When I was but a wee lad, I knew good endings from bad. The good ending had the Heroes beating up the Bad Guys and living Happily Ever After. The bad endings had the good guys dying and the villains winning. Nothing could be simpler.
As I've grown to adulthood, this position hasn't changed, exactly. While I now have a tendency to refer to the good guys as the more neutral protagonist and the bad guys by the equally neutral Antagonist, I still prefer watching movies and reading books where Good triumphs.
However, I've come to realize that there are better definitions for a good ending and a bad ending. The following are some of my thoughts on what composes the two.
A good ending fits the story like a glove. When looking back on the course of the plot, it should be clear how the characters reached this outcome. Whether you like the outcome or not is another ending.
Cheating can be forgiven here and there during the course of the tale, but never ever at the end. A minor cheat brings the roll of the eyes, a lessening of regard for what has come before. A major one means the story shouldn't have been made in the first place.
Using this line of thought, stories where the protagonist dies, or where Evil does triumph over Good, can qualify as good endings. It helps, however, if the protagonists succeed in some way. It could be a major victory, such as with the protagonists trapping themselves in a parallel dimension in order to stem off an alien invasion, or a minor one, such as a protagonist sacrificing his or her life to defeat an monstrous creature.
Crafting the right ending is a vital part of the story. It is the creator's final word on the matter. It should match what has come before and not be something completely and totally different. After spending an hour or so worth of comedic adventurers with a group of protagonist, one really doesn't need to see each and every one of them brutally murdered. On the flipside, switching to dumb comedy at the end of a horror movie is equally disastrous.
The Saturation Effect is where everything goes right for the protagonists through the course of the movie. Or, on the other hand, where everything goes wrong. It is an overdose of the positive or the negative and it leads to a less that enjoyable experience, depending how the work ends.
In the first case, a happy ending is less than satisfying. What was the point? Where was the challenge? The majority of cartoons suffer from the Saturation Effect. If the story are silly enough or diverting enough, one might not notice it happening. But why risk it?
With the second case, a downbeat ending is uncalled for, even if the rest of the movie is moving to that point. This varies, of course, with how bad things go wrong, but the darker the work, the less cause for such an outcome. Might as well go out into the world and do something rather than partake in such entertainment.
A companion to the Saturation Effect is the Point of No Redemption. Sometimes an audience will watch a film or read a story and reach a point in the narrative where they say, "Things have to turn out this way. Otherwise I'm due a portion of my life back."
This is something the creator has little control over, as audiences vary. However, avoiding the Saturation Effect helps here. It helps a lot.
At the end of the day, all of these thoughts are merely guidelines at best, personal opinion at worst. The talented creator can ignore this point or that point and get away with doing so. It is a risk to do so and always will be. But if the story demands it...
1 comment:
Interesting perspectives. The way I judge an ending to be good is when it makes me "freeze" for a few moments in contemplation.
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