I said arguably for American psycho, as by the end of the novel, it is ambiguous as to whether this is actually real or in his mind, although in either case he gets away with it, plus as the MC he isn’t actually portrayed as the villain of the piece although the things he is doing are clearly villainous, in a similar vein Jeff Lindsays Dexter and Thomas Harris Hannibal can also be seen as such, they are undoubtedly villains, (For those that have only seen Dexter on screen read the novels, it is obvious he has no redeeming human compassion, he lives simply to kill) but portraying them as the MC puts them in the position of being both villain and hero of the novel. You also find many examples when it is ambiguous as to who, or what the villain actually is, many of Shakespeare’s plays for instance blur the distinction, or something like Arthur Millers, The Crucible, when even the main characters have villainous defects (John Proctor is a lecherer and beats his servants) and the Villains of the piece are the church who condemned these people to hang for witchcraft, although this at the time was done in the name of good. As someone has already pointed out, one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter, and so a villain winning may not e as black and white as the hero being defeated as maybe we are looking at it from the wrong point of view.
Pathos. Pathos is one of the keys to a successful `bad` ending, i.e. the antangonist wins/lives on/suceeds in the end. For instance, the key character, be it the MC or someone of roughly equal importance, finds that by defeating or taking out their enemy, they have inadvertantly or purposely brought about their own demise. Whether that is emotionally (which is generally is) or physically is up to the author to decide. It's pretty challenging to do and requires scenes with strong emotional intensity or and/or characters who have strong relationships with each other for it to truely work. It can be a `downer` ending but it can also leave the reader wanting to find out what happens in the next book (assuming that there is a sequel). Just remember, no matter how you write it or what happens, if the villan or antagonist wins out in the end, whether by the MC making a massive sacrifice to defeat them or something else, that pathos is essential to making a good `bad` ending.
Of course the villain can win! The best stories involving them winning! Look at Othello, even though Iago is arrested he still succeeds in his task! Not only tat, but the bravery of a villain winning sticks with a reader. So many great novels and films have the villains win, Animal Farm, I Am Legend (book not film), Dr Strangelove, have no fear in letting your villain win!
It’s actually pretty easy: The stories in which the antagonist (which does not necessarily have to be a ´bad` guy – good stories avoid painting in black and white in favour of ambivalent characters anyways) wins and the protagonist (´hero`) fails are called ´tragedies`. There are tons of those around, like Ödipus, Hamlet, Antigone, Romeo und Julia. Go google definitions of ´drama` and ´comedy` and ´tragedy`. These are technical terms describing the mode of construction and outcome of the ´hero’s journey` (google that as well!). And by the way, the ´hero` can be the villain as well. Ist’s not like the protagonist has to be the good guy. It’s a POV kind of question, not a good-bad one. Thing is, if your protagonist – no matter if he’s a good or a bad guy – wins he has to have learned and kind of embraced the lesson his ´journey` taught him. If he refused to do so, he’s bound to loose, to fail, to go down, to die…whatever… Go read stuff on dramaturgy and plotting and such. And don’t let people talk you into writing ´happy ends` just because they ´sell better`! There are plot that just aren’t supposed to ´happy end`! Some of the best and most famous plots in history are such a kind!!!
In the case of The Empire Strikes Back it was part of a larger story in which the villains eventually lost. And many movies and other stories are actually like this. It can be argued that in The Dark Knight the Joker won in the end because his goal was to turn Batman into a villain. And in order to protect Harvey Dent's name and use Dent as the face as Gotham, he voluntarily became the villain.
It's doable. I mean, it's been done before. The trick, I think, is to use proper buildup. Don't set the readers up to expect a happy ending and then hit them with a great big tragedy out of nowhere. Readers will forgive a tragic ending, but not broken promises. Instead, try to build a foreboding sense of doom throughout your story. Let the readers think that: "This is probably not going to end well, but I need to keep reading to see what happens."
As said above - if it's a prequel you're writing then at least allude to a potential future storyline (even if it doesn't eventuate.) If your story has the villians as the winners then that's what you should do, it is your story. It sounds like the book in which the villan wins will be your first book and the one about rebuilding will be the sequel. If this is so, then remember that you need to have something to intice readers to continue on with the story.
Interesting discussion and its something that I have been thinking about for my novel - having an unhappy end for the protagonist. However I've suggested it to a few people and they all said they expect a happy ending in a book, except one that seems unlikely. My conclusion is troubling me a lot.
it depends on the book/story... if it works for yours, all well and good... if it doesn't, try another way of ending it... no one can tell one way or t'other, without reading your ms...
