Melody Thomas | Happy Endings find us all happier. What could be wrong with that?

Some years ago I sat in a movie theater watching, The Perfect Storm. I must have been the only one present who did not know this was a true story, therefore the ending set in the proverbial stone of historical fact. Up until the point all three of the heroes perished, I had been waiting for that miraculous intervention, anything that would save them. When the movie ended, I was so aggravated that I had sat through the entire movie and had nothing but a sense of doom to show for my time. So my question to you is: what is the point of a movie or a book if it does not end with at least the hope that the characters we suffer with will be happy when the story ends. This is one of the reasons I don’t trust mainstream fiction or movies that are supposed to have a meaningful message to us poor, beleaguered souls of humanity. Too often, such entertainment leaves me depressed. In addition, because I am a writer, I have concluded that it is a lot easier for an author to give a book or a movie a sad ending than it is for one to deliver the hope of happiness. It takes great skill to leave a reader, who has just been put through an emotional wringer with a character, elevated at the story’s end. It is far easier for a writer to let characters dangle indefinitely in perpetual misery than it is to build the foundation for a happy ending. A good story accomplishes this feat. A great story resonates long after we close the book. Knowing that our intrepid heroine has overcome adversity, taken control of her life and destiny, and found true love, empowers us all as we embrace her happy ending as if it were our own. A great romance does this by invoking all of our emotions throughout the book and, just at the moment when all feels lost, somehow pulls it all together and yanks that worried reader back from the brink. That quality is what makes this wonderful genre the most popular and bestselling mass market genre in the world. As a writer of romance novels, I am proud to stand up for the happy ending.

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