This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper TS Elliot all the Greats are downers
One can have depression and gloom without depth and insight, but given the way the world is, the reverse is much more difficult! I loved happy endings up to my early twenties. Then I grew and came to understand that a happy ending in a story is just the story ending in a high moment. True, the rest of the characters’ lives may be improved over the story’s conflict, but to claim a “happily ever after” ending like in a romance novel is an idea best left to children’s books. Earthly life is a war, not a party; moments of pleasure are few and far between. All the world’s religious and philosophical traditions acknowledge this.
I've said it before, probably on this thread, but happy endings are pretty genre-specific, mainly found in children's books and romances. They can be found in just about any genre if the stories are aimed at a youthful enough audience. But when it reaches an adult level generally the pretense of happiness is stripped away. That doesn't mean it's depressing or morbid, just that reality itself isn't all sunshine and roses. Knowledge and life experience often (always?) come at a high price, namely the stripping away of naive fantasies that everything has a happy ending.
Also, the happy ending for children is a relatively new marketing device. Up until (I don't know precisely) a century or so ago (?) we didn't live in safe societies where we were spared from knowledge of the harsh realities of life. Many people grew up on farms and ranches, where they'd see animals getting sick and dying. And when people were sick, they weren't whisked away to a hospital, there was a sickbed set up in the home (you can see this in countless paintings and sketches and in many stories from these time periods). Death was very visible, and would happen right inside the home. So did birth. But by somewhere in the Victorian era, children were being throught of in flowery romantic terms as tender little sprouts that needed to be protected from these harsh realities. By that time civilization had become so insulated from harsh reality that this could be accomplished. More and more since then we've sheltered the children, and mental illness has been on the rise. It's known in psychology (those braches of it still in touch with the realities of life, not the ones insulated from it) that the way to make people mentally healthy isn't to pamper them and insulate them from what frightens them, but quite the opposite—you must expose them little by little to the things they're afraid of. it's called Exposure Therapy, and has a proven track record. Many people who have undergone it were terrified of many things at first, but gradually toughened up and became courageous enough to face things despite any fear. We've inadvertently created a society that makes people mentally ill and afraid of everything.
I tend to utilize endings that put the main character's story on hold for the time being and provide reassurance that maybe they will be fine but add in some unanswered questions so that people will want to read the next book. I also have a few mysteries yet to be addressed that happen between the first book and the second so that'll be a good way to draw people back in [a scandalous affair, a murder manipulated to look like a suicide, blackmail, the list goes on] So I guess my endings are bittersweet in a way, because the protagonist is all right [kind of], but the story ends just as the world around them starts crashing down
I think all important knowledge comes at the risk of pain or danger. We learn to walk by giving up the safety of crawling, and taking on the risk of falling down. We learn the word Hot (my first word) often by touching a stovetop. We cry for a while, but the knowledge is gained, and we grow from it. Growth is largely a gradual stripping away of naive fantasies, though up to a certain point we do keep children protected from the harshest realities. Exposing them to too much too early risks traumatizing them, so it must be done by stages. I think this is why when books reach a more adult level they must deal with the issues we were protected from as children. We need to learn about them, and it's best done by proxy at first, through books and movies, as practice for when we encounter the realities.
I think maybe I have a different definition of a happy ending. Like, one story I read, the main character started out a free man, but his relationship with his family was horrible and the world was passing him by. At the end, he winds up in prison. But his relationship with his son is improved dramatically, and he has changed for the better and is optimistic about his life after serving his time. He ended up better at the end than the beginning. Even though he was imprisoned, that’s a happy enough ending for me.
What creatures we are that can read and produce stories about everything from alternate World War II realities to zombie apocolypses with complete aplomb, yet regard happy endings as unrealistic.
It's what's generally known as bittersweet, having a strong positive component within an otherwise very negative situation. And it's basically what I mean when I say my characters go through some hellish conditions (the symbolic death as the naive person they were) in order to discover new truths and take on new life as who they become (the symbolic resurrection).
The problem with literary fiction is the book is just as likely to sit on the coffee table as it is to be read. If I work that hard on a story I want it to be read.
What? Literary fiction is read all the time, no less than any genre. I love reading and writing literary fiction. It's from reading literary fiction that made me want to become a writer. There's no reason to put down these kinds of books. If the same thing was said about a genre, I bet some people around here would be pretty pissed off.
Okay let’s stop before we start huh? some people dig lit fic some don’t, some dig genre fic some don’t . We don’t need any mines better than yours bullshit
My character spent years of her life trying to free her husband from prison. But much to my surprise, her husband Renee—an ex-priest—was a man that had been cared for all of his life and didn't want to take on the responsibilities of a married life, so he returned to the priesthood. She ended up marrying another rebel priest that helped her along the way. Who knew... This was the nineteenth century.
Even if my bullshit really is better than yours? Well, guess it would have to be equine shit since we sold all the cattle last fall. We do have two mules and I'm not sure how many horses. I should count them again.
I could never be as kickass as Sister Sarah, and I wouldn't ride a donkey, either. The mules and horses are under the care of and actually belong to my son, though the sale from my cow and calf paid for one of them.
I brought one of my writing works to its end recently, a short story, but not so short as my other short stories, but nearly long enough to be a novella. Its ending was with development of the one I think of being the main character, but that was happening earlier and the story ends with questioning what many presume, which I do not, that could have the readers think more, and perhaps as I would hope then change in some ways too.
This is a story I have been writing and just brought to its end recently, and don't know where I will publish it if I do. A young girl who I think is the main character in it is gifted on her birthday with a really large bird by her parents. None of them suspected what the girl finds at the beginning, the bird can speak and talks then with the girl in the language they understand. The bird is intelligent and brings the girl to understanding things differently. Her parents have different reactions though and the story is involving how everything works out between all of them.
My novels (and outlines for possible future novels) generally have happy endings. At least the good guys win, anyway. My shorts, on the other hand are bleak AF! Almost every one ends in heartbreak and/or death. I haven't figured out why I do this exactly. It seems these are just the stories that occur to me. Even when I go in with no ending in mind, I end up going dark.
I will have to think if I will always want happy endings, if I bring many more of writing works besides the short stories to an end. It seems those endings would be more desirable but what is predictable isn't.
