Writing Books with Happy Endings

A bittersweet ending, an open ending, a dramatic finale: while it might evade us for a while, as writers we all dream of reaching ‘The End.’ We know how we want our readers to feel when they turn those final few pages—usually joy, pleasure, satisfaction, and happiness to have spent precious time with our story. Writing a happy ending is a wonderful way to ensure your readers leave your novel buzzing from experiencing the world through your characters’ eyes.

There are, of course, challenges to writing a satisfying, realistic, and suitable happy ending to your story. But these challenges are easily overcome, as the bestselling author of happy endings, Libby Page, demonstrates in this article for The Novelry.

Libby Page is the Sunday Times bestselling author of five novels and a leading voice of feel-good fiction. Her debut novel The Lido (published in over 23 territories worldwide, and in the U.S.A. as Mornings with Rosemary) was a defining example of the term Up Lit when it was coined the year of its publication. Libby’s novels explore the joys and struggles of community, love, and friendship, offering her characters happy endings in ways they often did not expect. Named a Guardian New Face of Fiction, Libby coaches romance, Up Lit, and women’s fiction at The Novelry.

In this article, Libby defends the happy ending and offers writers a guide to writing happy endings across the genres of romance, Up Lit, women’s fiction, and literary fiction, all the way through to fantasy and children’s fiction. Libby offers solutions to the common challenges that arise with writing happy endings and ultimately reminds us that happiness comes in many forms, because happiness means different things to each and every one of us. Now, we hand over to Libby.

Writing Up Lit and happy endings

As an author of Up Lit, happy endings are my domain. It’s in the name: Up Lit is an abbreviation of Uplifting Literature and refers to feel-good novels with themes of friendship and community at their heart. Part of what makes the genre is the fact that readers expect to feel uplifted, with the characters finding meaning, friendship, and perhaps love along the way. My novels are also commonly shelved under romance, another genre that trades in happy endings.

With the rise in popularity of genres like romance and romantasy, it’s clear that readers are looking for books with happy endings perhaps now more than ever. In a world that can feel unpredictable and, at times, overwhelming, there’s something very special about the comfort of reading books with happy endings.

Why I’m proud to write books with happy endings

As you write your novel, it’s worth thinking about how you want to make your reader feel. When they turn the final page of your novel, what emotion do you want to leave them with? Many different feelings and reactions could be sparked at the end of a book: shock, a sense of injustice, contemplation, joy, sadness...

I want to leave my readers feeling happy. Perhaps with a tear in their eye, too, because there is a place for the bittersweet within a happy ending. But ultimately, I want my readers to feel uplifted as well as moved. To have a smile on their face and a warm feeling in their chest. Maybe to feel as though they’ve just been given a hug by a friend or had their hand squeezed by a stranger.

My book The Vintage Shop was described by The Times as ‘hot-buttered-toast-and-tea feelgood fiction,’ and I don’t think I’ve ever been quite as proud of a review. Life can be hard. Don’t we all sometimes crave the comfort of hot buttered toast and warm tea? To offer that in book form to a reader is something I don’t take lightly. I consider it a privilege, and it’s a thought that motivates me to want to keep writing books with happy endings.

Some of the proudest moments in my writing career have come from receiving messages from readers telling me that my books have helped them through grief or illness, or that they gifted one of my books to a friend who was having a terrible time and needed something happy to read. I find it deeply moving to think of my books reaching someone at a low point in their life and offering a glimmer of hope and happiness.

During difficult moments in my own life, I have found great solace in books. When times are tough, nothing hits the spot for me quite like a book with a happy ending: romantic comedies, Up Lit, feel-good women’s fiction, cozy fantasy, and middle-grade novels in particular.

I love this line in Lindsey Kelk’s novel Love Story, which celebrates the importance of romance novels: ‘That’s why I love romance novels. When I read a really good one, I see how the world could be.’

