In case you’re wondering, I’m not Loralie. She’s moping right now. You’d think she just found out her cat was dead. She didn’t, but she was going to clutter her blog with it anyway, and I asked her to please not to. So now she has something really sweet (no, really, like diabetic coma sweet and she just keeps drinking it anyway) that the gas station said was ‘English Toffee Coffee’ and she’s giggling over the name which leaves me time to say what I want.
Oh, btw, this is Scott. Don’t remember me? Loralie let me post here a few weeks back. I am her oldest character. Well, besides Kelly, but…don’t ever get me started on Kelly. You thought I was mean last time.
Remember teh new shiney? I’m wicked stoked about this. I get the girl. Okay, I get A girl. But she’s kind of like THE girl because she’s as important to the story as anyone else. And this girl is smokin’. Sexy, intelligent, and three different colors in her hair. Besides her natural color. Red, blue, green. All at once. Oh, and did I mention killer intelligent?
And since Loralie has done this for me, I’m going to do the post she wanted to, but with less moping. Here’s the thing: everyone in this world knows what’s going to happen to the other main characters in this story. The reader may never see it, but we all know here in Lori-Land. The story has been played out so many times in so many ways, and Zach and Max always meet the same fate after the curtains close.
They each get their own happily ever after. Talk about well adjusted. Seriously, who’s that well adjusted in real life and what are the odds of two of them knowing each other? Just. Doesn’t. Happen. Not that I wish differently on them. They’re my best friends. It’s just…implausible anyone?
Here’s the difference. I don’t know if my story is happily-ever-after once the curtain draws shut. My guess? It’s not because it never is. No matter how many times she plays it out, things go sour for me eventually. Thing is, I’m not bitter. Life isn’t always happy endings, right? And neither is fiction. Sometimes our shoelaces come untied, and sometimes we trip, and sometimes we lose that job we thought was the perfect fit (slaps Loralie’s hands away. My post!), and sometimes that perfect girl/guy/puppy, mets an unhappy fate.
Which means that not everyone has to have a happily ever after in your writing. Whether it happens on the pages or its implied after, not everything gets tied up in a neat package. Unless you’re ‘Wallstreet: Money Never Sleeps’. Then you pour on the sugar at the end of an otherwise intense, fascinating examination of business, big-money, and human nature, and you ruin the entire premise of the entire freaking movie.
All I’m saying/asking/pleading/whatever is make sure when you wrap things up, it’s appropriate. Don’t make it all cookies and sunshine just because things are over for now, and don’t make it all doom and gloom if there should be a rainbow. Us characters have to live with it.
Are there books/movies that stick in your head as either having the completely wrong or completely right ending for the story that was told? Something that’s either so satisfying or so disatisfying that it makes or breaks the entire story?