Yea thats fair enough Maia. I was just wondering whether it was a rule of thumb in modern writing that a story needs a "happy ending". Thanks.
What about writing in a prologue? Sometimes that helps get some of the history without writing an entire book...I had trouble with a book of mine I was writing a couple of years ago, where I had all of this hostory that needed to be written, and I didn't know how to do it, so I started writing a prequel. In the end, I realized I could have summed it up into chapter's length, and written a prologue. Good luck! MB
Yeah, extensive backstory usually engages a conceit of the author, in my view. It's like "Hey, I made all this stuff up and you're going to hear about it whether you like it or not." It is great for the author to know all of that information, but the reader doesn't need to know it all and the parts the reader does need to know can be presented more effectively over the course of the story itself than via an info-dump in a prologue. I often skip over prologues like this, and I've even put books back on the shelf because they have them.
Generally I agree with this. But sometimes people get away with things like, well, the text crawl at the beginning of Star Wars ... As to the main question: Can the bad guy win? The short answer is, Of course the bad guy can win. There are no hard and fast rules in fiction. Keep in mind that people like happy endings, though, and a story in which evil triumphs over good is not likely to be as popular as one in which good triumphs over evil. In my own opinion, if you really want the villain to win, it should be because of some critical moral failing on the part of the good guys. Not a failing of intelligence, in which the villain outsmarts the hero, and not a failing of strength, in which the villain simply overpowers the hero. For the hero to lose, he has to have in his character at the outset the seeds of his own defeat. Perhaps he's too selfish. Perhaps he's too cowardly. These failings might cause him to make a fatal decision at a critical moment; he will refuse to sacrifice himself or something of value to him when he must do so in order to win. Or he might not have strong enough loyalty to his friends, or he might not have enough faith in others - you can work out the details. But if the hero loses, it should be because of some flaw in his own character. That way, the reader is left with the sense that whatever virtue the hero lacked is important to people, important for the advancement of society and civilization. That way, an ending in which the villain triumphs can still be satisfying to me. I would definitely not be happy with an ending in which the hero has every virtue I think is important in a person and has no flaws, and yet the villain simply overpowers him. That says that, darn it, evil is just stronger than good and it doesn't matter how good good is, good will lose because evil is stronger. That's not a satisfying message to me; it leaves no room for hope. It says "What good is being good if good can't win? What good is following the right path if it only leads, not only to your own destruction, but to the destruction of everything you hold dear?" I know there are people out there who have that kind of nihilistic philosophy and they'd like to see an ending like that, but I don't share that philosophy, so I want to see some room for hope.
Horror fiction, and science fiction intended to warn of a potential threat often ends with the villains winning, or at least the good folks losing. Would Beneath the Planet of the Apes have anywhere near the same impact if Brent were able to prevent the Omega bomb from exploding?
I like it when the bad guy wins. I think a lot of the times the main characters in books are flawed to the point where they're almost evil and for some reason we're still rooting for them. The sweet and innocent can't win every time, it's too predictable. I'm never scared in a novel when my character is on the verge of death because I know they always survive.
that's not a book... people aren't going to walk out of a movie just because there's an info dump at the beginning of the film... but people do put down [and don't buy] books that have boring prologues to wade through before they can get to the story...
Also, a movie is limited to about three hours (more or less), so such clumsy forms of exposition are tolerated there. Books lack that restriction, but on the other hand, they can only grab the reader with words, not with slick visuals and pulse pounding music.
And besides, I don't think anyone ever thought much about the "crawling text" in Star Wars. It became iconic ,sure, but only because the movie did well.
No, it was borrowed from the old movie serials like Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and Captain Marvel. They were shown as short episodes (10-20 minutes) before the main feature, and the crawl was used to bring viewers up to date in case they had not seen the previous installment(s). Star Wars was a feature homage to the movie serial.
Probably why I hate so many movies... I always pick the plot to pieces. Then it ruins it for me. So this is a prequel to the civilization "rising from the ashes" right? Then them being defeated would be necessary in order for them to have a come back. Also if you leave the reader with some tiny hint of hope, no matter how small, they will probably be more inclined to read the next book. Also you can always take the route of making the villain like-able in some bizarre way. I've always wanted to give that a shot. Certainly makes things more interesting when you're not sure what side you want to come out on top.
Banewreaker and Godslayer by Jacquelin Carey do this pretty well, in my opinion - She kind of twists around LotR and gets you to route against "Frodo". The world is different and the cast of characters is different but it's fairly easy to see the underlying quest to destroy the ring, but now we're in the PoV of trying to stop that from happening. I thought both were good reads and interesting to see some redeemable qualities in evil characters that, while reading LotR, were 100% evil...