That’s exactly how I feel about reading books with happy endings, but also about writing them. As writers, we have the power to construct new worlds, to write the manifesto for a better way, and to give characters the endings they truly deserve but might not always get in real life. If you have the power to choose every time you sit down with your manuscript, why not choose happiness?

How to write books with happy endings

There are so many wonderful things about writing books with happy endings. But writing an ending that leaves readers feeling uplifted and hopeful can be more complicated than you might think.

A happy ending means something different depending on the genre of your novel. Readers in different genres have different expectations. Here’s how you might tackle writing a happy ending based on your genre.

Happy endings in romance

In romance, there are two types of happy ending: the Happily Ever After (HEA) and the Happy For Now (HFN).

Happily Ever After (HEA) is the most common type of happy ending in a romance. For most romance readers, a happily ever after is an expectation of the genre. It might even be the reason they chose to read a romance: for the satisfaction and feel-good factor of a happily ever after.

Happily Ever After means seeing the two characters you’ve been rooting for ending up together. That ‘together’ can take many forms: the book might end with a kiss (Laura Wood, Under Your Spell ), a declaration of love (Sally Thorne, The Hating Game), sex (Ashley Poston, The Seven Year Slip), a marriage proposal (Emily Henry, Beach Read  U.S. edition—interesting fact: the proposal doesn’t feature in the U.K. edition of the book), or a wedding (Annabel Monaghan, Nora Goes Off Script; Abbi Jimenez, Yours Truly).

A common technique in romance novels is to feature an epilogue set in the future that cements the sense of a happy ending by showing that the characters are still together—perhaps happily married and with a family of their own, like in Hook, Line, and Sinker  by Tessa Bailey, which revisits the characters ten years in the future.

A Christmas tree twinkled in the windows. And when her husband walked into view with one of their daughters slung casually over his brawny shoulder, a laugh filled with yearning and love and gratitude puffed out of her in the quiet car. They’d more than made it work, hadn’t they? They’d made a life happier and filled with more joy than either of them could have expected.
—Tessa Bailey, Hook, Line, and Sinker

For me, there is an important second layer to a HEA in romance: as well as seeing the two characters end up happily together, the main character should also find happiness beyond the relationship. Perhaps they have gone on a journey of self-growth, resolved a conflict in a friendship or family relationship, found a new sense of fulfillment in their career, or moved through a period of grief or isolation. Maybe they have discovered a newfound family or sense of community. In Happy Place by Emily Henry, for example, the ending sees the main character Harriet in love but also having reconciled with her friends, gaining a better understanding of her family, and having found a sense of contentment and purpose through a new career in making pottery.

What personal journey can you take your character on outside of their romance? That can be the key to making your ending happy on a deeper level.

Happy For Now (HFN) is a more complicated version of a happy ending. It leaves the characters in a moment of happiness, but with some questions or uncertainty about the future. Even though in an HFN the reader might be left feeling unsure whether the characters will really end up together forever, there is still an overall sense of happiness. It should still feel uplifting.

We were an author of love stories and an editor of romances, weaving a story about a boy who was once a little ghostly and a girl who lived with ghosts. And maybe, if we were lucky, we’d find a happily ever after, too.
—Ashley Poston, The Dead Romantics

I had no idea what I was doing, no clue if we’d find our way to a happily ever after. This was the beginning of a new chapter, a fresh page that hadn’t been written yet.
—Lindsey Kelk, Love Story

Both these endings feel romantic and uplifting, but they also acknowledge the complexity of life and that not everything can be predicted. Perhaps less traditionally romantic than a Happily Ever After, but if you want an ending that is happy but more nuanced, then a Happy For Now might work for your novel.

Happy endings in Up Lit

Up Lit novels typically see a character starting off in an isolated place in their life and going on a journey in which they meet a group of unlikely new friends and find community—and themselves—along the way. A happy ending in Up Lit will typically see the main character surrounded by friendship and love (maybe, but not necessarily, romantic). Importantly, they will also have gone on a journey of self-growth and made some important realizations about life and themselves.

