Must a fantasy novel have a happy ending?

I'm not sure whether a publisher would pick it up, but I'd read it.

I don't think you have to have a "Happy Ending." I'm all for tragic downfalls. I just think if you're going to have a "Bad ending" there some be some cause for it. All tragedies end poorly for the main characters, but there are always moments where they could have made a different decision, and had a better outcome.

That said, I've lost interest in "A Song of Fire and Ice" just because its gotten so dark, so many of the compelling characters are dead and nothing "positive" happened in the last book. I think there is a line you have to walk.

If it was category romance, it would be unsellable. As to fantasy, it really depends how well you do it. It may limit your sales, but shouldn't render your novel unsellable.

Does the downer ending leave open the possibility of a sequel?

I certainly hope so because the fantasy/mystery I'm querying doesn't have your traditional HEA. But, I believe the ending works for the story. That's all that should matter - does the ending work.

Now that I think about it, I've read a lot of fantasies that don't have HEAs. So long as it's satisfying, I've never cared.

I don't think fantasy has to have a happy ending. Some of my favourites don't - James Barclay's Raven books for a start. So long as it's not done to look clever, and it actually fits the story and the style, then there's nothingwrong with having an unhappy ending. Anyway, plenty of mainstream fiction is miserable, and people do accuse us fantasy writers of being too escapist!

In worlds where people are getting chopped up, butchered, murdered, stabbed in the heart, etc., no ending will be entirely happy. But I tend to prefer series where at least the good guy/girl and his/her significant other make it to the end.

Ever read Dusk? The ending to that was a downer. For one thing, at the end, my favoret character died. Except it was that kind of agonizing death where you read for fifty pages without being SURE that they're dead and hoping all the while that they're not...and then she was.

No, A'meer! WHY! Why did you have to die! WHYYY!

Stil a really good book. So it's all in the writing. Remember that, sonnie.

NO.

God I hope not. If it does, my current WIP (sitting at about 85k at the moment and STILL not done) is totally screwed. Hmm....maybe I should let SOMEONE live....

deathwizard said:

In worlds where people are getting <snip> stabbed in the heart, etc.,

Click to expand...

HA! Rose survives getting stabbed in the heart in the climax of her first novel...

...but it is not such a happy ending. Her love sees the spear sticking out of her chest, thinks she is dying, and gets killed while distracted... so in response to the original question, I hope not!

Every novel, regardless of genre, age demographic, or culural reference must have a happy ending.

dclary said:

Every novel, regardless of genre, age demographic, or culural reference must have a happy ending.

Click to expand...

LMAO! Like Of Mice and Men perhaps?

The distinction that often matters to publishers/editors -- the way they happen to mention it often -- is not necessarily the happy ending, but the "emotionally satisfying" ending.

The skillful writer can provide you with the feeling that there was some point to it all, even if his/her sense of realism and the logistics of the story won't permit a Frank Capra ending. Emotional satisfaction counts even when it comes to a "tragic" ending.

In classic drama, even tragedy was rigidly constructed with a point to it all, a recognition of the tension between fate and the hero's hubris, and how hubris would actually help create the tragedy that was fated despite the hero's effort to defy it, and so on -- all rules that helped the audience nod in recognition and feel like the tragedy was part of an ordered universe.

Some of us may believe that the universe is not so ordered, but it's a bad idea to believe that the craft of fiction should lack that order for the sake of pressing that belief. (As in "bad luck and coincidences are part of the real world, so at the end I'll surprise the reader by having the hero struck down by a stray bullet. Oo! Artistic!") A story that ends tragically can be quite moving and rewarding, or it can seem pointless and make the reader throw the book across the room.

If tragedy is thrown in out of nowhere in some misguided effort to represent the odds of the real world, I call it a bad idea. But that's coming from someone who doesn't appreciate the Hong Kong action films that do this to the extent of creating a sort of deux ex machina feeling as a result, or at the very least a trendy formula to follow for those who expect it. (Not a lot different from the disappointment of a happy ending that seems to come from nowhere.) I'm no coinoisseur of these films either, but I'd offer a distinction between Hero, (***spoilers coming***) which ends with what might be called a noble sacrifice that appears necessary to save a nation and which was clearly orchestrated by the protagonist throughout the story, and others I've seen that seemed to end in a haphazard bloodbath that was not foreshadowed anywhere else in the story or left me with the feeling of any "point" to that choice of ending. Aside from following the trend of faux coolness through a tacked on tragic ending, that is.

The downer ending you described for your WIP doesn't sound tacked on at all. Whether it will seem "emotionally satisfying" when all is done depends on your writing style and the kinds of observations or epiphanies that bloom from the events of the plot and its conclusion. But you see, I'm only reflecting common trends and formulas in Western fiction by saying so. If your story makes sense the way it is, satisfaction in the ending will probably depend on the reader.

Remember the Katharsis at the end and you should be fine. Otherwise it probably won't work out.

glutton said:

HA! Rose survives getting stabbed in the heart in the climax of her first novel...

...but it is not such a happy ending. Her love sees the spear sticking out of her chest, thinks she is dying, and gets killed while distracted... so in response to the original question, I hope not!

