Unhappy Endings

[pink_silk_glove]

I let my endings be whatever they are going to be--either because it's the most logical outcome at that point (it's often not an ending of anything but this particular story) or because it provides the highest surprise "twist ending" possibility.

Yes, I never understand why people expect a certain ending. Why would anyone want to know the ending before they start reading. When I read something I ride that roller-coaster until I find what exciting place that it decides to dump me out. That is the whole point of reading a story - y'know with plot 'n stuff. (shrug)

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I advocate writing what you want to write, and putting it in front of readers who are likely to enjoy it.

No, you advocate keeping it away from readers who might not enjoy it.

And you keep saying that it's not romance yet have still not explained why it is not romance. Even when I asked you a couple of posts back, all you could reiterate was that "it's not romance" and gave zero explanation. Is there anything in this story besides the lack of HEA that makes it not romance?

 

[djrip]

No, you advocate keeping it away from readers who might not enjoy it.

And you keep saying that it's not romance yet have still not explained why it is not romance. Even when I asked you a couple of posts back, all you could reiterate was that "it's not romance" and gave zero explanation. Is there anything in this story besides the lack of HEA that makes it not romance?

He said romance was specifically the genre of stories about strangers meeting and developing a romantic relationship. That may or not be true, I'm no romance genre expert. But it was clear enough to understand.

 

[UnquietDreams]

Strictly speaking, if it has a sad ending, it's not a romance.
Which is not to say such stories aren't allowed in the Romance category here. They are. But my one and only such effort on Lit got some of the nastiest comments of my career here. (I've never done a Loving Wives story, to be fair!) One of the more polite, but still negative, comments explained that because it was in Romance, the ending really threw them for a loop.
For my part, I still think it's a pretty good story. But in retrospect, I see why it got such a visceral reaction from people who were expecting something quite different in light of the category.

I just read the comments. I feel horrible for you, but some of those made me literally laugh out loud they were so bad.

 

[NotWise]

No, you advocate keeping it away from readers who might not enjoy it.

And you keep saying that it's not romance yet have still not explained why it is not romance. Even when I asked you a couple of posts back, all you could reiterate was that "it's not romance" and gave zero explanation. Is there anything in this story besides the lack of HEA that makes it not romance?

Like djrip pointed out, I explained what a Romance is in my first post. I also said why that story was not a Romance, but I'll amplify.

Tx_Tall_Tales' article on selecting categories gives writers good reason to put stories into Romance, but it doesn't actually explain what a Romance is, so a lot of people (including myself) who read that article want to post to Romance. I put my first Lit story there. It wasn't a Romance and Laurel published it in EC. A couple months later I put another story into Romance. That wasn't a Romance either, and Laurel didn't move it.

I didn't understand the readers' reaction. It felt like half the readers were giving me 5* votes and half were giving me 1*, so I went to the Story Feedback forum and asked what I did wrong. My question was answered by several people who were either readers or writers in Romance. They defined for me what a Romance was and pointed out that, while a Romance builds a relationship from scratch, overcomes obstacles, and ends HEA, my story started with a successful relationship, placed it in danger, and then reaffirmed the relationship at the end--if maybe a little ambiguously. Not a Romance.

At my request, Laurel moved the story from Romance to EC, and I tracked the votes. The 1* bombs stopped, so they must have come from Romance readers. The high votes kept going, so they came from the New list or from EC.

The story described in the OP is even farther from a Romance then my story was. It starts with an established relationship in danger, tries to pull it together, and ends in failure. It doesn't make much difference if it's sentimental or not, it's not a Romance. If you followed Kurt Vonnegut's talk on story arcs, that's the "Kafka" story arc.

 

[YDB95]

I just read the comments. I feel horrible for you, but some of those made me literally laugh out loud they were so bad.

No problem, they made me laugh too.

 

[Britva415]

Erotic Coupling doesn't get a ton of readers, but to me it really feels like a "anything goes" category in some ways

In some ways. To me it feels like the category where stuff goes when it doesn't have the stuff each of the other categories names.