The ending doesn’t have to be devoid of sadness in order to still feel, ultimately, like a happy one. In my book The Lido, there is a death at the end of the book, but I would still describe it as a happy ending. An older character dies, but it is portrayed as the natural order of things and I emphasize the character’s legacy; the fact that while she may be gone, her memory and impact live on.

When I wrote the book, which explores the unlikely friendship between 86-year-old Rosemary and 26-year-old Kate as they fight to save their beloved local pool, I had two alternate endings in my mind: one in which they save the lido but Rosemary dies, or another in which Rosemary lives but the lido closes. I decided in the end that the latter would actually be the sadder of the two, and therefore not appropriate for the genre. It would imply that the efforts of the characters in the novels had been in vain and would show a big corporation winning over community action. To me, that felt bleak—a feeling that has no real place in Up Lit. Bittersweet, yes. Bleak, no.

In the version I went for, the characters manage to save their valued community space and along the way they find friendship and belonging. Although the ending is tinged with sadness, the overall message is a positive, uplifting one.

Showing the main character finding community and learning to live in a whole-hearted way is key to a happy ending in Up Lit.

He’d been living in the shadows for so long, and holding on so tightly to the past, that he’d let the present pass him by. But that was then, and this was now, and he was finally ready to embrace the future and make the most of every minute he had left.
—Mike Gayle, All the Lonely People

In All the Lonely People by Mike Gayle, we see Hubert Bird move through grief and learn to live again, a happy ending which is typical of the genre.

A happy ending in Up Lit can be overt—ending in a moment of celebration, perhaps—or it can be a quieter type of happiness, like in Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. This novel ends quietly but with a sense of the main character having been changed for the better, finding herself connected to others where she was once isolated.

‘Bye then, Raymond,’ I said.

He pulled me in for a hug and held me for a moment, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. I felt the warm bulk of him, soft but strong. When we broke apart, I kissed his cheek, his bristles all soft and ticklish.

‘See you soon, Eleanor Oliphant,’ he said.
—Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

At the end of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, we see the main character open up about the trauma of her past and find strength in her story (‘In the end, what matters is this: I survived’ ) and experience what seems like an everyday moment—sharing a hug with a friend—but which shows huge change compared to where Eleanor was at the start of the book. The quiet hope of the moment implies a life that will now feature friendship instead of her previous life of isolation. Not all happy endings have to be euphoric; there is something very fitting for this story and for Eleanor’s character journey to end with a moment of quiet hope and contentment.  

Happy endings in crime

When you think of books with happy endings, you might not necessarily think of crime fiction, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t scope to leave your reader with a version of a happy ending fitting for the genre.

‘For me, when I’m writing crime, a “happy ending” is less about happiness in the conventional sense, and more about the restoration of order,’ says author and writing coach at The Novelry Clare Mackintosh. ‘Has justice been served? Is everyone safe?’

If you address these questions in your novel, tying up the story’s loose threads and achieving a sense of justice for the characters, then you can still leave your reader with an ending that feels ultimately positive.  

Emylia Hall, cozy crime author and writing coach at The Novelry, says: ‘A happy ending in a cozy crime novel means resolution, with the case cracked, the promise of justice to come—and the return of peace.’

Readers expect to see the criminal caught and questions answered. That, in its own way, is a type of happy ending.

With my series, The Shell House Detectives, hope is also important. The feeling that, despite whatever crimes have been committed this time, life is a little bit better for those still standing. The triumph of optimism. That’s not to say it’s saccharine overload, because I also enjoy the bittersweet. If you take death seriously—and I hope my novels do—it’s not a case of pure glee at the novel’s end. Moments of stillness and reflection are also important, perhaps even a touch of melancholy. I want an ending to deliver on all the emotions. Life and death, joy and sadness, are inextricably mixed. You can’t have one without the other, and I want my endings to reflect that. So, happiness... But only until the next time.
—Emylia Hall

Happy endings in women’s fiction and literary fiction

In women’s fiction and literary fiction, a happy ending might be less explicit than a happy ending in romance or Up Lit, but there is still space to leave the reader with a feeling of positivity.

