: What if neither the protagonist nor antagonist wins? This may seem like an awkward scenario for a story's ending. My plot revolves around a constant struggle of the protagonist against the antagonist's

Whether you can do this depends on the nature of the villain's goals and the MC's goals. If the villain seeks power, then even if it costs the MC her life, if she prevents the villain from getting power then she has unequivocally won.

For example, in Armageddon; Bruce Willis has to blow up the asteroid. (This is a man-against-nature movie; but it works as an example). His goal, from the beginning, is to fly his team to the asteroid, plant the nuke, and get safely away before detonating it.

But complications happen; the remote detonator gets lost or won't work or something, so somebody has to detonate the nuke by hand. Bruce takes the hit to save his team; there's an emotional end where he says goodbye to his daughter by video, etc. He blows up himself and the asteroid in the nick of time.

So you might say Bruce didn't accomplish his goal, but he accomplished his true implied goal, to save humanity (made personal by saving his daughter's life). It cost more than he planned, but the villain (Nature) was defeated in its plan to wipe out all life on Earth.

This is a general rule for protagonists, no matter what the cost to them, even death, they are considered to have won if they prevented the villain from getting what they want. So in order to defeat the protagonist, you have to let the villain win.

There may be some way around this by playing with the goals; but they would almost have to be disconnected from each other, and then I wonder why the protagonist wants to stop the villain, if the villain's plans won't affect her negatively in any way. Why would she risk her life or time or injury to stop the villain?

An out that you can use here is "partial success." In Star Wars, Vader succeeds in destroying a planet full of people, but the rebels succeed in destroying the death star -- But not Vader, he gets away. Eventually Obi Wan dies too, but his spirit lives on. Star Wars is full of mixed results where nobody wins completely, every win comes with losses.

And individual stories can do the same. It doesn't have to be a "lives happily ever after" ending, the MC can prevail but lose the true love of her life; or stop the plans of the villain but not kill the villain; like Vader he escapes. Or the villain partially succeeds. In fighting competition (IRL) it is very seldom the "victor" escapes unscathed. Instead they are bloody, injured, exhausted and in pain. Victors, but the cost is high. Fiction can emulate life in that respect, at least metaphorically.

So invert "nobody wins", make it so nobody escapes without suffering terrible loss.

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I don't think you quite understand the words you're using. This is a common misconception among writers who haven't thought about the meaning of those two words. Also, writers who haven't been in the right classes.

So, a lesson, before I answer your question.

Definitions

Protagonist - Character who is working towards one or many goals. They are pro-active. They do things.

Antagonist - Entity (person, place or thing) that is in the way of the protagonist getting what they want.

Looking Deeper

Nothing in that definition says there is one protagonist, but for the purposes of story telling we're usually only worried about a few protagonists and the main character tends to be a protagonist.

Antagonists don't have to want to stop the protagonist. They just have to be in the way. A mountain can be an antagonist and a mountain can't want (in most stories). A mother who loves her child can be benevolently in the way of that child doing what they want to do. Antagonists are typically people, animals, or forces of nature; things that do things that are threatening to the main character's goals. But, what is threatening?

Threatening just means putting the protagonist's goal in jeopardy. Sure, that might mean blowing up the world (very threatening). But it also might mean one girl getting the boy to fall in love her, when the protagonist wants that boy. The boy might even be falling for non-protagonist girl. Those two might belong together.

The antagonist in that last scenario does not want to directly thwart our protagonist. In fact, the boy might die. Or the boy might realize he's gay. Or the boy might go off to war and meet someone new. Or, and this isn't the common story, the boy and both girls might get together and they all 'win' (here's looking at you wheel of time).

There is no writing contract that a protagonist or antagonist must win. That is a false dichotomy.

Endings: Comedy, Tragedy & Satisfaction

If the characters have a happy ending, it's likely the protagonist got what they wanted. If the protagonist doesn't, then their personal story may be a tragedy. It is easiest to do what you want in a tragedy. Just take away whatever both parties want. But you can also do it in a comedy if it turns out that what the protagonist wanted to do wasn't important after all.

The problem with both of those types of stories is that they can be unsatisfying. If the ending comes out of nowhere, your readership won't be pleasantly surprised at your witty expectation subverting ending. They'll put your book down and tell all of their friends not to read it. So if you want to do this you need bread crumbs to indicate where you are going, what type of story you are telling, and the ending you actually pick needs to satisfy some part of the reader so that they are given something they didn't know they wanted.

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Set up the novel so the reader knows what to expect, and you should be OK.

In other words, in the opening scene, or first chapter, be very clear about the 'truth' in what it is you are doing--that life is messy, there is no resolution in life, just a sequence of events, people giving of themselves (or taking or whatever) and ultimately being completely wrung out, giving up, or what have you.

It's more to do with how you set the contract. If you promise a trope-y book with a hero and a big bad villain and keep signaling that good will prevail, then the ending you've described is problematic. But if you set the contract appropriately, the reader will accept the ending you have described.

Books have done this before. This posting has a couple examples:
www.quora.com/Does-every-novel-have-a-resolution-What-are-examples-of-stories-that-end-at-a-climax

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