The (Un)happy Ending

And why I love them

It’s been a long while since I managed to sit down and write a Substack post. I’ve tried a few times, and abandoned them all for various reasons - mainly linked to not knowing what it was I was trying to say. This is also an issue with my fiction at times, and those are always the scenes that end up being rewritten or cut entirely. I’m all in with the technique of throwing a scene in the bin, giving myself a fresh page and the endless possibilities it holds, because sometimes what is already there is such an obstruction to what should be there. And so all those unfinished posts lay rotting in my draft folder, never to be exhumed. And today I opened a fresh page…

Another reason for my silence is I’ve been in the hell pit that is editing. Editing draft four of my novel (now back with my agent), and completing line and copy edits for my novella, The Off-Season, due for release on June 26th. You can pre-order here, if you so wish, and I’ll love you forever. But basically, I’ve been dealing with a lot of words, and I had no space for anymore.

But the other day, I was on a plane, and it was a long flight. This meant that wonderful commodity of time, and I used it to watch some movies. I went with two I have already seen and love, La La Land and The Bridges of Madison County (spoilers ahead). Both of them got me thinking about endings and how I am drawn, both in movies and books, to the non-obvious, against-what-feels-right ending.

When I sit down to plot my stories, I always have some idea of the ending. I know where I want my characters to go from and to. And I have realised recently that I veer towards the unhappy ending, the ending where my characters don’t get what we feel they are due, where they don’t waltz off into the sunset to live their life happily off the page. My stories have an element of tragedy. And is that not more true to life as we know it?

La La Land is a perfect example of this. Mia and Seb. Two individuals striving for their, very different, dreams. Their paths cross at the right time for them - they are both failing, they become stronger together, they each help the other to forge their path. They are the ying to the other’s yang. Until they are not. Until their successes actually begin to pull them apart. Their’s is a love story of a time. Fleeting, intense, real. But their time passes. Their happy ending isn’t together, and there lies their tragedy. I remember the first time I watched this movie, and how relieved I was that it didn’t conform. A big part of me was rooting for them to reconnect, for their love to be too strong to be parted forever. But life isn’t like that, is it? More often than not, people don’t have the happily ever after. It’s the antithesis of the fairytale ending we are all raised on.

And then we have the love story of Robert and Francesca in The Bridges of Madison County. A beautiful, quiet movie - the kind I love - where we get to know the longings of these two souls. Francesca, trapped by her marriage and motherhood, unappreciated, a woman with lost and forgotten dreams. Robert, a travelling photographer with no roots, no grounding, a drifter with short-lived relationships. Their paths cross as he is searching for a bridge to photograph, and so begins a truly intense four-day love affair. One that awakens in them both the thing that they realise is missing. She sees the life she could have had, the sort of man she could have had, who helps her cook dinner and washes dishes, such simple acts of partnership. But someone who can fill her with passion and desire, who offers to walk with her into that sunset, happily ever after. Because he has realised that he can love a woman, that he does love a woman, and that he wants to commit to her.

This film has a lot to say about womanhood. As Francesca packs to leave with Robert, to walk away from her husband and two teenaged children, she sees that she cannot leave, that her daughter will soon need her to guide her through her own relationships, that her husband is not a bad man, and she committed to him and their family. She chooses to do the right thing, as she has done all her life. Her wild fantasies belong to another woman with another life who made different choices. We aren’t given their happy-ever-after. We are given reality.

I walk away from stories such as these feeling good about the world. Because life is exactly this - messy, sad, ecstatically happy, full of fleeting moments, change, out of our control. We, just like these fictional characters, grow and shift through these experiences. And because of this, we all know and understand these (un)happy endings.

Do let me know your favourite (un)happy ending!

Until next time, whenever that might be x