Can't put it in Incest, Gay, Romance, Fetish, Exhibitionism, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.? EC is your jam.

 

[Britva415]

There is only one factor that makes this not romance, and that is the lack of HEA, and even that is not required for romance, only for the mostly expected rigid formula. It seems to have everything else but the HEA.

Sure, you're not wrong, but the discussion isn't about whether it's (technically) a romance or not, it's about whether it's (pragmatically) a good story for the Romance category based on the expectations of that category's readers.

They aren't wrong either, you know?

 

[UnquietDreams]

No problem, they made me laugh too.

Honestly, it was less "you used a twist ending that made sense and was sad" and more "why did you murder my puppy?"

 

[BobbyLaker]

...

I feel like people are more expectant of happy endings in the Romance category, but it still definitely fits best for this story. The sex is not centre stage enough for Erotic Couplings to work. And it's definitely not non-erotic. Any advice?

Could you, maybe, pull it/repost it to a different cathegory if it bombs due to the sadness? Laurel may even carry across your reviews/ratings though you might not want her to... obviously.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Sure, you're not wrong, but the discussion isn't about whether it's (technically) a romance or not, it's about whether it's (pragmatically) a good story for the Romance category based on the expectations of that category's readers.

They aren't wrong either, you know?

No, not wrong, but taking the pandering side of things instead of the story telling side.

And yes it is about whether it is a romance or not. It clearly is romance as it has more than enough romance elements even if it doesn't exactly fit into some rigid template that some expect. NotWise disagrees because he also takes the pandering side of things as he believes in the rigid template. He also admits to feeling this way in no small part due to his poor scores (pandering/score protecting). He's not wrong in that regard (anyone is free to pander or protect their score) but our OP sounds very much like he is telling his story and not into pandering, so he's free to put it in romance.

 

[mildlyaroused]

Like djrip pointed out, I explained what a Romance is in my first post. I also said why that story was not a Romance, but I'll amplify.

Tx_Tall_Tales' article on selecting categories gives writers good reason to put stories into Romance, but it doesn't actually explain what a Romance is, so a lot of people (including myself) who read that article want to post to Romance. I put my first Lit story there. It wasn't a Romance and Laurel published it in EC. A couple months later I put another story into Romance. That wasn't a Romance either, and Laurel didn't move it.

I didn't understand the readers' reaction. It felt like half the readers were giving me 5* votes and half were giving me 1*, so I went to the Story Feedback forum and asked what I did wrong. My question was answered by several people who were either readers or writers in Romance. They defined for me what a Romance was and pointed out that, while a Romance builds a relationship from scratch, overcomes obstacles, and ends HEA, my story started with a successful relationship, placed it in danger, and then reaffirmed the relationship at the end--if maybe a little ambiguously. Not a Romance.

At my request, Laurel moved the story from Romance to EC, and I tracked the votes. The 1* bombs stopped, so they must have come from Romance readers. The high votes kept going, so they came from the New list or from EC.

The story described in the OP is even farther from a Romance then my story was. It starts with an established relationship in danger, tries to pull it together, and ends in failure. It doesn't make much difference if it's sentimental or not, it's not a Romance. If you followed Kurt Vonnegut's talk on story arcs, that's the "Kafka" story arc.

Unfortunately, though, there's no 'Kafka' category in sight! I do genuinely appreciate the time you've taken for this thread because you seem much more knowledgeable about this site and its conventions in particular than me.

I think what @pink_silk_glove was getting at, rather, is that audience expectations aside there is nothing that makes the story not romance; whereas you said a few times that it is simply the 'wrong' category. I think it comes down more to the fact that to you, audience expectations are more of a defining aspect of what makes a category a category than they are to them.

To me (and them?), the story I described is still a Romance because it still deals with the emotional processes and journeys of a romantic relationship, including introspection on the past of the relationship. If the building of a relationship itself is absolutely vital (which I don't think it is; I've seen Romances here that start with a happily married couple and just portray one of their romantic escapades), I still think that doesn't disqualify the story from being a Romance, because some of that introspection I mentioned is about how the relationship formed.

