Heroes Not Winning in the End?

[Naomasa298]

It's not a question of sending a "message". It's how you want the readers to feel, having read the story.

A. Do you want them to think "Ok, everyone's dead, time to move on to the next thing".
B. Or do you want them to think "This story reveals something I didn't know before".
C. Or "I spent a lot of time reading this story, I wasted it".
D. Or "This story really made me think how I would act in the same situation".
E. Something else

Because how you end the story makes a big difference. Is there an emotional payoff? Or is the reader going to feel cheated? If the journey doesn't justify the end, they're going to feel that. And this gets built throughout the story. If you're building something that screams "The heroes are gonna find a way to save the world!", and then it doesn't, many people will feel cheated.

Unless you're subverting that ending, but subverting doesn't mean the obvious ending doesn't happen. It can mean, the obvious end DOES happen, but... Or it can mean it was obvious all along, but they didn't accept it, but I'd hate that unless I really disliked the characters. And a myriad of other options.

 

[CatrionaGrace]

He told Frank that, in a play, the audience is at some distance from the actor. But movies put the actor right into the viewer's face, and there's an intimacy that prohibits allowing the good guy to die.

That is interesting. Huh. New things to ponder. How do you suppose that might translate to adapting books for the movies, if it translates at all?

 

[Naomasa298]

In the play though, the human Audrey dies and Seymour feeds her to the plant. They did film that, but it seems test audiences didn't like it, so the ending was changed.

 

[sierraromeobravo]

I've always wanted to write a story as if you're starting at the beginning of the second book and everything that happened in the first book was devastating. A story where the hero is required to figure out how to survive in a world that knew he was supposed to save them but he couldn't. I think too often we depend on people always winning. Not all stories have good endings! Go for it!