Sick and tired

terry88

Virgin
Joined
Sep 10, 2015
Posts
7
Of all of these SciFy stories on this site that are incomplete. What the hell is wrong with all of these authors? They start writing a great story and after 4-5 chapters they never finish them. Literotica needs to clean up this site if a story goes 1-2 years as incomplete it should be removed.
 
I wouldn't read any series that didn't declare on the top of the first chapter that the series was finished and that gave the number of chapters and some idea when it would be completed posting. (and this is what I provide on my chaptered works.) So, I feel your pain, but I just won't volunteer to be victimized by something that either drags out or never finishes.
 
Feel the pain. Once, long ago, I tried to start a long term story, but I didn’t get any positive feedback, so I gave it up. But my current story is pretty much completely outlined in my head, such that if I don’t finish it’ll crack out of my head like Athena, so I’ll be finishing it popular or not.
 
Not gonna criticize authors as most of them write chapter for chapter and can't predict what's going to happen in their rl. Yes it's a real bummer to follow a story and not knowing whether it's gonna be completed but in the end none of us pays money so authors aren't obliged to do invest time.

There are stories that i wish never were completed, Roommate Relations by TripleL for example as it turned from cheating behind the bfs back to the gf and her lover humiliating him in the end.

On the other hand there are incomplete stories that i hope will never be completed, for example My Brother-in-Law by xleglover. That was the first erotic story i read and knowing about his other stories i'm happy that it died after Chapter 2, it's all about willing cuckold and that doesn't turn me on.
 
it is fustrating

I am an avid Scify fan. There are so many great stories on here that have been left unfinished. I have gotten to the point of looking at a story and junmping to the last chapter and reading the comments to see if it has been completed or not. It pisses me off to see a story published in say 2006 it has 10 chapters ad then it is not finished. It just seems to happen more in the Scify genre than any other. Maybe authors get so involved in the story they just dont know how to wrap it up and finsh the tale. Who knows. This was just my rant of the day. LOL
 
All of these SciFy stories on this site that are incomplete. What the hell is wrong with all of these authors? They start writing a great story and after 4-5 chapters they never finish them. Literotica needs to clean up this site if a story goes 1-2 years as incomplete it should be removed.

The risk you run on a free site - over ambitious authors starting a multi-part thing, craving the immediate feedback, and then either running out of ideas or time, and stopping half-way through.

I can't see Lit doing a clean up though - who's going to go through all the multiple-chapter stories to figure out if they're finished or not?

It takes a lot of discipline to do a multi-parter as it should be done - fully written before the first chapter is posted. Most writers are too impatient, I guess. I'm writing a stupid long thing at the moment - six months in and eight parts written, and I might be half way through. Drives me nuts writing it, but it's not going to be published until it's complete, for exactly the reasons you give.
 
There's a difference between what the writer and the reader do about this. If a reader is upset that series don't end, then it's logical that these readers just wouldn't start reading anything that didn't have a credible promise of completion. Then it's up to the writer on what readers she/he wants.
 
I can't see Lit doing a clean up though - who's going to go through all the multiple-chapter stories to figure out if they're finished or not?

I guess we'll all have to volunteer to hunt them down and finish them.

(More seriously, the I'll take one chapter of a hot unfinished story over a lame complete trilogy).
 
The risk you run on a free site - over ambitious authors starting a multi-part thing, craving the immediate feedback, and then either running out of ideas or time, and stopping half-way through.

I can't see Lit doing a clean up though - who's going to go through all the multiple-chapter stories to figure out if they're finished or not?

It takes a lot of discipline to do a multi-parter as it should be done - fully written before the first chapter is posted. Most writers are too impatient, I guess. I'm writing a stupid long thing at the moment - six months in and eight parts written, and I might be half way through. Drives me nuts writing it, but it's not going to be published until it's complete, for exactly the reasons you give.

I'm doing another series this winter, even though I told myself "no more series"! And like you and others have said, it only makes sense to finish the bloody thing first and then let readers know up front that it's completed. I think it's a good idea, and talking about it on the forum hopefully encourages others to do the same with their series submissions.
 
George RR Martin

Even one of the most famous Scifi authors cannot finish a series. At least HBO will give us one possible ending.
 
The risk you run on a free site - over ambitious authors starting a multi-part thing, craving the immediate feedback, and then either running out of ideas or time, and stopping half-way through.

It happens even in professional fiction. It's rare for an author to complete an entire series before starting to publish, probably because they'd starve to death before their first royalty cheques arrived :)

There have been several cases of well-known pros dying partway through a series. Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" was finished by Brandon Sanderson based on Jordan's notes, but inevitably not all the readers liked Sanderson's take on it. Charles Dickens died in the middle of "The Mystery of Edwin Drood".

One of my favourite SF authors wrote two books in what was intended to be a longer series, then realised that he'd written himself into a corner and couldn't come up with a way out, so that series is on indefinite hold. It's frustrating not to see that series continued, but I'm glad he's still writing other stuff instead of pounding his head on that particular wall.

I can't see Lit doing a clean up though - who's going to go through all the multiple-chapter stories to figure out if they're finished or not?

I think both SR and I have noted that even when the author thinks the story's complete, the readers may not ;-)

I'm tempting the fates right now by writing another series, posting as I go. (Well, with roughly one chapter's buffer, to help smooth out my posting schedule.) Readers take the chance that real life will get in the way and I won't complete it, but I find it helps to have the first chapters out there and have those readers as a spur to keep me working on it. Otherwise it's just too easy to set aside an unpublished work and get distracted from finishing it.
 
