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

Yes, very good and true of course!

I begin a story with an ending in mind for it, but sometimes the story takes on a life of its own and goes in a different direction than I had intended.

Sometimes, I have an ending planned from the beginning and the story is just a way of getting to that ending. This is usually the case for shorter stories.

Sometimes, though, those shorter stories end up getting sequels that I wasn't even planning on at first, and it becomes a serial. In the case of serials, I usually have an ending in mind for each particular segment, but I don't always know where the whole thing is going or how the longrunning plot will terminate.

Sometimes, I start off knowing some things that will happen throughout the story, but not having any idea about its ultimate destination, and let the resolution write itself.

Sometimes.

I usually have an end in mind. I am a big picture person and develop details as I go along. I did not for the very first serial I wrote- Sherri's Discipline Plan - and allowed myself to be influenced by the comments I garnered. At one point I sent the plot in a whole new direction because of a comment. Often I added twists and turns to confound all predictions. I operated the same way in my second serial doing lots of experimenting. That one went for 14 episodes and that was too much. Now I have settled into romantic mode varying spanking orientation m/f or f/m, endings are easy. They- the couple - stay together or they break up. I do plan for some character influence also and will go off track to explore a situation or idea that presents itself for an episode. I have a solid, well documented attention deficit disorder and it is easy to give into my creative notions.
Islandcarol

I usually have the whole story in my mind, but not of course in sentences. As I write the whole thing changes and characters show themselves as they really are, not as I have imagined them.
The end usually comes close to my thoughts.

Sometimes though I begin with a sentence and just let the thing run from there. In such a case I have no idea what will happen. Often they are the best ones. This particularly applies to the supernatural. 'Gone Away' and ' Found and Lost' wrote themselves.

I have a number of stories waiting in the stable as it were. The first few lines awaiting a rider. Then one day I will enter the stable, pick out a horse and away we go.

I'm a little like nibra. I have the story largely worked out in my head when I start to write it. I have the outline and have to fill in the blanks as such, certain points and even characters can change, but overall the outline remains stable. I too tend to work a story or two ahead. When I'm writing one I have the next two or three up there ready to go. This is particularly true of the Spank Shop series.

I've written a couple of story series about the same couple of characters. I know somewhere in the individual stories a spanking will occur; I'm just not sure how the first sentence will lead to the last one. They're more romantic than harder spankings so they're not posted here. In other stories or series, the characters are different and though I have a "theme" in mind i.e. mafia based, vampires, other fantasy, historical etc I start with an idea and let the characters lead the story to where they want to go. Not all my fiction is spanking fiction. I like to think I don't really write spanking stories; I write stories about relationships that most likely will include a spanking somewhere (sometimes, everywhere) along the journey to the ending.

Nothing wrong with that! Post 'em!

On what Saradora said, although I know the reader and me like the spanking component of the story I actually tend to prefer other elements of it. Character, plot, set up and atmosphere. I've said this a few times, but one of the best 'spanking' stories I have ever read didn't include an actual spanking.

I've now figured out why I have a dozen half written stories in my "in progress" file. I am waiting to figure out the ending, and until I do they won't get finished. I have an idea, start to flesh it out, but if I don't know how to end it, there it sits. The best ones are the ones where I've worked out the whole thing in my head prior to writing a single word. If I have that, it goes like gang busters. So have the end in mind first. Sometimes I even think of what the last line is going to be and then writing towards that is easy. Perfect case in point was "The Legend of Sophia the Fair."