Unfulfilled plot bunnies, maybe?

[TarnishedPenny]

I am finally getting over several months’ serious writer’s block and have finally been able to add that final ‘30’ to a long-stalled story.

Doing the first major edit, I notice two fairly substantial chunks which I am culling, one of what might be termed an erotic food fight and the other with a female gymnast teaching her new lover how to help her do some moves. There’s nothing wrong with either of them; they are each a couple of Word pages long and could earn their salt with no more than the usual bit of editing, but my high-altitude read shows that neither adds anything to this particular story. So, discarded and done.

I’m not looking for advice, but am a bit curious. Does this happen to everybody? If it does happen to you:

a) do you just delete such and consider yourself better off for the experience of writing them, or

b) do you tuck them away in a special ‘These Might Come In Handy Someday’ file, or

c) something else?​

Thanks.

 

[TadOverdon]

A lot gets used eventually - scenes, paragraphs, dialogue. I've got a "wicked witch" line that I just decided doesn't fit the situation terribly well. It will show up in another exchange between other characters.

Every time I do a substantial revision, I do it in a new file. So most stuff that's cut out is preserved in its earlier context.

Plot, though? No, not really.

 

[oggbashan]

When I thought I might die soon, I posted my incomplete stories on Lit so that others could use them.

First part of four, here:

https://www.literotica.com/s/oggbashan-stew-pt-01



Trouble is, I survived and I nearly have as many incomplete stories I had then...

 

[MrPixel]

Every time I do a substantial revision, I do it in a new file. So most stuff that's cut out is preserved in its earlier context.

Bingo. I do the same thing. Last time I started into what was supposed to be a plot nugget, it grew legs and became its own story, a spin-off. In fact, it's sitting in the approval queue right now (five days! ), and there are a couple of spoilers in there for the main story I'm still editing.

 

[SimonDoom]

I have a gazillion plot bunnies, ranging from stories half-finished to those barely begun.

Some of them are stuck in a state of arrested development, but I've never completely abandoned any of them. I just need to rustle up the focus and discipline to get them done, one by one.

 

[nonverbalcommunication]

Beware the bunnies

Tim the Enchanter: Well, that's no ordinary rabbit! That's the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on!
Sir Robin: You tit! I soiled my armor, I was so scared!
Tim the Enchanter: Look, that rabbit's got a vicious streak a mile wide, it's a killer!

 

[BiscuitHammer]

I'm an idea hoarder, I pack everything away/leave it strewn around for later use. I had a major idea that was supposed to go into a chapter of Freja & Jeanie, but I just couldn't feel it in, so it's waiting for another chapter to come up in the future where I'll use it.

And that's nowhere near the first time I've have done this. Certainly won't be the last.

 

[RejectReality]

I've got a folder of half-baked stories, another for unused cover mock-ups, and one full of cut scenes.

Every once in a blue moon, a half-baked story will see a resurrection when I peruse that folder. The cover ideas often get cannibalized for other covers, but do sometimes end up translating into a new story. Can't think of any cut scene that ended up going anywhere but the "cutting room floor" page of my website. It's usually not just a single scene, but lots of surrounding stuff, which makes it difficult to use elsewhere.

The ideas/setting/kinks from a cut scene may get repurposed, but the actual wordage never does.

The last thing I wrote is going to end up in the half-baked folder eventually, because it's a dead end as is. First substantial writing I've done in months, over the course of a late evening and the following morning. When I took a break during a cool-off in the sex scene, I slowly realized neither of these people are likeable or redeemable, and there's no satisfying way to end it. They're both scumbags.

She's a little less scumbaggish, but only by comparison to him.

 

[NotWise]

Doing the first major edit, I notice two fairly substantial chunks which I am culling, one of what might be termed an erotic food fight and the other with a female gymnast teaching her new lover how to help her do some moves. There’s nothing wrong with either of them; they are each a couple of Word pages long and could earn their salt with no more than the usual bit of editing, but my high-altitude read shows that neither adds anything to this particular story. So, discarded and done.

I’m not looking for advice, but am a bit curious. Does this happen to everybody?

To me, it should happen more often. My stories have too many extraneous scenes. I could have made two stories out of "Izzy Has a List," because scenes that were relevant to part of the story were superfluous for the other.

