Reception for Bad/Twist Endings

[lovecraft68]

I agree.

Most of the time, my endings are positive. It fits with my general erotic story philosophy: I depict the exploration of kinkiness in a positive way, most of the time. I want to show that it's liberating and empowering. But every once in a while I want to go dark, and I don't really care if some readers don't like it.

I think some people see "real" as dark.

Example, in a mom son story the father had pictures of the mother performing various sex acts with him on his computer. The son found them, became obsessed with them and sent them to himself.

When the father walks in on him masturbating to them he loses his shit, slaps him in the face and threatens to throw him out of the house.

Ironic that people reacted to it in a way that makes it seem Dad finding him doing it and saying "You're into your mom? Cool, I'll let you fuck her! We can even tag team her!" would be the natural reaction and mine was the wrong one.

Fantasy v Reality.

 

[SimonDoom]

I think some people see "real" as dark.

Example, in a mom son story the father had pictures of the mother performing various sex acts with him on his computer. The son found them, became obsessed with them and sent them to himself.

When the father walks in on him masturbating to them he loses his shit, slaps him in the face and threatens to throw him out of the house.

Ironic that people reacted to it in a way that makes it seem Dad finding him doing it and saying "You're into your mom? Cool, I'll let you fuck her! We can even tag team her!" would be the natural reaction and mine was the wrong one.

Fantasy v Reality.

You may be right, but in the case of my stories, dark isn't real, it's just crazy dark. I have three (out of 42) stories with dark endings. One involves absurd cuckoldry, one involves tentacle monsters, and the last one involves the slaughter of most of Earth's male population. It was the last story that prompted a comment that accused me of "rampant self-loathing."

 

[lovecraft68]

You may be right, but in the case of my stories, dark isn't real, it's just crazy dark. I have three (out of 42) stories with dark endings. One involves absurd cuckoldry, one involves tentacle monsters, and the last one involves the slaughter of most of Earth's male population. It was the last story that prompted a comment that accused me of "rampant self-loathing."

Anything negative towards men will get you heat. Cold male insecurity cannot handle them being anything less than "real men" even in fiction.

The self loathing resides in the people making those comments.

 

[NotWise]

My sci-fi story Time To Breathe has a tragic twist at the end. Most commenters said they didn't see it coming and a few confessed that I made them cry. That's really just the greatest feeling. To be fair, I nerfed the tragedy with an uplifting epilogue. That may have saved me from some hate.

I think there should be more stories with tragic endings. Some tragedies are just down at the end, but a lot of them use the tragic circumstances to produce an upward effect.

"The Third Ring" is an epic tragedy, but I'd call its ending affirming rather than down. "Love is Enough" has a tragic ending. I didn't even realize that until xelliebabex pointed it out to me, and I think most readers would call that end uplifting.

I've never had any feedback suggesting that those endings disappointed readers.

 

[lovecraft68]

I think there should be more stories with tragic endings. Some tragedies are just down at the end, but a lot of them use the tragic circumstances to produce an upward effect.

"The Third Ring" is an epic tragedy, but I'd call its ending affirming rather than down. "Love is Enough" has a tragic ending. I didn't even realize that until xelliebabex pointed it out to me, and I think most readers would call that end uplifting.

I've never had any feedback suggesting that those endings disappointed readers.

Sorry, wrong thread...two browsers open...

 

[LAHomedog]

Well, failed expectations are the mother of bitterness.

I think it is how you set the story up in your reader's mind. So many ways to do it, the genre, the story telling style, the description on top. We're talking highly sophisticated writing technique here to do this right. But it is doable and can be fun.

You just can't have the reader feel as if you pulled the rug out from under them.

 

[Trionyx]

If all you are looking for is a high score, go with the HEA. Sometimes the story is more important (for me, at least) so I am willing to put it out there, even without a HEA. My winter holiday story Eddie’s Christmas Gift has an abrupt twist near the end and I was warned it might not be well received. Fortunately I’ve had some kind comments and people seem to have enjoyed it so I’ll write what I want to, even if the ending isn’t what the masses (or average reader) like.

https://www.literotica.com/s/eddies-christmas-gift

 

[RetroFan]

I think some people see "real" as dark.

