Reader/writer Contract . . . Resolution

[sartorias]

Pretty much what it says up there.

What are the elements of a good resolution for you? Does it depend on genre, or are there some expectations beyond genre, that you expect of any novel?

Comments

[whswhs]

I'm not sure how my sense of acceptable resolution could be affected by genre. I'm interested in genre and indeed happy to make fussy distinctions about it, but at that level it seems to me that story is story. If the tension created by the initial situation is not relaxed before the dénouement, I'm going to be unsatisfied.

[sartorias]

Yeah, I feel that way too, though I find that there are some distinctions relevant to genre that do influence my expectations. For example, when I pick up a romance, my expectation is of a happily ever after resolution. It can be the most wrenching and powerfully written tragic resolution ever, and I'll hurl the book into the recycle bin and never touch that author again. But that same ending in another book where my expectations were not set up for that, and I'll not feel rooked.

[marycatelli]

That's because the tension type affects the genre too.

[whswhs]

I'm not sure I understand how that's a response to my comment. Was it meant to be a reply to sartorias?

[rysmiel]

I can theoretically see that shape of expectations of acceptable resolution varying for me between, say, the type of thriller that has "we contain the scary new thing and prevent it from disrupting the world order" as a happy ending, and the kind of SF that has "the new thing gets out there and we explore all the interesting things it does to the world" as part of the satisfying resolution.

I'm not generally overly fond of the first of those, but can enjoy one that's well done on enough other axes.