: Re: Creating a story in which the hero(es) lose So I am still in the primitive stages of creating my own world and story, if I even do it that is. I am still trying to get a feel for where

@Alves689

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3) Would creating a story that ends with the enemy winning be something interesting to others?

Are you telling a “big picture” story, or human (orc, dwarf, elf, whatever) interest story? And why can’t it be both?

Use the enemy winning as a backdrop. Maybe not Love in The Time of Cholera, but isn’t Gone with the Wind the classic example of the enemy winning, but everyone enjoying the book?

Look at the enduring appeal of Anne Frank's diary, which hardly has a happy ending. Not really, do the fictional works The Handmaiden's Tale or A Canticle for Leibowitz, both told many years (centuries) after the death of the main protagonist. In all, the “enemy” wins.

Basically, you are telling an adversarial story.

And, more importantly, you speak of a series.

The James Bond novels were never a series, because Bond always won (yawn).

An adversarial series provides you the scope to flip/flop and reverse the tides of fortune.

Think Cliff Hanger Ending. Think “it’s always darkest before the dawn” as the ending of each book. When people hear that the next has been published they will flock to buy it, to discover how the protagonist is going to “get out of that”.

Short answer to 3) is a resounding YES

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