I've deleted a few scenes, but I've never done anything with them. I'd rather write the same idea into a new story than edit an old scene into a new setting.

 

[LAHomedog]

I save everything that is cut. Premises, plot points, characters, good lines. Hey! One never knows and why not.

I have four or five folders on my desktop where I tuck them in.

 

[Handley_Page]

I am finally getting over several months’ serious writer’s block and have finally been able to add that final ‘30’ to a long-stalled story.
.
.

b) do you tuck them away in a special ‘These Might Come In Handy Someday’ file, or

Thanks.

I have a large directory full of it

 

[PennameWombat]

I am finally getting over several months’ serious writer’s block and have finally been able to add that final ‘30’ to a long-stalled story.

Congrats on gettin’ the mojo flowing again.

I’m not looking for advice, but am a bit curious. Does this happen to everybody? If it does happen to you:

a) do you just delete such and consider yourself better off for the experience of writing them, or

b) do you tuck them away in a special ‘These Might Come In Handy Someday’ file, or

c) something else?​

Thanks.

Definitely b). One of my personal favorite stories (and actually quite decently rated) came from a scene that I envisioned for a WIP. I cut what I’d written for that scene and saved it in a file that collects such stuff and continued on with the WIP.

From that cut scene emerged a separate universe. The offshoot story has been better received than that WIP, which I put much more effort into.

A few other scenes worked their way into other stories, with appropriate name changes and other tweaks.

 

[davion2308]

Option B

No doubt, go with Option B.

I have probably a dozen half-finished, half-started, half-assed stories I keep on Penzu.com because they may come in handy. I don't like the stories but I like certain sentences, ideas, scenes, and descriptions and I'll use those as random drawers full of parts so I can create stronger works when I'm trying.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I save everything that is cut. Premises, plot points, characters, good lines. Hey! One never knows and why not.

I have four or five folders on my desktop where I tuck them in.

I'm brutal with my discards. I figure that, if it was junk in this story, it's gonna be junk in the next, so why keep it? Delete file? Yes.

I don't keep my junk writing - and I'll know in the first five-hundred words "if this is going to work." Fortunately, most new starts work, so I don't trash much.

I think I only have one chunk of a barely started story that I've kept, that might never get finished. Other than that, I have four WIPS that I have every intention of completing, eventually, but no endless folders. I can't bear seeing all that junk!

 

[Agiel]

I'm brutal with my discards. I figure that, if it was junk in this story, it's gonna be junk in the next, so why keep it? Delete file? Yes.

I don't keep my junk writing - and I'll know in the first five-hundred words "if this is going to work." Fortunately, most new starts work, so I don't trash much.

I agree with getting rid of junk. When you realise you’ve written crap what’s the point of keeping it? But you have to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water. It might be the idea was good but not the words that followed. So keep the idea and get rid of the words. Sometimes not all of it is junk. Sometimes there are words, phrases etc which don’t fit in that story but will in a future one. It’s happened to me and I’m sure it’s happened to many others. Think twice delete once.

But if it truly is junk and there’s nothing good in it at all then the logical thing to do is delete it.

 

[oggbashan]

I used to get rid of junk when I had an XT with two 360k floppy drives. Once I upgraded to a hard drive (a whole 10 MB!) I started keeping everything including earlier drafts.

Now, despite the hundreds of stories I have written, and the thousands of earlier versions, they will all fit as Word files on a CD. As .txt files they would fit on a 1.2 mb floppy.

Why do I keep everything?

My first ever attempt at an erotic story was on one of my 360k floppies. I drastically rewrote it, changing it from third person to first person and going through several major revisions. But I finally decided that the change of voice and rewrites weren't working and I should start again with the original.

But I only had it on one 360k floppy and that had become corrupt so it is lost forever.

I had reached about 50,000 words before the rewrite. I suppose I could rewrite it, but it would never be a Lit story. The premise is that the main character is sexually abused as a child and his eventual response and self-discovery. The sexual abuse was detailed and played a major part in the plot and ending - so not for Lit.

I couldn't write it now. It was started over 20 years ago when I was a different writer and a different person. But its loss still rankles.

 

[gordo12]

I am finally getting over several months’ serious writer’s block and have finally been able to add that final ‘30’ to a long-stalled story.

