I finally manage to actually finish writing a short story, though I wasn't happy with the ending. I gave it to my family members and they agreed, they said it was way to abrupt that they got really into the story and then it suddenly ended. I'm curious as to what anyone else thinks about writing a good ending.
It sounds as though the abrupt ending did not satisfy the readers - in this case. As said above, an abrupt ending is fine if it make sense for that particular tale. Try and imagine it as a film, or a play that you attend. If you ended it because you 'felt a bit stuck' then you do need to have another go! Do you have too many characters? If so, that may have made it more complicated for you to unravel. I understand 3-4 characters is a good number for a short story.
I have the same problem with endings, Bethany!
It's maybe one of the reason why I'm not terribly good at writing short stories; when I write, I really delve into emotion and that needs a lot of explanation, I think. Hence, a lot of words so I always run over the word limit then!
When I actually do force myself though, I just remember to try and keep the storyline nice and tight so I have plenty of words left for the ending, if need be.
In a short story it should all be about the last line. The whole story should build up to those last few words and everything should fall into place as the reader comes to them. An abrupt ending is fine as long as that happens. One of the stories listed on the blog is a good example of it. I think it was called Ghosting.