Why Authors have never feared an Unhappy ending

One of the best things about YA fiction that stands apart from regular romance or teen fiction is that it has never feared to give you an unhappy ending.

Writers often write fantasy and science fiction as a way to escape the realities of real life. So often those stories are full of happy endings. Or at the very least, hopeful. Many readers don’t see the reason for reading a whole story only to have everything end horribly. On the other hand, I have always loved reading stories where the ending is more final for the characters.

Real-life is messy, just like they show us in literature. So why wouldn’t the ending be just as messy and incomplete as well?

A Heroine’s Last Farewell

What YA fiction does best is showing us, heroines, what we can aspire to be. These heroines are often outspoken, sarcastic, and seem to run headlong into danger. They follow their heart instead of the rules that govern the world they live in.

One of my favorite heroines of all time was thrust into dangerous situations throughout the novel series. She was sent away from her family as the city she lived in dictated and was forced to fight her way to belong to her new home. While finding out she was something that was currently being hunted and killed in the city they lived in.

Yes, I am being vague about what character I’m talking about, but I love this story’s end so much that I don’t want to dissuade any future people from reading this particular novel. Regardless, she fought her whole way through the novel series. Finally, in the last installment in the trilogy, just chapters before the ending, everything that had been up in the air was being solved, and it looked like her happy ending was moving closer within her grasp. Then towards the last moment, she was given the choice of saving herself and her brother. She chose right, even though it meant she would never see those she loved again.

In the last chapter of that particular novel, we had her friends and family spreading her ashes over the city in a way that she would’ve appreciated. Many of the other people who read this series didn’t agree with the ending, but I found it satisfying, unlike the movie adaptation that changed it to a more ambiguous ending.

The heroine in question lived her life, fighting for those she loved and what she believed in. She died so that the truth of all the lies would come forth. So that the people who were the cause of so much unhappiness and death would receive what they deserved.

This isn’t the first time a character thought to be the main character in the novel died to save everyone else. I’ve always found those endings to resonate the most. What it shows readers is the act of sacrifice. Of willing to do whatever you can to save the innocent. To make sure that what you leave behind is a legacy much better than death and corruption.

The Ultimate Plot Twist

Some of the greatest stories are those that towards the end when you have less than twenty pages left, and it looks like all hope is lost. In YA books, deaths have happened so frequently that some people are afraid to continue reading certain novels to fear what will happen to the character’s next.

One of the most recent novels I’ve read, Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard shows this author has no fear of killing people off and changing a character that was thought to be good, into someone infinitely evil.

One of the greatest things about Red Queen is how one character seemed to be one of the good guys, flipped to be the ultimate adversary for the rest of the novels. These novels are so intense with the storytelling that I have found readers like me needing to take a breath from reading. While I will be going back to this particular novel series, I will say it’s not for the faint of heart. That in itself proves how great the plot twists of this particular series is.

Novels with plot twists are generally ones with sudden deaths within them or a betrayal of some kind. That’s when you start thinking about Villains and heroes. Light and Dark. How can one person who seemed to be innocent become the darkest and most vile character of the series suddenly? The power of ruining characters' lives is something that some writers excel at? We always wish for a happy ending; I think that is what makes us human. We don’t want a good person to suffer, just like when a good, selfless character dies, we are horrified for how the other characters react.

Of course, plot twists aren’t always about death. Sometimes the biggest plot twists throw the story's heroes into a state of utter hopelessness, where you assume that everything will end for the characters in question.

Other times the more significant plot twists have to do with a character known to be dead returning to life under questionable circumstances. Those plot twists are ones that you don’t always suspect but are always fulfilling endings. Or beginnings in the case of The Red Queen.

Tragic endings are not for the faint of heart. Sometimes even when reading novels where you know the main character will die, you still find yourself hoping for the best. Likewise, there are always YA fiction stories that show a villain finding redemption and finally doing the right thing even if it means their death. We still cry for those characters and see only the good they have ever done instead of all the horrible things they have always done for the primary set of characters.

Does it make death stronger, if that death is a heroine who is inches from her own happy ending? Novels that make you question the complete basis of the novel are the ones that make you think and question the author. Those to me are the best types of storytelling.