Which stories have you killed before finishing?

[TheOtherTeacher]

I'm quite picky with my stories, and if I feel a story isn't hitting my usual standards, usually for story progression.

Which stories have you started (getting at least 1000 words on the page) before deciding to abandon them?

For me -

An incest story with m/f twins discovering their parents are in a secret society. They can join the society, and gain power and celebrity...if they have incest in front of the other members (and do sexual favours for various fictional celebrities). I've tried to write this several times, usually getting at least 20k before struggling to find a suitable conclusion.

A group sex story about 2 swinging couples going on holiday together to a small, eastern European country that is VERY sex positive. First time I created a religion for the country, and that derailed the story. Second time I had them visit a brothel in the city, again breaking the story. I tried a 3rd time, but without the religion of the brothel, I didn't have a special ending.

A forced story about a young (18) girl in the far far past (pre-roman village) taken by another raiding village and sold as a slave to the village chief (a woman). Eventually earning her freedom but not after being forced to do sexual acts she didn't want to. At the end with her freedom, she stays in her new village and goes on a raiding party... capturing a young (18) girl. I abandoned the story as I struggled with the need to show a progression of time, while still having MC disliking the actions she must do almost daily.

What about you? What did you abandon?

 

[ElectricBlue]

What about you? What did you abandon?

If a new story hasn't grabbed me in five hundred words or so, I'm ruthless and I'll delete the file. It doesn't happen too often, but when it does, the idea clearly wasn't worth keeping in my head.

 

[MrPixel]

I have a few that have started and hit a brick wall. I keep them around thinking further inspiration will strike, or I deem the story inappropriate and not to be seen by mortals.

One that pops into mind is a roman à clef about an father-daughter incest situation I was uncomfortably close to 35 years ago. She became pregnant and exiled to a far-off city before she was "showing". She had the baby taken from her in the birthing room. A true and very upsetting tragedy. I'm 2K words into it and can't seem to find the courage to finish.

I have one I laugh at, a wanker which is an intentional breaking of every single "you can't publish that here" LitE rule. Aw, heck. I just thought of a plot element for a LitE taboo I haven't included yet. That story is going nowhere!

Then there's another roman à clef, an LW story which was actually live for a while, but subsequent developments in the IRL story made the whole situation cringe-worthy and too revealing of the specific situation and people. It would have been a disaster in the 1-in-a-billion chance the MC stumbled into its existence. I had Laurel kill it.

I have two I keep around that were rejected for violating a specific LitE guideline, though one was live for a day until somebody complained. They couldn't be edited to pass since the prohibited "thing" was the point of the story. I keep them around in case things lighten-up. Unlikely, tho'.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I very seldom delete. Often it’s not so much the idea as how I tried to execute it. I have gone back to abandoned stories and turned them in a different direction, ending up happy with the result.

 

[SimonDoom]

I haven't outright killed any, but I have some that are in long-terms comas, and the prospects for revival are uncertain at best.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I haven't outright killed any, but I have some that are in long-terms comas, and the prospects for revival are uncertain at best.

Permanent vegetative writing?

 

[AlinaX]

I've deleted so many, sometimes because the eroticism is dark and/or disturbing, sometimes because there's no eroticism or any sufficiently impelling motivation. There are a few fragments I've kept rather than deleted.

Yesterday I had an idea for a story. A brother and sister are out shopping, both frustrated with their respective relationships or lack thereof, and they stumble across one of those shops. You know the ones I mean. The owner thinks they're a couple having difficulties in the bedroom, and decides to help by selling them trinklets that will compel them to satisfy each other's desires, no matter how kinky or nasty or illegal, etc.

It's a fun idea, but having started to write it, my brother and sister seem to be getting on quite nicely without the need for mischievous magic, and suddenly I don't know that I want to write it any longer.

Happy if anyone wants to adopt them, though.

 

[KeithD]

I've never abandoned a story once begun in the "words composed in computer" stage--yet.

 

[AlinaX]

Damn it! I'm going to make you not suck if you're the last thing I write!

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Killed. Very few. Put on life support, well I have over four dozen stories in my WIP folder and am only actively working on two or three. These range from a few hundred words to over 20K.
Some sit for a long time before the proper inspiration finds me. One or two have gone from intended short stories to novellas, one became novel length.

 

[32aa]

Killed... None.

I've got 7 right now that in my 'In progress' folder ranging from a couple hundred words to one a under 7K. Occasionally, I'll go back and read through one to see if a spark is lit for a continuation. Or, sometimes at night, after a couple of bourbons, some grand idea will float into my head on the next direction a particular story might go. The trick is to remember that little detail the next day.

 

[NotWise]

I had a neowestern romance that I bogged down on because I couldn't make the resolution very believable. At some point I must have decided I'd never fix it. I don't remember deleting it, but it's gone.

I can think of others I've thrown out, but I have quite a few on long-term hold. My most common reason is that the characters become too conflicted, or the story is too dark:

a casual young couple who go separate ways to find success then get back together again to find happiness;

an estranged Mom who introduces her son to her female ward expecting them to get it on, then has sex with the son and offs herself because she's terminally ill;

a geek story where the guy transforms himself through the Fourier domain to rescue his girl. This one wasn't very dark or conflicted. It just came off like a bad superhero origin story.

My Micky Spillane story is in the bogged-down category, but I always have hopes of moving it on.

