Do romances need to have a happy ending?
Is a book labelled "romance" expected to a have a happy ending?
I've heard advice that "romance" novels are meant to satisfy, well, a desire for romance, and so an ending without a "happily ever after" disqualifies a book from the genre. And indeed, it's hard for me to recall a "straight" romance that doesn't end well.
On the other hand, romance is a rich genre with lots of character attention; I could see a well-written "unhappy" ending being tragic, but satisfying. And I've just read several YA books (Every Day by David Levithan and The Fault In Our Stars by John Green) which are almost entirely about one romantic relationship, but have sad endings. (Is it possible these aren't romances? If not romances, what are they?)
Genre boundaries are pretty important for marketing purposes, telling the reader what to expect. That's why it's important for me to understand whether "unhappy ending" falls within the "typical" boundaries of the romance genres, or not.
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"Love Story" by Erich Segal. (Book and movie)
"The Way We Were" (movie only)
"Gone With the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell (book and movie)
"Romeo and Juliet" by...really, I could have just led with this!
Do I need to go on?
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Do you want to piss your readers off? No? Then call a tragedy a tragedy, a drama a drama and a romance a romance.
This question is all about customers' expectations. You can call your story a romance and end it in disaster. But be prepared to disappoint a lot of readers (also be prepared for their reviews).
Of course not all readers expect a romance to end happily. But I think it's safe to say, that most readers do. To start with an opposite view, let me cite the script lab:
Whether the end is happy or tragic, Romance film aims to evoke strong emotions in the audience.
"Happy or tragic", ok, we get it. But it's about movie scripts, not novels. Does that make a difference? I'm not sure. But in my opinion if it ends tragically, why don't you call it a tragedy?
The Romance Writers of America define the basic elements of a romance:
Two basic elements comprise every romance novel: a central love story and an emotionally-satisfying and optimistic ending.
Happy end! Must-have according to the Romance Writers (whoever they are).
Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan define the "basic formula" of a romance as "deceptively simple":
Boy meets girl.
Holy crap, shit happens!
Eventually, the boy gets the girl back.
They live Happily Ever After.
"Happily Ever After" is written uppercase in the book, no typo from my side. Maybe they want to make a point. (Oh, and they are talking about heterosexual romances only here, where the main audience are women. Maybe it's different for gay romance. I do not know.)
So you can Happily name your tragedy a romance and live Ever After with the angry mob tearing apart your book on Amazon, or ...
As I said, it's all about readers' expectations.
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I am German. You will soon understand why I state this up front. In German cultural theory a difference is made between so called 'serious' literature, music, painting and so on, and 'entertaining' literature, music etc. 'Serious' works are 'art'; 'entertaining' literature is called 'trivial literature'.
'Entertaining' or 'trivial' literature are all genre works: crime, SF, romance, western, horror etc. They follow genre rules, such as the happy end, or consciously play with and break them.
Depending on your concept of art, 'serious' literature, or literature as 'art', might attempt to capture the sublime, represent reality, deconstruct a discourse, or something like that. There are no rules for the creation of art, although, again depending on your concept of art, they might reflect Aristotle's rules of the comedy (not funny!) or some other poetics.
In my eyes this is a useful distinction. You examples would be 'art' or 'serious' literature. They do not aim at entertainment, but at developing the personality of the reader.
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As an amateur writer I'm writing my first novel and this question came up when I was searching on writing tips on how to end my novel and I posed that same question which is how I got here.
Breaking the boundaries of what is romance and what is other genres like Drama, Thriller or Crime can be blended to create your story if you remain true to your goals and the eventual story being told. This can play out in series like many contemporary romance/drama authors, there's a wealth of them out there that end the book on a serious note, enticing you into buying the next in the series. You capture the readers attention with the love story, throw in drama, maybe a crime or thriller situation and then end it alluding to the next book continuing the hero/heroines story.
I believe that you should write to your soul and not worry, if you want to publish your work and no firm wants it, self publish, there's plenty of us readers and avid novelists out there who read all types of genres many of them self published.
Life like literature and writing in general, is not always about happy endings, break the boundaries and find what works and write, its not about what others think in the end, you have to be proud of your work.
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