I’ve been thinking a lot about endings, lately. Specifically, the way a story ends, since Jaida and I recently hashed out a rough outline for our second book, complete with the way we envisioned it turning out.

At the beginning of the summer, in between editing Havemercy and starting the next book, I’ve been watching a lot of Japanese dramas, and reading a lot of Japanese literature. Since it’s Jaida’s major, there was always a ready supply of books around the house, and although I’m not as well-educated on the subject as she is, Japanese culture has always fascinated me.

Because here’s the thing about Japan: they don’t like happy endings. A happy ending does not exist in Japanese fiction, at least not in anything I’ve encountered so far. It’s a very clear cultural contrast when compared to that of Hollywood, say, where so many stories are wrapped up in neat little packages at the end and everyone goes home happy. It’s weird, to say the least, and at first it sort of upset me. I’m the sort of person who likes happy endings. Hell, I’m the sort of person who needs happy endings. I don’t mind heaping the suffering on my characters, so long as I know they’re going to get out of it all right at the end. I used to think there wasn’t any point in creating a conflict that you couldn’t solve, and that unhappy endings were a form of laziness–not solving a conflict you’d created.

Enter the Japanese.

I have a very clear memory of Jaida explaining to me (over my weeping all through the ending of The Bird People in China) that a very common form of storytelling in Japan is to give the characters a glimpse of something greater, something beyond the pale, only to take it away at the end. And you almost get the sense that it’s all right, because the character’s had that sense of something greater–that maybe they can hold onto it and it’ll make their lives that much better, even though they never get it back.

So in some ways, I suppose I’ve accepted the unhappy ending. Or at least the bittersweet one. There are some stories where the specific circumstances make a happy ending almost impossible (I’m thinking about The King and the Clown right now, which wasn’t Japanese but Korean), and in the end, I think you have to go with what rings true for the story and for the characters.

Still, I’ll probably end up weeping a little over the course of this book. I’m a sap like that.

-Dani