"Death of a Salesman", or Do You Ever Choose to Write an Erotic Tragedy?

[yowser]

An anonymous comment on Colrain:

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

 

[SavannaT]

I've done this twice.

My Aftermath story is about the marriage breaking apart, when the husband couldn't deal with the changed wife after her abduction and assault. And at the end of the story, it implies they died longing for each other.

love this kinda stuff.. ive inserted myself as the assaulted wife in my recent story, Tess Takes the Train where she’s assaulted on a train and it turns into a gangbang and its sequel Tess Takes to the Streets is basically her regressing after lots of therapy and it destroying her marriage as she falls in love with her attacker. The final chapter (for now) I’m finishing off and very much an erotic tragedy steeped in depravity.

 

[HordHolm]

My Pandaemonium story last year had a melancholy end, though there was a 'could have been worse' element to it. It clearly wasn't to everyone's taste, as the views, votes, everything about it is underwhelming. But I liked it. It's a Gay Male story: https://www.literotica.com/s/the-virgin-sharpy

I dithered between tragedy and HEA in my most recent effort, but went for HEA, purely because in a First World War story, most people would expect tragedy .

 

[LisaMayTurner]

I did Wuthering Heights with a farmer's gangbang on the windy moors in the old pub that was haunted by horny ghosts, but they all had to leave early to get the cows in for milking.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

I've had enough real unhappy endings to wanna write them.

 

[SouthernCrossfire]

I have a couple of stories with sad endings but tomorrow's "Rock and a Hard Place" (being published 9/5/25) feels somewhat tragic. A young woman falls on hard times and makes a series of choices.

If readers like the main character, there may be a sequel or two where things could change, possibly for the better. Both are partially written but we'll see if they're ever completed.

 

[iwatchus]

Life can suck enough on its own. I want my fantasy life to always have HEA.

 

[AwkwardMD]

My stories are usually about growth, and more than a few of them get there through a difficult path. Lafayette Hills and Attack Decay Sustain Release in particular are hard and sad even if they ultimately lead to better places.

 

[DeMont]

I've done this twice.

My Aftermath story is about the marriage breaking apart, when the husband couldn't deal with the changed wife after her abduction and assault. And at the end of the story, it implies they died longing for each other.

In my latest "A Band of Sisters and Brothers", I could have ended the story with a "happily ever after" with the non-monogamous couple enjoying their group of "swinger" friends. I even considered embedding a statement before the Epilogue saying: "End here for the Happily Ever After".

But it seemed incomplete, and I knew it would draw out the trolls explaining how the couple will eventually get divorced or that the husband should burn the cheating slut. So, I wrote the epilogue and showed how the couple's marriage finally ends.

I've found I don't get as many hater comments on these stories, except for the ones who apparently don't bother to READ the story.

Just "food for thought" as these stories have rated just over 3, at 3.08 and 3.11 (lower than my usual crap average at 3.6.)

Do you ever deliberately write tragedies (other than a Burn the Bitch), something where the MC has a bad ending?

@Lifestyle66,
Good morning my dear colleague. I only wrote (read: rewrote) my first story with what you might call a tragic ending but all the way through the story there were hints of personal tragedy, psychoses and the like. It didn't rate very well at all but, as I've said often enough, write YOUR story, Your way and make it YOURS - hang the trolls and haters. It did receive one very strongly positive reception comment.

In my opinion, a story needs three things, a beginning, a middle and an end (the traditional story arc) I will admit I'm not one for "Tragic" endings per se but if the story demands it, so be it. Stories, for me, have a strange way of telling themselves, in their own way and in their own time - I am just the "tool" that is used by my Muse to produce the finished article. If the "Trolls and Haters" don't like my stories it's because they have missed the entire point of the story. I can say this, with some authority, after writing for decades in multiple genres, for publication, contests and anthologies.