Example, in a mom son story the father had pictures of the mother performing various sex acts with him on his computer. The son found them, became obsessed with them and sent them to himself.

When the father walks in on him masturbating to them he loses his shit, slaps him in the face and threatens to throw him out of the house.

Ironic that people reacted to it in a way that makes it seem Dad finding him doing it and saying "You're into your mom? Cool, I'll let you fuck her! We can even tag team her!" would be the natural reaction and mine was the wrong one.

Fantasy v Reality.

Incest is a bit of an odd one. Even in incest stories with fantasy plots, the actions of the characters have to be believable enough to engage the audience, but get too real and it becomes disturbing rather than erotic or go too far out there and you lose your readers.

For example, say there is a simple enough incest story where the parents go out for the evening, leaving their twin 18-year-old son and daughter at home watching TV. The parents do not know that the twins have a secret incestuous relationship, and the brother and sister enjoy wild sex together while their parents are out.

It would be far better to have the parents come back after everything is finished and the twins are again innocently watching TV, their parents ask them what they did tonight and the brother and sister reply 'Not a lot' and the clueless parents head off to bed.

But have the parents come back early, catch them in the act, freak out and the family is destroyed then this is way too dark for the category. Conversely, if you have the parents come back early and are not horrified but delighted that their son and daughter are having sex together, saying they did the same with their own siblings and going to get the twins' cousins who live up the street so their kids can have a foursome, that's also going to lose readers as the reaction is just too out there.

 

[SimonDoom]

Conversely, if you have the parents come back early and are not horrified but delighted that their son and daughter are having sex together, saying they did the same with their own siblings and going to get the twins' cousins who live up the street so their kids can have a foursome, that's also going to lose readers as the reaction is just too out there.

Actually, I don't think you'd lose many readers at all. Incest readers, in my experience, have a very high tolerance for fantasy, and there's a big audience for zany incest. As an author, you need to do a little bit to suspend disbelief, but not much.

 

[yowser]

Incest is an odd category, all its own, and I don't pretend to understand the readership.

I've only done a couple, one with an ending that didn't sit well with some, but worked the way I wanted it to. Ultimately, as has been repeated many times here, the writer has to write their own story. Readers usually like the tale to have all the loose ends wrapped up tidy and pleasantly, but if all stories were like that, the fiction landscape would be impoverished.

One comment on 'Colrain':

Wow that ending was super sad. Realities of war for sure, but still caught me off guard. Damn.

 

[8letters]

You may be right, but in the case of my stories, dark isn't real, it's just crazy dark. I have three (out of 42) stories with dark endings. One involves absurd cuckoldry, one involves tentacle monsters, and the last one involves the slaughter of most of Earth's male population. It was the last story that prompted a comment that accused me of "rampant self-loathing."

I had a story end with the US being wiped out by its own nuclear weapons. It was suppose to be a silly, dark humor story. It's rating for its first month was around four, which is way, way below that of my other stories.

 

[Comshaw]

I'm curious about the experiences others have with feedback for stories that have bad endings or twist endings.

My experience is that I get more negative feedback than I normally do. My story "Penis Fish," for example, is erotic, if bizarre and twisted, for most of the story, until the ending, when it becomes horrific (I did put it in "Erotic Horror," so that should have tipped it off). Some readers hated the ending. I got one such comment this morning.

I had some similar kinds of comments for the other two stories I wrote with twist or negative endings.

My perception is that while Lit readers are a diverse bunch, in general, there's a strong preference for the "Happily Ever After" ending.

Has anybody here had an experience where they wrote a story with either a twist or a really negative ending but they felt like they nailed it with the readers?

I've posted four stories with a twist at the end, but none with a tragic ending. One of these days I will do a story with a tragic ending. When I do, I will probably put in a prologue to alert the reader to that fact.

The reason almost all of my stories have a hopeful (as opposed to a happy) ending is because they are colored by my personal life philosophy. I've seen and experienced more than a little death, destruction and evil in my life. But through all of it, I always, always had hope, saw a light at the end of the tunnel. Even if it was only a faint, far away glimmer, it was still there. A thing to hang on to, to strive toward. It's a matter of faith, not the religious kind, faith in the fact that if you hang on long enough, if you endure it will get better one way or the other.

