Finishing Stuff Off

As a relative novice, I still feel a social responsibility to my readers to take them to an end, but I'm too impatient for feedback to write the whole thing before posting any of it. Like edb I tend to write anything from 5 to 10 parts before posting the first so that the characters and plot are reasonably well-established/developed and I can still go back and amend certain details. After that it becomes a balancing act: re-reading earlier parts, and keeping a record of who's who and what happened when, becomes important.
I love serials because, as a writer (and maybe as a reader too), you develop deeper friendships with your characters who have more space and time to surprise you and go their own way (even if it is just to another spanking!)

I tend to write the entire story before posting. Not so much so I can go back to fix things but because I usually see it as one long story. Sometimes I will write a sequel or do another take on a part of the story, but normally I see it as one long twisting (some times out of control) series of events involving the same characters - or one long story.

That said, I've just finished another that might need to be broken into sections before I post it here. It's 33 pages of text (10 point font) and people have said that they prefer long stories to be broken into bite sized chunks.

Goodgulf

Funny... I NEVER have problems with sequels.

I'm like Goodgulf I write the whole thing before posting, probably why my stories are so long.

A most interesting topic! From my little experience I cannot begin a story until the whole sequence, plot, characterisation and ending are firmly decided upon and fixed in my mind. What puzzles me is that I cannot write starting from page one and carrying on through to the end. I'm so eager to write down the good bits, it all comes out in no established order, no logical sequence so that as time passes I have a series of lengthy paragraphs which I polish up and stitch together, so to speak, in one patchwork quilt.

Does this make sense to anyone? To me it seems an odd way to be working but what else is there to do when ideas come thick and fast?

By the way, I don't think I would have the nerve to post a story or serial before it had been completed satisfactorily.

Of course it makes sense. Although I work in a different fashion, everyone is different, and should use whatever works. Like you, I don't start writing a story until I have it pretty much worked out in my head. Then I tend to write it straight through with very few revisions. With the logic having all been worked out ahead of time, I would never find myself writing patchwork and then stitching together. There are times that the plot strays somewhat from what I had planned out ahead of time, usually because my characters won't behave as I had intended them to, but even then, the writing (once I get to the actual writing) is all very linear, and won't change much when I return for final polishing. What this means is that I very seldom write anything too long, because it's too hard to have a very long story worked out mentally to that degree. But it makes it fairly easy to finish what I start - which is important for someone prone to writer's block.

But that's just me. As I said - everyone should use what works for him/her.

I salute you for being so organized! But I...ummm....don't do it that way. My stories often germinate from a scene in my head. Typically, that scene comes to me when I'm waking up in the morning. When I start writing, I always have some idea where the story is going, but I don't insist that the story always actually arrive at that particular destination.

Then I revise; let it sit; revise; let it sit... Mix and repeat until I finally have a finished product.

Now do you understand why you don't see a lot of new GuySpencer stories?

Guy

I'm not that organized. I do a lot what of what you do, only it's in my head before I begin actual writing.

I rough out a story in my head, and it can be sloshing around for months. During that period some ideas die and some live and prosper. I have an idea of a plot before I start, but it can change and some plots are quite vague. I usually add details and complications as I write. Sometimes quite important things are unsettled and I hope the ideas will come as I write. For instance, I've just responded to a few people who asked me to write a sequel to "The Major". It's pretty clear at the end of the original story that the newly-arrived Officer Lucinda Geary is going to get spanked by the Major with Tara's help - but how? I don't mean with a paddle or a strap etc, but given that this is not a story with non-consensual action, how are they going to persuade Lucinda to submit? When I started writing I didn't know, but some ideas are forming as I write.

Some serials I've written bit by bit, that is writing Part 1 and posting, then Part 2 and posting and so on. This has happened where the different parts are fairly loosely connected, really a series of short stories in chronological sequence with some of the same characters and settings - or where I had the plot very clear in my mind and it was obvious that the length of the story would require subdivision. When I've written the whole thing before cutting it into bits and posting them one by one, either it has been so densely plotted that I might well wish to go back when I was writing Part 4 and change something in Part 1 (as in the series about dreams becoming reality) or I started thinking this would be a longish one-part story and then realised it was getting too long and complicated for that (which has happened with something I'm writing right now, "Silver, Blaise".

If I'm writing a proper self-contained serial I always finish it off before posting. I have three waiting, one which is 3 to 4 years old and is eventually coming to a conclusion and should appear here this summer. The other two are much shorter and will both be completed shortly.

If I'm writing a series, like the Dicker stories these are all self-contained around a theme and are written when the mood strikes-there is one on its way.-, with a number of plots already thought up.

I'm going to experiment with Miranda and see how it works if I use her for a series of ideas that she can albeit very improbably wander into. I've got five to six in my mind but none have yet jumped into "Word".

Some just grab me and take me inevitably to their conclusion, some are almost addictive and demand my attention; while some just rumble on like a pot-boiler, and a few just like 'Topsy' just grow from a short story into something much longer.