Authors - Do you know the end in advance ...?

Thanks for all your interesting replies. I shall have to have a go at writing the ending first and working backwards.

And rue - where have you been, girl?! Great to see you again

flops

Writing 'spanking' fiction has been reatively easy for me, simply because I KNOW where it's going to end up - with someone getting a spanking. (Ok, there are a few exceptions in my work, with a different ending and the spanking occuring along the way). Whenever I've tried to 'switch over' into some other genre, I falter, and mostly because I DON'T really know where a story should end up - an ending that makes the reading worthwhile.

The germ of the story usually starts with a particular scenario and/or character(s), and then I try to figure out how to get to a spanking in a more-or-less believable fashion. As for everything else, I usually know more or less where the story will go to get to the ending at the time I start, but sometime I suprise myself. Or is it the characters surprising me? It's important for me to create 'real,' believable charatcers (ok - again there are exceptions in my stories), and sometimes by doing what's natural for them, they lead me in directions I hadn't anticipated. When I began 'Storming the Castle,"' I figured the good doctor would be delivering the spanking, but, with another perfect spanker available, that plan changed as I headed to the climax. I would note that one story ("The Mnister's Wife") had a vastly different conclusion than I intended at the start - which could easily be explained by a ten-year gap between when I started and finished it. Looking back, though, over my list of stories, most of them reached the end in pretty much the way I expected, with only the twists and turns getting there having developed with the writing.

"To be honest, I usually have an end in mind, but I allow myself the opportunity to change my mind just in case a brilliant stroke..." Indeed, I usually have an end in mind, if not several. The end in "East Meets West", for example, belongs to PC Sally West. I also plan brilliant strokes!

Seriously, I always start with some idea of how the story will end, but it can change. Sometimes it's more definite than others: for example, when I started "East Meets West" the basic idea was just that Sally was called to a burglary in a house that contained a lot of frightening eastern objects belonging to a weird professor, and somehow she got trapped and spanked. The idea of the carved idol with the open mouth (that then closed) came as I wrote. On the other hand, I knew the ending of "A School Outing", or Sally's first appearance in "Strict Islam Part 1" before I started.

I often find I embellish as I write, adding details and events not originally planned. There is a danger in this, of course, of over-embellishment.

One advantage of knowing how the story will end is that you can put in true or false clues as well as details that seem insignificant at the time but gain significance from the particular ending.

Barretthunter

My stories start with a thought or daydream and I almost always let them develop in my head for quite awhile. By the time I start writing, I have a really good idea of what the buildup to the spanking will be, and I usually end the story shortly after the spanking concludes. I add plenty of little details while writing and tweak my ideas a little, but the plot mostly stays the same.

Like others said, it's the characters who seem to have minds of their own. One in particular I originally thought to be passive and introverted, but he's proving to be much more stubborn and social than I first imagined.

I think that this particular genre of" literature" we love to read need only one end: the spanking scene well described...

Not sure I'd agree totally. If the work is to be worthy of the name 'story' then it needs a plot, complication and resolution, as well as characters we can have feelings for. Yes, the resolution is usually a spanking, but I have read some excellent stories with no spanking at all ... stories which build the dread or excitement, create tension or humour, and end before the first spank is spanked!

With you on that one Linda. I rarely have a clue how the story will end.

When writing stories for our blog I would say it's about 50/50,that I know how the story is going to end.
Some I just let grow,and the end sort of alters itself.Others are stories that started out as online roleplays with my blogging partner,so by the nature of it being two-handed you can't tell exactly where the story will finally lead.

I have an idea that I usually dream up while walking the dogs. Over the next few days I refine the basic story line in my head.
The biggest problem is to try to dream up an idea that has some originality and may be vaguely feasible if extremely unlikely.
Then I start writing. Hopefully the characters come alive, and this usually leads to a serial.
I then leave the story for a few days and reread, and either discard or edit. I then re-edit until I'm happy, and even sometimes change the plot.
I often have stories lying around for months maybe even a year.
However I used to enjoy the chain-stories on Alex's Flaming Cheeks because you had to write quickly and in reply to somebody's ideas.
My preferred stories just grow -like Topsy, and develop a life of their own.
Although I start working towards an original idea and the denoument is usually a caning in my case, I often finish up with quite a different story from my first idea.

It's probably several months away yet and may not even materialise but I'm hoping to be able to provide some dedicated software to facilitate and encourage collaborative writing including 'chain stories'.