Comedy or Tragedy? Choose Your Ending Wisely

I think one of the hardest things as a creative writer is trying to decide what kind of ending I’m going to give the story.

When it comes to movies, we find the ones that normally do well have “happy” endings–they leave the audience smiling and feeling like a million bucks.  Yet, when you look at the book world, the great writers of our time often use “tragic” endings–these books leave a lasting impression that can span many, many generations of readers.

So, which is better?  Well, of course there is no easy answer to that.  I mean, if you are writing a comedy then you don’t necessarily want to have a tragic ending on it.  With something like a mystery, you can have a happy or sad ending, but you had better “solve” the mystery.  Horror is supposed to leave us scared to turn the light off and Romance, well it can be either or, but the character better have found love at some point in the story–even if they did lose it in the end.

In essence, it all depends on the story.  But, some stories (most stories) can have more than one kind of ending, they can even be written with alternative endings for those people that are totally dissatisfied with the original–or if the writer simply couldn’t make up their mind.  These are the stories that I’m referring to, the ones that can “swing” either way.

I have a series of books that I’ve been working on, and each one has its own ending, but the issue I’m dealing with is the final ending, how is the last book going to leave the reader feeling? 

My first impression is to leave the reader feeling good, happy that they read the series, but is this really appropriate for the books?  In light of certain research, I’m not sure that it is.

So what if I don’t leave my audience feeling good?  Is this going to change who my targeted audience is?  Possibly.  Of course, they won’t realize that until the end, but as most of us know, word of mouth is still one of the best marketing strategies.  Do I want people saying, “That was so sad!”  Or worse, “That ending sucked!”

Well, maybe I do.  I guess the question is how close do I want this to mirror reality, or logical reality?  We all have dreams as kids, but how often do we actually obtain those dreams?  Also, as we enter adulthood, dreams often change to something, perhaps more obtainable–but again, how often do we actually get what we want?  Sometimes, life simply becomes a matter of surviving from one day to the next with little regard to what are dreams used to be.

It seems to me that human nature has a tendency to be … um, rather schizophrenic.  Here’s an example:  We’re watching a car race, and on one hand we want our favorite driver to win the race, on the other hand we’re on the edge of our seats waiting to see which cars are going to be involved in a crash.  This goes all the way back to the gladiators (and probably way earlier than that).  We want to see someone win, yet we want to see bloodshed. 

This also follows the lines of Comedy/Tragedy.  We love to laugh, and we also like to have our hearts ripped from our chests–metaphorically speaking.

Leaving the extremes, I could also use the “satisfactory” ending.  This idea I’ve pretty much thrown out.  I don’t want my audience to just be satisfied with the ending, I want it to resonate through their minds weeks after they read the book.  Not only that, but a satisfactory ending rarely gets word of mouth support.  By this I mean that people aren’t likely to recommend the book to someone else unless they happen to be having a conversation with the person about a particular genre in which they remember the book being.  So, satisfactory ending … I could, if I absolutely can’t think of what else to do with it, but if that’s the case then I’m not sure if it was a very good book to begin with.

Originally, I had thought I’d leave my readers all warm and fuzzy inside, but the more I get to know the characters, and the more the storyline develops, the more I think that it might not be the best ending.

But, as they say, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.  For now, the best thing I could do is concentrate on getting the first book published, first.