theflowerofcarnage

There's a topic for cliche ways to begin a story, so I figured I should make this thread.

What's your definition of a cliche ending? What kind of situations faced by the protagonist would you consider cliche?

I tried to look for answers on Google and Altavista, but didn't come across anything helpful. It's really bugging me, because I'm trying to figure out a way to end one of the stories I'm working on and I'm completely stuck.

MichelleWritesStuff

If I read the end and am not surprised, or shrug and say, "of course," then it's probably a cliche. The writer needs to bring something new to the story -- if not an unexpected ending, a new perspective or insight.

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lisajane

'And they lived happily ever after'

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sampson

id say any ending where a couple realizes their love for each other after a break up and a few lonely nights is pretty cliche, but my view may be tainted because i have been forced to read some awful novels with all the traveling ive done lately.

aspiring

Suddenly he woke up and realised it had all been a dream.

Mike C

They're all cliché - especially aspiring's example.

People live or die, fall in or out of love, there's only so many ways to finish a story. It's how you get there that counts, and whether the ending you offer gives the reader satisfaction.

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Talia_Brie

Damn, I was going to say that.

Happy endings are a form of cliche, though a generally acceptable one. I do however like to see books that do not have happy endings. That's why I read a bit of horror.

For example, it's good to know Paul Sheldon, from Stephen King's Misery, is going to have nightmares for the rest of his life.

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dwellerofthedeep

I'd put as a more specific cliche that doomed romance makes for a boring ending, I'm getting used to reading this on the agent's blog I read.

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MichelleWritesStuff

Let me ask -- can that be reclaimed? Is there a way to make it work?

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Mike C

Yes. Anything can be made to work, as long as the story preceding it is solid and the ending gives the reader what they want. What about the Wizard of Oz? At the end, Dorothy woke up and it was all a dream... or was it?

Also Ian Banks - The Bridge. All the action takes place inside his head, while he's in a coma. At the end - he wakes up.

Any story, with any ending, can be either cliché or classic - it's all down to how you write it.

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MichelleWritesStuff

Yes, by Wizard of Oz was a long time ago, and it would be a lot harder for a book or movie to rock that ending today.

The Banks thing does sound like it was a unique take though.

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Corwin

The entire "Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever" series was written under the suggestion that it was all a dream.

Anarkos

I disagree. Often, that can just be the combination of (overly?) clear characterisation and foreshadowing. Sure, bring something new to the climax, but the very end...meh. If the story is not cliche, and the work ends in a way that is predictable in light of the story, then the end probably isn't either.

Indeed. However, I don't think that it is ever possible to redeem the "but is was all just a dream" ending unless you have it foreshadowed well. For example, the entirety of The Bridge is bizarrely surreal and interspersed with moments of semi-consciousness (most obviously, the partially comprehensible car-crash introduction).

And, of course, given the presence of, for example, a Culture knife-missile in the dream, you could argue that it in fact wasn't a dream.

Argh.

"And then I died" is probably a cliche ending, even though it was an awesome trick at primary school.

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RichardHeimer Schmitt

I've found, however, (to counter Mike C) that changing "and they lived happily ever after" to "and happily there after they lived" really doesn't help and is most likely just a rehashing of a clichéd idea not hashed very well. I am a firm believer in un-cliché-ing a cliche. And in making up words.

Pierres Cassées

I agree, the "happily ever after" ending is the most overplayed--a classic cliche.

But these days, the obligatory death or deaths, and tragic endings are coming into the cliche foreground. If it doesn't fit with the flow of the book, and its put there as some twist-without-grounds, then it, too, is cliche in that it's to much a part of the mainstream "angsty" movement that we're coming into.

I would say, one of the few non-cliche endings left is the nihilistic negation of a books points and pretense. For instance, say you're writing a first-person narrative novel, about anything at all.
Now, you've set the narrator up as the main-character, the protagonist. Throughout the novel he has set up a pretense of this, and then at the end you change view points--and do this by seperating the character from the reader. Have the character as a rebel against society, and turn it on the reader in the end, declaring that he is actually the antagonist, because he is fighting for something against the flow--against the norm. The enemy in the book is the protagonist, because he was standing for the society norms, albeit corrupt ones. Then, have him leave, or die, or anything with a feel of punctuation, of closure, to it.
This leaves the reader feeling some reification of an abstract twist--and makes him think.

I really doubt I've explained this in any legible way--it's just something I'm working on in a story.
But I think it's damn'd innovative.
Maybe.