A happily ever after? A victory won at a high cost? A beautiful tragedy? A tragedy that's anything but beautiful? How do you like to end your stories? Do most of your characters make it out alive and are that ones that survive ever the same? Do your heroes get the honors they deserve, go quietly back to their normal lives, or never live to see their friends victories? Do you try to leave your audience smiling or in tears? Tell me about how your stories end.
I've got 3 things I'm working on at the moment.
First one ends with a war victory and promise of future peace. Most of the main characters make it through (not entirely unscathed though) and look forward to a potentially bright future.
Second one is still in the works, but I'll probably kill off one of the two main protagonists in a tragedy saving humankind.
Third one is a soft quiet ending to a struggle against nature and technology.
Mine ends on a kinda hopeless tone. And by kinda, I mean extremely. The characters made the wrong choice (which seemed right at the time of their decision) and they start to realize it as it ends. Both main characters accept this and their fate, leading to the possible end of their lives. It's kind of an open ending in that respect.
What are happy endings? I've never heard of them.
Just kidding, happy endings are the best, but with the types of stories I write, they're just unrealistic. After all the shit I put my characters through, none of them will ever be the same, that's just not how it works. I don't plan on killing all of my characters, I need half of them for another series. But! One of them has to trap herself in another reality to defeat a monster, leaving behind her found family and a boy she loves very much. One is forced to sacrifice herself to get rid of the main antagonist, but is it really a sad ending if she's been alive for hundreds of years and is ready to go? Although, in another of my stories, the main character loses at least two of her three brothers. One of my characters loses her arm and nearly loses her boyfriend, while her crew starts to not trust her.
I mean, in every story, they all save the world? So that's good, I guess? Like I said, I'm pretty sure I've never heard of these "happy endings."
Happy endings are somewhat overrated because they are ridiculously hard to write and still be believable.
The story I’m working on currently will end with my main character losing his memories of the whole thing and returning to a normal life with his family. He will forget the girl he loves, the life he led, the people he met. I’m thinking of adding an epilogue-type thing where he’ll see the girl (who did not lose her memories) and recognize her, but not be sure as to why.
One of my stories starts out in a sort-of dystopia, like instead of the world being much worse than it used to be, it's better than it was in the past but that is still terrible. I plan to have it end with a more neutral environment, where not all the problems are completely solved but they're solved enough that everyone can have what is considered a normal life in our real present world. I want the readers to realize how much my protagonist has grown since the beginning of the story, where he thought the world should be "the right way" meaning that he thought the world should be the way he would have made it so it benefits what he believes to be the entire world, when it would only benefit just a bit under half of it. I want the readers to recognize how the things he had done since the beginning of the story effected his decisions at the end of it.
Idk I actually prefer endings that are at least somewhat happy. Not everything has to work out in the end, and yeah, if your characters have been through a lot they're probably not the same person that they were at the start of the story. Sometimes though when I read a book with a sad ending, it makes me feel like everything the characters went through was all for nothing. When you're rooting for a character to succeed and then they don't it's pretty disappointing, especially when that's what you're ending your story with.
In terms of my own writing, I honestly don't have endings planned out for some of my stories but ideally I'd like for it to be mostly happy. I want my characters to succeed in their main goal but it doesn't really end with all sunshine and rainbows.
In the one story where I do have an ending (more or less) planned, one of my main character's main goal is to kill off the king of his country (who is also his father). Throughout the story, he's convinced that if he were to do this everyone would love him and he'd go down in history as this great hero. He does end up killing his father, but he's met with a lot of backlash and ends up getting exiled from his kingdom. So it's kind of bittersweet in that he achieves his goal, but his actions don't have the outcome that he had hoped for.
Bittersweet emphasis on bitter.
Story numero uno- Louise has had an awful life and attempts to escape it by joining her kingdom's enemy army. She's tasked with protecting what would be the proper protagonist, powerful, the last hope, the saviour, but he's just a kid and he's terrified. Louise makes so many mistakes and is forced to face her past, kills her brother, kills her king (who she was engaged to), and the people she knew. Suddenly she finds herself at the turning point and sacrifices her life to end the war. The war is over, humans are saved but Louise is no more. Not only that but she can't move on and find peace because of what she's done.
