: Re: Can a successful book series let the bad guy win? I have a five book series and I have plotted them all out. The main bad guy wins in the end. My problem with this is my girlfriend keeps

@Holmes449

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No, I don't think it would be okay for a bad guy to win in the end.

Readers don't like it. They read for fantasy fulfillment. Happy endings outsell unhappy endings ten to one; publishers and studios don't like unhappy endings. They want something positive in the end.

Especially from a writer that has no following; if you were already a best-selling author or script-writer they might trust you and publish it anyway, but not if you are starting out.

In a series you can have a mixed ending; basically a draw. The hero doesn't win, but doesn't lose. But even that might not be satisfying.

If you are unpublished, you probably should not be writing a series, unless you intend to write all of it before trying to sell it. Publishers do not want to publish book one with an ambiguous ending if there is no guarantee you will actually finish the rest of the series. And if you are a beginner, they don't want to buy three or five books at once. And if your series has an unhappy ending, they don't want to buy any of it.

I suggest you write a book, even a somewhat long book, that stands on its own, with a reasonably happy ending in which the hero prevails, perhaps at a cost but prevails. The villain is defeated, perhaps escaping with their life and bound to return, but defeated.

The problem here is psychological. Reading fiction is escapism. What are readers trying to escape? The real world, where the bad guys win pretty much all the time! In real life, crime pays. People get away with rape and murder and abuse of others. Drug kingpins, dictators, corrupt politicians destroy innocent lives and live high on the hog without a single regret.

The real world is what we are trying to get away from. We want you to make your story and setting believable, and the dangers feel real, but in the end we don't want the realism of the hero chickening out, or the bad guys prevailing and continuing to create pain, misery and hopelessness. In the end, we want the wish fulfillment fantasy that the good will prevail and the nightmare will end.

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