Doing the first major edit, I notice two fairly substantial chunks which I am culling, one of what might be termed an erotic food fight and the other with a female gymnast teaching her new lover how to help her do some moves. There’s nothing wrong with either of them; they are each a couple of Word pages long and could earn their salt with no more than the usual bit of editing, but my high-altitude read shows that neither adds anything to this particular story. So, discarded and done.

I’m not looking for advice, but am a bit curious. Does this happen to everybody? If it does happen to you:

a) do you just delete such and consider yourself better off for the experience of writing them, or

b) do you tuck them away in a special ‘These Might Come In Handy Someday’ file, or

c) something else?​

Thanks.

Definitely B. Several have morphed into their own stories. I don't mind discarding words or a paragraph but if I've written a scene a couple of pages long no way am I throwing it away. I wrote it because I liked it. And if I like it, there may be some use for it someday.

 

[oggbashan]

Definitely B. Several have morphed into their own stories. I don't mind discarding words or a paragraph but if I've written a scene a couple of pages long no way am I throwing it away. I wrote it because I liked it. And if I like it, there may be some use for it someday.

I have had to accept that my 'some days' are limited. Posting my incomplete stories was a relief, but I have more now...

 

[8letters]

Option A.

Stuff I wrote for one story is highly unlikely ever to work in another story. Are you ever likely to write another story about a gymnast? Even if you did, that gymnast would hopefully have a very different personality and relationship with her lover. Let it go.

 

[Rustyoznail]

Option A.

Stuff I wrote for one story is highly unlikely ever to work in another story. Are you ever likely to write another story about a gymnast? Even if you did, that gymnast would hopefully have a very different personality and relationship with her lover. Let it go.

I go with this theory. I have a lot of plot points or dialogue at the bottom of the draft I'm working on, but when the story is finished, it gets deleted.

Now, if we're talking about half finished stories... I may have one or two bunnies in the back paddock.

 

[TadOverdon]

For me, it's just wasted work to throw it out.

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

I go with this theory. I have a lot of plot points or dialogue at the bottom of the draft I'm working on, but when the story is finished, it gets deleted.

Now, if we're talking about half finished stories... I may have one or two bunnies in the back paddock.

Will does that too; sometimes he'll get up in the middle of the night and tap in a few words or plot ideas on a story he's working on just to get it down on paper, as it were, especially if it's a story he's really into. He'll then incorporate, or not, into the main text when he works out how it's going to work. When I read his first drafts there are usually whole chains of comments, strings of unused dialog, plot points, potential direction changes and curves and 'what ifs?' jumbled together on the bottom of the page. Most of it gets deleted, but some of it I'll recognize in reworked fashion in a different story somewhere down the road.

 

[Djmac1031]

Closest I've come to that so far is I wrote a chapter for a series then scrapped most of it because I decided it was moving things along too quickly between my main characters, so rewrote it and slowed things down.

I saved the scrapped parts and used elements of it in later chapters when it felt more appropriate .

 

[gunhilltrain]

I agree with getting rid of junk. When you realise you’ve written crap what’s the point of keeping it? But you have to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water. It might be the idea was good but not the words that followed. So keep the idea and get rid of the words. Sometimes not all of it is junk. Sometimes there are words, phrases etc which don’t fit in that story but will in a future one. It’s happened to me and I’m sure it’s happened to many others. Think twice delete once.

But if it truly is junk and there’s nothing good in it at all then the logical thing to do is delete it.

It's not necessarily junk. But some writer (I don't remember which one) said, "Don't fall in love with your own words." I think he meant that something may be well-written, but it may distract from the story you're trying to tell. Of course, the hard part is recognizing when this is happening and what has to go.

John Updike got away with a lot of "scene descriptions," I'd call them, that I wouldn't attempt myself. He starts Rabbit, Run with a multi-page description of Harry Angstrom attempting to drive to Florida and ends the fourth book with another trip where he actually gets there. Somehow he makes all the details work.

 

[Wifetheif]

I save everything. Sometimes the completion for that story you began but never hoped to finish will pop into your mind full-blown and you'll be kicking yourself for having trashed it. Now that no one keeps massive filing cabinets anymore, what's a few extra bits on your hard drive?