Hatrack River Writers Workshop: How to make a bad ending work.

This is topic How to make a bad ending work. in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by skadder (Member # 6757) on :

When I write stories, although usually at the planning stage, I ask myself a few questions:

a)What ending do the readers want--I mean emotionally? What would satisfy them based the story evolution to date?
b)Can I twist that a little, so that they will think that the may not get the desired outcome....but then do.

On one of my stories a critter said "...nice tidy plot--perhaps a little too tidy."

He suggest my MC should die. I couldn't understand how that would satisfy anyone...but then I watched 'Gladiator' and it set me wondering.

How do you set up an ending where your MC fails/dies yet it manages to satisfy your readers?

Any ideas?

[This message has been edited by skadder (edited November 22, 2007).]

Posted by JeanneT (Member # 5709) on :

I think killing the MC rarely satisfies the reader, but that's actually not something I consider in my writing. I know I still haven't quite forgiven Carey for killing Tanaros at the end of Godslayer. But it was also the RIGHT ending.

But I am a rather organic writer. I don't "set up" my plots either. They develop out of the situation and the characters, not because I "set up" something.

To me that is the question. You should never have any ending because it is some arbitrary "twist" or because it's what someone expects or doesn't. The question is: Is it the right ending for the story?

[This message has been edited by JeanneT (edited November 22, 2007).]

Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :

Usually I have some idea of how something will end before I start it---though sometimes it changes along the way. They usually work for me, but maybe not others...

I'm rarely dissatisfied with the way things end in books and stories. I might be upset at the death of a character at the end, though not dissatisfied. (I have less luck with the movies, where things end abruptly and often illogically.)

More likely, though more rarely, I'll be unhappy that it came to an end, and I want more. Different problem, really.

Posted by wetwilly (Member # 1818) on :

I think it depends on the story you're trying to tell. Sometimes, killing off your MC is the only ending that would be satisfying. Even when I hate that the MC had to die, and I can't forgive the author for doing that to me, it's the only ending that would be satisfying.

************SPOILERS FOR TWO MOVIES BELOW******************

Take "Cool Hand Luke." I always want to turn the movie off before the ending because I hate watching Luke die. Absolutely hate it. But, if Luke would have escaped, that would have undercut the point of the entire movie. The point was that "the establishment" (it was made in the 60's) is an all-powerful machine that destroys anything that won't conform to its standards. Luke refused to conform. Therefore, Luke had to be destroyed. If he had not been destroyed, the establishment would not have been all-powerful. It would have been just another jailbreak movie. It wasn't just another jailbreak movie, though. It was a powerful story because Luke died at the end.

Or "Man on Fire." Creesey had to die at the end, even though I was practically screaming at my television to let him live (I know my television doesn't control who lives and dies; I was emotional, okay?). The whole point is that he his soul has been reawakened by this little girl, and when someone does harm to her, he is willing to give anything to save her. For that to really carry weight, we had to watch him give everything to save her. If he had not been required to give his life for hers, the ending, and the whole movie, would have been much less powerful.

*************************SPOILERS OVER**************************

So, I guess the beginning and the middle should dictate the ending. Maybe in a truly well-crafted story, there shouldn't really be a question of the ending by the time you get there. I know in "Cool Hand Luke" and "Man on Fire," I knew the ending was inevitable before it happened.

Posted by Rick Norwood (Member # 5604) on :

Stephen King wrote (in On Writing?) that when the kid dies in Cujo it took him completely by surprise.

In several of my stories, the best ending that fits the plot is bittersweet, but I always try to give the reader an ending that will be satisfying, even if it is not "happily ever after".

On the other hand, Baen's Universe in particular insists on a happy ending -- at least, they rejected one of my stories and told me that the reason for the rejection was because the ending was only partly happy.

Posted by Marzo (Member # 5495) on :

quote:

How do you set up an ending where your MC fails/dies yet it manages to satisfy your readers?

If the MC does his best in a way that's unique to his skills, yet still fails, that can be satisfying in its own way.

By uniqueness, I guess I mean simply character specificity. For example, if the MC is a professor, I want to see them struggle over their particular field of research, and fail at that, not lose out in an epic car chase and crash and die. That's a dissatisfying failure, and perhaps an extreme example. In short, if the failure challenges their expertise or character traits and brings some doubt or reassessment out of it, then it's a good failure.

I also like the bittersweet ending, where the MC gets what he wants, but realizes too late it isn't what he thought it was, whether that's a goal or an actual object.

Posted by RMatthewWare (Member # 4831) on :

I usually give my story the ending that it demands. I don't know that I'm really an organic writer. I usually don't start writing until I know how I'm starting, where I'm going, and where it ends. How I write is I start coming up with ideas and start writing them down. Usually a sentence or a paragraph at a time. When I get enough ideas to form a story, I put them into a rough outline so I know my chronology. When that's done I start a rough draft (really rough). Then I go through and try to flesh out the story. As characters change, or as I realize one character needs to go and another needs to be created, some elements change.

