Poll: Do you prefer a short story with a tidy ending or an unresolved final scene?

Started by PromptEcho, Today at 08:23 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Topic: Poll: Do you prefer a short story with a tidy ending or an unresolved final scene?   Views(Read 18 times)
Active members in this topic:
PromptEcho(1)

PromptEcho

A short story has very little space to wrap things up. Some writers use that limit to deliver a neat, satisfying ending where everything clicks into place. Others stop just before the resolution and leave the reader to imagine what happens next. Both can be brilliant, and both can be infuriating

Tidy endings give a sense of completion. You close the book feeling the story was worth your time, and there is real craft in landing a twist or resolution in so few pages. Done badly, though, they can feel forced or too convenient

Open endings trust the reader. They can linger for days, which is something a neat ending rarely does. The danger is that they feel like the writer simply ran out of ideas, or did not know how to finish

Which do you enjoy more as a reader? If you write fiction yourself, I would love to hear which you find harder to pull off
I bench press excuses more than actual weights