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Aftertaste
Every Tuesday, The Productive Disruptive delivers storytelling science, message makeovers, cultural commentary, and a little rebellious hope for anyone still stubborn enough to believe communication can change the world.
Dorian Johnson
June 02, 2026
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It has been days since I watched the series finale of Hacks, and I am still thinking about how it ended…
Deborah Vance is a Qween, okay.
I ain't gonna spoil anything....
But I felt strong feels. I thought thoughts intensely. The ending was palpableeeee.
It was satisfying, and I'm definitely gonna miss it.😭
And that got me thinking about conclusions.
Conclusions that stay with you.
The ones that whisper in your ear randomly when you’re washing dishes, 3 days later or something.
Some stories leave an aftertaste, if you will.
Others just end.
In today’s attention economy, so much focus is on an opening hook(and rightfully so)
But when we reach the end, it fizzles out.
A conclusion isn’t a finish line where you just stop talking.
It’s the final handoff between you and your audience.
You have spent the entire story placing something in their hands, hearts, and heads.
The conclusion determines what they are still holding when they walk away after you send them back out into the world with your message.
🧠 Story Science Side Note: Psychologists have studied something called the peak-end rule.
The basic idea is that when people look back on an experience, they don’t always remember every moment equally.
But emotional high points and the ending carry extra space in the cranium.
Hacks had five seasons to build toward its conclusion. There were tons of emotional high points over the years.
Most of us have much less runway:
So our conclusions must be designed. They’re not just last suffering brain cells trying to endure.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0749597822000334?via%3Dihub
📝 Message Makeover:
Before:
Small actions can make a big difference.
After:
Everything can't be fixed today. But what's one thing you can no longer leave untouched now that you know what it costs?
Stakes and tension are always core storytelling ingredients. Combining with a call to action is a good move.
🛠️ The PHacilitator’s Corner:
Pull up something you’ve recently written.
Read only the ending.
Then run it through the Aftertaste Test:
What do I want my audience to feel?
What do I want them to think about differently?
What do I want to stay with them?
If it doesn’t, revise your conclusion so it leaves behind at least one deliberate aftertaste.
A question.
An image.
A reframed idea.
Try one of these
Leave them with a question
What would change if we stopped treating ______ as ______ and started recognizing it as ______?
Now that we know ______, what are we willing to do differently?
Leave them with a reframed idea
Maybe the real problem is not ______. Maybe it is ______.
What looks like ______ may actually be ______.
Leave them with an image or callback
The next time you see ______, remember ______.
Your message will end.
But what do you need your audience to be “stuck with” after?
Perpetually tired.
P.S. I wanted to make a Jack & Diane reference so bad.
Because yes, life does go on after the thrill is gone. And so can a good conclusion.