Story numero due- Kado was a noble and took advantage of that. A good person but terribly misguided. He was forced into a war he wanted nothing to do with but was driven by his hazy need for revenge. Then his power is exploited by his so called best friend, Mara, who wants to destroy this other guy for her own gain. Then he finds himself spiraling down this path of betrayal, suffering, tears, and a lot of blood until finally he beats Mara and goes back to a 'normal' life but after so long adventuring, making friends, making enemies, fighting and all good things he yearns for what was. He has a family now, a wife and kids so he can't just leave but he wants to so badly. He also misses Mara and all the good times they had despite her being the bad guy in the end. (Mara was also a main character with her own perspective and tragic fate but I won't go into that)
And to summarise-
3- More betrayal, loss, death but both the main characters live miraculously, satisfied but forever shaken. Neither can live completely in the present anymore.
4- The best ending. The main character has taken down her family and her past. Everything is erased and she can start over but she can never go back. She can only go forwards.
I love rambling about my brain's ideas.
I like depressing endings. The endings that make the readers think. The bittersweet endings. The endings that make them want to cry their eyes out or makes them feel that heavy weight in their chest. The ending that makes readers want more, and makes them feel like the story just can't be over yet.
I like depressing endings. The endings that make the readers think. The bittersweet endings. The endings that make them want to cry their eyes out or makes them feel that heavy weight in their chest. The ending that makes readers want more, and makes them feel like the story just can't be over yet.
Have you read The Fault in our Stars by John Green? :p
The only novel-length story I ever finished ended with somewhat of a cliffhanger or open end. The main character was still heavily questioning his morals and decided to visit the antagonist. The story ended right after the antagonist's true identity was finally revealed.
I'm still working on part two were one of the old main character's far descendants is the new main character. They're struggling with their own thing while slowly revealing to the reader what happened centuries back after the first book ended through narrative.
Long story short: I like semi-open endings because they give readers the idea that the main character still has a future beyond the story.
I like depressing endings. The endings that make the readers think. The bittersweet endings. The endings that make them want to cry their eyes out or makes them feel that heavy weight in their chest. The ending that makes readers want more, and makes them feel like the story just can't be over yet.
Have you read The Fault in our Stars by John Green? :p
No, I actually haven't. But I know what happens and I've been meaning to read it.
I like depressing endings. The endings that make the readers think. The bittersweet endings. The endings that make them want to cry their eyes out or makes them feel that heavy weight in their chest. The ending that makes readers want more, and makes them feel like the story just can't be over yet.
Have you read The Fault in our Stars by John Green? :p
No, I actually haven't. But I know what happens and I've been meaning to read it.
Kewl. The ending is legit what you described, is why :D
I love happy endings, both when I read and when I write. Which come to think of it is strange when I realise that the two short stories I've written that won anything both have open-ended, quite sad endings. (I think what happened there is I've got the 'rest' of the ending in my head. It might look sad, but the story doesn't end there, really.)
That's not to say that I avoid reading or writing anything where characters die or are hurt or disappointed, or tie up every single loose end down to the widow of the wild rabbit who got eaten for dinner finding a new mate to raise bunnies with. I do like stories with tension and a wide range of expressed emotions. But I want them to end on a positive note so that, like @Starfast said, what the characters went through wasn't all for nothing. /stares daggers at Death Cure
I think an ending can still be open-ended if it's happy. There's a range of happy endings from the 'we survived Voldemort one more year' endings of the 1-6 Harry Potter books to the 'and they all lived happily ever after' of traditional fairy tales.
Death Cure
It's like you read my exact thoughts.
Story One: The war is won, barely, and only because a small group of people from Ehre came to help. The dictator is dead, but so is the leader of the rebel army and the heir to the throne. Characters lose everything from brothers and sister to uncles to fingers, but most of the mains survive.
Story Two: Fern is reunited with her terminally ill mother, Huxley refused to kill Fern and had two of his toes shot off, Rosalind is killed by Ayla and Lysander but at the cost of Lysander's life. Asher, Carrie, Fern, and Huxley go to Twyllo to help in the revolution.
Story Three: none of the MCs survive. One is killed in a rescue, one is executed, and two drown trying to swim to safety.