More importantly, did anybody like Wheel of Time? I bought the first book, and got bored halfway through the first chapter. Am I missing something?
 
More importantly, did anybody like Wheel of Time? I bought the first book, and got bored halfway through the first chapter. Am I missing something?

It never made it onto my list, but I had friends who were wild about it. I hear it started to drag later in the series, but it sounds like you reached that point earlier :)
 
Life, feedback, pay, in no particular order. Unless the author just loves to write, it makes sense for many to stop writing if one or more of those three are in the negatives.
 
*shrugs sheepishly*

Just because something isn't finished and hasn't been added to in years doesn't mean it's abandoned. New chapters of SOTM will start hitting Sci-Fi&Fantasy the second week of January after five long years of nothing.

It's the reason I'll never post one word of any story that isn't already complete, though. Never happen again.

Believe it or not, the authors are probably even more irritated by those incomplete stories than you are. They're incomplete because something stopped them from finishing the story they set out to tell.
 
In some cases, I actually prefer an open end, because the actual endings writers do choose are not the ones I prefer in my head and in my own sexual/ized fantasies.

There are authors and bloggers I generally wish would continue to write, no matter what, but I don't really care too much about a plot not properly "ending"; in my head, the story, the sexuality, goes on, anyway.

It can actually be nice if it doesn't really have an end but is "endless" - coming out of nowhere, going nowhere. Like the best symphonies (Mahler's 9th, Tchaikovsky's 6th, Brahm's Requiem, etc.) who don't end with pomp and trumpets and loud and like Beethoven's 9th but just kinda fade out into nothingness.
 
More importantly, did anybody like Wheel of Time? I bought the first book, and got bored halfway through the first chapter. Am I missing something?

I'm in the same boat. I have friends who would have happily kept buying Jordan's doorstop-size tomes for the next thirty years because they felt it was the best, most amazing, most realistic, and best-realized fantasy series on the market.

I've tried to start the whole thing four or five times, including once after Sanderson finished the final book, and I just can't get through "The Eye of the World". It's so wordy, dull, and full of itself. Friends tell me, "Oh, just give it until about book 3 or 4, that's when it really starts getting good," and I'm thinking, "Then why didn't Jordan start writing it with book 3 or 4 instead of wasting some 3,000 pages prior to writing something interesting?" Then to hear later on that you can entirely skip over at least one of the later books (number 9, maybe?) because nothing at all happens for 1,200 pages?

Nope. Nope, nope, nope. Don't waste my time. :)
 
I don't think Literotica needs to "clean up" the site. I see no purpose served in that. If you find a story that's 8 chapters and the last chapter was written 7 years ago it's a pretty good clue that there's not going to be a chapter 9 and you don't need to start the series. There's no harm, no foul to you. On the other hand, readers who don't care can enjoy the partially completed series.

I can understand reader frustration with incomplete series -- I've experienced it with my own partially completed series (to be finished within the month, I hope). But it's not always realistic to expect that a long series will be completely done before being the first chapter is published. Many writers here are novices and have no idea what they are getting into. This is a learning experience for them.

There also are some series in which, frankly, an early termination may be a blessing. Some series are episodic rather than leading to a clear conclusion, and as the series goes on the episodes become less inspired, somewhat like a lot of TV series. I've found this to be the case with some of my favorite story series here. It's hard to maintain a good erotic premise chapter after chapter.
 
Sick and tired:
Of all of these SciFy stories on this site that are incomplete. What the hell is wrong with all of these authors?

Terry, maybe you should write (and complete) a SciFi story then?
 
right

Terry, maybe you should write (and complete) a SciFi story then?

That will never happen. I dont have the imagination or know how to write my own stories. With my bad grammer, punctuation, spelling, I woulld be crucified by people. LOL :)
 
So, you have "no choice" but to enjoy the stories here, no matter if they're completed or not?
 
How's the old saying go?

"You attract more flies with honey than vinegar."

Rather than whinge, why not actively encourage the writers of the series you like to continue. Tell them, "Hey, I really like this. Please continue and write more."

A little kindness goes a long way.

Or better yet, offer to slip them a bone via Patreon or PayPal.
 
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As a new writer and from my own experiences, I find it is hard to keep a long multi-part story going. I tend to run out of motivation after the first draft and the comments can get wild and hurtful on sites like this, not to mention you aren't getting paid.

I normally write short stories because I get bored of the build up very quickly and everything between start and sex feels like filler to me.

Still I understand from a readers perspective, it is very frustrating to have something incomplete mainly when you are already 30k words into the blasted thing. My advice is to just check to see if it is completed by looking at comments or even messaging the author if that is an option.

Anyways, Good luck with stories. Maybe one day I will write a syfy story.
 
Unfinished Stories

Unfinished stories are a bane.

Authors who do not finish a story in reasonable time should be shot. Manu should create a Finishing Enforcement Bureau to track down and eliminate both unfinished stories and their low-life authors. We in America have guns and would willingly use them for this purpose. Read-rage is common here.

I refuse to submit unfinished stories. A few times, I've completely changed a story because of something I put in a later chapter, and I had to go back and change earlier scenes, adding foreshadowing and making other changes.

My highest-rated story was completely re-organized because an early incident chronologically was the best, so I moved it near the end as a flashback that explained things. I never submit chapters, only complete stories.
 
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