The Fairy Tale Ending

Fair warning: this post is more my random, jumbled thoughts on this topic than anything coherent. Read at your own risk.

While I was working today, my mind drifted to the realms of writing and reading-as it often does. I got to thinking about the “Fairy Tale Ending” – the warm, fuzzy Happily Ever After.

Stories with romance at the core of the plot – or even as a strong subplot – often end in this way. After all the struggles a couple goes through, they finally end up together and live happily ever after. Perhaps we get to see the wedding before the fade out, but we often don’t even get that much.

This doesn’t make sense for me on so many levels. The first, and most cynical, is that sometimes happily ever after is really happily until the honeymoon period runs out, the two people let their guard down, not everyone is on their best behavior, and they realize the don’t really like each other orhappily until someone falls in love with another person. I don’t like any of these scenarios, but let’s be honest here – they are realistic.

What really gets me about the happily ever after ending though is that is cuts things short. The most exciting, wonderful, happy things about a relationship come after the happily ever after. Sure, it is exhilarating to follow the courtship and see the awkward first date, but there is so much more than that! I want to see a Fairy Tale where the wedding takes place a third of the way through and we get to see what happens in their life together! (Kudos, by the way, to Stephenie Meyer for putting the wedding scene at the beginning of Breaking Dawn instead of waiting for the end.)(Oops…should I have spoiler alerted that for the three people who have not read that book?)

Writers: Don’t cop out with a neat little and they lived happily ever after. Show us what happens-good or bad.

Rambling Out.