Authors who left a cliffhanger in their stories but then found no time to write the s

[sweetdreamssss]

How does it feel that people are waiting for your next part but due to personal reasons you can't write more?

Do you ever felt that you should have wrote all parts and published them in periodic intervals?

As a reader,do you feel betrayed that you are following a story but you are waiting forever for the next part ?

Do share your opinion on them ?

 

[jaF0]

Don't care.

No.

I very rarely read stories here any more.

No.

 

[Nezhul]

I've recently went on hiatus for almost a year.
Feels bad, actually, like I'm letting my fans down. Like I'm letting MYSELF down, because I really want that story finished, and I also want to make a living as a writer someday - and you can't do that unless you write every day.

I'm trying now, and it's working so far.

But... I really don't see what personal reasons can stop you from writing forever, apart from some sickness that make it impossible to type.
Your friends and family shouldn't affect that - they should be supportative whatever smut you end up writing.

I hope you get back into it! Good luck!

 

[bushyTrail]

As a writer, I don't publish a story that has not been finished to prevent just that (and the possibility that, after all, you can't complete your story because there was no story to begin with).
This notwithstanding, I found myself in a pickle when I realized that the last part of a series wasn't good enough and should be changed. Unfortunately it happened in a moment when I did not feel inspired at all. I ended up delaying the publication for 4 weeks, I hope for the best. My readers prodded me a little, but respectfully, and later thanked me for not leaving them out to dry.
As a reader... Well, I hate it when it happens! Not that my anger is ever towards who writes, it's just... You know, annoying!

 

[Bramblethorn]

As a reader, it's disappointing, of course. But I see this as a place for new and inexperienced writers to try things, learn, and make a few mistakes; I don't hold them to the same expectations as I would for a professional author who's been paid for a series.

As a writer, well, I've only just resumed my current series after a twelve-month hiatus. Sometimes life gets in the way, and until somebody feels like offering me enough money to quit my side job, I'm not promising punctuality. Happy to say my readers are a very patient lot; I don't recall a single grumpy email or comment about the long delay, although there were several on the "positive encouragement" side.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Urk. I have four series that have been in suspended animation for 3 years and I feel rather guilty over leaving them hanging. I intended to pick them up at the start of 2019 and didn’t, but I feel I owe it to my readers to finish. That and I love the stories and don’t want to leave them hanging forever. I try not to do that now, so my stories are written with a definite conclusion, but in a way that I can continue them if I want to. On the other hand, a lot of my stand-alone stories are longer than some people’s series so I don’t worry about it much.

 

[SimonDoom]

I do not feel guilty, although I do want to finish a series that I stopped updating 3 years ago. I take Bramblethorns attitude

 

[KeithD]

I don't submit anything to Literotica that I don't consider finished and I don't read anything that doesn't appear to be finished.

 

[Maeven_quinn]

How does it feel that people are waiting for your next part but due to personal reasons you can't write more?

Do you ever felt that you should have wrote all parts and published them in periodic intervals?

As a reader,do you feel betrayed that you are following a story but you are waiting forever for the next part ?

Do share your opinion on them ?

Well, I've betrayed a few readers for sure in this respect.

However, I don't usually publish sections of a multipart until I have all the story written, or at the minimum, outlined.

Writers block happens. Life happens. All kinds of things happen. So planning ahead keeps stories from languishing in the dust bin.

 

[Nezhul]

As a writer, I don't publish a story that has not been finished to prevent just that

I mean, I can understand that... For shorter stuff.
But my current webnovel is over 100 000 words long already, and it could go at least as much longer. Writing it out as a single piece, and then publishing it would be insane. Not to mention, I can really use the motivation to keep going, and my readers give it to me.
Yeah, sometimes you go on hiatus. But If I was writing it on my own - I'd probably still be at around chapter 12 or so. In fact, when I stopped posting it on Lit (for disagreements with the platform rules) - I stopped writing it for over a year. And I went on a long hiatus just last year, and frankly, the only thing that made me take up the pen again is my readers asking me politely every now and then. They were really supportive.

And then there're things like ISSTH that is over 10 million words. Or Worm, that is just short of 5 million.
Those are Giga-novels that are insanely good, but do you think they'd ever have seen the light of day if the author was aiming to finish them before publishing?

As a rule of thumb, I'd want to finish anything under 50k words. But anything over it - it's fine to post chapter-by-chapter.

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

As a reader, it's disappointing, of course. But I see this as a place for new and inexperienced writers to try things, learn, and make a few mistakes; I don't hold them to the same expectations as I would for a professional author who's been paid for a series.

As a writer, well, I've only just resumed my current series after a twelve-month hiatus. Sometimes life gets in the way, and until somebody feels like offering me enough money to quit my side job, I'm not promising punctuality. Happy to say my readers are a very patient lot; I don't recall a single grumpy email or comment about the long delay, although there were several on the "positive encouragement" side.

Ditto to all this.

I began my primary work on Lit with a complete draft around 200k; the draft expanded to about 500k and I’ve now revised/edited to 400k, but now, I’m writing, revising and publishing without any lead time. I’m behind my original publishing “schedule”, but I’m not being paid to do any of this and there are no deadlines except those I set for myself. Like BT, I feel very lucky to also have readers that don’t have unrealistic expectations, and are patient and encouraging.