Enough of that. Back to the subject at hand:
Out of the four I have posted, two twists were small in nature. One was a bit more of a surprise to the readers, weighed by the comments received. There were also some comments (and I'm sure votes) that slammed that particular story, but those had nothing to do with the surprise at the end. It was a wife sharing story with a screwed up title (the title The Basement Window read The Basement Widow) and I posted it in the Loving Wives category. Yeah, that. It still did fair (a 4.13).

One had a total surprise ending. That one was also well received, weighed as above.

I don't think surprise endings in and of themselves sours the reader on a story. However, a twist coupled with a tragedy as an ending would sour many readers. There are those who like that kind of tale, but I believe that in the most part people are hopeful and need that in a story, especially at the end.

But that's just my view of it.

Comshaw

 

[SimonDoom]

The reason almost all of my stories have a hopeful (as opposed to a happy) ending is because they are colored by my personal life philosophy. I've seen and experienced more than a little death, destruction and evil in my life. But through all of it, I always, always had hope, saw a light at the end of the tunnel. Even if it was only a faint, far away glimmer, it was still there. A thing to hang on to, to strive toward. It's a matter of faith, not the religious kind, faith in the fact that if you hang on long enough, if you endure it will get better one way or the other.



Comshaw

This is nice to hear. This is my basic life philosophy too. I call it "morbid optimism" -- acknowledging that there's lots of shit out there, but there's hope too. My erotic wrinkle on that is that I like to write about erotic activity as a way of self-fulfillment or improvement.

Most of my stories have happy endings but once in a while I like to mix it up.

 

[lovecraft68]

Actually, I don't think you'd lose many readers at all. Incest readers, in my experience, have a very high tolerance for fantasy, and there's a big audience for zany incest. As an author, you need to do a little bit to suspend disbelief, but not much.

Maybe, but maybe not.

Just because someone is a fan of incest, doesn't mean all incest. There are people who like sibs stories and don't like parent/child-even though its adult child. There are mom son fans who don't like dad/daughter you get the point

so starting a story with the example RC gives, if Mom and dad were delighted and wanted to join in...there are people who like 'full family' but more that will be "no, what the bro/sis have is special, don't mess with it."

I see this in my comments all the time if there's other family characters that aren't involved in the taboo...you get :next chapter mom should find out and join in" then someone else says "Ignore them, its best to keep it between them"

So there is a limit to how absurd you can get even in that category

My lowest received I/T stories were the full family series I tried out last year, just nowhere near the readership of any of my other 'pairings'

 

[Bramblethorn]

I'm curious about the experiences others have with feedback for stories that have bad endings or twist endings.

My experience is that I get more negative feedback than I normally do. My story "Penis Fish," for example, is erotic, if bizarre and twisted, for most of the story, until the ending, when it becomes horrific (I did put it in "Erotic Horror," so that should have tipped it off). Some readers hated the ending. I got one such comment this morning.

I had some similar kinds of comments for the other two stories I wrote with twist or negative endings.

My perception is that while Lit readers are a diverse bunch, in general, there's a strong preference for the "Happily Ever After" ending.

Has anybody here had an experience where they wrote a story with either a twist or a really negative ending but they felt like they nailed it with the readers?

I'd distinguish between "positive ending" and HEA. HEAs are generally positive, but a positive ending doesn't have to be HEA.

Take for instance Moulin Rouge, Titanic, and Rogue One, all of which boil down to: "They're gonna die. But along the way, they do something that outlives them." Done right, that kind of story leaves audiences feeling sad, but not bad.

My latest story follows roughly that structure: it's a kind-of romance where the narrator's wife develops dementia and eventually dies, but along the way they build something that's more than a snapshot of her, less than immortality. I wouldn't really consider it a happy ending, but it affirms the importance of the relationship, and I think that's why it's done quite well in Romance despite not having the usual happy ending. It briefly made it into the top 250, and even after some downvoting it's still sitting at a pretty respectable score for a one-shot.

I have a couple of horror stories that end very badly for the protagonists, and readers seemed to like them well enough, but horror has its own expectations.

Now I'm wondering about stories that go the other way: a feel-bad Happy Ever After, where the protagonist gets their HEA but at too high a price.

