have you ever written an alternate version of a completed story?

[rae121452]

a few months ago i sat down to write a series of stories i had been thinking about for some time. they were to take place in the late 18th century and concern an uncle, his orphaned nephew and a man servant. the uncle was to be very controlling and powerful, the nephew an easily manipulated airhead and the servant an older, mysterious, sinister figure.
in the course of the first story the characters took over and the time changed to the late 19th century. the uncle became a louche, jaded sort, the nephew a naive but still worldly sort and the man servant a young worldwise adonis
what started as a projected 4 part story has grown into something that i'll be lucky to complete in ten.
and, the original concept and characters are still rattling around in my brain wanting out.
should i complete the current series and then try to do the original story cycle?

 

[lovecraft68]

Not the whole story, but I have alternate endings to a couple of pieces. Wrote both to see which would work better, then picked one. I have a couple of alternate scenes as well, fight scenes, mostly.

 

[regularguy13]

stories evolve

Often, i begin with one thought and end up going somewhere else.

I'd write whatever part of the story moves you. You can add other chapters later. What story is demanding to be told? What characters is shouting the loudest? r

 

[oggbashan]

My opinion, and it is no more than that, is that you should complete the newer version and file the older one for later reference.

I suggest moving on to something new, not returning to write another version of a story you have already written.

Maybe in five years time you might look back at the first version and decide you can make something else from it but not a variation of the story you've posted.

 

[Carnevil9]

I've never done it, but I've often thought about writing an alternate version of the same story, only told from the perspective of a different character. Especially a story with only two primary characters. It seems you could completely change the meaning of the story, and the takeaway for the readers, if you handle the inner thoughts cleverly enough.

 

[sr71plt]

I've rewritten hetero stories into GM ones and vice versa. And sometime when I get around to posting a marketplace published version on a free-read Web site like this one, I will recast it--just for fun.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I've rewritten hetero stories into GM ones and vice versa.

Obvious physical aspects aside, do you find that requires a lot of reworking? My F-F stories usually seem to involve themes that don't translate easily to a M-F story, simply because those relationships are treated differently by society.

 

[sr71plt]

Obvious physical aspects aside, do you find that requires a lot of reworking? My F-F stories usually seem to involve themes that don't translate easily to a M-F story, simply because those relationships are treated differently by society.

I'm doing that with a Lit. story now that is hetero and I want to make it GM for a GM story site. The only problem I'm having in conversion is redoing the sex scene completely. The theme of the servant seducing and initiating the impressionable (of age) child of the family remains the same in theme and the hook of the story is more a factor of the story's setting, which didn't have to change.

Sometimes when I'm doing this, though, I decide to recast the theme altogether. Which is fine. If I have the urge to do that, I do it.

 

[Wifetheif]

a few months ago i sat down to write a series of stories i had been thinking about for some time. they were to take place in the late 18th century and concern an uncle, his orphaned nephew and a man servant. the uncle was to be very controlling and powerful, the nephew an easily manipulated airhead and the servant an older, mysterious, sinister figure.
in the course of the first story the characters took over and the time changed to the late 19th century. the uncle became a louche, jaded sort, the nephew a naive but still worldly sort and the man servant a young worldwise adonis
what started as a projected 4 part story has grown into something that i'll be lucky to complete in ten.
and, the original concept and characters are still rattling around in my brain wanting out.
should i complete the current series and then try to do the original story cycle?

I've don this a few times. I like to show different views by writing corollary tales. My story Cygnus Five is about two couples torn apart on a world of radical male patriarchy. Both men have to battle in harsh hand-to-hand combat to retain their wives. One man wins one man loses. "Vera's Tale" is the wife's perspective and aftermath of those events. "I know what I am Doing Honey" is a multi-part story of a wife who enters voluntary slavery for a year.
How much do you think I would Bring?" Is the husband's perspective of the event. "The Journalists" is the male reporters perspective on entering into a short term BDSM assignment for a magazine. "Ruthie's Story" is the wife's perspective. She is also a journalist

Varying points of view is both challenging and fun. Writing in male and female spectators to the same event is terrific fun

 

[Hypoxia]

I have done so three-plus times. Once-plus, a story was taken down after protests. I tweaked it to remove any trace of snuff, then rewrote it with a swapped POV. All three versions are now up. Another was rewritten by request to enhance and tighten the incest. I wrote the last as mother+son and rewrote it as father+daughter, to see which version drew a stronger reaction. They came out about the same.

Similarly, I've expanded minor incidents in some tales into full-fledged standalone stories, and will likely do so again, when the voices in my head so direct me.

I don't try to 'improve' tales by rewriting them. Each is a different take on a theme. Alter the constants and the variables head off into new directions. Fun fun fun.

