Like many others, I’ve always been fascinated by stories that have sad or dour endings. There always seemed to be something deeper, more profound or cathartic about the Protagonist NOT getting what they were striving for the whole story to get. But as a writer, you have to be very careful with how you handle sad endings. It can often be a cop-out because you wrote yourself into a corner and gave your protagonist a problem they can’t solve without some sort of deus ex machina interference. In that instance, you have to better plan your story in advance so your protagonist will have the skills and resources available before hand to find a way out of their ultimate predicament beforehand.
But even if you choose to have the bad ending, there still has to be a payoff of some sorts for the journey that the reader took with you for this whole story. There has to be some modicum of closure, even a small one. As a reader, when you follow a story, you are taking this immense journey through the ups and downs and trials and tribulations of the protagonist as they work to solve the big problem that set the story into motion. You are suffering along with them, experiencing their highs and lows with them, and investing a lot of your emotional and mental energy into their plight. To not get some form of payoff means you had essentially a wasted trip.
This does not mean every story has to have a happy ending. But it does mean that something the protagonist sets out to accomplish must be fulfilled for your reader to feel that the journey was worth the emotional and time investment. Even something minor.
Case in Point: The Empire Strikes Back. We all know that as the movie where the bad guys win. The Rebellion is sent reeling, Han is gone and Luke lost not only his hand but his innocence. But there is still some amount of closure in the film; Luke has enhanced his Jedi Training and faced his first real test. Leia and company were able to find and rescue Luke from Bespin and they gained a new ally in Lando. So it wasn’t a total loss: there was still hope that the good guys could come back and win in movie 3.
This is the advice Dave Barnett, Publisher of Necro Publications and author of “Dead Souls,” Gave me in one of my early drafts of Godmode. This led me to completely overhaul the ending of the book:
“I feel there is absolutely no payoff for the reader. There was no
climax and therefore no denouement. You establish the villain and he just gets away, no real tension or battle. I realize you’re trying to set this up to be a series, but there needs to be some sort of emotional payoff for the reader at the end. You basically have a book with no ending.
I know writers are told to write something that can be a series because it’s easier to sell. This can be a series, obviously, because of what you set up with the cityscape in ruins, but does it need to be? You could have just wrapped it up nicely in this book by at least killing the secretary then there’s a struggle and he almost kills the main villain or does, gets his wife and kid back, THEN is faced with having to survive in this destroyed city or world? Then the rest of the series is trying to get somewhere safe while finding out there’s something even bigger and more sinister at work. So you have something, but to repeat myself, you just to deliver more of a payoff, then set it up for the next book.”
I am currently writing a story where the heroes get their asses kicked at the end of the book. But there is an important side mission they manage to be successful at in the process of said ass-kicking, this is the feelgood moment so the reader doesn’t feel like the story is a total loss.
So next time you think of writing a story (especially a novel or screenplay) with a bad ending, consider giving the reader at least a little something to smile about amidst all the dourness.
