: Stories about people who went from rags-to-riches-to-rags and stayed there? I need suggestions for stories I can read to get inspiration on how to tackle a nonfiction rags-to-riches-to-rags story

I need suggestions for stories I can read to get inspiration on how to tackle a nonfiction rags-to-riches-to-rags story with an uplifting ending.

It's easy to find rags-to-riches stories, but I'm having difficulty finding those about rags-riches-rags; i.e., the person who climbs up from nothing, does stupid things to reduce their hard-won place in life, and is happy with being back to "rags."

I put "rags" in quotes, because they don't have to be reduced to where they started from; just to a greatly reduced place from what they achieved.

Anyone have suggestions?

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@Moriarity138

My favorite rags-riches-rags story is the classic folktale "The Fisherman and His Wife." It's not clear that the title couple is happier at the end, but there's a strong sense that they are better off as they are. www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm019.html. Orson Scott Card's "Unaccompanied Sonata" also has the up and down story arc, with an ambiguous ending.

One of the best examples I can think of is the original novel The Neverending Story (not to be confused with the movie version). The title character completes an entire arc from bullied kid to godlike Emperor and then back, but he ends the book with a new sense of identity and self-confidence.

If you want a true life story, what about Jimmy Carter? From peanut farmer to leader of the free world, but arguably at his best in the years after his presidency, not during them.

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: Stories about people who went from rags-to-riches-to-rags and stayed there? I need suggestions for stories I can read to get inspiration on how to tackle a nonfiction rags-to-riches-to-rags story

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: Using "Earth words" in a futuristic, fictional setting As a writer of primarily science fiction, I've often struggled with finding a happy medium between making the prose/dialogue relatable for

: What is the "acid test" for a nonfiction anthology? I'm asking this on Writing.SE because I'm doing a short presentation on "What is an anthology," and I'm not sure how to answer the question

: Can the same book appear in a different series? A book series is a sequence of books having certain characteristics in common that are formally identified together as a group. Book series

: To my knowledge (not a lawyer), you don't have any legal responsibility to attribute the ideas in your actual text, unless you're directly quoting or paraphrasing. It's very rare (but not

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