As I am very fond of pointing out around her, write YOUR story, YOUR way and in YOUR time regardless of the ending there will be doting followers, haters, trolls and all things in between, that's showbiz around here.
Deepest Respects,
D

 

[sirhugs]

Cliffhanger is in First Time. Does marginally ok at 4.03, 10 comments (9 positive) and 54K reads. Can't recall why I wrote something so maudlin. I do notice from the date that it was the spring before my wife left, so there was perhaps a disturbance in the Force.

something a bit different? Elysium Island Adventures was written as part of a writer's challenge where I was given 3 or 5 words (forget exactly) that I had to work into the story- an interesting challenge. It lags a bit in terms of scores (3.88) but I enjoyed writing it, and still smile when I revisit. 10 comments ( a very mixed bag), 94K reads. One of my longest stories, early in my Lit writing "career" it was good experience at at writing something more than a stroker. I still don't care if it worked or not, I like it. Chuckle every time I visit it.

 

[Duleigh]

My "fan club" tells me that all my stories are tragedies

yes, I quite often write tragic events, but do not center an entire story on these events. My series, Stormwatch is going to climax on a severe tragedy, which is rare for me. I try to have pity on my readers and reward them with something lighter to read so most of my tragic events are resolved by the completion of the story/series. My tragedies generally revolve around what I personally find tragic - the horrible treatment our injured and homeless veterans are subject to. How veteran suicide is a plague on those that served our country and the plague goes ignored, the suffering that brings to their families.

 

[Lifestyle66]

My tragedies generally revolve around what I personally find tragic - the horrible treatment our injured and homeless veterans are subject to. How veteran suicide is a plague on those that served our country and the plague goes ignored, the suffering that brings to their families.

I started writing my last story before Memorial Day, for that same reason.

But it grew and I got carried away, not publishing it until July.

Now I'm expanding and refining it, trying to give the story attention I think it deserves.

 

[nice90sguy]

I like writing black comedies, which are basically tragedies from the protags pov, but the reader is invited to laugh at the poor schmuck and say to themselves, "there but for the grace of God..."

Bittersweet stories of loss are not something I'm ready to attempt. You really need to be a very good writer to pull them off (as Bramble did with "Loss Function").

 

[NoTalentHack]

Do you ever deliberately write tragedies (other than a Burn the Bitch), something where the MC has a bad ending?

I shall answer you with an image:

 

[caleb35]

I don’t know about tragedy per se but a lot of my stories tend to be downers That’s not my goal but the themes that I’m most interested in exploring — reluctance, regret, wrong choices made for good reasons — do not lend themselves to happy endings. I often think my story scores would be higher if I did write happier (or at least more carefree) fare, but that’s not me.

 

[Areala-chan]

A few of my stories have tragedy elements in them. If I'm doing that, it's because that specific situation could, in my mind, end in no other way. There's always a reason. But I don't always write downers--readers must be kept on their toes, otherwise they'd think, "Ah, I see where this is going. Not today, Areala-chan!" and click away before I got the chance to break them into a million pieces. Sometimes a few cracks in the façade are just as good as a complete shattering.

My goal is always: if you start it, you will want to finish it. And even if you think you know where it's going, you'll have to check to make sure. This is an idiotic goal, because nothing can ever appeal to everybody. But hey, I'm a fantasist, and this is my fantasy.

 

[HelenL]

A few of my stories have tragedy elements in them. If I'm doing that, it's because that specific situation could, in my mind, end in no other way. There's always a reason. But I don't always write downers--readers must be kept on their toes, otherwise they'd think, "Ah, I see where this is going. Not today, Areala-chan!" and click away before I got the chance to break them into a million pieces. Sometimes a few cracks in the façade are just as good as a complete shattering.

My goal is always: if you start it, you will want to finish it. And even if you think you know where it's going, you'll have to check to make sure. This is an idiotic goal, because nothing can ever appeal to everybody. But hey, I'm a fantasist, and this is my fantasy.

So I've been wondering for a while: if you're writing a story with a tragic ending, do you owe your readers a warning? "Owe" isn't the right word, because clearly that's a "no," but would you do it to avoid pissing your readers off? You handle this by warning your "Dead Space: Kendra" readers that "There are no happy endings in the Dead Space universe" and @THBGato by stating that "The Parting Glass" is about heroism, and the tag line "Not all heroines get happy endings."

I'm sure that anyone who's familiar with my stories is looking for a HEA (perhaps straying into "frenemies forever" with "They Were Roommates"), but there's a story I want to write that has a downer ending that I'd really prefer not to telegraph, though there may be hints in the story. I'm thinking about a noncommittal warning like "This story isn't in the same universe, don't expect it to follow the same rules."

