What was your least favorite ending?

[TheDeepThinker]

Writing endings can be hard, but they are a necessary part of every story. If we hook readers on the journey, it's on us to guide them to the destination, not leave them stranded in the middle of nowhere without any idea where they are. Out of all the stories you've ever read on Literotica, which one had your least favorite ending, and why? The purpose of this thread is to give feedback that could help writers craft better endings, not to complain about others' hard work.

My pick would have to be A Mistake That Cost Me Dearly. Besides being one of the few noncon stories that might arguably be disturbing, it gave no peace whatsoever. Kristen refusing to have Kurt's child felt unnecessarily cruel after all they'd been through. The final sentence has her masturbating to the man who raped her and doesn't show Kurt's reaction. The reason I hated this ending is because it doesn't resolve anything. If the damage to Kurt and Kristen's marriage was too great, indicate that's where it's headed. If their marriage is going to survive, have Kristen forgive him and end with her having his child. If you don't want to guide readers directly to the North Pole, that's fine, but at least give some indication of which direction the characters are facing.

That's my least favorite ending and what I think could fix it. Agree? Disagree? Have a different ending that left you unsatisfied?

 

[JaxonHill]

I always want to blow things up at the end.

It took a lot of willpower to avoid having my MMC not kill his mother at the end of my Halloween contest submission.

I was surprised and slightly horrified that the thought came into my head. Normally its more of a desire to do a zeppelin explosion style ending. I think this was the first time I actually had murder come into the frame of thinking.

But I always end up writing happy-ish endings. They seem lame, but I guess I don't want to risk horrifying my readers mid orgasm.

I guess I'm empathizing with you. Not sure I have an answer.

 

[AchtungNight]

I’m not going to disparage other writers’ endings, but my own stories’ most disappointing ones are for X-Men Additional Aftermath and Hollywood Nights. They fit the story, but they are an unresolved cliffhanger and an anticlimax respectively. At least imo they both leave the reader wanting more.

 

[NoTalentHack]

Almost certainly Another Love by RichardGerald. I know some people might dislike the ending to February Sucks by GeorgeAnderson more, given how many people have rewritten it, but first, I've already written my epilogue to it and analyzed the shit out of the story in doing so; I've purged that demon. And second, even without doing that, I could kind of squint at the ending to FS and go, "yeah, okay, I can see how the MMC would get there, even if I think it's a terrible choice."

But Another Love? LOL Not just no, but fuck no. Another Love absolutely pissed me off.

My memories are hazy. I should reread it, because it's well written, even if I hated the ending.

That said, a TL;DR: MMC's wife carries on decades-long affair with another man, an artist, with the full knowledge of that man's wife, who indulges his "appetites," even if she doesn't entirely appreciate it. This affair includes: having him live in the MMC's home while the husband is off for military service; traveling to Quebec with her young children to live at the home of the affair partner and his wife (who she also sleeps with) to celebrate Christmas while the husband is serving in the gulf; telling her children to keep it secret from Daddy and causing a rift between the oldest child and the father; and I'm sure other horrible shit I don't remember.

The husband discovers the affair when a painting shows up on his doorstep, one of his naked, well-fucked wife from when they were much younger. The recently-deceased artist's wife is shocked to find out that that the MMC's wife never told him about the affair. MMC's wife shows no real remorse (other than, "I'm sorry that this hurts your feelings, but our marriage wouldn't have survived otherwise") when the husband finds out; everyone, from his kids to the extended family of the affair partner--who the MMC's wife invites to Christmas at their home!--push him to accept and move on, even as they call him a cuckold. IIRC, the affair is also indirectly partially responsible for the husband, near the end of the story, losing control of his life's work, along with his team that was working on it. The AP and his wife were communists with ties to radical Quebecois separatists, I believe, and it was a government-funded project.

Ultimately, the story ends with the man accepting his fate as the two women undress him to "make it up" to him and the engine is flown on its maiden voyage. Oh, this is after AP's and the MMC's wife prepare a gallery showing of the artist's work, the centerpiece of which will be the portrait of the wife, who had, of course, just had sex with the artist when the picture was painted. And they make him attend as people gossip around him.

Seriously, fuck that ending. It's clear that RG was drawing parallels to the military service and then the aircraft engine project being "the other woman," but he flubbed it spectacularly.

Funnily enough, as much heat as GeorgeAnderson gets for February Sucks, he also has his highest scoring story in Another Love: Lost, where he tells an alternate version of the final third of the story. It's not a full-on burn, but it is a pretty nuanced rejection of... basically all the bullshit being hurled in the original story. That's probably why there are only a handful of reaction stories to it; he essentially dropped the mic on it with the definitive "here's how it should have ended" take.