Caroline Smailes on unhappy endings
This Friday’s piece comes from Caroline Smailes, author of two novels to date: In Search of Adam and Black Boxes - both of which avoid the traditional happy ending. As a result she has had quite diverse reactions to her work. She has an army of loyal fans, but then there are people who are completely thrown by the way she avoids the temptation to give us some hope! This short pieces discusses that happy ending syndrome.
I blame Walt Disney
The creative writing course I attended years ago taught me about a formula for creating a perfectly structured novel. It was said that endings should focus on ‘The Road Back’ and on ‘Return with the Elixir’. That’s all very fabulous, but what if that road back involves popping a few tablets and killing off the main character?
If we’re all told to write by the same method and then some start breaking rules and expectations, not every reader is going to be happy. I mean, I understand, for many life’s a bit rubbish at the minute and reading about real life concerns isn’t exactly uplifting. And, I also understand why some readers have ripped up my books, thrown them in the bin, emailed complaints and posted comments online. But, I really couldn’t end my stories any other way. If I want to write realistic characters and throw them into challenging and often dark situations, then I’ve got to have real consequences too.
Of course, I’ve tried to be upfront about it all. The blurb for Black Boxes tells the reader that Ana Lewis has taken a cocktail of tablets and will die by the end of the book. It was hoped that the reader would focus on finding out why Ana had been driven to such an extreme reaction. Yet still some readers have expected a prince on a horse with a whopping big sword to come along and rescue the darkly distressed girl.
And I blame Walt Disney.
Once upon a time, fairytales were soaked in hidden meaning, the teller would adapt the story to offer their own warning or message to their audience. It’s what once made those spoken tales unique and significant. Look at Cinderella, look at Snow White and then look at the way Walt Disney made the endings of their stories perfectly happily ever after, or rather different from their original telling. Disney has happy endings down to a fine art.
The difference, of course, is that real life often (usually) doesn’t have the happy ending of a fairytale. And, of course, I’d love to live in a castle and make friends with the woodland creatures but fact is I don’t and can’t and the important thing about writing (for me anyway) is to write from the heart and to draw on experience. And while my life hasn’t left me in bed with a mixture of pills and a bottle for company, it doesn’t take many steps from disappointments or experiences to imagine myself in my main characters’ shoes. I tend to write about real life and about a society that needs to feel authentic. I want my readers to empathise with my characters and, most importantly, to believe in them.
I know that I pulled on fairytales for inspiration for both Black Boxes and In Search of Adam and I’ll happily argue that Jude in In Search of Adam is a modern day Cinderella and that in Black Boxes, Ana’s children are Hansel and Gretel. So Disney may be the king of happy endings, but I’m trying to offer a truly moral and social message, just like the early tellers of those original fairytales. My stories are trying to recapture those layers in meaning that were so significant in the traditional art.
Problem is, you might not like the endings.
www.carolinesmailes.co.uk
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