Ending the 'Eternal' Despair -- Happy Endings

I’ve talked about Lowest of Low scenes a couple times before. I even talked about keeping hints of hope alive in a sea of eternal despair.

                But today’s post is about bringing an end to that despair, which wasn’t so eternal after all.

                At some point, your characters will have nowhere to go but up (unless you’re one of those authors who enjoys killing everyone and everything, but I’ll come back to that in a moment).

                Your characters are at rock bottom. Torture them any more, and they’ll be dead. All of them. Needlessly. And depressingly. At this point, unless you’re planning a resurrection or want to depress your reader, it’s best to turn around. Start to move back toward a happy ending. Not too fast, or you might border on the edge of unbelievable (for instance, if the main character’s trio of best friends he’s known since forever perishes dramatically in a gruesome, nightmare-inducing way within the last chapter, it will be unbelievable if three pages later your MC is chuckling along with the rest of the Heroic Party, partying without a care in the world after somehow scraping out a victory at the very last second).

                Baby steps. Back towards sunny days and sweet memories. Towards an ending that can leave a reader with a smile on their face. What kind of smile? Well, that depends on what kind of ending it is.

·         Wide, Uncontrollable, People-are-staring Grin: These are the truly happy endings. All the frayed strands of plot and characters have been tied together in a big, pretty bow. Sad times are a distant memory. All the couples are happy together, and all the villains have been ground into the dust. There is literally nothing left to be sad about. When done well, this can be a good ending, but done badly it can be just as unsatisfying as an awful, depressing ending, so tread carefully when attempting to write one of these.

·         Big Smile, But Creased Eyebrows = “What Comes Next?”: Things ended mostly in a happy way, but there are still some questions left unanswered. There are places where the author expects you to fill in the gaps. Will so-and-so get together? What will happen to the imprisoned villain, or the one who got away? Will the lady with the tragic past ever truly open her heart up to love? You’re happy… And yet you can’t help but mourn that it’s all over.

·         Crooked Smirk/Lips Pressed Thin: Say you are an author who kills everyone off. Sometimes, one last happy note a few pages from the end wouldn’t hurt.  Maybe there’s a little victory. Maybe there’s at least a few moments of happiness between your MC and the girl he loves. And hey, even if the meteoroid really does hit the earth and wipe out every living thing on the planet, at least your main character got to spit in the villain’s face one time before their extinction. Don’t feel like you have to break the mood you’ve been building, by any means… But like I said in another post, sometimes you just gotta interrupt the suck, and keep your reader from ending with the thought, “Nothing good happened in that book at all!”

·         Smile’s Still There, but Small. And Bittersweet: The author ended on a light note, but not without remembering that last, perishing trio. The characters remember every dark moment, every cloud that covered the sun, but in the end, there’s still hope. The ending is a memorial to every struggle the MC faced, and everyone he had to leave behind. Times were dark. They might still be dark. But somewhere up ahead, there is light.

                What happens when you don’t give the reader those (hints of) happy endings?

                You’ll never guess. You ready? This is probably the deepest thing I’ve ever written in a blog post.

                The reader stays unhappy.

                I’m serious, folks. In the post on interrupting the suck with happy moments, I briefly mentioned books where nothing good happens. Ever. I’m sure you can think of one, where things ended depressingly and you started to wonder, “Why did I read this? I just spent how many hours reading to feel nothing but sad and frustrated?”

                There are plenty of things in the real world that could do the same thing, much faster.

                Deep down, everyone loves a happy ending. It may not be obviously happy. The author may leave some threads dangling, or they may slip in a few ominous omens of evil lurking things, just in case the chance for a sequel rolls along. Or they may have made sacrifices that you wished with all your heart were just very long typos that nobody noticed during the editing process.

                But when all things are said and done, we want to end a book with hope. That things will get better. That the sacrifices weren’t in vain. That even the depressing stories were just setting the framework for a brighter, happier story that takes place long after you turn the last page.

                In fiction. In real life. I think no matter who you’re talking about, they want to have hope. It’s part of being a reader… It’s part of being a writer…

                And it’s part of being human.

What happy endings have you read that ended eternal despair, or made you smile in some way I didn't describe above? Do you agree with me, that deep down everyone wants to hope? Has there ever been a completely depressing, nothing-good-happens book that you enjoyed? Any whole-heartedly happy endings that you didn't enjoy? And as always, feedback on how I'm doing is welcome. ;)

The Anguish of Being Unflinching: Hard Scenes

As writers, it’s pretty much a given that we sometimes enjoy torturing our characters. We laugh about it, brag about it, revel in every angsty scene, and search topics online that would make any non-writer raise their eyebrows at the sight of our browser history.

                We love to torture our characters.