 

[Areala-chan]

So I've been wondering for a while: if you're writing a story with a tragic ending, do you owe your readers a warning? "Owe" isn't the right word, because clearly that's a "no," but would you do it to avoid pissing your readers off? You handle this by warning your "Dead Space: Kendra" readers that "There are no happy endings in the Dead Space universe" and @THBGato by stating that "The Parting Glass" is about heroism, and the tag line "Not all heroines get happy endings."

I'm sure that anyone who's familiar with my stories is looking for a HEA (perhaps straying into "frenemies forever" with "They Were Roommates"), but there's a story I want to write that has a downer ending that I'd really prefer not to telegraph, though there may be hints in the story. I'm thinking about a noncommittal warning like "This story isn't in the same universe, don't expect it to follow the same rules."

I only think you might owe readers a warning if there are sudden, out-of-left-field incidents that the story can't telegraph. If you're 7 Lit pages into your story and suddenly a truck blows through a red light and kills one of your characters, that's quite different from how, say @Bramblethorn handles the inevitable in AI Era: Loss Function.

I got around it in "Kendra" not only with the author's note at the beginning, but also by using the opening scene to make it clear Kendra and Sasha won't be together at the end of the story, and hinting to the reader through the logs Sasha reads that Kendra is not the person Sasha thinks she is. If somebody finishes the story and is surprised there's no HEA, then they, like Sasha, haven't been paying attention.

Sudden shocking events happen all the time in real life, and we aren't prepared for them. As long as you build your stories about how the other characters respond to those events, and you aren't doing it to be deliberately malicious to your readers, then I don't think your readers will be mad at you. On the other hand, if the only reason you inject tragedy is because it's shocking, surprising, unpredictable, and there's no way the reader will see it coming, then maybe a warning is warranted? You don't have to spoil the particulars, but if a sudden heart attack or plane crash is going to derail everything you've been building towards with no forthcoming resolution, I think it's only fair to at least plant some evidence somewhere so readers don't feel cheated.

I'd be pissed if the story I was reading had all the signs of pointing towards an HEA only for a last-second bomb explosion to kill everyone when there hadn't been even an iota of foreshadowing.

Personally, one of my favorite ways that I've seen media handle a tragic ending was with The Wrath of Khan. During production, word got out that Spock was going to die in the movie. Screenwriter and director Nicholas Meyer's solution to this was to kill not only Spock, but also Uhura, Sulu, Dr. McCoy, and Scotty in the film's opening moments, then pull back to reveal this was all a training exercise meant to stress-test an officer's command abilities when everything is going sideways. Kirk, as the person overseeing the test and evaluating the trainees, even needles Spock a short time later, asking him, "Aren't you dead?". Even if someone went into the movie knowing Spock dies, this scene right at the beginning instantly disarms them: oh, Spock just "died", that must have been what they were talking about. Whew!

Then the end of the film happens, and in some ways it's even worse if it was spoiled for you, because now you really weren't expecting it and they got you twice. There's a reason so many fans consider it to be the best Star Trek film of all time.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

So I've been wondering for a while: if you're writing a story with a tragic ending, do you owe your readers a warning?

Nope. The whole point of reading a story is to find out how it all ends and how it gets there. If you spoil the ending, it ruins everything. Why do you think that protesters against certain movies walk up to the ticket line and shout out ending spoilers?

Unless you are writing porn stroke. Then you tell them everything that will happen so that they know that the story will get them off. This is a different type of reader who does not care about plot (whether they even know that or not) only kink.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I only think you would owe readers a warning if there are sudden, out-of-left-field incidents that the story can't telegraph. If you're 7 Lit pages into your story and suddenly a truck blows through a red light and kills one of your characters, that's quite different from how, say @Bramblethorn handles the inevitable in AI Era: Loss Function.

Yeah, for that story I made sure to telegraph the death up front. I did that both as a way of warning readers that this was not a happy ending story, and also because I thought the idea of a woman discussing her own funeral with her spouse was a really neat hook. The former seems particularly important for a story in Romance, although I think I'd already decided on that beginning before I settled on where I was going to post it. Even the title is a hint that this is a story about loss.

