Much! lol
Thanks that’s super nice to hear
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Frustratingly, it’s a long standing tradition on all erotica sites to discover stories you’re really into that are left unfinished. The number of stories where it seems the author gave up or died is legion on this site!
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Some of us have reasons for publishing infrequently, but yes, you’re right. A lot of people just get bored with their own writing and move on, or they don’t have the time or what have you. As much as I enjoy writing novel-length stories myself, I’ll be the first to say that shorter, stand-alone stories have any number of benefits—the ability to read and be done with them is probably foremost among them.
Yes, unfortunately so.
Sometimes I wonder if I should curate the published stories more, to improve the overall quality. Like to make sure that the author has all the stories written before he starts to post them. And a certain quality of the writing…
But then I think we would have missed a lot of really good content and authors who started out quite … quirky but later on developed into writing really good stuff.
It’s a dilemma.
And again I apologize for all my unfinished stories. I wished I had the time and energy to finish them all. Believe me, I want to…
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Martin, dude, you’ve got WAY too much time on your hands trying to fill every need you see or hear for this/these sites… Time you should be spending writing which is too infrequent!
That said, since you love adding features (playful dig intended), perhaps some sort of flag that the readers can check to prod the author to keep going with their story. Even if it’s gets repetitive it can still be amazing (Baralai’s game is a great examples).
Some stories are like soap operas (I see you Robinhood’s Web of Trust) and I just love returning to the world they inhabit.
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That’s actually a really good idea! I like it 
Would you mind copying that idea into a new thread in the “Feature Requests” category here in the forum?
Oh gosh, please no. I appreciate that it’s a good thing for us to finish our stories, and in general I try to, but I really rely on reader feedback to help me figure out what’s working and what’s not between chapters. Even when I’ve done something like the “It’s Hard…” series or “A Stranger Comes to Town”, where I’m literally publishing a new chapter every day, I’m often posting them the moment they’re done, then incorporating the feedback into the next chapter.
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I have almost NEVER had the entire series finished when I begin posting. Sometimes I have four or five chapters done, so I can create a buffer when publishing, but I’ve never had a story finished when I started. A lot of times, the energy of the reader’s response motivates the writing.
And then suggestions and conversations can move the plot in way different ways…
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Hard same. Except a few one-offs or two-part stories I’ve never had the discipline to write out an entire series then publish it sequentially. I respect the hell out of writers who can and do, but it’s just not possible for me unfortunately.
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I simply can’t plot out stories until I start to write them. As I write, the story flows. So I start with a basic idea and let it develop. This can cause serious problems with episodic stories. In one story ‘Incubus’, I got into a serious plot cul-de-sac which could only be solved by deleting one chapter and entirely rewriting it. It can also lead to incomplete stories, which I hate when other writers do the same (currently ‘Nubians’ and ‘Earth to Earth’ are unfinished). Still, it’s the way I work and usually it turns out alright.
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Dude… I do this all of the time. In my writing, there tends to be a myriad of methods I will use, but it depends on what I am writing and what kind of thing I am going for. There are plenty of techniques out there that I definitely utilize depending on what I am writing.
If I am writing a long-term novel, I definitely plan everything out in a bulleted format so I keep on point and on track to hit every plot point that there is. Having a long-term novel, a book of numerous chapters, can become daunting and overwhelming… with a huge possibility of either repeating oneself or missing things thought to already exist because one thought it was in there in the first place.
However, if I am writing a short term sort of project, like a multi-chapter story here… I tend to just go with the flow. Writing one off stories here or on other sites I let the idea brew and then let the story have a life of its own. Sometimes the words just flow from my fingertips onto the screen… sometimes they don’t. If they don’t, I stop what I am doing, save it for later and work on something completely different. Then I eventually come back and see what happens. Some of the best stories written or ever told are the ones that come from the imagination with no planning to them. The only thing that is needed to be done is to make sure the story is on point. Since it is possible to save what is being worked on and read over what has been written here, it’s easier to see what has been done, what hasn’t and then go from there. Another thing that I do to help compartmentalize what I am writing is to name everything. If you DON’T want to post the story until you are done and you have the ending… you have that as an option as well. Personally, I use Google Drive to work on long term stories in case I am not sure of what I am doing or where I am going with anything. There are times I will get an earworm stuck in my brain, I will have to write it out and see if anything comes of it. Generally speaking, I can’t say that any of them have.
Another piece of advice that I have is: name the book/story. Name the chapters. In doing so, I work to include the name of the book or chapters in what is written as a sort of “nod” to the readers to be like “you see… ahah! This is where I was going all along!” This can help you to hit a plot point you wanted to include in your story and delineate the start and stop of the chapter or the overall story as a whole. It can also help the reader to have a preview into what might be going on… or perhaps may be a piece to the puzzle of the overall story to keep them enticed to keep coming back to what has been written. Having things named is also a huge help too for the reader so if they had to put down what has been written because life got in the way, they can thumb through the chapter titles and find where they were easier than just… Chapter 1 - Chapter 52 because a LOT can happen in any one of those chapters.
In closing, if I waited to write something, in most cases, until I knew the ending of the story… I would have never started writing at all.
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I often start stories thinking that I know the ending, but I’m also character-led and they tend to get a bit unruly. I do start with a few beats to guide me between scenes but revise and modify them as the story becomes more itself and gains steam.
I also rarely post part of a story before the rest is written. I only have two series I’ve done that for – my The Machine series, which is really more self-contained shorts with an arc between them and the same character, and In Tykhe’s Grasp, which is a collaboration with my spouse, who is a new author.
I uh…I should break up my stories into chapters more but I just don’t. it’s hard for me to break something up afterwards and wait to post it for a number of reasons:
- I feel like each chapter should have its own complete arc/I don’t like to just split things up any which way. Oftentimes, the longer thing is the one that feels like it has the better arc.
- I’m bad at waiting haha.
Something to work on, I guess!
I also increasingly have some standalone stories that people have asked for sequels to! So far, the only one where I’ve written a sequel is to Wild Pansies in the Fae Court – I recently posted Them Wild Eyed Boys That Are Really Fae.
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I like to envision where a story is suppose to go, but as I write, I let my reactions to my actions dictate where it actually ends up going. I get a goal in mind, but I might miss it. Change teams… But that is also my style of writing.
Some goals might be very important, and giving reason and hints are what make the story worth it. My stories are more focused on the emotions and the reactions of someone being put under, so the end goal isn’t all that important.
I think that’s all true, BUT, it’s also a good reason why you should always do “one final compete rewrite”
Absolute statements are always wrong. 
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I’ll absolute your statement!
By the way., not to beg for reads and reviews, but the series I wrote this thread about has since been finished.
It’s a five part fantasy love/romance story and many of the sections (especially the latter chapters) lay blankly awaiting enough ratings/reviews to get them past the 12 or so ratings needed to quality for rankings to begin with.
Now, I read the story several times and edited since release; I’m very proud of it.
But, if anyone of you want to do me a solid and read a goofy, emotional, slightly daft love story between a naïve person-phobic monster and a human in a monster outfit., you would be doing me a favour by reading and rating the chapters of this saga, Especially the later chapters.
I’m not saying it’s good or bad, but the entire saga contains a great deal of my internal self (unintentionally of course).