Everyone is sort of right and valid in their views lol. I guess this is the problem with getting a bunch of writers to talk about things: we are all beautiful but pedantic fools (and usually highly opinionated, bless our souls).

Could you, maybe, pull it/repost it to a different cathegory if it bombs due to the sadness? Laurel may even carry across your reviews/ratings though you might not want her to... obviously.

This is a good idea too. I don't see any reason (other than a few people who might see it twice) why a story couldn't be deleted and reuploaded somewhere else - unless that's against the rules because it's seen as a way of artificially changing scores.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Could you, maybe, pull it/repost it to a different cathegory if it bombs due to the sadness? Laurel may even carry across your reviews/ratings though you might not want her to... obviously.

Asking for a category change keeps all scores and commentary. You don't need to take a story down and resubmit, you can just ask for the category change.

 

[cababge]

Asking for a category change keeps all scores and commentary. You don't need to take a story down and resubmit, you can just ask for the category change.

If you posted in the wrong category and got bombed by low ratings for the mistake it might be smarter to reupload from scratch tho. If you're allowed to do that.

 

[ElectricBlue]

If you posted in the wrong category and got bombed by low ratings for the mistake it might be smarter to reupload from scratch tho. If you're allowed to do that.

You can, but it's a bit of a waste of Laurel's time and yours. The moral of the tale is to get the category right, first time.

 

[CalebZhass]

I've always liked an unhappy ending. Happiness is more beautiful when things are sad.

Less philosophically, though, how careful should I be about posting a story in Romance that doesn't conclude happily ever after?

It's a story about a couple on the verge of divorce who spend one last night together, in sex and reminiscence of their relationship and lives. They were hoping somewhere that this night would fix things, but it doesn't. The story ends with them following through with the divorce. So it's a sad ending, but not wholly so: they mature, and find closure in their relationship and the joy it brought, and realise the value of moving on.

I feel like people are more expectant of happy endings in the Romance category, but it still definitely fits best for this story. The sex is not centre stage enough for Erotic Couplings to work. And it's definitely not non-erotic. Any advice?

I agree with you that happiness is nothing without contrast, but does it have to be the ending? Why not have a sad beginning or a middle and leave the reader end on a high note?

In the above story, I guess it depends on how you write it, if it fusses too much about the saving of their relationship, then that not being saved can and will leave a bad taste in mouth afterwards. When you read a story, you step into the skin of the characters, "feeling" their feelings, "living" their lives, etc. It gets deeper the better the piece is written. You feel their love, but you can also feel their sadness and pain. When such a story closes on a painful point for the characters, that will inadvertently cause the reader to end up sad / disappointed as well.

I think that's okay for a multi part story as a cliffhanger, or a darker piece that's never supposed to be about happy endings. But for most works, especially for works about love or sex, that people generally read to feel good, I think it is a reasonable expectation for the story to leave me in a higher emotional state than I was when I started.

I believe you must simply accept that sad endings are simply not for every genre / person and just write what you like to write. Alternatively, if you want to write stuff that pleases more people, you could maybe try to shift focus away from the divorce itself, so that its inevitability has less of an impression on the reader's mind, making the overall tone not that depressing. Last, but not least, the most simple of all, don't end when they are divorced. Spend some time exploring their happy and full lives after the divorce, show how both of them have found joy and happiness so that the reader can still end on a positive note, even after they've been shown the emotional depths of a divorce.

Happiness is more beautiful when things are sad.

Happiness is also meaningless, if its not there at the end. It is just a cruel form of torture to show glimpses of happiness, only to leave you sad and depressed, after having shown you how much better life could be.

 

[RetroFan]

I've never written a story which has a devastatingly sad ending (such as one where a couple marry, the bride goes to run an errand before they leave for their honeymoon and is killed in a car accident leaving the groom completely destroyed having lost everything) or one where the bad guy wins, but I have written some sad stories that have bitter-sweet endings.

