Do You Have to Write Happy Endings?

In the 2003 film adaptation of Peter Pan, Wendy describes the stories she’s been telling the Lost Boys as “adventures, in which good triumphs over evil.” In response, Captain Hook sneers, “They all end in a kiss.”

Like Wendy and the Lost Boys, millions of people escape into the world of fiction to find happily-ever-after endings. We cheer when the good guy defeats the villain. We applaud when true love conquers all. We find hope and encouragement in the fictional examples that peace and happiness await on the other side of seemingly insurmountable trials.

Without doubt, happy endings are enjoyable, uplifting, and reaffirming.

But does this mean all endings should be happy? Are sad stories with sad endings the domain of the lonely, the manic-depressive, and the masochistic?

In his essay “Writing toward the light” in The Writer, creative writing teacher and short story author David Harris Ebenbach shared his experiences:

More than once I’ve been asked why I don’t write happy stories. I’ve been asked by friends, family, strangers, and even the president of the college where I teach. My wife, too, messed up a perfectly nice date by reminding me in the middle of my complaining about how hard it is to get published that, after all, people like to read about hope, beauty, and wonder.

Is that what we’re doing when we write sad stories? Are we squelching hope, beauty, and wonder?

Or are we perhaps exploring the opposite side of the same coin?

Life is just as full of sadness as it is of happiness. To ignore that fact is to limit both our personal experience of human existence and our ability to write truthfully about life. To cap every story with a happy ending is dishonesty to both ourselves and our readers. The moment fiction becomes dishonest is the moment it becomes useless.

Novelist Aryn Kyle commented in her article “In defense of sad stories,” also published in The Writer:

“You should write something happy,” people tell me, and I don’t understand. Happy like Anna Karenina? Happy like The Grapes of Wrath? Happy like … Catch-22 or … Hamlet?

Take a moment to think about the stories that have changed your life. Many of them were undoubtedly stories of pain, loss, sacrifice, and sin.

These are stories that speak bluntly about hard subjects and force their characters—and their readers—to face hard truths and, hopefully, walk away from those realizations slightly different and perhaps slightly better. Few of us would want to subsist on a steady diet of tragedy, but all of us are better for having occasionally cleansed our reading palate with the astringent bite of these unflinching portrayals of bittersweet truth.

As writers, not all of us are cut out to write the next Crime and Punishment. Light humor is just as valuable as stark reality. But if we’re going to call ourselves authors, we must be brave enough to stand unflinching before the truths of life, even—and perhaps especially—those that don’t end happily ever after. Readers won’t hate you for writing a sad story. In fact, if you execute it properly, you have the opportunity to leave an impression they’ll carry all through their lives.

Sad stories don’t have to be depressing stories. The stories that have broken my heart and changed my life are stories of great tragedy, but they’re also stories of great hope. That, right there, is where we find the true power of the sad story—because light always shines brightest in the darkness.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! Have you ever written a sad story you were afraid would turn readers away? Tell me in the comments!

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