To Anyone Who Has Completed A Story. - Comments

I have finished most of mine...but i have a few i have abandon. My trick is writing off the top of my head. I have a vague basic plot and i let each chapter create itself. I bleed it out until i feel like i can wrap it up efficiently. The ones where i kno how i want them to end are almost always inevitably the ones i abandon half way thru because i feel like i kno where i want to go but dont kno how to get there and give up. If after ive finished a story i really love and revisit later and see it could be changed and way better i'll go thru a rewrite and edit and edit and sometimes that changes the whole story, sometimes it doesnt and it turns out stronger. Just depends. And sometimes its the rewrites i abandon. But mostly i just write, tell myself its alright to have some fluff and some weak chspters in the first few drafts, and i have fun. Another trick i do, i usually am always working on more than one at a time, a serious one, and a "plotless fluff " kind of writing romantic comedy thing for when my serious stories become too heavy, or i feel like im burning out. I can take a break and write a lot of silliness and clear my mind and get back to my tragedy/drama/otherwise serious story.

I make an outline of the whole story, what's going to happen in each chapter. Then I write it but I don't post until it's edited a bunch of times and completely finished. I've been in too many situations where I find a really good story and begin to read it only to find out the author abandoned it.

I have finished two stories and to be honest all I did was binge write. Once I knew I was closer to the end I kept pushing myself. The first draft May seem just absolutely terrible but tell yourself that it's okay to write a terrible first draft, it's why they invented editing. There's no real trick there's just you and the world you've created with a pencil (or keyboard these days lol)

I have finished quite a few, but there are some that I would still love to complete.

I've managed to complete one story but it was only 10 chapters long

I've got another story that's over a year old and I didn't touch it until last month when I finally updated it one of my readers told me she's been waiting for nearly a year to update.

I don't have many finished stories, but with the ones that are, I work backwards. Write the ending first and then I write the start, from there I make notes of major events I want to happen and write them out. After that I wing it and fill in the blanks. It doesn't work all the time, but when it does it feels amazing.

Another thing I have started to do, is write down a lot more notes. If I have a few ideas for the story, I write them down and just work off of them. Almost like writing a mini story for the major story. I mess around and fix up the mini story to fit into a chapter of the major story and go from there. That works a lot for me.

Hope that helps.

To be honest, my OCD is usually what motivates me to finish my stories. Quite often, even if I had a definite ending in mind at the beginning, I get tired of writing a story and want to move onto something else. So, in my mind, it just HAS TO END, and I figure out a way to end it more quickly. Other times, I just freestyle my way into an ending. Very rarely am I able to keep my whole heart in a story from beginning to end. There have only been a couple that I've been completely devoted to from beginning to end. Whatever works for you. :)

It was the hardest thing for me to do ever. It took me three years to finish Scarlet Rose and its not even a long story. My help is to make sure you just don't focus on it too much or you'll burn yourself out on the idea.

I understand completely. Before I got to the point where I couldn't write past the first sentence (current state) I never finished a story. I great at thinking up great hooks for stories but after that have no idea how to fill it out and then end it.

Did... Did you just read my mind?

I've completed literally hundreds of thousands of words in original fiction and fanfiction. 600k in fanfiction, 400k in original. And that's complete--I have a few open things in OF that aren't anywhere near being done. I wrote 122k words in about three months. I go by word count rather than chapters because a "chapter" can be 500 words and I don't consider that a true chapter. When I write, I write like it's a novel, and I don't bog myself down with too many ideas at once or one will eventually fizzle out.

This has been something I struggle with. So what I've had to do is write stories but make the chapters really short. I've never done that before. I've always told my self that my stories had to have a certain amount of words to even be called a story.

But when I write short chapters, I'm able to write more chapters, I feel more free with my thoughts. It's euphoric and I've never enjoyed writing more until I started making my chapters short and to the point.

I've finished one story out of the dozens of stories that I've written. It's 4 chapters and the chapters are short but not very short. I really loved it.