 

[PennameWombat]

I’ve a few ‘neutral’ endings, but one notable ‘bad’ ending. It wasn’t a twist, in that for the last quarter of the story it was clear that what happened was a definite possibility.

In Adrift in Space my two main characters were both killed, along with the mutineers and a few other innocent parties, when the satellite they were on crashed due to mutineer sabotage. One comment specifically expressed sadness at that result and blamed the appropriate parties, but didn’t upbraid me about it. It’s managed to stay in H territory. The two characters had long been in love but it had remained unconsummated for Reasons.

 

[shewantsmore]

Dont think all stories should have a happy ending,real life is not always happy ever after,,in real life you have death or divorce or separations and anger hatred,fantasies and reality are never the same, sometimes stories should have a real ending, the good guy looses to the bad guy

 

[TarnishedPenny]

I've done 'good' twists' and 'bad' twists. The good ones generally did very well in terms of ratings; the bad twist brought down whines, whinges and moans about no happy ending. I personally think the latter were wrong, but it's their call.

Ya buy the ticket, ya take the ride.

 

[rjordan]

Dont think all stories should have a happy ending,real life is not always happy ever after

I get a lot of FTDS comments (Finish the damn story). Many of my stories resolve the conflict the story was about, but fail to resolve all the conflicts that afflict the marriage. Some of them never occurred to me, but readers think they see them.

There may be other issues, even major ones, that still need work. At best, those are issues for a different story which I never have any interest in addressing.

rj

 

[SamScribble]

Dont think all stories should have a happy ending,real life is not always happy ever after,,in real life you have death or divorce or separations and anger hatred,fantasies and reality are never the same, sometimes stories should have a real ending, the good guy looses to the bad guy

So true

 

[RetroFan]

Incest is an odd category, all its own, and I don't pretend to understand the readership.

I've only done a couple, one with an ending that didn't sit well with some, but worked the way I wanted it to. Ultimately, as has been repeated many times here, the writer has to write their own story. Readers usually like the tale to have all the loose ends wrapped up tidy and pleasantly, but if all stories were like that, the fiction landscape would be impoverished.

One comment on 'Colrain':

Wow that ending was super sad. Realities of war for sure, but still caught me off guard. Damn.

Two of the oddest things I've noticed about Incest/Taboo comments:

1. Request for Pregnancy - I've had various comments against IT stories I have written wishing that female characters get pregnant, such as an aunt/nephew story, two cousins, step father and step daughter and one with a brother and sister in self quarantine. Never once have I written a story in any other category where there have been comments wanting female characters to fall pregnant.

2. Reacting to First Person Stories - Some comments about First Person IT stories have been made addressing the narrating character as 'You'. For example, in my stepfather and stepdaughter story narrated by the stepfather, one commenter said it was too long and that 'you should have made your move on the stepdaughter earlier' rather than addressing me as the author and saying that 'the stepfather should have seduced the stepdaughter earlier'. Likewise in an aunt/nephew story narrated by the aunt, the commenter said 'Too much information, we don't need your life story' rather than 'Too much information, we don't need the aunt's life story'. Again, I have written stories in first person in other categories, but in no other cases has the comment been addressed at the narrating character as 'You.'

 

[LexxRuthless]

About two years ago I posted a story called "Whoops!" in which I intentionally went for that "twist" ending. I'll never do it again. Loads of comments on that story like this one:

Wow you managed to completely ruin it right at the end. That takes some serious skill to destroy a great story in just a few sentences.

 

[oggbashan]

My winter holidays contest entry Elf and Safety ends on a sad note but seems to be liked.

 

[YDB95]

Probably the worst feedback I've ever received was for this story, because it had a sad ending in a genre where that's not expected (so I guess it's a sad ending AND a twist). To be fair, I now know a romance story by definition has a happy ending (so classics like Casablanca and Romeo and Juliet technically aren't romances - who knew?). I'm not sure how I would've classified it if I were redoing it, though.

 

[NotWise]

Probably the worst feedback I've ever received was for this story, because it had a sad ending in a genre where that's not expected (so I guess it's a sad ending AND a twist). To be fair, I now know a romance story by definition has a happy ending (so classics like Casablanca and Romeo and Juliet technically aren't romances - who knew?). I'm not sure how I would've classified it if I were redoing it, though.

There is a difference between a Romance and a Tragedy.