 

[ChuckWolf]

There have been a few stories that I posted elsewhere before becoming a writer on Literotica and a few of those were multi-chapter stories that I still plan on finishing, but right now are on the backburner.

I do feel a little guilty about not finishing them.

Most of my more recent stories were just intended as one shots, but then reader-encouragement and inspiration have made me interested in writing sequels to them.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Send money and I have an obligation. Send nothing, I don't. Comment nicely and ask for more, and I might. I write because I want to, not because readers want me to. I might die tomorrow, what's my obligation then?

 

[oggbashan]

Yes.

I had Christmas Fairy nagging at my subconsciousness for years. I had written myself into a corner and couldn't see a way to write Part 3 and finish it.

Parts 1 and 2 - 2004

Part 3 and final - December 2017!

 

[SamScribble]

I tend not to write multi-part stories. But I do sometimes write a sequel (or two).

And as a reader? I don't tend to read much on Lit. But when I do - and if I manage to get to the end of the piece I'm reading - then that's the end. Perhaps that's the reason that I never took to TV soaps.

 

[BiscuitHammer]

Certainly none of my ongoing stories are meant to be unfinished, but it can take time for me to get back to them. If I have to put something in hiatus, I at least try to stop at a point that feels like a natural pause, and then have a note explaining that the story will go in.

My fault, really, for having around eight stories active and on the go.

And aboot twelve others perking inside my cranial grape. Gah...

 

[KeithD]

Writing it out as a single piece, and then publishing it would be insane.

Well, no, that's pretty much the standard in the publishing world. (And it's what I do.)

 

[JamesMiehoff]

I try to do that and I have good intentions, but Hey! A squirrel.

Jame Look! Something shiny!

 

[Nezhul]

Well, no, that's pretty much the standard in the publishing world. (And it's what I do.)

I mean, I know that.
But I'm not in the publishing world. I'm doing it as a hobby.

Maybe I'm just weak like that

 

[KeithD]

I mean, I know that.
But I'm not in the publishing world. I'm doing it as a hobby.

Maybe I'm just weak like that

Literotica is smack dab in the publishing world. When it's posted here, it's been published. Doing it as hobby is irrelevant to this particular point. Just like everywhere else, a preponderance of works that are posted to Literotica are fully finished before submitted. This rolling series bit, although a legitimate writing form, is a small slice of works published, even here. You posted that submitting something that was finished before submitting it would be insane. That's just flatly wrong.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Well, no, that's pretty much the standard in the publishing world. (And it's what I do.)

Maybe I'm missing something here, but this doesn't jibe with what I can see of publishing. In the fields where serial works are common (e.g. SF/F, comics, romance, ...) the norm seems to be to publish each episode of the series as it's ready.

The Green Mile, Harry Potter, Wheel of Time, Sandman... literally every major fantasy series I can think of from the last few decades has been published on that basis. GRRM's fans have been waiting almost a decade for book six of A Song of Ice and Fire (aka Game of Thrones), and he's still got another one to go after that. Robert Jordan died before completing WoT, with the last three books written by another author working from his notes.

At the less famous end of things, many series get killed by their publisher before the story's complete, because the first couple of books didn't sell well enough to justify printing more. Authors who are trying to make a living in that market can't afford to write the whole of a five- or ten-book series until they know whether they're going to get paid past book two.

I am having difficulty thinking of a major series in the last 20 years that was completely written before the first instalment went on sale. What am I missing here?

I agree with Nezhul here. A long series is a big investment of an author's time, and publish-as-you-go can be very helpful in maintaining the momentum to finish it. (Or, for pro authors, in not starving to death before they finish a series that the readers might not even want...)

 

[Nezhul]

It was a colorful word that is used purely for illustrative purposes and reflects only my state of mind and not the TRUTH in some higher form.

It'd be insanely hard for me to finish such project in one go.
There.
Does that make more sense?

 

[ElectricBlue]

I am having difficulty thinking of a major series in the last 20 years that was completely written before the first instalment went on sale. What am I missing here?

I tend to agree - and way back when, Tolkien for example, published LOTR over several years, C.S.Lewis published the Narnia Chronicles and his sci-fi trilogy over several years. Mervyn Peake, with Gormenghast, likewise. More recently, Philip Pullman with His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust, each volume a year or two apart.

The last trilogy that I can recall published simultaneously was the Thomas Covenant Chronicles, back in the eighties - but I might be wrong about that. I know I bought them all together.

Even Lawrence Durell spread his novels out a bit - although now, of course, they're available in single volumes.

 

[KeithD]

The serials you folks are referring to are a small proportion of what is being published. I responded to what was posted--that finishing the work before publishing it is insane. It's not. Most works--even on Literotica--are finished before they are published. Serials are a small portion of the whole. Don't go ignoring the goalposts that were set.

 

[Hypoxia]

I try to do that and I have good intentions, but Hey! A squirrel.

Jame Look! Something shiny!

Why we may abandon an unfinished LIT (or other) endeavor:

* distracted by distractions
* run out of ideas or energy
* dead or disinterested
* intentionally fuck with readers

That last is fun. At cliffhanger time, finish with something like, "NEXT: The Pope's Favorite Hot Daughter" and then move on to another project.