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happy endings?

rae121452 said:
i just got another message about always having happy endings on my stories. doesn't it seem a bit counter intuitive to try to write an arousing story and then end it on a down note?
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No, it doesn't.

It seems to me that readers enjoy a feeling of completion at the end of a story and a happy ending is one way to give it to them. Tragic endings are no less complete and sometimes they're more fulfilling for the reader. There are endings that are happy for some readers and tragic for others, and it still works because either way you see it there is a measure of emotional gratification.

If you're really writing porn then it doesn't make much difference. End with an orgasm and it's all good.
 
NotWise said:
End with an orgasm and it's all good.
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The orgasms can come before the resolution of the story does. In writing erotica/porn, I think of writing a story as I would for the mainstream, but just staying in the trysting place when sex scenes come up rather than floating out the door and saying they happened but let's look over here. The climax of the story can be something other than a sex scene climax even though the story includes sex scene climaxes. I often start the story with them. Nothing establishes relationships between story characters better/quicker than showing who's on top and who is controlling what.
 
It's easy.

How to write an ending -- THE END.

How to write a sweet ending -- THE END :rose:

How to write a hanging ending -- THE END?

How to write a continuation -- NEXT:

Other options:

* Chop off in mid-sentence.
* Circle around and start over.
* Multiple-choice endings.
* Total non-sequitur.

Some moving tales are more wistful than happy or sad. More emotions exist.
 
KeithD said:
I've done that. You can't express the end much more definitively than that.
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Or blow everyone up. It works great to end the story but for some reason it pissed a lot of people off. That is experience talking.
 
TxRad said:
Or blow everyone up. It works great to end the story but for some reason it pissed a lot of people off. That is experience talking.
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I think I've noted before, in a mainstream novel I blew a woman up in a terrorist/spy situation. I'd carried her through two books in the series and my mother had become attached to her. She told me she was pissed that I blew the character up, so I had to figure out how she wasn't blown up and bring her back in the next book (there were six books in the series--espionage and international crime in the Middle East). At the end of the next book, I killed her again. :)D)

This folds into the oft noted phenomena in Literotica stories that you can clear the decks--kill everyone by the last reel and paint the resolving moral of the story in skyscraper letters--and you'll still have readers asking you for more of the story.
 
KeithD said:
This folds into the oft noted phenomena in Literotica stories that you can clear the decks--kill everyone by the last reel and paint the resolving moral of the story in skyscraper letters--and you'll still have readers asking you for more of the story.
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Then it's time for a prequel or spinoff or alt.universe or dream or reincarnation or hand-waving. Or ignore them.

I've not yet slaughtered a cast of players. It would surely end a Valentine tale.
 
KeithD said:
so I had to figure out how she wasn't blown up and bring her back
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Groggy and half asleep, Pam hears water running in the bathroom. Looking in, she sees Bobby in the shower and realizes 'it was only a dream?'
 
Hypoxia said:
How to write an ending -- THE END.

How to write a sweet ending -- THE END :rose:

How to write a hanging ending -- THE END?

How to write a continuation -- NEXT:

Other options:

* Chop off in mid-sentence.
* Circle around and start over.
* Multiple-choice endings.
* Total non-sequitur.

Some moving tales are more wistful than happy or sad. More emotions exist.
Click to expand...

I wrote one in 1st POV and killed off the teller of the story at the end. Very Hitchcockien (sp). Received a lot of amazed reader comments on that aspect of the story.
 
Zeb_Carter said:
I wrote one in 1st POV and killed off the teller of the story at the end. Very Hitchcockien (sp). Received a lot of amazed reader comments on that aspect of the story.
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1st person present tense (1P-PT) should signal doom. "I see the white puff of smoke from the rifle / I feel the bullet go deep in my chest." Past tense is told from the future. The El Paso narrator has no future. I may eventually write a 1P-PT tale of screwing as the plane is about to crash. When I feel motivated.
 
Hypoxia said:
1st person present tense (1P-PT) should signal doom. "I see the white puff of smoke from the rifle / I feel the bullet go deep in my chest." Past tense is told from the future. The El Paso narrator has no future. I may eventually write a 1P-PT tale of screwing as the plane is about to crash. When I feel motivated.
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No, I wrote it in 1 person past tense. That's what upset some readers. I thought it was very funny.

It's called Just Another Day.
 
jaF0 said:
Groggy and half asleep, Pam hears water running in the bathroom. Looking in, she sees Bobby in the shower and realizes 'it was only a dream?'
Click to expand...

No, she got untied and out of the chair in the room behind the copperware store in the Beirut souk and away before the bomb went off. Then she was so afraid of being caught again, she took on a new identity when she returned to Cyprus.
 
Hypoxia said:
1st person present tense (1P-PT) should signal doom. "I see the white puff of smoke from the rifle / I feel the bullet go deep in my chest." Past tense is told from the future. The El Paso narrator has no future. I may eventually write a 1P-PT tale of screwing as the plane is about to crash. When I feel motivated.
Click to expand...

Yep, if you are going to off the protagonist/narrator in the end, the piece has to be in the present tense and it's best to go out in midsentence or midthought.
 
