.

I suppose it’s true really. It was never my intention that it should turn out that way, but many of my stories do seem to have something of an edge to them, or a dark undercurrent.

They do have moments of humour too, mostly intentional, I like to think.  With the crime stories I suppose the endings are mixed rather than straighforward, and that makes sense because if someone’s been murdered it would be a little creepy to have the characters unmoved by it. Oops, now there’s another germ of a story idea I might decide to follow up on.

It’s the other stories though, the ones about childhood, that really seem to cause problems. The one about the game of kiss catch, and the one about the jumble sale – both have this kind of moral ambiguity at their heart.

Yet I’ve always really enjoyed a happy ending. I remember as a teenager reading Romeo and Juliet atc school, I was completely enraged by the ending. Later I found soap opera unbearable, because I just couldn’t accept that people would behave so stupidly. Why don’t they talk things through, I would wonder…okay, the screaming at the TV was a bit louder than that “wonder” made it sound.

One of my favourite series of historical novels is Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond chronicles. Six long novels following the adventures of a kind of Tudor James Bond hero – except much, much more literate and tortured.  Anyway, half a dozen pages before the end and something truly dreadful happens and the hero, the Lymond I have adored throughout the books, is killed. That was the first time I really, truly, literally threw a book across the room. Two days later I picked it up and read the last piece, and of course there was a twist and all was saved. But for those two days I was in pain.

As for my favourite TV series, Babylon 5 – well I don’t know how that ends. I’ve watched all five series three times now, and the films – but I haven’t watched the final two episodes. As far as I’m concerned, I won’t be watching them until the sixth series is out.

So it really doesn’t make any kind of sense that I would be doing this dark and twisted thing to any poor soul who reads my stories. I’ve been trying harder lately, and wrote a flash piece the other day that ended on a happy note. But still, I can see, looking at what I’ve written, the best stories are still the bleakest.

I hope this is just a phase I’m going through, I really do.  I don’t have any objection to realism, but that’s my point I think. Realism may include the occasional bit of misery, but there should be hope and happiness too.

What about you?  Do you enjoy a bit of angst, a healthy dose of realism, or the joy of a really happy ending?

Ann

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  • neilfairbrother
    Creative works are never finished, just abandoned.
  • AnnGodridge
    Good point Neil...there's always hope then...
  • What a fabulous question!

    It's difficult for me to lose my 'working head' when faced with true endings, whether happy or not - a blessing and a curse I guess! Yet there's always something to be learned whatever the outcome. The endings let people work out what it is they might have done differently in the same situation - they are all just metaphors after all. And I for one love the power of metaphor!
  • That's interesting, Jackie. I suppose in a way most fiction is a kind of thought experiment, isn't it? An exercise in empathy, in walking a while in someoen else's shoes....

    Hmmm....
  • Morag
    The great thing about walking a mile in someone else's shoes is that by the time they realise, you're a mile away - and they don't have any shoes to chase you in.

    BOOM-BOOM.
  • Yes even made up stories come from somewhere don't they ... not all writer's can write the same sort of thing just as not all people live the same life, nor everyone enjoy the same fiction. So I guess that whatever's important to the writer and their reader, hidden in the depths of their unconscious, must come out in their choice of fiction.

    A friend was recently reading a really gory crime book as she came up on the train to a weekend workshop we were running. As it happened the last chapter in the book suddenly gave her closure on her husband's death just as she pulled into Edinburgh!

    The oldies are the goodies Morag!
  • From a personal view I read books and watch films as an escape. I know life can be awful, I know that bad things happen to good people and for no reason, I know that there are no happy endings because the only real ending to life is death. So I like my books and films to have happy endings because I can get enough of the other sort by watching the news or reading the papers.

    Having said that, I do like my endings to be endings. I'm not so keen on the "One year/five years/twenty years later" epilogues unless they are REALLY well done, and usually they aren't.

    And Babs, I agree that the definition of happy endings doesn't have to be "and they all lived happily ever after," as long as it's uplifting in some way.
  • That's a good point, Maggie - unremitting catasptrophe and you might as well be watching the news, some days ...

    And I hadn't thought about those epilogues either, but you're right, thee's something unsatisfying them too...
  • Oh Ann - I have a blog post brewing on this very theme - exploring the "happy ending" and how cross I am with my disappointment when there isn't one. Even knowing how unrealistic books and films are when they all end with everything coming together, I still expect and enjoy such myself.

    Having said that, some of my favourites are not traditionally happy-ended - the book "What Dreams May Come" is not obviously happy (though we know it will be), and the film "City of Angels" is incredibly sad and not how we want it to end, but it's still a favourite. The same of "Pay it Forward" - so very sad but with such a positive message that it is a winner, too.
  • I think that's it exactly, Babs - even if it is sad it can be redeemed by some kind of positive message. Sometimes just surviving to go on is enough - sometimes not surviving works if it turns out that is what is needed to preserve a character's integrity.

    I cried when I was very young when Sidney Carton dies at the end of a Tale of Two Cities though...
  • Morag
    Thanks for the book recommendation, Ann. I'll pick those up for Bob.

    As you know from my own short story writing, I like to have a humorous throwaway to end my stories. I do like a proper ending though. Can't bear the whole "fade out" thing. I watched Harold and Maude last night on DVD, and the boy simply walks away at the end. Not dramatic enough for me, even though he did wreck his car.
  • It does depend on the mood of the whole story too - there are some cases where perhaps having this sense of things just continuing would be right.

    But if I've really cared about the characters, I think I want the idea that something has gone right for them, even if they didn't get everything they wanted.

    And I hate it if I feel I've been tricked....
  • I don't mind whether a story has a happy ending or a bleak one, so long as it HAS an ending! I read too many stories that just sort of trail off ... like a fade out in a song when I want a crescendo and its very unsatisfactory. I know in real life one story merges into the next one and there is no real ending to anything but when I read a novel I want a conclusion.
  • I agree with you Ann, whole heartedly those tales that trail off make be scream with frustration, an unsatisfactory ending is just so... unfulfilling and makes me feel cheated by the author and publisher.

    I stopped reading Stephen Kind books because I found one of his short stories had a rubbish ending, and I have dropped other authors over the years.

    I like a end as you don't get them in life, as you say one story merges into another.
  • It's very difficult to get endings right, I find. I don't know why, but there's a tendency for me to waffle on too lomg until I've put everyone to sleep, or to cut it off too short.

    Or I have been known to come over all Victorian and tell everyone what I think the story means...

    But I agree, I do like a story to have a beginning, a middle and a end - and preferably in that order. Old fashioned though it may be ;)
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