Leaderboard

Part of the reason I ask is because I had a reader who is reading one of my long form narrative stories. Within the space of a week, they read every chapter of the story. I know this because they liked almost every chapter and I got a notification. But they got to around 10 chapters from the end of the story and stopped liking the chapters. The story didn’t really have a happy ending. One could argue it’s an “everything is terrible/life is suffering” ending. So part of me wonders if having a not happy ending is what caused them to stop. Maybe they did finish the story but didn’t like the last few chapters. Which makes me curious about what caused this change.

It could be someone who gets together with a love interest, but there’s no firm commitment like a marriage or mating contract. It could be that whatever the Big Problem was has been resolved, and for the time being, at least, the MCs aren’t in any danger or at risk, and can canoodle happily until life rears its head and something nasty appears again. For most publishers, they would say it means the characters are happy at the end of the novel without any assurance that the happiness is going to last forever.

For me, it depends on what I’m writing. Publishers tend to want happy-ever-after endings or at least happy-for-now endings. So, if I’m going to submit what I’m writing to a publisher, I try for at least the HFN ending. When I write for myself, I’m much less inclined to write happy endings. I’m never quite sure life has a happy ending in most cases, although I’m firmly in the camp of life having happy bits throughout. But I think how people cope with adversity that doesn’t resolve neatly is far too interesting not to write it.