I was thinking about this the other day, and it occured to me that there isnt a single story in my arsenal of about 40 that has a happy ending. I hate 'good-guy beats bad-guy and gets the girl' endings, so I try to be original with them, but in most of them, the protagonist either dies, or loses the final showdown, or is outwitted or in some way beaten. The only one that has a vaugely good ending is, er, not appropriate. For anyone. I also tend to leave a lot of questions partially unanswered, deliberately. Does anyone else use common themes with their endings, or is it a mix and match kind of deal?
It happens with some writers. My favorite stories either have dreaded happy endings (you wouldn't call it happy) or very different endings. It's not great to have a sad ending, but, it's not wrong. I enjoy killing my hero I, for the most part, have mixed endings, some stereotypal and some uniquely my thoughts.
I'm a huge fan of sad endings. : ) (Doctor Zhivago is sad, right?) As for me, I tend to just go with the flow. If I want it to be "human" I usually go for a sad ending, for some odd reason.
The story finds its own ending, for me. Blue had an upbeat ending, because no other ending would have made sense. Forever in a Heartbeat was essentially a horror story which could only really have the somewhat sinister ending it has. Other times I have gone for a mixed, bittersweet ending. From a life perspective, I think I'm more upbeat than pessimistic, and that probably shows in my stories' endings.
It depends really. Life isn't always a happy ending (in fact, it rarely is), so it isn't really fitting to have them all the time in stories. For me, I usually end my novels in a baptism of blood, but not necessarily killing the main character. In one novel, I killed all major characters apart from the central one, just to highlight the fact that he ended it as alone as he had begun it.
the first major thing im writing ends tragically. there are a few silver linings though, and it dosn't feel like the story could end any other way. others will end happily im sure.
I also tend to write stories where the good guy doesn't always win. I think that some stories need to be sad because nothing works out a hundred percent of the time.
