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fee_folay August 18 2012, 13:24:56 UTC
I too have wondered if, perhaps, the poor writers of unfinished WIPs have encountered some tragic real life circumstances that has made it impossible to complete their work - and that may be true in a small percentage of cases, but most of the time, I suspect they have just moved on to the "new and shiny". I say this because, I, as a writer, am well aware of the temperamental nature of my personal "muse" which drives my inspiration. My fandom interests are fluid - and I shift from fandom to fandom. When I am "into" something, I can be very driven to read and write in that fandom, but eventually that passion wanes a bit, and something else takes its place. As a result, I have several WIPs of my own, but you will not find them posted anywhere because I have made it a rule to only post completed pieces. Often, I will cycle back to a fandom and pick up where I left off on one of my WIPs, and eventually post them when they are done. This can take a long time. My TOS story, Wider Than the Sky literally was "in process" for years! Still, I prefer that to posting an incomplete piece and disappointing readers, as I have been disappointed.

P.S. I too sometimes wish I could just "finish" other folks works in fandom, but unless you can reach the author and get permission, doing so and posting any results is not really kosher. I one time came across a site in which authors could post their unfinished stories for others to pick up and complete if they wanted, which was an interesting idea. It might make a challenging writing practice in trying to match another author’s style and "voice" in order for the piece to flow smoothly.

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paleom August 18 2012, 13:56:34 UTC
I should point out that would never post it - I just do it for my own enjoyment on my own PC
Although once I sent my version to a writer and it prompted her to actually finish the work herself. *grin*

Maybe we should start a group. We can search the internet for unfinished work and post a complaint.
Maybe with enough 'comments' people will stop doing it and do as we do - don't post till its finished. LOL
I've got two in my LJ account that are set to private viewing - when I finally get round to finishing them I
will make them public, till then they are my failure aone to purview. LOL.

PaleoM
xx

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paleom August 28 2012, 12:28:38 UTC
FIC RANT:

....and I just discovered another thing I hate! Just happened again and I needed somewhere to rant and I figured you may well understand;

People who split things into little pages so they can tell them selves they've written a 12 or 25 or 32 chapter story and you get all excited and then realise that each 'chapter' is like a snippet and you're lucky if there is actually 3 chapters worth there but they don't do links properly so you have to keep going backwards and forewards and clicking on links and waiting for pages to load for something they could have put on one page!! Grrrrrr!

That annoys me.

Thank you for listening *Grin*

Paleom
xx

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fee_folay August 28 2012, 23:29:10 UTC
LOL! Yes, I can see where that would get annoying. The LJ feature that limits posts is bothersome to me, because I would prefer to post my work as complete stories rather than in chapters. I really do not understand the mindset of posting in multiple parts. I have had to do it with a few longer fics, simply due to the fact that LJ limits how many characters can be in one post. This is one of the reasons I posted my latest Big Bang fic on AO3 - it would have been too many chapters on LJ and I did not wish to do that to myself or my readers.

I suspect some people hope readers will post comments for every chapter, thus increasing the amount of feedback. Or maybe they want readers to be impressed by the high number of chapters - though it seems readers would soon figure out that the chapters are rather puny in length. Perhaps they just see every shift to a new scene or moment in time as an opportunity for a new chapter, but for me that just breaks up the flow of a story. I don't really know the intent behind this personal posting choice, and maybe I should not speculate since it is so opposite of my prefered style of posting.

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paleom August 29 2012, 07:23:31 UTC
I post in chapters on fanfiction but I at least make sure each chapter is average 5 or 6 A4 pages, not one.
I agree that LJ's post limit is annoying, but not enough to make me actually pay for an account. However
I still fill the post if I can. If they just put NEXT at the bottom of each chapter it wouldn't be quite so bad and
I wouldn't mind hardly at all but when you're PC is ten years old, all that toing and frowing tends to send it a
little batty and eventually it gets all gripey.

This author has written another one and I'm not sure I can be bothered. Have to wait till the weekend I think.
All that extra loading pages adds time as well.

Sometimes I see that it is done for 'artistic values' and fare enough - each to thier own. Most times I think it's
the inexperience of the writer. Generally in these fics there are issues like two characters talking in the same
paragraph, etc and you don't want to put them off (I think everyone should write, even if they start off
bad - they will get better) so I just seethe quietly at my PC and really really wish they wouldn't do that! LOL.

I really need to get an A03 account.

Paleom
xx

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