For example, in my story 'The Lost Hours With Annabelle' Jim and Annabelle are 18 when we meet them in 1962. Annabelle and her family are from Adelaide in South Australia, and stay with Jim and his family in Melbourne, Victoria at Easter that year. Jim and Annabelle are definitely attracted to each other and go out on a picnic together, hiring a rowboat on Melbourne's Yarra River. However, mid-morning both seem to be drifting off to sleep, before they awaken six hours later with no explanation for and no memory of the missing time.

Annabelle returns to Adelaide with her family several days later, and she and Jim swear to keep in touch by letter, but after a few months this peters out and they lose contact. Jim and Annabelle find love with other people in their respective cities, many years pass and by 2019 Jim (who is the narrator of the story) and his wife Sandra are retired and have children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The elderly Jim sometimes ponders the mystery of the lost time experience way back in 1962 and whatever happened to Annabelle but not all the time.

Until he and his family go to an agricultural show, and Jim agrees to be part of a stage hypnotist show. The hypnosis has a strange effect on Jim, and thereafter he keeps seeing things that remind him of Annabelle all those years ago. That night Jim falls into a deep sleep in which the events of the missing hours with Annabelle appear to come back to him in a dream, and his worried wife struggles to awaken him the next morning. The next day, a series of chances causes Jim to get hold of a South Australian newspaper in which he finds Annabelle's obituary.

Jim and Sandra travel to Adelaide for Annabelle's funeral, and Jim is stunned to learn that Annabelle (who had been in failing health with Parkinson's Disease for a number of years) died in care on the day he had the hypnosis and weird dream. The story ends with Jim realizing that he will never know the truth about what really happened that day, especially now given Annabelle has died.

Although well received (the story won a contest) some readers did comment that I should have gone with an ending in which Jim and Annabelle had ended up together and lived happily ever after. But for the story to work, Jim and Annabelle couldn't end up together, and both had successful lives with the right people for them. And the sad and somewhat haunting ending with no real resolution leaves readers wondering if supernatural forces were at play, or whether everything was simply a series of odd coincidences.

 

[cababge]

Happiness is also meaningless, if its not there at the end. It is just a cruel form of torture to show glimpses of happiness, only to leave you sad and depressed, after having shown you how much better life could be.

I agree with most of your points - but not this. Happiness can never be meaningless, even if it is lost. It gives characters something to live for, even if it's only glimpses, and a drive to find happiness again.

The idea that, more often than not, readers want fiction to leave them feeling better though, is true. It doesn't have to be a wholly happy ending as you say. But a little something that means things aren't all bleak.

Some roses in the apocalypse.

And if not, then trend and tailor the story and its themes towards that utterly crushing ending. Don't write a fluffy romance and cut it short without warning; a sad ending should serve the story thematically, not just be there for shock value.

 

[mildlyaroused]

Some roses in the apocalypse.

I like it.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I am vegan. When I go to a restaurant and they have nothing vegan on the menu, I don't bitch that they are disrespecting me. I just find another restaurant that suits my diet. When I'm invited out to dinner and I have a strong reason to believe that there will not be viable vegan options, I just eat something before hand and then enjoy my friends' company while they eat meat. I do this because my dietary choices are my problem and my responsibility. No one has any responsibility to look out for my veganism but me, so I refuse to be some cunt who whines when I'm not accommodated.

If you really need to know the ending before you start reading that badly, don't bitch to the author for not providing a spoiler up front. Just go to the last page and read the ending. Your need to know the ending is your problem. Don't make it everyone else's. That's just lazy. No one has any responsibility to look out for your need for a happy ending but you. Deal with it.

