Happy end? Or just lazy writing?

[Deleted member 84247]

You just need a satisfying conclusion regardless of its happy or not.

 

[Clo]

No matter how awful and tragic the journey in my books may be, I can only end on a positive note.

Goddess knows the world can use more optimism. And as a writer? I can be the change I want to see(read)

 

[bulmabriefs144]

So, since I'm currently suffering from a severe case of writer's block, I decided to post a question for y'all: Happy endings, yay or nay?

I was watching the finale of Miraculous Ladybug (a pretty good cartoon by some French guy) when I realized that a story loses its spark if it ends "happily ever after." Once the bad guy is defeated, it seems unrealistic that all the world's problems are suddenly solved. Shouldn't there be loose ends or unanswered questions that were never acknowledged or a new threat that appears from this "utopian" Earth? I'm not saying stories that end this way are bad (in fact, Miraculous Ladybug didn't actually end this way), I just don't find this sort of conclusion believable and/or creative.

Like Agent Smith said, "As a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery." Any thoughts?

I think a story can have a realistic happy end. Here's an example story from watching a film on a plane trip. A woman attends a shiva (Jewish mourning festival) at the request of her in-laws. We find out she's a prostitute, she's bisexual, and that both the guy she had sex with this morning is here... with his wife and child, but also a former female flame is here. But the ex-gf and the wife find out all her secrets via cellphone, but mercifully there is no big confrontation. Instead, we have very Jewish scenes where she continually is shamed about not eating anything and how skinny she is. Or whether she's married to a nice Jewish boy yet. The film ends with an absurd clown car setup, where she and the ex-gf (who she's managed to repair things with) sit in the very back with an old grandma, then the wife and the guy she had sex with are in the middle, and then like five other people are in the car. The film ends with them holding hands, and nobody can see it, because the old grandma is snoring. Happily ever after isn't realistic, no, but you can give low-key happy endings.

Depends on if they feel earned. A happy ending that doesn't feel like it happened organically, like the author is manipulating reality to give the heroes exactly what they want, is just as bad as an edgy "AND THEN EVERYONE DIED AND THE WORLD BUUUURRRRNED! BWAHAHAHAAA!" ending.

I ended one of my books with the hero being so soft that he felt sorry for demons trying to destroy the world and self-destructed with magic. The demon is sealed by a third party, and the hero and the bestgirl are trapped in a sorta limbo. Yeah, it was still a happy ending but it was weird AF.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

I always hated the fairy tales that ended with that infamous line "Happily Ever After" - indeed, I disliked all fairy tales for several years because of it. Not because I dislike happy endings, but because I was annoyed that these characters go through all these horrible things, and yet everything usually works out at the end and everyone (except the probably dead villain) is now happy, healthy, and unscarred by their hideous ordeal. I only started appreciating the genre much, much later after discovering that the "clean" versions were mostly introduced in the 20th Century by primarily American editors (the originals are much, much darker - The Red Shoe has the girl die; the fate of The Little Mermaid is one of the most tragic ever, and the wolf is not cut open to find Red and Grandma still alive inside...) who felt children couldn't handle them, and then after discovering much darker parodies/tributes, like Tanith Lee's Red as Blood: Tales of the Sisters Grimmer. Now I can go back and enjoy most of them for what they are (and even appreciate L. Frank Baum's American Fairy Tales - the Oz Cycle and the Santa Claus Cycle). But it took me a while, and I do prefer a "nearly tidy" ending, one that wraps up all the major elements, and suggests that there might be more to come, but all the important stuff is resolved in the best way possible (not always happy).

 

[Valmond]

Depends on if they feel earned. A happy ending that doesn't feel like it happened organically, like the author is manipulating reality to give the heroes exactly what they want, is just as bad as an edgy "AND THEN EVERYONE DIED AND THE WORLD BUUUURRRRNED! BWAHAHAHAAA!" ending.

Ain’t gonna lie, I kinda want to see that line in a story ending at least once.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Ain’t gonna lie, I kinda want to see that line in a story ending at least once.

Wagner's operas (Der Ring des Nibelungen (English: The Ring of the Nibelung). gave us the term "Götterdämmerung" literally "twilight of the gods" - also the German translation of the Norse word " Ragnarök," and depicted Asgard in flames at the end; that phrase has come to mean "...and the world burned..." in literature since then.

 

[Valmond]

Wagner's operas (Der Ring des Nibelungen (English: The Ring of the Nibelung). gave us the term "Götterdämmerung" literally "twilight of the gods" - also the German translation of the Norse word " Ragnarök," and depicted Asgard in flames at the end; that phrase has come to mean "...and the world burned..." in literature since then.

I meant the actual line used like the guy said.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

I meant the actual line used like the guy said.

Don't remember where, but I have seen it or something very much like it, in the past. Been at least a decade though.

 

[Valmond]

Don't remember where, but I have seen it or something very much like it, in the past. Been at least a decade though.

 

[wordsmith12008]

Well, when I read a book, I read it precisely because they aren't realistic and the characters aren't real. Why would I want to read more about the depressing stuff about reality? I want my books to be a good escape to a better world, a world where there are good endings which feel earned and leave me full. I don't want my stories to end on a sad note and leave me unfulfilled.

 

[soupsabaw]

Ah, it depends. I try to do both kinds of writing: ones that are tragic and ones that are not. I would feel miserable if all my stories led up to a devasting ending. I do feel that making everything completely heaven after an antagonist is dealt with is kind of lazy, but I also don't want to be insulting others' work. While I strongly believe there will always be good people in the world, I also strongly believe there are always bad people in the world. Maybe ending things with a cliffhanging threat that peace will not be forever.