In my WiP, one character needed to go. They weren't necessary in the role they had and a lot of the time he was a bit to convenient. So he's out. But then I realized I had a hole to fill. So another character was born. But this character, being different, caused the two remaining characters to develop a little different. The ending didn't change, but the way they get there did.

When it comes to killing the hero, just make sure it works. The way JK Rowling set up Harry's death (as it seemed he was going to die), I would have accepted him dying. But I've seen many hero deaths where I just thought, "that was dumb and cruel, the writer was going more for affect than to tell the right story." Don't kill a character just to kill them. Kill them because its necessary. Kill them because the story has progressed to the point where the characters involved have to die.

Posted by Zero (Member # 3619) on :

I find I am struggling with this very thing. But my story compels me to write the right ending, despite what I thought I wanted.

***HARRY POTTER SPOILER ALERT***

And I think if you take the right ending, and force it to be happy [see oxford: "Disneyfication"] it will feel unrealistic, contrived, and cheesy. Much like the end of Harry Potter 7.

I liked Harry Potter. But the ending was so much stronger when he died.

[This message has been edited by Zero (edited November 22, 2007).]

Posted by Grant John (Member # 5993) on :

If my characters really existed I would be a serial killer. Sometimes I wonder if I get too death happy, especially with my MC. I disagree that a death has be set up, two examples I would give for this would be 'Pay it Forward' and 'Bridge to Terabithia' both had random deaths of children and both moved me strongly and I never felt cheated.

In my own writing I think deaths can be very meaningful (generally martyr style) but while setting up a MC to martyr himself at the end of the trilogy he did not die, instead another paid the price for him winning, though he himself was horribly disfigured, a fate and price - for a proud hero type - worse than death, and hopefully taking my audience by surprise.

Grant

Posted by RMatthewWare (Member # 4831) on :

What I'm saying is that the death should have a reason other than, 'and here someone dies so you can be sad'. It's been a while since I've read Teribithea, but I remember loving it (haven't watched the movie yet). So, deaths can be done well, but sometimes they're just cheap (SPOILERS: like Fred, Tonks, and Lupin dying in HP7. They just died and it was mentioned like 'oh yeah, these people died, did I forget to tell you?)

Posted by Zero (Member # 3619) on :

Yeah, I swear they were just tossed in to protect the illusion that "Deathly Hallows" was going to be deadly. But when Hagrid can avoid death several times, for barely any reason, and Harry Potter somehow can wish his way back to life, it's hard to take the deaths seriously. Especially when the only convention for choosing who dies is simple convenience and not good plotting.

Posted by AstroStewart (Member # 2597) on :

I think when the MC gives his/her life to accomplish some ultimate goal / save someone else, etc, it can be a very satisfying ending. So far as every death having to be necessary, and planned out within the plot, as opposed to random deaths for no reason, I disagree.

While I agree in being disappointed in the "collateral deaths" in HP7, I mostly didn't like them because I didn't even get to see it happen. Not because they happened. But when I write, I like to live in an evolving, variable world. I set out a rough outline, and I usually decided the fate of my 2-3 "main" characters far in advance, so they only die when I want them to die, if at all. But all the secondary characters are at risk all the time. While writing book 2 of my WiP, for most of the outline I had planned on having character X die and character Y live. But then, while writing, the plot just evolved and I wrote the death scene of character Y.

I was shocked, myself. I liked character Y much more than X, and I didn't WANT my more favorite character to die. But I was letting the plot evolve the way it should, the way it WOULD in a "real" fantasy world, where the characters act based on their own motivations, and not on what I, as the author, simply force them to do.

Sometimes, in novels / movies / etc, I get annoyed at the bad marskmanship effect. Enemy soldiers can fire a thousand arrows, but if they're aiming at our MC, they all miss. People can fire a machine gun, and somehow miss our MC. Think of the countless stormtroopers that are unable to hit Luke from like 3 feet away. So I do my best to remove this effect from my work. Sometimes, when a group of heroes are running through a barrage of arrows, they get away fine. Sometimes, someone gets shot in the arm or leg. Sometimes, someone will die.

And sometimes, when a group of heroes walk into a trap, someone dies. They don't all just go to prison to escape unharmed.

To me, a world where characters can die, sometimes in stupid and meaningless ways, and even for characters we really care about, the world is more real to me. I may not LIKE that characters I love die, but the fact that they CAN die means that the peril is real. In the future, when my favorite character gets into danger, I really will fear for his/her life. Because in a world where the author spares no one arbitrarily, the characters really are in danger of being killed.

Posted by Zero (Member # 3619) on :

You make a good point. And I'm not saying so much that it has to be planned out, but that is has to be meaningful. Random, arbitrary deaths that mean nothing are horrible.