‘For me, a happy ending has hope,’ says author and writing coach Gina Sorell. ‘Things may not be all wrapped up with a bow, but ideally, my readers are left with a sense of hope that things will work out for the characters. It may not be in the way that the characters originally expected but it could be even better than they envisioned. I like to leave my characters at the start of this new unwritten chapter for their lives and let the reader imagine how it plays out off the page.’

At the end of my debut novel, Mothers and Other Strangers, my main character, Elsie, learns what her estranged mother was running from and why, from the aunt she never knew she had. Learning the truth helps her understand her mother better and why their relationship was so fraught. The truth doesn’t bring her mother back, but it gives her some sense of closure and forgiveness. She mourns all that could have been but is relieved of the hurt she carried all those years. She has lost her mother but has gained a welcoming family member she never knew she had, giving her the roots she craved and the chance to belong that she was always searching for.
—Gina Sorell

An ending can be complex and contain sadness while still feeling ultimately happy by answering questions posed in the novel and showing the main character moving forward with their life in an ultimately positive way.

Happy endings in Young Adult fiction

If you’re writing Young Adult fiction, it’s especially important that your ending shows the main character having taken control of their own story for it to feel like a happy one for your readers.

Alice Kuipers, YA author and coach at The Novelry, explains:

Agency is always important in a novel, but even more so for young readers who want to figure out who they are going to be and how. They want to see their main character have an impact on the story and the ending. I think we also want at least a hint about what this main character is like now they’ve become more adult because of the events of the book.
—Alice Kuipers

As in other genres like crime and literary fiction, an ending in YA can contain plenty of darkness but still feel ultimately hopeful. For example, in The Hunger Games, the ending remains within the dark world created by Suzanne Collins but still gives a sense of hope and shows how Katniss is changed by the events of the novel and ready for the next stage in her story.

Happy endings in middle-grade fiction

‘In middle grade, we generally have a happy ending, but often it is bittersweet,’ says author and The Novelry writing coach Melanie Conklin.

The characters will get what they need, but not what they want. There are, after all, many different ways to get a happy ending. For example, a character who longs to return to a place may not get to return, but they may find a new sense of home where they are now. Another character may lose a best friend, but gain a new friendship group, like what happens in my latest book, Crushed. Often, your hero won’t get a financial windfall they were hoping for, but they will discover richness in their lives that overcomes the challenge in a new and unexpected way.
—Melanie Conklin

Like with other genres, it’s important that your happy ending in middle-grade novels feels specific to your story and shows the character’s growth. Bittersweet endings especially resonate with young readers because they are at a formative juncture in their lives. They are wrestling with the realities of the world intersecting with their dreams. We always leave them with the hope that they can reach their dreams eventually, but allowing a little realness to seep into the story also instills faith in the young reader that you respect their true lived experiences and understand how challenging it is to be a young person finding their way.

Happy endings in fantasy

In cozy fantasy, a happy ending might be similar to a happy ending in Up Lit, with the main character finding friendship, community, and a sense of belonging. But it’s likely there will also be some positive conclusion to do with the magical world at large, too.

For example, in TJ Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea, the book ends with the main character Linus having found love, family, and a sense of belonging. The stakes that were raised at the start of the book—whether the home for this particular group of young magical beings will remain open—are addressed, with the home being saved. But the end of the novel also sees the characters coming together to protect magic and magical beings more generally in the face of prejudice. Plans are underway to welcome more children into the home and to do what it takes to improve the lives of young magical beings everywhere. There’s a sense of resolution on a personal level, but also a wider one.

