I need Happily Ever Afters in my stories.

It’s my biggest failure as an English major, I admit, this dreadful need for a commercial sweet ending, but who cares? I’ve been rewriting the ends to literary stories for years now, at least in my mind.

Romeo & Juliet is a definite beef of mine, especially since it’s proof of why teenagers should wait until they’re 25 before they’re allowed to date. (Idiots.) Admittedly, my interpretation of the story when I was a teenager was actually more romantic-minded, back when I thought there is only one soul-mate, one true love for any one person. Back then, I rewrote the ending for a school project, thus alerting Ms. Yount even then of my intent to write trashy novels.

I’ve been rewriting endings ever since really.

Anyone see the movie Sommersby? Richard Gere and Jodie Foster fall in love in this post-Civil War era flick. I watched it one Christmas Eve, totally a lamb led to slaughter as I bonded with this couple, only to watch Richard hanged at the end. Hanged. I leaped out of my chair, screaming at the television—which went over well in a household that was asleep at 1 a.m.

Shakespeare in Love. Another wonderful flick (one I actually own)—and our couple is cruelly separated at the end, and she has to go off and live with Colin Firth. Oh, the pitiless injustice of it all! (In all fairness, he’s not nearly as dashing or charming as he was as Darcy, but it is Colin Firth after all.)

Titanic. *pauses for the obvious jokes that will abound here* That rat bastard of a fiancée makes it, but poor Jack drowns for his sweet Rose. Mike was completely inconsolable for weeks!

Over the summer, a supposed comedy called The Breakup had an ending where the couple didn’t end up together. It is possibly the only non-together ending where I wouldn’t rewrite it to have them get together. These two were so wholly unlikeable, they didn’t deserve a happy ending. (I still want my $8 back.)

Well, there is a point to this. I’m not the only one who likes to rewrite endings to unhappily ended romances and give the sigh we were all waiting to exhale. Over the weekend, I read an erotica novel by Colette Gale called Unmasqued, which tells a new version of The Phantom of the Opera. Well, well-done. Highly recommend, and I got to thinking about beloved stories in which I wished the ending had been a bit different. And it got me to thinking of story ideas in which I could rewrite the ending to…oh, The Flying Dutchman. Or maybe a modern day Romeo & Juliet, fifteen years after the supposed suicide maybe.

Maybe that’s how I’ll make the world a better place—one HEA at a time. Just call me…SuperWriter.

What stories have you wished for a different ending? How would you have made it different?