That question of forewarning is something I've dealt with in a few stories, and made different choices depending on the story:

Magnum Innominandum ends with the death of the protagonist and an unspecified but presumably sinister end for her lover. I used a flashback device in that one too, to signal that this wasn't going to have a happy ending, but I wasn't as direct about it. Both because the nature of the story makes it hard to be specific (I am not sure myself exactly what happened to Ruth!) and because this one was written for Erotic Horror so I presume readers aren't going to be shocked by lack of a HEA.

Stringed Instrument involves the unexpected death of a likeable side character. I didn't foreshadow this at all, because the surprise of it was part of the story and I needed readers to feel something of that shock. If she had been a more central character I'd probably have looked for a different way to handle this.

Red Scarf is a story where the protagonist hires a friend for sex, catches feelings, thinks they're going to end up together, and gets an unpleasant surprise when the friend doesn't want the same thing. Again, this is one where the narrator being blindsided by her mistaken expectation was part of what I wanted readers to feel; I wanted to tell a story about how sometimes you don't get what you wanted and perhaps that's not the end of the world and not the other person's fault.

Although I never categorised or tagged it as a romance story, I knew some readers were going to mistake the premise for a romance (as does the narrator) and weren't going to be happy with the let-down. In the words of Lord Farqad, that was a sacrifice I was willing to make in order to tell the story I wanted. A break-up is not as bad as a death, and for people who read closely and didn't assume the narrator was infallible, it was possible to see this coming, though I think that's likely a minority of readers.

I guess the TLDR is: I'm willing to make readers sad when the story calls for it, but I try to be deliberate about when and how I do that, and not to do it gratuitously. Aside from anything else, if you're constantly hitting readers with shock and tragedy, they're just going to switch off and avoid developing sympathy for characters, and then it's impossible to get them invested in the story. (Or at least that's how things like Game of Thrones lose me.)

 

[nice90sguy]

For younger readers (i.e. for children's stories), it's healthy to give them occasional tragic moments (if only to prepare them for life). My first exposure to tragedy in a story (and I guess other older people here have the same experience) was the death of Bambi's mother in the Disney movie. JK Rowling explains how she was intent on including tragic deaths in the Harry Potter stories, for that reason.

I remember, as a young child, seeing a bittersweet teleplay based on the "The Shop Around the Corner" (badly remade as "You've Got Mail"), where, out of shame, neither protagonist finds out the true identity of the other, and there is no closure. That left me such a strong sense of the tragedy of a missed opportunity that I've never forgotten it, and it's affected my life choices ever since.

 

[StillStunned]

So I've been wondering for a while: if you're writing a story with a tragic ending, do you owe your readers a warning? "Owe" isn't the right word, because clearly that's a "no," but would you do it to avoid pissing your readers off?

The most tragic of my stories has a clear warning: Life and Death of the She-Wolf. It even begins with the She-Wolf's ghost in her burial mound. She dies.

 

[Areala-chan]

I did Wuthering Heights with a farmer's gangbang on the windy moors in the old pub that was haunted by horny ghosts, but they all had to leave early to get the cows in for milking.

Y-you monster...

 

[nice90sguy]

The most tragic of my stories has a clear warning: Life and Death of the She-Wolf. It even begins with the She-Wolf's ghost in her burial mound. She dies.

Thanks, saved me reading it.

 

[MrPixel]

A couple of years ago I test-wrote a tragic element in one story (series), but couldn't bear to part with the character, nor take on the angst that would permeate the suddenly-formerly joyous and carefree cast of clowns. So I put her in the hospital in a knife's edge situation, and let the troupe have fun and visit her in recovery to relate their antics and entertain hospital staff.

It's how I feel about some Tom Hanks movies, like Forrest Gump and Cast Away, romantic tragedies where the protagonist is handed an emotionally-crushing fate he did not deserve. Yes, they're designed to be heart-wrenchers, but life is tough enough to want to be manipulated that way, and I certainly didn't find it either cathartic or satisfying - just troubling.

So, not for me. Rainbows and pink unicorns live in my keyboard.