You guys are awesome! I especially appreciate it from the people I don't hear from much, or those of you who are new to my blog. You are now my new favorite people.
With it being Friday, I wanted to keep it light and talk about Happy Endings (and no, I'm not referring to questionable massage parlor practices).
I ran into an issue when I was first trying to genre-lize (that is the art of figuring out what genre your book falls into -- yeah, I made it up). Since my story rests under the paranormal romance umbrella, it has to follow basic understood romance guidelines. Meaning, it better end on a happy note ... or a really high one at least.
At first I was like, "well what if I don't want it to end happy? Life doesn't always end happy, why should my story?" (for the record, it ends on a high note)
Then I realized I was being a hypocrite. I was thinking like an entertainer and not one of the entertained.
I LOVE happy endings. It doesn't have to be saccharine sweet, but I want an ending where I feel like GOOD has ultimately won out over EVIL ... no matter how much GOOD may have heart-wrenchingly lost along the way.
I can handle a song being sad, because it's only 4 minutes of my life. I can allow myself to feel that intense emotion for 4 minutes, knowing I can move onto something happier when it's done. When it comes to books or movies -- or any other serious time commitment form of entertainment -- I need to be satisfied with the ending.
That doesn't mean I want Mary Sue type characters who always have people fixing things for them. I enjoy stories & movies where my hero suffers to the point where I'm thinking inside my head "Leave him alone! Hasn't he suffered enough? Damn you!"
I think endings are trickier for those of us who write books, more than any of the others. Because it's such a big time commitment for a person to read a book, we are under the pressure to write endings that will meet their expectations. I've forgiven great movies with bad endings, but there are a couple of great stories I know I'll never likely read again, because I was so disappointed in where the journey ended.
So what do you all think? Do you need a happy ending or do you prefer entertainment that rips your heart out and leaves it lying on the floor? Can you think of examples where a book or story DIDN'T end happily, but you loved it anyway?