Helen looked relieved. ‘There’s more, you know. So many more.’

‘We know,’ Linus said. ‘And while we may not be able to help them all, we’ll do as much as we can for all those put in our path.’
—TJ Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea

A happy ending in epic fantasy typically sees the hero having completed their journey and the world restored to order. If the main character set out on a particular quest, they will have achieved their goal, or perhaps achieved something even greater than they could have imagined. Along the way, they will have been challenged and forced to change, and a happy ending means one in which we see that growth and feel they are returning from their journey a different person to the person who set out at the start of the book.

If the book has included battles and war, then a happy ending would see the return of peace, and perhaps the character returning to the cherished home they fought to protect in the book, like in The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien.

At last the three companions turned away, and never again looking back they rode slowly homewards; and they spoke no word to one another until they came back to the Shire, but each had great comfort in his friends on the long grey road.

At last they rode over the downs and took the East Road, and then Merry and Pippin rode on to Buckland; and already they were singing again as they went. But Sam turned to Bywater, and so came back up the Hill, as day was ending once more. And he went on, and there was yellow light, and fire within; and the evening meal was ready, and he was expected. And Rose drew him in, and set him in his chair, and put little Elanor on his lap.

He drew a breath. ‘Well, I’m back,’ he said.
—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

In this ending, we get a sense of the friendships that were formed along the way and a scene of everyday peace—the comforts of home—making an ending that feels uplifting, especially when those simple comforts were so hard-won.

Challenges of writing books with happy endings (and how to overcome them)

One of the difficulties of writing books with happy endings is striking the balance between keeping your reader guessing and turning those pages with giving them an ending that feels deeply satisfying and ‘right.’ If an ending feels too neat it might seem predictable. But if it is too unexpected then it might not connect with readers or may leave them feeling disappointed that they didn’t get the ending they were hoping for.

A way to overcome this is to make sure your novel contains plenty of conflict, right up to the end. In my own genres of Up Lit and romance, I always think about including an ‘all is lost’ moment toward the end of the novel where the reader feels as though things can’t possibly come together. It might be an argument or misunderstanding between the love interests, or in the case of my book The Lido, it was the moment when it seems that the lido really will be closed for good. Put obstacles in the way of your characters reaching their happy ending so that when they ultimately arrive there, it feels hard-earned and therefore even more uplifting—and maybe even surprising.

Make sure that your happy ending is deeply rooted in your specific characters and their specific versions of happiness. This is where knowing your characters on a deep level becomes so important. For an ending to feel unique to your story, and therefore moving and not too predictable, it should feel like the perfect happy ending for your characters and no one else. It should tap into their definition of happiness and feel rooted in their emotional scars and backstory.

For example, in the Up Lit novel Frank and Red by Matt Coyne, the main character, Frank, starts the book bitter and isolated, shutting himself off from everyone around him. At the end, the fence dividing his garden from the garden of his young neighbor and unlikely new friend, Red, falls down. Frank pretends to grumble but is, in fact, accepting in a way that he never would have been at the start of the book. Throughout the novel, the fence is used as a metaphor for the way Frank shuts himself off from others and from life itself, so it feels very fitting to this specific story to end the novel with it coming down. The novel also sees Frank getting back to writing for the first time in years, turning back to something that used to bring him joy but that he turned away from for a long time due to grief. Seeing him reconnect with something he used to love gives the reader a happy ending that is true to him and his story. It isn’t a loud celebration, but instead the quiet tapping of keys on a typewriter that is the most fitting happy ending for Frank and this novel.

So, if you want to write a book with a happy ending, remember that happiness comes in many forms. It can be bittersweet, but still hopeful and ultimately uplifting. It should feel like the version of happiness that is right for your genre and, importantly, your characters, because happiness means different things to different people and in different contexts. But at its heart, a happy ending includes the triumph of good over evil, a character who is changed for the better, and a sense of hope for the next chapter.

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