Any discussion of cozy fantasy—the cuddliest and least swordy of all fantasy subgenres with the highest number of bakeries per capita—invariably turns to whether a given book is, in fact, cozy. Or… too cozy? Not cozy enough? Does The Goblin Emperor count?
It’s a discussion that’s come up over the last few months in my town’s Sci Fi Book Club, as we’ve been reading and discussing Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers series.
The books are not cozy fantasy, but cozy sci-fi, full of found families on spaceships, interspecies cooperation, and lovable tinkers with cyberpunk tattoos.
In short, we all love them.
We’ve also spent a lot of time discussing which book is the coziest, and why. Did Book Three have too much death and human-body composting? Or is it okay because it’s about processing trauma and the cycle of life? And how much do cozy beverages and friendly AIs offset said trauma?
(Or, in the case of fantasy, how much do cozy beverages, cute magical creatures, and magic revolving around plants or tea offset said trauma?)
For the record, I don’t think there’s a right answer.
But there’s another factor that isn’t talked about as much: structure.
Most books end chapters and scenes with something to keep the tension going: new information, an uneasy question, a cliffhanger, an evil twin. Mr. Willoughby rather coldly asking after Marianne Dashwood’s mother when everyone thought they were practically engaged, so we know he must be some kind of scoundrel.
But cozy books do something different: instead of unease or deepening tension, cozy scenes often end on a note of hope. They seem to say, “This could be promising.”
This looks like a group of potential new friends walking to a restaurant. The curl of steam from a cup of tea—finally made correctly. Squirming under the covers and gazing up at the rafters that finally feel like home.
It’s not that they never use the other types of endings, but the balance is different, and it gives the book a different emotional feel.
In my own work, I have plenty of gentle elements. There’s a bakery, even if the main character doesn’t especially want to be there. I might not have any cute magical creatures or cozy magic, but there’s friendship and humor, conversations over coffee.
However, I use cozy scene endings very, very sparingly.
Even in low-stakes scenes, I prefer to rip off a raw edge, to leave something unanswered, something uneasy. They’re traditional scene endings, even if they’re not going to secret-evil-twins-and-literal-cliffhanger extremes.
And the stakes are rising the deeper we move into the series.
For some people, the Stars Fall Out Books might be cozy; for others, not so much.
Cozy is as much a feeling as it is a list of traits. That makes it hugely subjective.
But subjective doesn’t mean random, and cozy scene endings can tip the balance, warming up a story like a bakery’s ambient heat. As long as conflict still exists somewhere, as long as the characters act and feel, cozy scene endings create a safe world, like wrapping in a blanket on an autumn afternoon.
As a genre signal, scene endings can fly under the radar, but because they can sour a sweet scene or sweeten a sour one, they’re a powerful part of the story experience.