 

[mildlyaroused]

I am vegan. When I go to a restaurant and they have nothing vegan on the menu, I don't bitch that they are disrespecting me. I just find another restaurant that suits my diet. When I'm invited out to dinner and I have a strong reason to believe that there will not be viable vegan options, I just eat something before hand and then enjoy my friends' company while they eat meat. I do this because my dietary choices are my problem and my responsibility. No one has any responsibility to look out for my veganism but me, so I refuse to be some cunt who whines when I'm not accommodated.

If you really need to know the ending before you start reading that badly, don't bitch to the author for not providing a spoiler up front. Just go to the last page and read the ending. Your need to know the ending is your problem. Don't make it everyone else's. That's just lazy. No one has any responsibility to look out for your need for a happy ending but you. Deal with it.

Yes.

But:

An author still has a responsibility to make their work a cohesive whole. I agree with cabbage in that a sad (or shocking, or in some other way subversive) ending should not be written for the hell of it. It needs to be thematically appropriate - and this naturally means that the rest of your story has to be trending towards that sad ending. That doesn't mean you make it obvious (it can still be surprising) but it does have to make sense for the characters, themes, etc.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Yes.

But:

An author still has a responsibility to make their work a cohesive whole. I agree with cabbage in that a sad (or shocking, or in some other way subversive) ending should not be written for the hell of it. It needs to be thematically appropriate - and this naturally means that the rest of your story has to be trending towards that sad ending. That doesn't mean you make it obvious (it can still be surprising) but it does have to make sense for the characters, themes, etc.

I agree with this except the part in the middle that the story has to trend towards the ending. As someone mentioned Vonnegut's shape of stories seminar, stories move up and down and up and down all the time. Even HEA's (good ones) move up and down and up and down, they just finish on an up. You can end HEA, HFN, bad end, cliffhanger, or even ambiguous arty metaphor end, and it does not matter how you got there so long as the reader's interest is held well enough and long enough to see it through.

My previous post is really about those who expect their happy ending and when they don't get it will bitch (or downvote) that they weren't warned. They expect the author to look out for their need for the HEA by spoiling it for anyone else who doesn't want the spoiler. Well, as the world does not revolve around my veganism, the world also does not revolve around someone's need for a happy ending. If the reader expects the authors and the other readers to kneel to their needs for them, not only is it lazy, it's terribly arrogant.

 

[mildlyaroused]

I agree with this except the part in the middle that the story has to trend towards the ending. As someone mentioned Vonnegut's shape of stories seminar, stories move up and down and up and down all the time. Even HEA's (good ones) move up and down and up and down, they just finish on an up. You can end HEA, HFN, bad end, cliffhanger, or even ambiguous arty metaphor end, and it does not matter how you got there so long as the reader's interest is held well enough and long enough to see it through.

My previous post is really about those who expect their happy ending and when they don't get it will bitch (or downvote) that they weren't warned. They expect the author to look out for their need for the HEA by spoiling it for anyone else who doesn't want the spoiler. Well, as the world does not revolve around my veganism, the world also does not revolve around someone's need for a happy ending. If the reader expects the authors and the other readers to kneel to their needs for them, not only is it lazy, it's terribly arrogant.

Yeah - 'trend' was a misplaced word I realise now. The ending just has to be true to the story, themes and characters.

And I agree. Readers are within their rights to be disappointed but nobody owes them anything. Still, people are people, and I guess my sad ending in Romance might be disliked. That's okay lol...

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Those who expect and/or demand an HEA are no better (literary wise at least) than the BtB crowd who expect/demand a bad end for the bitch.

There are many people out there who expect to read a certain specific story yet for whatever reason can't or won't write it themselves, then get mighty pissed off when another author doesn't recite the reader's own fantasy back to them. If one insists that the story go a certain way, one should write it himself. No author should be shackled by the laziness and/or arrogance of such readers.

So I repeat what was said on page 1: put it in Romance and if anyone doesn't like it, fuck 'em.

 

[Omenainen]

So I repeat what was said on page 1: put it in Romance and if anyone doesn't like it, fuck 'em.

Fuck them in the butt with a big fat man-finger!

…no, wait, that was the other thread