Click to expand...

Rose is too much woman for any one man to handle anyway!

mscelina said:

LMAO! Like Of Mice and Men perhaps?

Click to expand...

I was hoping my grotesquely absurd answer would in some small way subtextually point out how grotesquely absurd the question is.

deathwizard said:

Rose is too much woman for any one man to handle anyway!

Click to expand...

Nah, she's easy to handle unless you're an enemy. She's a nice considerate girl, perhaps even too careful if anything.

Something makes me want to take an M60 to Rose...

Like, "Yo! Byatch!" BUDDABUDDABUDDABUDDABUDDA!

Maybe I'm mean spirited or something. Or, if not an M60, a battery of bombards.

glutton said:

Nah, she's easy to handle unless you're an enemy. She's a nice considerate girl, perhaps even too careful if anything.

Click to expand...

Ha!

Happy ending? What is this 'Happy Ending' you speak of? In reality, endings are rarely happy and if you want your novel to really grab the reader, it needs to be somewhat realistic. I'm not saying there shouldn't be happiness, I'm just saying some people do need to die, maybe some torture, a pink bunny gets sucked into a blender...people respond to deep emotion and pain because they have deep emotions and pain. They won't respond to "Happily evera after, no one gets hurt." Even the sterrotypicaly happy endings of fairytales were originally quite dark. The witch in snow white has to wear shoes made of hot, burning metal for eternity. Disney didn't think that was such a good idea for children. The witch falls off a cliff instead. Anyway, the point is that horrible endings aren't bad things just because bad things happen. They are just realistic and readers respond to realism. I know I can't get into movies or books that are totally off the wall happy or physically impossible. (My sister loves, what is it?, Charlies Angel's. I hate it. You can't jump off a cliff and into a moving helicopter as you're falling!) Plus, why alter the book? Trust me when I say that a book that is changed from its original to please an audience will only make it suck because then it isn't coming from the heart. It will lack the passion and fire that naturally ingrains itself in a novel an author is psyched about. It won't be coming from you, it will be coming from other people , from their percepption of a good ending. You're the writer, so write the damn thing. A book that is written for the author and no one else will be the best, because then it will all fit together and it will consistently have the fire behind it. Get what I'm saying? And great literature is that wich comes from the soul of the author. Besides, plenty of great books out there have sad endings, horrible ones. At least your protagonist wins, there are plenty of those that don't! Don't ever conform to meet another standard. Originality stands out on a book shelf. The best novels are those that are written as intended. Happy ending books, there are thousands of those. Books that touch you with realism, truth, and sadness...the diamonds in the rough.

--DrakLight...

Late response

I've read fantasy trilogies where the first / 2nd book don't necessarily end happily, but I find happy closure easier to read at the finale than I do dark or sad closure.

I want to read (and go back to or continue to buy their work) an author that gives me a story where, even if the main or multiple characters die, you don't feel like its the end of the world to which you've invested yourself through reading and you don't feel like they're doomed.

Dark endings are difficult to swallow.

Coming from me - Mr. Dark Ending - that might sound a little weird. Just my opinion though.

Ben / ND

DarkLight said:

Happy ending? What is this 'Happy Ending' you speak of? In reality, endings are rarely happy and if you want your novel to really grab the reader, it needs to be somewhat realistic. I'm not saying there shouldn't be happiness, I'm just saying some people do need to die, maybe some torture, a pink bunny gets sucked into a blender...people respond to deep emotion and pain because they have deep emotions and pain. They won't respond to "Happily evera after, no one gets hurt." Even the sterrotypicaly happy endings of fairytales were originally quite dark. The witch in snow white has to wear shoes made of hot, burning metal for eternity. Disney didn't think that was such a good idea for children. The witch falls off a cliff instead. Anyway, the point is that horrible endings aren't bad things just because bad things happen. They are just realistic and readers respond to realism. I know I can't get into movies or books that are totally off the wall happy or physically impossible. (My sister loves, what is it?, Charlies Angel's. I hate it. You can't jump off a cliff and into a moving helicopter as you're falling!) Plus, why alter the book? Trust me when I say that a book that is changed from its original to please an audience will only make it suck because then it isn't coming from the heart. It will lack the passion and fire that naturally ingrains itself in a novel an author is psyched about. It won't be coming from you, it will be coming from other people , from their percepption of a good ending. You're the writer, so write the damn thing. A book that is written for the author and no one else will be the best, because then it will all fit together and it will consistently have the fire behind it. Get what I'm saying? And great literature is that wich comes from the soul of the author. Besides, plenty of great books out there have sad endings, horrible ones. At least your protagonist wins, there are plenty of those that don't! Don't ever conform to meet another standard. Originality stands out on a book shelf. The best novels are those that are written as intended. Happy ending books, there are thousands of those. Books that touch you with realism, truth, and sadness...the diamonds in the rough.

--DrakLight...

Click to expand...

I think you spelled your name wrong...

dclary said:

I think you spelled your name wrong...

Click to expand...

My gosh, are you suggesting, that's not his....real name?