How it Feels to Die

I took my time with Microphone Meritorious, literally. I got about 6 chapters in and stopped writing it for about a month or two. I sat down with myself and said I'm not going to post a chapter of [...] until I had posted at least three of MM. When I did that, I found myself on a roll with MM and after a couple of weeks, I managed to finish the story. I just ignore every other idea for new stories/already working on stories to sit down and try and finish the one story. Hope that helps somehow

I somehow by a stroke of pure luck managed to complete an original trilogy here, It's not as good as I thought it was back in the day but it's not as bad as I think it is now either (I hope). My first, and only, book (which was also my senior project when I graduated high school) was posted here for a while before I had it published with this company I really wish I hadn't bothered with now. I can't seem to finish anything now though. It's like after my professor opened my eyes to how I should write I've been trying that way and I just begin to over judge my work and now everything I write seems absolutely horrible and it doesn't work out. :(

I used to be able to finish stories and something went wrong along the way and now I can't even edit one fucking chapter. Ommigod. I don't know what the trick was. I just did it. It was a short lived but beautiful period in my life and I wish I could return to it. I finished a 400+ page novel once. FINISHED IT! And now I can't even edit a chapter without giving up and moving onto something else. *Sobs*

This blog is literally me to a T. I've been writing for a great majority of my life, and I've never finished anything except for a one-shot. Seriously. That seems to be the only thing I can actually accomplish. I think most of it stems from the fact that if my story isn't perfect, I rewrite it completely and lose everything that I'd previously written.

Writer problems.

Being an author, even a fan-fiction author, is really challenging to put yourself through a constant writing process.
My only long chaptered story I actually completed was Forevermore, which took a bit to complete (a few months or more I believe) and then I decided to do its sequel, REVolution and I plan for even another sequel after that, which will end the whole story together.
City of Evil is about finished (3 chapters remaining) until the sequel Nightmare comes into play, which I got to work on the outline for that lol.

Since City of Evil is a remake of an original script, I remember doing the original and I NEVER finished it. I used to post it on deviantART but suddenly, I had this MASSIVE writers block that continued for long periods of times, probably because I just had very low support in my writing.
When I found Mibba, that all changed. I became ADDICTED to writing more than ever and I praise that.

But even with City of Evil being near its end, it was still hard to complete even with the outline/script all laid out in front of me in a little handy notebook. Same goes for Forevermore when that was completed from beginning to end: it was NOT an easy process. Especially since I included real life events, which made it more challenging to play by. But it was still fun to compete with :)

Pretty much, it is all about pushing yourself to do it and exceeding towards motivation.

My motivation is slowly working its way up to the 100-percent-tile and I hope at that point it will be smooth sailing. Even with stories ending, I still struggle with some writing. But it is all about never giving up.

Here are some steps I take to complete a story from chapter to chapter:

1.) Brainstorm your ideas for the upcoming story and write all of them down when you can, even if it is just random shit haha.
2.) Begin your outline. Having a full outline of the story WILL help you get through with completing it because now all you have to do is fill in the blanks to each bullet point you have set up for beginning-to-end of each chapter.

Here's an example of a part of my City of Evil outline (It was hard to transport the characters from the notebook on to here lol):

Chapter 32: To Slay A Beast
-- Cynthia watches Shadows in horror of his demonic form

• Shadows snarls at her and comes after her
  
  -- Cynthia runs for her dear life
• Unable to Transform
  (Impact must have weakened her)
• Goes through alleyways, in which Shadows rips right through them (roaring at her)
• Cynthia takes many sharp turns and luckily ends up loosing Shadows
  (Relief)
  (Watches him walk away on the hunt in the city)
  
  ~~~
  See?
  Now you just have to "fill in the blanks" by turning the bullet point events into sentence structures and built-in dialogue :)
  
  3.) Find the motivation you need! (Example: Music, movies, books, etc.) The inspiration is all around! Take a stroll to the library or a park if you have to. That's what I do! Or better yet, when you are waiting in class/school, start writing down ideas.
  4.) Never Give Up
  5.) Know that you are unique for your own writing style
  6.) Put yourself out there
  
  That's all I have to say for now :)
  Sorry about the drastic long comment LOL
  Hopefully this helped! :)

I applaud this blog. I always know exactly how I want things to end but either through my own laziness or writer's block, I don't finish it. I finished a story years ago but I forced my way through it and it ended up being really bad at the end.

Wow, that was an awful tip. I'm sorry I couldn't contribute something actually useful.

This blog perfectly describes what I was talking about in the Why I'm Not A Mibba VIP thread