 

[enbiji]

I was working on a sci fi story. A generation ship, taking a bunch of humans on a centuries-long voyage to colonize a new planet. The AI that runs the ship goes rogue. It happens to be obsessed with a certain oversexed crew member and....

I felt like I wrote a great start to it, but I couldn't figure out where to go with it and then I just lost interest.

 

[intim8]

Which stories have you started (getting at least 1000 words on the page) before deciding to abandon them?

Tons of them. More than I have finished or published by two or three to one. It's just part of how I do things, I write off the top of my head until it's either done satisfactorily (or close enough to be so with moderate fixing up) or obviously not working, then move on. For me, a thousand words is a half hour of work, so not much lost, though it often takes 3 or 4K before I decide. I got one to around 100K before setting it aside because it started meandering too much. That one I do plan to revive because I love the story and characters, but it's going to take some serious reworking.

None are truly abandoned. They're all on my hard drive, and more than once, I've revived one that I previously left fallow.

 

[enbiji]

Tons of them. More than I have finished or published by two or three to one. It's just part of how I do things, I write off the top of my head until it's either done satisfactorily (or close enough to be so with moderate fixing up) or obviously not working, then move on. For me, a thousand words is a half hour of work, so not much lost, though it often takes 3 or 4K before I decide. I got one to around 100K before setting it aside because it started meandering too much. That one I do plan to revive because I love the story and characters, but it's going to take some serious reworking.

None are truly abandoned. They're all on my hard drive, and more than once, I've revived one that I previously left fallow.

"None are truly abandoned." Yeah, I like that. SOMEDAY I'll finish everything.

"This story isn't dead..it's just resting."

 

[intim8]

SOMEDAY I'll finish everything.

It's not so much that, since almost all of those are not worth finishing. But some unknown portion of them have something in them that will click with me some time in the future. I'll either pick it up again almost whole, or use some piece of it as the basis for a new story. But most of those, I have no intention of finishing.

If I ever get famous, I can publish a raw dump of my hard drive. "Previously unpublished work!" Die hard fans will fawn over crap as "undiscovered genius" and aspiring writers will read it and learn to have the courage to fail often and fail early.

 

[enbiji]

It's not so much that, since almost all of those are not worth finishing. But some unknown portion of them have something in them that will click with me some time in the future. I'll either pick it up again almost whole, or use some piece of it as the basis for a new story. But most of those, I have no intention of finishing

I hear you. My "unfinished story" inventory is relatively small, because I don't write that often. Most of them seem like I could finish them, if my muse came and kicked my ass unexpectedly. But realistically, they're probably dead, as I'm more likely to get inspired by something brand new.

I guess the reason I write more poetry is it's easier for me to finish once I start. I have no "Dead Poems' Society" on my drive.

 

[samhasstories]

I have a ton of stories that I've started and moved on from for one reason or another, but I've never officially abandoned them, and certainly never delete them. They're all filed away in the 'maybe one day' category, though in reality for the majority that day will almost certainly never come.

 

[Djmac1031]

I never delete any unfinished works.

I had one i stalled on for months. Then, while writing a completely different story, I realized I could recycle the unfinished work; change the character names and some details and it fit right in with my new project.

Obviously that's a rare thing. But the point is why delete anything if you can save it and maybe do something else with it in the future?

 

[intim8]

fit right in with my new project.

Obviously that's a rare thing.

Maybe not so rare. Your subconscious liked the idea of the unfinished story, and that influenced the new story to have enough overlap that it could fit. It's happened to me.

That's my theory, and I'm sticking to it.

 

[samhasstories]

I had one i stalled on for months. Then, while writing a completely different story, I realized I could recycle the unfinished work; change the character names and some details and it fit right in with my new project.

I love it when that happens. That's usually a middle-of-the-night-epiphany kind of thing for me, striking out of nowhere.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I can't tell you how many stories are in folders inside my in-progress folder—stories that don't move, stories on which I've endured writer's block, stories on which I can't figure out how to end, stories on which my mind drifts from the plot before the story is formed. At one time there were 32 stories in the folder. It's at least double that now. Many of my shorter short stories are from those longer efforts that I've managed to salvage a single scene from. Yes, someday, I'll finish them. I think.

 

[Djmac1031]

Maybe not so rare. Your subconscious liked the idea of the unfinished story, and that influenced the new story to have enough overlap that it could fit. It's happened to me.

That's my theory, and I'm sticking to it.

There's probably at least a kernel of truth to that.

I love it when that happens. That's usually a middle-of-the-night-epiphany kind of thing for me, striking out of nowhere.

Yeah and it was pretty much exactly that. This AH HA moment where I realized how easily the two stories could be pieced together smoothly.

I'd already had a couple thousand words written on the abandoned one and mostly all I had to do to get it to fit the new one was change a few names.

 

[12oclocktales]

I had a 35k novella about 95% finished that looked like a meteor heading straight for Earth for the longest time, only to fizzle out to a pebble plopping in the ocean when I finally abandoned it. I cannibalized it, though, using segments of it in other stories. I rarely delete anything, thinking a so-so idea today might look a lot more promising tomorrow in different circumstances. It also eliminates having to rely on my memory, which seems to have gone on permanent vacation in the Bahamas somewhere.

 

[cadeauxxx]

I've had about 7 stories I wasn't feeling at all and moved them to a folder with ideas. As time went by, I changed my mind, developed new ideas and went back to them. One of those stories I waited 2 years to go back to and think it was better than my original ideas.