Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Fan Fiction & Poetry

Unfinished Fics Discussion

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Monika:

--- Quote from: Marge_Innavera on December 06, 2008, 03:56:07 pm --- And if the writer has aspirations of doing it professionally, considering readers to not be worth even that much effort is a very bad way to start. 

--- End quote ---
I hear what you are saying, and I understand that it is frustrating when writer don´t complete their stories. (after all, there are WIPs out there that I´d paid money for to become finished! :))But please don´t believe that writers don´t think that "the readers are worth the effort". The reason I don´t write synopsis is because i wouldn´t like to read it myself. Another factor is that when it comes to my own stories, I don´t neccessarily know how they end myself. That´s usually someting that comes to me as I approach the ending of the story myself.
 All writers work differently. Some have the whole story finished in their heads before they even put pen to paper, but others write the story as they are writing it, one chapter at the time.


Anyone besides me that has actually written their own ending to someone elses unfinished story? ;D ;D
Everything is aloowed in war, love and fan fiction, right? ;)

NavyVet:

--- Quote from: louisev on December 05, 2008, 07:12:59 pm ---I think that the reason so many fics get abandoned is a few different reasons, really. .......... .  And they might have personal and social difficulties that make them want to bail out of the story or the fandom very suddenly - fandom is a volatile social environment.

--- End quote ---

Wow, I'm really glad to have stumbled across all those very good points you made, Louise.  I haven't visited Bettermost in ages, but I still read fics in the BbM fandom.  I used to get really bummed about getting caught up in WIPs, and then not being able to find out how they end when they are abandoned/unfinished.  As I can only follow so many stories at a time w/o getting them mixed up, I now try to save new ones on a 'to read' list and not start reading until they've been completed.
I understand how there can be so many factors as to why authors can't/don't finish their stories.  I find your comments encouraging really, because I have found myself in a similar situation.  I have written and posted over 232,000 words of a fanfic novel (different fandom, not BbM) that I have been unable to finish.  I haven't updated in over 2 years, though I have tried to force myself to work on it out of guilt for leaving readers hanging.  Real life issues aside, it seems my muse has completely left me.  The words won't come and even though it's fairly close to the end, I can't seem to 'wrap it up'.  I'm trying not to beat myself up about it.  Any advice?
I'm just an amateur writer, but I did finish 2 short stories at least.  Part of the problem might be that the fandom's popularity fell off in 2005, and I had very few readers and little feedback to begin with.  However, I know I won't feel right until I somehow give closure to my fic.  I had given thought to tying up the loose ends with an epilogue, but it sounds like most people wouldn't want that either.
Sorry for going on and on.  I should probably have posted this over at the general discussion thread, but I'm just gonna hit the post button here anyway.  :-)

louisev:
It's not like there's heavy traffic in this thread, don't worry about it NV.

Suggestions on finishing a story that you've lost inspiration on.

1) reread your story.  Re-familiarize yourself with it, taking note of the parts of the story that still seem "alive" to you, which you can picture and can work and build on - i.e. specific characters that seem more alive, elements of the plot.  One of the biggest problems authors have  with their story is losing the image of what they are creating.  So re-establishing that image, making it alive in your imagination once more,is crucial.  So re-read.  Get to know your story again and immerse yourself in it as you had been before you stopped writing it.

2) Outline where you expect the story to go from the point where you stopped.  Even if it's only bullet points, such as:

Johnny finds out his girlfriend has betrayed him with his best friend
He confronts him and they come to blows; Johnny leaves town.
The girlfriend kills herself, but Johnny doesn't find out.
He returns to town months later and finds out she's dead; he visits her family and tries to find out what happened.

3) Once you have the bullet points or brief outline, and pay attention to the points that seem too complicated or might be hard for you to write.  Chances are that you stopped the story due to something you might feel you wouldn't be able to handle, or a part of the plot that rang false.  If there are any bullet points that are going to trip you up - remove them, and change your ending to something you CAN write.  For example with the above - the last item, finding out she's dead and visiting the family, sounds too melodramatic.  So go back and make it that she kills herself and he gets a letter, thus eliminating the high melodrama of the last part of the story and makes it easier to finish.  You'll be surprised how easily something you've conceptualized (more or less arbitrarily, when you think about it) could be the very reason you stopped writing it.  I remember getting completely stuck on a book I was writing - for TWO WHOLE YEARS - because I had written myself into a battle scene and didn't know much about the weapons.  After chewing my lip over it for a very long time I finally wrote down, "battle scene - weapons."  And imagined what kind of weapons the combatants MIGHT have, put them into a google search, got pictures of the weapons I imagined, and then looked up some information on how combat worked with those types of weapons.  It was not historically valid, because the fact was, I had no historical information for that exact period.  But I could assume they had swords, spears and bows, and got pictures of weapons and the type of warfare to within 100 or 200 years of the period I was writing about, and finally bit the bullet.  And I simplified the battle to a surprise skirmish rather than a large army confrontation, with limited troops, so I could "handle" the actual writing of the battle scene.  And I was able to go on with the story and finish it.

4) And simplify.  I write without outlines, generally, but a lot of people do write outlines.  And the outlines, for large stories, anyway, are about five times the size of a "normal" novel.  Normal published novels at 60,000 to 80,000 words.  Fan fictions can go on a LOT longer than that.  But why do they have to?  Because you wrote an outline that went on for 80 years?  Simplfy it.  You don't have the boundless ambition you had when you started writing it, and your goal then was to start the story.  Your goal now is to finish it, so eliminate those embellishments and details and side-roads that keep you from finishing it.  Because your readers want CLOSURE, not embellishment.  They don't need to know what the ultimate outcome is for every character, where they moved to, who they married and when they died.  They just need to know the important things: did the guy get the girl.  Did the sick old man die or recover?  Did they lose the house in foreclosure or did the brother-in-law step in and make the payment?  As a reader, I do not like to be left hanging, but I also don't need to know everything in the universe.  Just what's important.

I really believe that the reason most fanfics remain unfinished is due to ambition outpacing the writing ability of the writer.  I remember reading a new fic by an author who had written a couple of other stories, and it was "hotly anticipated" because it was a new concept.  The problem was, the "new concept" was something that clearly the writer knew next to nothing about, involving accidental crashes, injuries and field treatment of wounds.  And it was obvious: pretty soon the character with the broken hand was carrying things and having sex and doing all sorts of things that a person with a broken hand clearly could not do, and the writer had trapped herself into a story with too many limiting factors and characters who were getting hot about each other when they should be close to death and unable to even think about sex not to mention doing it.  I wasn't surprised when the story was discontinued a couple of chapters later.  So scale down that original outsized ambition, and chances are you'll be able to finish at least some version of the story.

louisev:
On second thought, I had lost track of the fact that we were in the "Two Crows Joy" thread, so I broke this part of the discussion off starting with my long message.

NavyVet:

--- Quote from: louisev on March 06, 2009, 01:49:49 pm ---

Suggestions on finishing a story that you've lost inspiration on.



--- End quote ---

Thank you so much for your advice, Louise!  I am going to take every single one of your suggestions to heart.  I even printed out the entire post.
You, and your awesome writing talent, inspire me.  I will let you know how things go.   :-*
Hugs,
NV

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