KeithD said:
Yep, if you are going to off the protagonist/narrator in the end, the piece has to be in the present tense and it's best to go out in midsentence or midthought.
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Spoiler alert

Or you can use the Sunset Boulevard strategy and put it at the beginning, and then have the whole thing as a flashback.

Actually, the flashback goes beyond the opening and the last few minutes of the movie seem to be "new events." Note that the late Joe Gillis is still narrating:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMTT0LW0M_Y
 
Which is sort of the point with fiction. You can do it so many different ways, so reject every "you do it this way" guidance that some your way.
 
Hypoxia said:
1st person present tense (1P-PT) should signal doom. "I see the white puff of smoke from the rifle / I feel the bullet go deep in my chest." Past tense is told from the future. The El Paso narrator has no future. I may eventually write a 1P-PT tale of screwing as the plane is about to crash. When I feel motivated.
Click to expand...

"I see a figure in my rifle sight
Who does not know that he's there
And as I hesitate to take his life
The ground explodes

My blood it flows
My heart is racing
Times escaping
As I feel it slowly scraping by"

Another Way You Can Die -- Trans Siberian Orchestra, Night Castle.
 
gunhilltrain said:
Or you can use the Sunset Boulevard strategy and put it at the beginning, and then have the whole thing as a flashback.
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Besides circle-around-and-restart (like Chip Delaney's DHALGREN) we have begin-at-the-end (the Sunset-Blvd model), kaleidoscopic flash-backs and -forwards, reversed sequence, and many other ways to chop, stretch, and twist time.

Try writing a reversed fuck, where a penis unfertilizes an ovum and loads testicles with warming sperm. Arousal diminishes. They kiss, dress, kiss again, and back away to the bar.

KeithD said:
Which is sort of the point with fiction. You can do it so many different ways, so reject every "you do it this way" guidance that some your way.
Click to expand...
I'll reject demands (unless paid) but consider suggestions.
 
Hypoxia said:
Try writing a reversed fuck, where a penis unfertilizes an ovum and loads testicles with warming sperm. Arousal diminishes. They kiss, dress, kiss again, and back away to the bar.
Click to expand...

How about: the Titanic rises out of the ocean and the people in the water get on board. The ship reverses past the iceberg and the hull is scraped back together. Finally it arrives in Southampton and (assuming this is the 1998 version) Jack and Rose get off and go back to wherever they came from.
 
gunhilltrain said:
How about: the Titanic rises out of the ocean and the people in the water get on board. The ship reverses past the iceberg and the hull is scraped back together. Finally it arrives in Southampton and (assuming this is the 1998 version) Jack and Rose get off and go back to wherever they came from.
Click to expand...

Kinda like playing country music backwards, you get your house back, your job back, your wife back and the beer bottle is full again. 🌹Kant.... now that’s a happy ending💋
 
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rae121452 said:
i just got another message about always having happy endings on my stories. doesn't it seem a bit counter intuitive to try to write an arousing story and then end it on a down note?

i have one series that i can't work on because i know how it ends and the ending is not happy. i don't want to give the characters trouble in their fictional lives.

is it possible to have a tragic or unhappy denouement and still write good porn?
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Oh totally possible. Here's a few ones (disclaimer - of mine) that spring to mind as examples.

I have one story where the heroine is slowly going crazy thru the story and you can see her disintegrating scene by scene.

I have another where the boyfriend dies and she's left pregnant.

There's Nocktunga Station, and that one still sends shivers down my spine at the lead female character's death but the alien sex is waaaaay hot. Weird, but hot.

The Halloween in the cemetery story where she fucks the guy and then burns him alive.

And try "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow."
 
Kantarii said:
Kinda like playing country music backwards, you get your house back, your job back, your wife back and the beer bottle is full again. 🌹Kant.... now that’s a happy ending💋
Click to expand...

Except that Rose never has that incredible life she gets from knowing Jack for three days or so. (The unintended message of the movie seems to be that the best boyfriends die long before they become disappointing.)
 
rae121452 said:
is it possible to have a tragic or unhappy denouement and still write good porn?
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I suppose it is.

Extremely hot encounter may not be destined to last, that may be a bit let down but can be perfectly understandable.

Also, happiness of the ending is pretty much depending on the viewpoint, it might be seen differently by different characters; that the protagonist is destroyed doesn't mean it isn't the best future for everyone else. Some such could possibly be made erotic on its own even.

Let's say, a long and bumpy relationship ends with a seemingly minor argument on the beach. Girl stands up, naked as she was, goes into the sea and swims away. The guy watch devastated how she climbs on board a superyaht, and is welcomed nude by the men there as the yaht take up speed. A chain of little details click together revealing it isn't random at all, she long planned her 'escape' already.

Is that ending tragic? For the pov, the guy left on the beach, sure. For the girl? We don't really know, but probably at least happy for now, and certainly exciting.
 
I mentioned 'wistful' endings. Gentle heartbreak. As LD above, but more gently, a narrator wistfully watches their current (recent) lover depart. A narrator fondly recalls a hot life together as they pour their late partner's ashes into the river. A narrator tells of finding a long-lost love who is now unobtainable. Not tragic or dramatic, just tugged heartstrings.

Write the endings you want.
 
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