How to Write a Tragic Ending
I like happy endings, but no happy ending is ever as affective as a tragic ending. Sometimes a story just needs to come to a tragic conclusion. There’s several ways to do this. One way is to have action to the end, but the heroes just aren’t up to the task. This is somewhat common with the older nuclear weapon movies. Our hero is trying to prevent an explosion, time runs out, there is a flash of white light and we fade to black. Game over. It works, but it doesn’t give the audience time to think about what just happened. A reader puts the novel down and starts thinking about doing laundry instead. The audience needs a breather between the tragic event and the actual end. Not a long breather, a few pages or so, but enough to respect the reader’s mourning over the loss of a character. Suppose a character decides life isn’t worth it and jumps from a bridge. We know he’s dead, but the story goes on and we find something that indicates he may not be dead. Then they find his body and sure e...