                But at the same time, we often run into the Hard Scenes. The ones that creep into your head, slinking back even though you rejected them immediately. The ones that make you dread putting your fingers to the keys. The ones that make your your characters look up at you with tear-rimmed puppy-dog eyes as they scream desperately, “There must be another way!”

                And sometimes there is. Sometimes you find an alternative, and backpedal away from the Hard Scene, relieved. Sure your climax might not be as… Well. Climactic. But there was no way you could’ve written that other scene. It would’ve killed your Main Character. It would’ve killed you to write it!

                But other times, there are no alternatives. It’s like I said in my post about character reactions. Sometimes, you have Action and the Unthinkable.

                And sometimes, very little separates the two.

                For some it’s the dark, violent battles, for others it’s the crushing emotional turmoil. But all stories have their Hard Scenes, and as writers we can’t afford to shy away from them just because they might be ‘hard’ for us to write. I’ll be highlighting a few different kinds of Hard Scenes today, and perhaps not all of them apply to you, but… Every writer is different.

·         Physically Hard Scenes: The other day, I was reading some manga (Japanese comic books. XD I’m a fan) and it was an action scene. And someone’s arm got sliced off. And I just kind of stared at the page for a couple minutes (making this face: O.O) because it was very sudden. It was very unexpected. Not particularly gory, yet it was completely and totally unflinching.

Characters get hurt. Whether it’s a slap in the face, or the amputation of a limb, or an incident that brings them close to death, your character is going to get hurt. If they don’t, they should. Especially if they’re involved in some kind of inherently risky business (taking part in a rebellion/war, ruling a criminal underworld, or guarding the most desirable object on the planet from vicious mercenaries… If your character is one of these things and doesn’t get more than a paper cut throughout the course of your book, you will have some very bored/unsatisfied readers).

A physical scene doesn’t have to be gory to be difficult to write, but in the long run these scenes will pay off. They’ll make your story more exciting. If you do your research first, they’ll make your story feel more realistic. While it’s tempting to leave your main character (or the oh-so-beautiful object of his affection) without a scratch, don’t make things too easy for him, or it’ll be hard to make your readers feel the urgency that keeps them turning pages.

·         Emotionally Hard Scenes: Physical pain is not the only kind of pain. Your characters are going to hurt emotionally, too. If they don’t, they should. Happy-Optimistic-Fun-Time-in-Spite-of-All-Odds can only last so long before it will start to bore/frustrate/annoy your reader (Angsty Despair throughout a whole novel can do the same thing. The key is to find balance). A character that’s never discouraged is not only unbelievable, it’s unrelatable. Everyone feels down at times, and in a melancholy way…? We like to feel down with a character. As they despair (briefly) we commiserate with them, and urge him on, and wait to see how they’ll recover.

A beloved side character dies. The love of our main character’s life rejects him. He finds out that he was the cause of his family’s death, or that one careless mistake may have ruined everything. These are the dimly-lit, rainy day scenes in movies where slow music plays in the background and the main character cries herself to sleep at night.

But hey, we should look on the bright side. It could always get worse!

Oh. Wait. That brings us to category number three…

·         The Lowest of Low Scenes (AKA, Scenes of Eternal Despair): Already talked about these some. These scenes are often a mixture of the above varieties. It is where literally everything goes wrong. The rebels’ attack on the palace fails, their escape route turns into a bloodbath, best friends die, enemies rule, and there is no hope. None at all.

We need these scenes. The scenes where everything goes wrong and all hope is lost.  Why?

“How could things possibly get any better after this? There’s still a huge hunk of pages left, so something must happen. Unless… Things get even worse.” Cue ‘O.O’ face and rapid flipping of pages.

I’m sure you could call some examples to mind on your own, and most likely they involve season finales of TV shows and cliff-hanger-ey middle books in a series (Mine do. Fall of the Earth Kingdom in Avatar: Last Airbender, and Catching Fire of the Hunger Games trilogy). Why? Because situations like this keep people interested. Even if they have to wait a while for the next installment, they’ll do it because they’ll want to see how things get turned around.

                As writers, we can’t afford to shy away from the Hard Scenes. They’re too important, to our characters, our stories, and our readers. If you write slowly, that’s fine. If you have to rewrite later, that’s fine. Do it during revision. If you have to go through boxes of tissues for every sentence you scrape out, that’s fine, too.

                But don’t run away from the Hard Scenes. Figure out how much emotion the scene needs. Write the scene. Chances are, they’ll be the scenes your readers remember most clearly long after they’ve finished reading.

We need to step forward, side by side with our main character, and say to them, “Hey. If I have the courage to face this, then so do you.”

We need to step forward, and write the Hard Scenes.

And then, we need to make things get better.

But I’ll save that for my next post. ;)

What are some Hard Scenes that you’ve struggled to write? What are some Lowest of Low Scenes that you remember from books or movies? How do you work through a scene that you find difficult to write?

