What Story Took the Longest to Finish?

[Flybynite1892]

Maybe it was a stand-alone story, maybe it was a chapter, maybe it was a series but no matter what it was - what story could you just *not* get out the dang door?

Some of the coolest, hottest ideas I've ever had have turned into the biggest boxing matches of my life when I try to put them on paper. Actually going line by line and making things line up and make sense from a plot perspective is not easy at all.

But beyond that regular threshold that I think we all fight through, what story was the most difficult one to finally get out there?

 

[pink_silk_glove]

My last submission Twist of Fate for the Spillane Challenge is the toughest thing that I ever wrote. It started as a simple idea but as I started unravelling it as a plot it quickly became more complex than I had first imagined. Originally it was intended for last year's Spillane, but between my job and trying to connect up the plot there was no way that I was going to make it. I had to let it sit for a few months until I realized that I had to untangle things by just separating the present day main plot from the flashback plot. That part ended up working really well (if I may say so) but there were still a couple of big plot gaps that needed covering which delayed me a couple more months. I had ideas to make it work but it didn't seem tight enough to me. What I had required a bit too much serendipity (luck) to work out. It needed to be more calculated but it just wasn't happening so I ended up cutting bait and wrote what I had. So it's far from perfect. I feel that it's good (or I wouldn't have published it) but not great. There are strong characters and some great scenes but overall the plot was a bit too ambitious. I'm glad that I wrote it since I know without a doubt that I'm a better writer now because I really challenged myself and pushed my abilities, even though I didn't quite hit the target. It was a really tough assignment and I almost pulled it off.

The scores are terrible but I don't believe that they have anything to do with the writing. It's a dark gritty story with an ensemble cast of antiheroes and straight up bad people and relatively low smut ratio. It's also very un-PC. You make a lot of enemies that way.

 

[AchtungNight]

The Rendezvous for me. I had to keep thinking up new crazy twists and reasons for the characters to be in conflict and yet drawn to each other. I also couldn’t settle on a title. When I listened to Eve 6 while writing and got inspired to conclude the story in a nightclub slash love hotel, I found my title. And I was glad to be almost through too.

 

[StillStunned]

Until a few days ago, I'd have said Chapter 5 of "The Rivals". One month for the first four chapters, then three to get the final one done.

But just the other day I finished "Upstream", which took seven months. I just couldn't write the sex scene. Even now it probably isn't as strong as it could be, but at least the story's finished.

 

[HordHolm]

My recent submission to the Pandemonium challenge from January - I had 75% done within the first week, and then... it sat on my desktop staring at me, and I would look guiltily back at it, and it would tap its fingers, and I would look away. Until two weeks before the end of the challenge and then I panic-finished it. It shows, IMO, but it's here https://www.literotica.com/s/the-virgin-sharpy

The title, BTW, is a Polari term for policeman. I though someone might ask, but nobody has. Polari was a gay slang/dialect in the UK from about the Victorian era (or perhaps earlier) up until the 70s/80s.

Next to that submission, since February, has been a third story in a Humor & Satire universe which I am only now finishing. It has also been looking at me pointedly and tapping its fingers.

 

[Flybynite1892]

Polari was a gay slang/dialect in the UK from about the Victorian era (or perhaps earlier) up until the 70s/80s.

This is fucking fascinating and I had no idea it existed. Thanks for sharing; I'm going to have to dig into it, entirely aside from my original question lol.

 

[Flybynite1892]

I just couldn't write the sex scene.

This happens to me all the damn time lol. It's stupid - we write erotica, like this is the point - but it's hard to just knock those out and to make them actually work.

 

[HordHolm]

This is fucking fascinating and I had no idea it existed. Thanks for sharing; I'm going to have to dig into it, entirely aside from my original question lol.

There are some good videos on youtube. I would recommend Rowan Ellis.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

This happens to me all the damn time lol. It's stupid - we write erotica, like this is the point - but it's hard to just knock those out and to make them actually work.

It's easy to write a sex scene. It's hard to write an original or an imaginative sex scene. I think that's why a lot of people leave their sex scenes until the end.

 

[StillStunned]

Blackadder: "I believe, Sir, that the Doctor is trying to tell you that he has just finished his dictionary. It has apparently taken him ten years."
Prince George: "Yes, well, I'm a slow reader myself."

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Aardvark.

 

[Cagivagurl]

Maybe it was a stand-alone story, maybe it was a chapter, maybe it was a series but no matter what it was - what story could you just *not* get out the dang door?

Some of the coolest, hottest ideas I've ever had have turned into the biggest boxing matches of my life when I try to put them on paper. Actually going line by line and making things line up and make sense from a plot perspective is not easy at all.

But beyond that regular threshold that I think we all fight through, what story was the most difficult one to finally get out there?

War and Peace was a bitch, but I did finally get the page that said.
"The end."

 

[Kumquatqueen]

This is fucking fascinating and I had no idea it existed. Thanks for sharing; I'm going to have to dig into it, entirely aside from my original question lol.

A fair few phrases from Polari have been adopted into London English and beyond, and there was quite an overlap with Cockney, too. One video online mentions how it was always spoken out of the side of one's mouth, for maximum deniability.

It became better known thanks to the radio show Round the Horne, with the very camp characters Julian and Sandy who speak it. It's still unknown whether the BBC didn't understand all the innuendo so let the show run, or did understand but just pretended not to.

My recent Crime & Punishment story refers to "Betty Bracelets" turning up, ie the police, which is a Polari phrase. The character would have picked up some similar terms when he moved to London in the 90s.

