Friday, August 17, 2007

Alternate endings - oh, yeah

I usually give our bloggers some topics for the month and I've definitely fallen down on my job this month - but I love this topic so thanks for picking up the slack, Donna and Shirley. I've got topics for the end of the month and for next month and, I promise, I won't fall behind again!!!

I make up alternate endings for books and movies (and people's lives) when I don't like what happens. I want a happy ending so I just make it up. I spend hours and hours (usually walking on the beach) recreating the end of a story so it has the perfect - for me! - ending.

Casablanca? Absolutely. Yes, it's a great tragic romance, but I want Sam and Ilsa to get together so her husband dies a hero, Sam fights for the resistance all the rest of the way through the war, and the two of them end up - five years later, in the same bar in Paris. Ta da!

Gone with the Wind. Funny, I don't give Scarlett a happy ending but only Rhett. She doesn't deserve him. I know, I know, that's blasphemy - but... Rhett finally, after many years, meets a wonderful woman, they fall in love and travel the country for the rest of their lives.

Every book every written by Nicholas Sparks. Puh-lease. Can't just one of them have a happy ending? You know what's going to happen before you even open the book. I understand that sometimes a happy ending is impossible - but still. Book after book after book?

I haven't yet figured out a happy ending (except a paranormal one) for The Titanic? Do any of you have any ideas that don't involve vampires or ghosts or alternate universes?

Anyway, that's my short form take on alternate endings.

Kate

5 comments:

Susan said...

IMHO you aren't making up alternate endings, more like continuing the story to get the happy ending. I can get behind that easy! Love your endings for Casablanca and Gone With The Wind. I have no idea how to come up with one for The Titanic! *sigh*

I have a hard time getting into books by Nicholas Sparks for that exact reason.

felinewyvern said...

Like you I love making my own happy endings to stories that I think are too sad when the end comes - but it only seems to work if the stories are fictional. For instance my own alternative ending for the Titanic always has rescue ships being closer and saving everyone before it sinks. Other than that it has to be paranormal or alien intervention because it really happened :(

Michele L. said...

I have to agree with you Susan about Nicholas Sparks books. I started one and never finished it. Not my type of book.

Gosh for an alternate ending for Titanic? Hmm....that is really hard since it actually happened. I wish a boat was really close by to them when it happened and came over and saved all the people in the water. Also, if that boat could have telegraphed to other boats to come quickly to help out with the rescue efforts. Communication back then was very poor.

Michele

ChristyJan said...

I just read Karin Slaghter's Beyond Reach. If you haven't read her books yet, it's the latest in her Grant County series. Anywho...I'm still in shock and so saddened by the ending she went with. I would have much preferred an alternate ending.

Unknown said...

I guess the only happy ending that could have went with the Titanic is if thay had more life boats aboard and had really filled them with people so that more could have survived the tragedy. They could have at least filled the lifeboats they had would have made for a happier ending then the way it ended.