One story where you stuck the landing

[YDB95]

Definitely Chemistry of Love. I think it really captures the essence of personal growth the alpha couple has experienced over the course of the story, and establishes once and for all that the female half of said couple is not the shrinking violet everyone - including her now-boyfriend - thinks she is.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Living up to the Legacy I still tear up when I get to the ending. There’s a reason it’s my highest rated story.

It's a story about expectations and how difficult it can be to live up to them, a story of a young girl in transition, trying to figure out who and what she is under the pressure of a dominating father. In the end, she realizes, she was exactly who and what she was supposed to be, that the legacy she was trying to live up to was the wrong one.

"... All those years, I had been trying to be what I thought someone else wanted me to be.

I had been trying to live up to a legacy.

It was just the wrong one."

 

[Rob_Royale]

I think I nailed it in my LW story, The Colonel's Wife. If it's any measure, I got an absolute minimum of grief from the trolls and its got a 4.52 rating without a burned bitch anywhere.

 

[AchtungNight]

My Loving Wives Story Fire Woman was another story where I did well at the ending, I think. Doug had a crush on Emily, she had one on him, they satisfied buried desires with a hookup... but it was clear to Emily he wouldn't leave his wife for her. She accepted that, settled for a three-way hookup the morning after and presumed friends with benefits status with both of them. Maybe she'll find another marriage someday and it will go better than her first one that she ended. Happiness all around.

 

[Vintage_DM]

Of the twenty something different stories I've posted to date. My fave ending was in Seaside. I let the reader decide on the story's conclusion.

 

[yowser]

A good story ending is indeed a gleaming jewel. I find it far easier to craft a snappy, intriguing beginning, while a satisfying, gather-up-the-loose-ends-with-summary finish does rank up there with the rare and precious gymnastic 'stick.'

I am struck and chagrined at how rarely I manage a suitable end to a story, but will break the 'one example' rule here by offering two that almost please me, (the first from a April Fool's day contest entry that did not sit well with readers - my second lowest rated story ever - folks don't seem to like 'surprise' plot twists) and another that intrigued me enough to follow up with a continuing series some three years further down the road from the initial offer.

From 'Blown Birthday':

Even then however, I was starting to think that if we were still together as a couple this time next year, that there would be revenge of the most dastardly sort.

"Let's get me out of these things, Mae," was what I said however, waving my wrists around in their restraints.

From 'Don't Let Sleeping Dicks Lie':

So there you have it. My condition is not listed in the latest DSM manual (I have checked) so I am not in clinical waters. I am not exactly proud of my compulsive interest, and it has introduced its share of complications over the years, but it has provided me plenty of enjoyment, and hasn't actually ever hurt or damaged anyone. You can't say that of all human behaviors, so I will leave it at that.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I put enormous weight on my endings. So much so that I nearly always write them early in the process.

I think my best ending is Queen of the Roller Derby.

I used a device that I have found effective. The final lines of the story paraphrase lines from the prologue, bringing the protagonist's arch to a full circle.

From the response it has gotten, I definitely stuck the landing. It delivers a strong emotional punch, but is also is subtly humorous.

 

[Bodington]

I guess the ending of a novel I’m most proud of is Ingrid’s Dark Secret Passion. The main plot line describes the titled character, Ingrid, although mainly straight, having about a year and a half long lesbian affair with an older woman some twenty plus years her senior. Ingrid is an excellent concert pianist and music composer who is offered to join with an established world famous violinist on a worldwide concert tour of all the continents (Antarctica obviously excluded). The tour would no doubt establish her as an international star in classical music. However, she confesses to her lover that she is reluctant to join the tour and instead would rather live with her lover in Vienna and just perform in Austria. The lover then disappears from Ingrid’s life forcing her to go on the tour and claim her rightful place as a premier pianist. At the end Ingrid composes a three movement violin and piano sonata dedicating to the affair. I incidentally lost a reader along the way. The anonymous reader was apparently enchanted with the affair but then proclaimed to stop reading as he/she was devastated by the ending of the affair.

 

[Areala-chan]

Dead Space: Kendra. The opening scene and the final scene are, word for word, exactly the same. But by the time you reach the end, those words take on an entirely different meaning the second time around, and I'm damn proud of it.

 

[djrip]

Me endings are usually quips that humorously imply more of the same is on the way.

In Bikini Barista Sleepover, it's the same, but I tried to set up a bit of a reverse symmetry loop back to the beginning. It starts with a wife ordering coffee from the bikini baristas at their stand and they make it in their outfits which are so skimpy they're practically naked. The next morning, after they've both had sex with her husband (and her, don't worry), a shift in power dynamic is implied when the wife is the one serving them fresh coffee while naked:

"Coffee, anyone?" she asked with a smile.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

Dead Space: Kendra. The opening scene and the final scene are, word for word, exactly the same. But by the time you reach the end, those words take on an entirely different meaning the second time around, and I'm damn proud of it.

I'll second that. Magnificent. One of those stories that I wish I had written.

 

[SimonDoom]

My first story, In The Hallway (first written but second published). It's my highest rated story. The conceit of the story is that a young man and woman meet in the hallway of an office building, after having both been thwarted in romance for a while and having consulted romance advice on two websites, and they have a series of interactions in which the man tells the woman what he wants and never asks a question, and the woman never says "no." Things naturally progress to consummation, but at the very end, after consummation, the man asks the woman "how do you feel?" I ended it this way:

Janna started at his question. It was the first and only question he had asked her, since their chance meeting in the hallway a few hours earlier. She pursed her lips and furrowed her brow in disapproval. Then she arched her back and looked up at him. She spread her legs wider, and she could feel his cum dribbling slowly out of her as her eyes held steadily on his. She cocked her head to the side just a bit and the corners of her mouth turned up slightly in a sly half smile.

Even the best masters must be reminded to play their roles correctly from time to time.

"You tell me," she said.

 

[ElectricBlue]

My first story, In The Hallway (first written but second published). It's my highest rated story. The conceit of the story is that a young man and woman meet in the hallway of an office building, after having both been thwarted in romance for a while and having consulted romance advice on two websites, and they have a series of interactions in which the man tells the woman what he wants and never asks a question, and the woman never says "no." Things naturally progress to consummation, but at the very end, after consummation, the man asks the woman "how do you feel?" I ended it this way:

I read that story when it first appeared, before I really knew you as an AH fellow author. I remember thinking, that's very good, that's edgy, and the anonymity really made it work.

It's a good example of those times I've said, you can always tell when a writer puts something genuine into a story, something that digs in deep, deeper than they might even realise.

It deserves to be your highest rated story because it's... well, you know, very very good. For me, it's up in Doc Mabeuse territory, and that's the highest compliment I can give any erotica writer.