Posting Unfinished Stories - The Poll

[rheasilvia]

There are stories on my harddrive that I will never finish. Many of them are just fragments; some are too embarrassing to ever be allowed to see the light of day. The latter category includes my first foray into slash, which took place in Star Trek: Voyager fandom (I went the extra mile to include every tired ST:V slash cliché I could buy, steal or

Comments

[rheasilvia]

which is vastly amusing to see the same topics come up over and over...

Yes! Fandom keeps biting its own tail. I'm sure we could start linking to old posts on certain subjects and nobody would ever know they weren't brand-new. :-)

Unfinished stories can be enjoyable as long as I don't get too involved in them, because then it's just depressing knowing there's nothing more.

This is true. I'm the same, which is why I mostly tried to stay away from such things, until my willpower pretty much totally deserted me some years back. :-) And I do have to say that there are some unfinished stories that I am very involved in - and whose unfinished status I frequently lament - that I think about more often than finished stories I love, and that this is not altogether a bad thing.

I have so many incomplete fics it's a joke, and I do go through and delete the ones I know will never be finished now, even though some of them are 25-80k D:

Noooo, don't delete them! Chances are some people really would still love to read them, particularly if they're already that long. (Disclaimer: I say this as someone who has never yet posted or deleted any of her ridiculously copious unfinished works. *g*)

So I say post them!

Most people do seem to be willing to give unfinished works a try - far more than I expected! - so I think I will! It seems there's actually a higher tolerance for works that are posted as permanently incomplete as opposed to works in progress. Which makes a lot of sense to my mind... this way, the reader knows what she's getting herself into from the start; no uncertainty.

You should post some of your unfinished works, too! Any Onmyouji ones...?

Also also, now I want to know what the really wrong JE fic is, because wrong fics are always the best kind!

Alas, I fear I will never have the courage to post this. It's a kind of melding of button-y guilty pleasure clichés - "fuck or die", slave!fic, mafia AU, rape fantasy...

[glitterburn]

I get very attached to some unfinished stories, sometimes over-attached, and sometimes I wonder if I deliberately keep them unfinished because I like the idea of them more than I'd like the reality, if you know what I mean. I have one I plotted out last year that's 12k of notes and dialogue snippets but it hasn't got any further, though I'm determined to push at it some more this year. Maybe. Perhaps. I look at it every week and coo at it but don't add to it!

Seriously I hate to think how many thousands of words I've deleted over the years. With some fandoms, when I lose them, they go forever and it's pointless to keep reminders hanging around.

Yeah, I think if you know a fic will never be finished, you can sort of mourn it and enjoy it at the same time. And it's possible that audience reaction might spur an author to finish a particular piece or it might reassure the author that the fic was never meant to be. Not in an 'OMG what crap' sense, but sometimes the idea fades and you don't want to let go, and putting the fic out there is enough to loosen the hold.

I've got two unfinished Onmyouji fics, one of which is nothing more than notes and scraps of dialogue. The other is 26k, though 3k of that is plotting notes. It's my Meiji AU and I was very happy with it right up to the time it ground to a halt. You're welcome to read it if you like but I'd rather email it to you than post it on LJ. Tell you what, I'll swap you the Meiji Onmyouji fic for the wrong JE fic - I love fannish trope fics like that XD

[rheasilvia]

I do think I know what you mean about not finishing some stories because they might not be as good as the idea you have of them in your head. One of the unfinished stories I am contemplating posting is a somewhat similar case (though maybe not exactly the same). The issue here is that it's a sequel, and I really like the way the first story turned out, so I have always feared that a sub-par sequel would bring down the first story... which is almost certainly a major factor in the story's unfinished status.

Seriously I hate to think how many thousands of words I've deleted over the years. With some fandoms, when I lose them, they go forever and it's pointless to keep reminders hanging around.

I guess I am just a hamster. :-) I never delete anything, no matter how crappy it may be, and/or how dead the fandom is to me. I mean - I still have that horrid Star Trek Voyager thing! You really can't get worse than that without pregnant kittens, cutesy nicknames and knitted socks being involved somehow. (It was more of an angstfest than a curtainfic kind of bad, but still, the analogy stands. *g*)

Not in an 'OMG what crap' sense, but sometimes the idea fades and you don't want to let go, and putting the fic out there is enough to loosen the hold.

This would be very cool. I do mourn the ideas of some of these stories, and in some cases I even have the vague (if unrealistic) hope that someone else might adopt the story and finish it so I can read it after all. I almost always write stories so I can read them, so this would make me happy.

Of course, in other cases I would not want anyone else to write this story, because I feel too possessive. I am not entirely sure why this applies to some stories and not to others, but it probably has to do with the degree of emotional distance to the story...

Tell you what, I'll swap you the Meiji Onmyouji fic for the wrong JE fic - I love fannish trope fics like that XD

Deal! But don't tell me I didn't warn you. :-) D'you have my email addy?

(Oh god, I can't read it before I send it to you or I will never get up the courage.)

[glitterburn]

The unfinished fic, is it a sequel to First Contact, by any chance? Because I love that story and even an unfinished sequel would make me squee :D

LOL I used to be a hamster, but when I get depressed I have a tendency to want to destroy things, and so I find it very easy to weed out unfinished fics and make harsh decisions that I might not otherwise make if I was in an okay mood. I have regretted the impulse once or twice, but not often. I think my laptop memory thanks me for it, too...

I hear you on the emotional distance thing. Some fics, once they're done, I can barely remember them. Others still have a hold on me. I always think it'd be fun to take part in a fannish remix challenge, but usually you can only pick one 'safe' fic that can't be touched and I'd probably want to keep seven or eight fics safe LOL!

Woohoo got your JE fic, OMG excited now XDDDDD

[rheasilvia]

The unfinished sequel hails from distant times long before my acquaintance with sparkly dancing boys! It's the sequel to the X-Files AU Partners, one of my first slash stories and the third piece of fanfic I ever posted anywhere. :-) First Contact doesn't have even an unfinished sequel so far, I'm afraid, and is unlikely to have one in future... (Which I regret too, in a very real way, because I would love to read it. Argh.)

Deleting some of my fragmentary unfinished fics would no doubt be a good deed in many ways, considering. But my hamsterish completism prevails. I also keep all of my hand-written stories, story fragments and notes from times when my age numbered in single digits. I can assure you this is not because of the quality of these works. ;-)

YES, on the remix challenges! That sounds so familiar. I have also been tempted, and I love the remix idea, and have admired how many remix fics I've seen have transformed the original story. But in some fandoms, I'd have to make a list of the stories that I'd be okay with being remixed rather than the other way around. :-)

It really is odd. In JE, it could actually work! I'd be okay with remixes here with pretty much all of the stories I've written, I think. I might not even need my one safe story. But my totally obscure Revolutionary Girl Utena stories, for example...