Obviously with a happy ending?

In a word, no.

Does your story need a happy ending? A sad ending? A horrible ending? There are different ways to approach that question.

One is the approach taken by Terry Pratchett in anything he wrote. He was a masterful writer of satirical fantasy. All of his stories start with a state of affairs that mirrors ordinary life in the western world in this century. Only with dragons and such. All of his stories end with the same state of affairs, and the same dragons. In between, he tells many jokes and makes a point or two about human nature and common sense. The endings are 'happy' insofar as the characters in the story learn a little bit about themselves and achieve a somewhat more desirable state than the one they were in before the action started. The audience feels they've got their money's worth, which is why his books are best sellers. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, and there's nothing I like better than chuckling over the Discworld.

Stephen King takes almost exactly the same approach. All of his stories start with a state of affairs that mirrors ordinary life in the western world in this century. Only with evil lurking in every pothole. What evil is, isn't exactly clear, and you probably won't find out by reading the story. I mean, it might be killer clowns or malevolent dust bunnies. (I didn't make those up. King did.) At the end of the story, most of the characters will be dead or insane, and the survivors will not have learned anything at all. On the way, many, many commercial brand names will have been introduced to add verisimilitude to an otherwise otherworldly narrative. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, and King's books are best sellers. Obviously, sometimes people are in the mood for a good scare.

Take a look at this picture:

Do you think:

• 'I want to bathe in that light.'
• 'I'll bet that old man in the red hat has a quest that's worth 2000 experience points.'
• 'Those ruins probably tell a story involving knights, a lady, and a dragon or three.'
• 'How evocative.'
• 'I'll bet there's a really creepy monster hiding under that aqueduct.'
• 'I wonder how fast I could ride my motorbike over that thing?'

This will probably tell you what kind of story you want to write. And that will probably tell you what kind of ending you want. I mean, if the glass is always half full for you, you'll probably head that way. Some of you tend to decide that the glass is probably half full of a clear, tasteless, and totally untraceable poison. Still others believe it is half empty, and has a disappointing flavour, anyway, so it isn't worth drinking. So be it.

I would like to say, though, and this is the only point I would want to make here: whatever direction you head in, you've got to earn that ending. You can't just slap it on because 'that's how these things go.' They may go that way for you, but not for everyone else. Maybe not for anyone else. You've got to set it up, you see. You've got to make it seem logical. When Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman set out to have Aziraphale and Crowley be able to outwit Heaven and Hell and avert the Apocalypse (Spoiler Alert? Srsly?), they had to equip the story to do this without being overloaded. So they invented Agnes Nutter, the 17th-century witch with the overspecific prophecies. You're so busy laughing at her sayings about Apple and those three-wheeler cars and such that you tend to overlook the role of her book as one giant get-out-of-jail-free card for the Good Guys. I love it.

Ditto with Stephen King. He clues you in early that the story's not going to be much fun for anybody in it. He's definitely of the school that says the glass is still half full, which is a shame, really, because lurking in it is a curse about to unleash havoc on the life of anyone unwise enough to drink it. (Well, he did that with a pie once…) Only Stephen King could look at the peaceful beauty of a Pennsylvania lake and imagine a night of terror involving a sentient oil slick. Or would want to. And yes, only George Romero would want to film it. But at least he takes you through his reasoning, step by step. He chooses characters whose actions make the events of the story inevitable.

Sometimes I wonder whether Terry Prachett just knew nicer people than Stephen King, or whether Sir Terry just thought better of his friends.

Anyway, you're free to decide which way your characters go. You're the god of your own fiction, and you can be as dictatorial as you like. You'll probably find people who will like to read your kind of story, any way you choose – but only if the story makes sense. You still need to get there on something more than a whim. Both happy and sad endings require work on your part. Whatever floats your boat, you're still going have to steer it.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

24.06.19 Front Page

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