It’s a Rocky Road to the Top: Why Your Happy Endings Are Killing Your Story
A road followed to its end leads nowhere.
When we spend weeks or months or even years with a character, we tend to become very attached. We’ve walked in their shoes; we’ve sorrowed over their sorrows; we’ve felt their grief, their joy, their regret. Small wonder that when we get to the end of a story with these guys, we really, really want things to turn out well for them. With total power, we end up steering for a happy ending. We give them the house, the car, the lover, and a solution to every problem that cropped up over the course of the story.
And it’s the worst decision we could possibly make.
Happy endings can often be earned. But more often than not, the truly satisfying, effective happy ending isn’t an ending at all. It’s an opening up, a widening of possibilities and visions. When a happy ending is stuck onto the end of a story, it causes stagnation. It tells the reader, “life ends at the end of this story.” I’m reminded of a quotation from Frank Herbert’s novel Dune, which, paraphrased, is that a road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Life isn’t a happy ending; it’s a complex, ever-changing pathway.
So happy endings are a bit of an oxymoron; we’re only happy when we’re allowed to continue growing, changing, and doing the things we love. In order to be happy, we need to be challenged, thoughtful, learning, disappointed, angry, learning more.
How to avoid the happy ending pitfall
So how do you keep from following a road to a dead end? A good happy ending shows that a writer has been thinking about what his character would really want in life. It’s not the outward accumulation of a house, car, and beautiful spouse. It’s often some sort of new opportunity or escape — an opportunity to change the life a character currently has, or an escape from the ills of the present. It’s never a dead stop in a pretty house somewhere. It’s a chance to keep living, to become more oneself, to look out on a new or familiar and dear horizon. Think carefully about what your character wants — and don’t quite let him or her have it. Let the road unfurl before his feet. Let her see the promised ship on the horizon. But let the reader take those last steps for happiness in her imagination, after the book is done.
I like to lead my character to the correct path, where they see how to get to happiness, and they have the ability to do so. Of course, this can only work in certain books and genres. Another way you could make the reader feel like the story continues after the last page is to point out the next adventure. For instance, we’ve defeated the Dark Lord, but now someone is going to have to stop the kingdom from falling into anarchy, and that might be even worse than the original problem!
I think it is fine to have an ‘upbeat’ ending, just not a cliche “happy ending.” My characters & their situations tend to be rather quirky. Ending with a small incident that implies (modest) hope for their future works pretty well for me, I think.
Of course, some of my stories end in complete bloodbaths for both the good & bad guys.(‘Life is not fair!’) Another novel ends with the villain (an old woman) being shot through the head by the kindly town grocer, an accomplished hunter.(‘Don’t judge people by their appearance!’)
And one story ends with a young ex-con starting to change his ways with the help of a socialist ‘commune,’ of sorts, formed by other ex-cons in Depression-era Chicago. (‘Yes, Bertha, many US citizens liked socialism & openly said so in the 30s!’)
(Most of us STILL like many aspects of socialism only now we cannot say so out loud.)
BLH, your post nailed it. No ‘drop-dead’ endings where everything is tied up in a bow & set on the shelf, & characters flat-line it, in perfect happiness, until they die.
Life is messy & always changing, evolving; a story’s “ending” will always be the start of the characters’ next phase–dead OR alive. There may have been a bloodbath, after all…
Will someone please put me out of my misery & tell me the correct terms? Blair, do you write a daily ‘post’ to your blog, or a ‘posting,’ or what? And am I writing a ‘comment’ to your ‘recent post(ing)?’
Whatever it is called, Blair, I love reading your ‘brief essays.’
They’re wonderful.
L&K, MaryB
I really appreciate and agree with this post, especially with the big “happy ending” punch in the gut that was the Harry Potter epilogue I was reminded of recently.
The idea of a pleasant resolution is much more appealing than a happy ending. Leaving the characters on the up and up, even if every problem in their lives hasn’t been resolved is still very satisfying. I would rather see a character set on the right path with the right motivation to continue improving their situation than for everything to be conveniently resolved.