Tragedy or Comedy?

[JoNightshade]

Which do you like best? Do your endings tend to be happy or sad?

[Alexandra Little]

Happy.

Which is why I might kill....well, nevermind.

[Shady Lane]

Hmm....usually pretty sad, honestly.

But there's always hope.

I have no idea who the one I'm writing now is going to end.

[blacbird]

The works that attract me most are those that manage to combine both aspects of human experience. Think One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, A Clockwork Orange, Huck Finn.

caw

[Simon Woodhouse]

My endings tend to offer the characters a chance at something good if they're prepared to try hard enough. I leave the reader to decide if this actually happens or not.

When I read, I don't mind sad endings but I'm not keen on the downright tragic. I don't like sudden endings either.

[julief]

okay your title made me think of that Woody Allen movie Melinda & Melinda.

I think of my endings as happy, or at least hopeful.

[Danger Jane]

Honestly, I just write what works best for the particular story, whether it is happy or sad. If I was partial to one or the other, the ending would feel contrived more often than not. My WIP in editing is a mixture of both and I think it works well--not a total downer, but the MC sure doesn't get what she wants. If I summed it up any other way it would be contrived, but as it is, it's satisfying. So I'm happy.

[Lyra Jean]

Mine are more sad than happy. For some reason characters always die in my stories.

So characters beware bwahahaha!!

My fantasy novel has a happy ending, if it gets completed. My short stories are always sad. So far at least.

[JoNightshade]

When I started writing, everything I wrote was sad. I thought then that the highest form of art was tragedy (in the sense that the Greeks split everything into either tragedy/sad ending or comedy/happy ending). I still like tragedies the best-- Hamlet, Cyrano de Bergerac, Phantom of the Opera, etc.

But over time I've come to admire the tragi-comedy the most: a combination of both. Something that can make me cry... both because I'm sad AND because I'm laughing so hard. Quick examples that come to mind are the TV shows House and Monk. And Fruits Basket, if anybody's seen the show or read the manga.

I think it takes real skill to take someone from laughter to tears and back in a moments' notice.

All that to say that my endings now are mixed. They're never "happily ever after," but neither are they "everybody dies."

[Azraelsbane]

My writing tends to be tragic, lots of sacrifice, etc. But I like to throw humor into the mix. My chars, other than when they're being tortured and killed, usually have a pretty decent sense of humor.

[Willowmound]

I like ambiguous.

[seun]

I go for whatever suits the story although I do tend to give my book characters at least a slightly hopeful ending. Short story characters, on the other hand, aren't always as lucky.

[IrishScribbler]

Whatever ending fits the story.

[ChaosTitan]

Depends on my mood. Sometimes I want a good cry; sometimes I just want to laugh until it hurts.

I don't write comedy, and I don't write tragedy, so I think my novels tend to land somewhere in the middle. Bad things may happen, but there is always a sense of hope for the future.

[jdparadise]

Mine tend to be sad with hopeful elements. Even the successful endings come at a price; the question I always seem to be asking is "is the price worth what it bought?"

[scarletpeaches]

Both.

I'm another one for ambiguous endings. I hate happy-or-sad. Life isn't like that. It's rare for an event in our lives to be 100% over, so why should that be the case in books? The only thing that comes to an end is our emotional attachment to a person/place/event and often it can flare up again - a kind of real-life sequel if you like.

Not that I'm a fan of sequels anyway. But that's another topic, and I'm rambling.

So both/neither/ambiguous for me.

[JohnDavidPaxton]

It really depends on how you look at it.

There are all kinds of way to view the villain sodomizing the corpse of the hero.

[NicoleMD]

My characters die happy. Does that count?

Nicole

[Azraelsbane]

My characters die happy. Does that count?

Nicole

Yes, it definitely does. IMO it makes the difference between happy/sad endings. It might be a sad death, but if it's a good death, then that nearly makes up for it ;)