 

[Bramblethorn]

For me, it's a tie between the current WIP and "Red Scarf". For various reasons I had a year-long hiatus in the middle of that one, but I did eventually pick it up and finish it.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I started writing my series, Mary and Alvin in mid-October 2017 and published the last installment on September 9, 2020. Just shy of three years.

I published it chapter by chapter on a regular monthly schedule. I know most writers here discourage that practice, but I feel that taking in the feedback I received helped me grow tremendously as a writer over that period, and I doubt very much that would have finished it, or continued writing at all, if I had gone all that time without that input and encouragement.

 

[SimonDoom]

I have several stories that I started back in 2017 when I was a new writer, bursting with ideas, but that weren't finished for a long time. My story from last Halloween's contest, Darkling Tower, probably took about five years.

I began an early version of Nude Day Running Adventure, which was published in June 2021, probably 12 years ago or more, long before I ever posted anything at Literotica. I lost it in a hard drive crash, and I completely started over years later. That was my very first effort at writing an erotic story.

 

[bethany_s]

For me it was my last submission also, a chapter in a series. I had started it a few months ago, but began to feel like I might be starting to repeat myself in some aspects, so I put it aside. My reader ‘fans’ on here kept asking me when my next chapter would be and that encouraged me to finish it. It played out in real life differently than I think readers will perceive it… meaning that I feel like a reader will bore of the details that repeat. My thoughts and memories are relatively easy to put down, it’s trying to make it ‘readable’ is what I’ve found is the challenge. I’m trying to approach each chapter in a slightly different way, and I’m sure that will have to evolve if I continue writing.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

When I first decided to write for Literotica, I came up with a series that was perfect. It could have lots of episodes, it had built-in motivation for sex scenes while still having a plot, I liked the main character. Basically, he would be isekai'd into the world of Porn Tropes, so he'd encounter the Seductive Neighbor, the Free Use people, get married so that he could encounter the Cuckolding Woman and the Homewrecker, maybe Freaky Friday into his wife's or lover's body ....

I could not make it work. I finally took all that stuff, several pages, out of my "future story stuff" file.

-Rocco

 

[Rustyoznail]

Technically, the longest from start to finish was The Ghost of Benanee. It started out as an article for a railway archaeology forum, but someone wrote a book covering the same area. I sat on the info for a bit over ten years before I had an idea to write a fictional account of the history of the settlement.

 

[THBGato]

This is fucking fascinating and I had no idea it existed. Thanks for sharing; I'm going to have to dig into it, entirely aside from my original question lol.

Polari was a gay slang/dialect in the UK from about the Victorian era (or perhaps earlier) up until the 70s/80s.

The polari words "naff" and "khazi" are still in reasonably regular use in the UK, largely thanks to the radio show "round the horn". EDIT: sorry, didn't see that kumquatqueen already mentioned this.

Back on topic, Eve & Lucy being the longest series I've written (84k words) was funnily enough the story that took the longest to write. I manage about 1000 words per weekday, and 4000 per weekend.

 

[HordHolm]

The polari words "naff" and "khazi" are still in reasonably regular use in the UK, largely thanks to the radio show "round the horn".

The other slang that works its way in here and there is prison slang - 'nonce', 'porridge', etc.

 

[Rob_Royale]

I came to Lit to write one story. So I sat down and I wrote it and submitted. It was kicked back three times, for various reasons, but the short of it was, my writing wasn't there yet. So that story got shoved in a folder in frustration, and I started another. It took a while to get it there, but it was posted and it got great reviews.

Nearly two years later, I dug the first story out of mothballs and rewrote it. It was a labor of love and this time My Beautiful Debbie was published. It's a very personal story, and having completed it, I'd be happy even if I never wrote another word.

 

[rebel_code]

Well, my latest, "Housemates", originally conceived as a bit of fluff and something of a stroker, somehow took over two years to get to publishable form.
I'll attribute a good part of that to writer's block, but some was also due to trying to make it good as long as I was bothering to write it at all. Stuff like, "Okay, there are six main characters, the reader needs to be able to tell them apart, so I'd better write some backstory for each one," which turned into an explanation of how they all turned out the way they did in the story's present. So, it's been fun, but I'd rather not take so long to write ~50k words of an elevated stroke story.

 

[Belegon]

The appropriately titled Things Left Undone has been taking up room in my skull for almost twenty years. It's an erotic romance ghost story involving a descendent of Wyatt Earp who gets assigned to San Diego as a member of the US Border Patrol. Many people aren't aware that Wyatt Earp and his wife lived in San Diego for awhile. He gambled in what's now the Gaslamp District and the building he ran a table in is still there in pretty much the original condition. He and his wife left SD rather suddenly and without explanation, and I adapted that fact to help me create the story. I do want to finish it some day. It's currently about 60% finished. I lost forward progress on it when one of my secondary characters became a great favorite of mine and I started writing about her instead of moving the plot forward and resolving the story.

 

[LiterallyLiterate]

Not been here long enough to boast years of lingering in the WIP folder, but I’ve been struggling with chapter 9 in my series for well over a month. Chapter 8 is done and gets submitted tomorrow, I think. Chapter 10 is also awaiting, more or less done, but 9…
I have some crucial plot developments that don’t fit in 8 or 10, and I did have a plot/plots ready, but after tinkering with the story on and off and getting a few thousand words down, I realized yesterday that I really didn’t want to keep writing the story the way I had begun.
So I simply had to scrap my work so far and begin from a fresh start with another angle.

On the bright side, I feel better about what I’ve started now, and I can introduce the key elements I need in that chapter another way.

Fingers crossed, I’ll make it work this time.