A Character's Class Schedule: Happiness Appreciation

Happiness Appreciation: Enjoying the Little Things

Ever had one of those days where nothing goes right?

Well, fictional characters have those days a lot.

Which is good! Part of being a writer is raising the stakes. Upping the action. Making the reader hang on your every heart-stopping word. We look at a scene and ask ourselves, “How can we make our main character’s day/week/life even worse?”

We ruin our character’s lives on a regular basis, prying the things they love most from their fingers.

And if you don’t do this, dear readers, perhaps you should.

I repeat. This is a good thing. Not only does pushing characters into these situations force them into some serious character development, but it also grips the reader in ways that sunshine and birthday parties simply can’t.

When the character’s life – not to mention sanity – is hanging by a thread, those are the moments when a reader is on the edge of their chair, desperately turning pages, deep into the night no matter how early they have to get up the next morning.

These Scenes of Eternal Despair pop up everywhere. Your character is physically and mentally exhausted, deprived of food, sleep, and showers. He’s injured. Friends have died. Homes have burned. The whole world is against your main character, and even the few allies he started out with are starting to rethink their choice to stay with him (that is, if they even bothered to stick around this long).

A ‘happy ending’ seems out of the question.

Which is when you start to turn things around. But I’ll save that tangent for a future post on this topic that I have partially written already (it’ll no doubt be coming sometime after the Back to School series ends).

The focus of this lesson is on the happy moments within the despair. The tantalizing glimpses of hope that give your characters the will to go on living, and your readers the will to keep on reading.

You see, folks, while well-done Despair plots can be gripping, and exciting, and suspenseful to a reader, 200 pages of nothing but suck and injustice and tragedies would be enough to make anyone throw your book against the wall and seek out something cheerful and fluffy.

We like to feel sad or scared for a time (After all, there are whole genres for ‘The World is Ending’ scenarios).

But the bad needs to be broken up with good, happy moments that keep us smiling and waiting for the happy ending; it’s gotta show up sometime.

It could be something as simple as a butterfly at the sight of a battlefield, or it could be a reunion between old friends, or it could be a single triumph that reminds everyone that the character’s plan may not be so hopeless after all. It all depends on how dark you want your story to be.

Some common ways to Interrupt the Suck:

Humor – You could have the most depressing, bloody, murder-filled book in the world, but if you slip in just enough humor to make the reader smile from time to time, it should help keep the reader from getting so depressed that they give up on it entirely. However, you shouldn’t be too irreverent. Making light of the gruesome, traumatizing death of someone close to the MC or his acquaintances could very well make your reader angry or frustrated with the characters involved. Make sure your humor fits with your characters’ personalities. But for darker scenes, I recommend a somewhat darker humor. Allow me to recommend a healthy dose of sarcasm.

Beauty – Like I said. Butterflies on the scene of a battlefield. An ancient cathedral that somehow has remained untouched in the center of a warzone. Often dealing with a fair amount of symbolism, this method is less to make the reader smile, and more to stir the main character’s spirit. These are the flashes of hope that reassure everyone, things are going to get better. Eventually. Just not right away.

Characters – There are certain people – in this world, as well as fictional worlds  - who can dispel even the darkest moods. Maybe it’s their overwhelming optimism, or their great sense of humor (see above), or the way they know exactly what kind of pep talk will make things seem not that bad after all. Whatever it is, just the sight of this character is enough to lift your MC’s spirits (Unfortunately, this type of character often serves as the Sacrificial Lamb, dying for the sake of – again – making your MC’s day even worse. This is rather cliché… But it happens). In some cases, it has nothing to do with the character’s personality. If it’s someone the MC hasn’t seen in ages, or someone who was last seen going into a dangerous situation, just seeing them alive and well will be enough to give your MC a sense of relief (and give your readers a short breather).

Triumph – A crucial victory. A petty victory. The sight of reinforcements on the horizon. A snappy comeback at exactly the right moment during an argument. Your MC finally gets a hint that his crush might return his affections. Even the little victories – like getting to ride shotgun, or managing to take a shotgun from the evil kidnappers – could be enough to make things seem a shade better than they did a few seconds ago.

So, what did we learn today, class? Scenes of Eternal Despair can be gripping. They can also be discouraging. To refresh the reader every so often, slip in a snippet of hope, or of humor.

Your (optional) homework: Write a Scene of Eternal Despair, where things just keep getting worse and worse (for one of your characters, or a scene for your novel, or a completely unrelated scene just for the practice). Incorporate a snippet of hope.

Have you written a Scene of Eternal Despair before? Can you think of any examples from books or movies?

 

(EDIT) Oh yeah, and one more thing. Those Scenes of Eternal Despair? They might not be so eternal after all. ;)