 

[Requiax]

I’ve rewritten a loose part work that was never getting anywhere into an entire novel. I changed from first to third person narrative, added a lot of extra events, changed the order some things happened in and generally made it a quite different beast.

I’m not sure if that is quite what you meant but I had a lot of fun revisiting an early work I wasn’t happy with and turning it into something I was much more proud to have written.

Of course, among the first feedback I got was “I preferred the original”, so you can’t please everybody...

 

[RetroFan]

I wrote a fetish story series this year called 'My Best Friend's Crazy Fat Sister', which while obviously is a fat fetish story it is also a character study with the four lead characters strongly showing the four personality types of melancholic (Sean), sanguine (Zoe), phlegmatic (Adam) and choleric (Emily).

The story is written in first person from Sean's perspective, but I had so much fun writing about Emily, a hot-tempered hottie, that I have considered writing a spin-off, with the same events from this story in first person from her perspective.

 

[8letters]

I've never done it, but I've often thought about writing an alternate version of the same story, only told from the perspective of a different character. Especially a story with only two primary characters. It seems you could completely change the meaning of the story, and the takeaway for the readers, if you handle the inner thoughts cleverly enough.

I don't think this will work as well as you think. I don't have a big catalog of stories and I think most of my readers have read most of them. To me, what makes my stories enjoyable is the journey, the plausible-but-steady ramping up of the sexual tension that culminates in a hot fuck. If I were to retell one of my stories from an alternate POV, then I'd be taking the reader on a journey he/she has probably already been on before. I don't think that would appeal to many.

 

[8letters]

I consider My European Summer Vacation my best story and it has been my highest rated story. For it's one year anniversary, I published an extended version. It initially had a worse rating than the original and it still doesn't have a lot of votes, views, comments or favorites. A few commenters like the original better, but most prefer the extended version and are appreciative that I took the time to share it.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Yes.

 

[sr71plt]

I don't think this will work as well as you think. I don't have a big catalog of stories and I think most of my readers have read most of them. To me, what makes my stories enjoyable is the journey, the plausible-but-steady ramping up of the sexual tension that culminates in a hot fuck. If I were to retell one of my stories from an alternate POV, then I'd be taking the reader on a journey he/she has probably already been on before. I don't think that would appeal to many.

It worked well (and rather famously) enough for Carol Shields in Happenstance.

It's also how I have written and published to the marketplace with Sabb under various pen names (Shabbu here)--the same story from the separate perspective of different characters.

 

[Damoiselle]

That sounds to me less like two different versions of the same *story*, and more like a base concept splitting into two stories...Which happens to me exactly all of the time.

Almost every concept I've come up with has transformed before I started writing it, and then later I find myself still drawn to the original concept I started with.

 

[Carnevil9]

I don't think this will work as well as you think. I don't have a big catalog of stories and I think most of my readers have read most of them. To me, what makes my stories enjoyable is the journey, the plausible-but-steady ramping up of the sexual tension that culminates in a hot fuck. If I were to retell one of my stories from an alternate POV, then I'd be taking the reader on a journey he/she has probably already been on before. I don't think that would appeal to many.

It worked for Shel Silverstein, albeit with two songs rather than two stories. He wrote "A Boy Named Sue," and years later wrote "The Father of a Boy Named Sue," which basically told the same tale but from the father's perspective. It was quite amusing. That's the kind of thing I had in mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeQmfPZUmHk

 

[Voboy]

No. If I think a story needs that kind of change, I’ll just do it while it’s in progress. For me, writing mostly in first person, that usually means changing the narrator’s gender. I’ve done it a couple of times, but I’m not sure it made the final product any better.

 

[R. Richard]

I frequently write two versions of an erotica story. One version is an incest version, the other a non-incest version. Some of my publishers won't publish incest, others will.

 

[kurrginatorX]

Me, too

I began writing a story titled For the Love of Gramma. I had a single vision, and there was just one way this story could go. Yet, like you, the story began writing itself, and soon I was faced with three stories that all held the same characters and same basic scenario. By the time it was over, the first story I wrote was the third version, the second remained the second, and the third was, of course, the original vision. I chose to submit the three with a disclaimer attached to each. What I finished with was For the Love of Gramma; For the Love of Gramma, Too; and For the Love of Gramma re:MARK'd (The lead character's name is Mark). These are the three for those who may be interested in the changes made to each:

https://www.literotica.com/s/for-the-love-of-gramma
https://www.literotica.com/s/for-the-love-of-gramma-too
https://www.literotica.com/s/for-the-love-of-gramma-re-markd

And, of course, all my stories:
https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=3938682&page=submissions