When do you know when to stop?

[Rob_Royale]

This problem doesn't arise for me because I do a lot of editing as I write. By the time I'm getting close to doing my audio read through, which is my last proofreading step, it's pretty well polished.

 

[designatedvictim]

Here's a lesson that I learned the hard way last year at NaNoWriMo: don't restrain your story. I was actually writing something that was supposed to be a bottle episode, but due to the structure that I used it ended up becoming huge: it turned into epic fantasy. Opposite of you, I didn't want to add anything to it, but the story asked for it, and to this day, is still asking for so many things that I ended up merging two ideas into one, mostly because both are very similar ideas, and both fit better with the same protagonist rather than splitting them into two different stories.

Not restraining the story might actually be part of my problem.

My initial story (WiP) was framed as a long weekend between two characters, chaptered-out by days. I didn't want to have it only boy-jumps-girl, girl-jumps-boy, rinse & repeat... well, I suppose I do want that, but writing it like that makes it an awfully one-note event. I have much of the end material already but I'm hung up on then next piece where the girl recounts a GGG threesome to the boy and I'm stuck on trying to make it realistic from the girl's POV. I know what types of things I want to happen and what types to skip and have her say, after the story ends, what other things did or did not happen 'off screen.'

Let's just say that that is something of which I have no first-hand references.

It bloated pretty quickly.

Same thing with the one I'm playing with now that prompted my post.

I was expecting to have it be small - 10K-ish, then 15K-ish, now probably in the 20-22K-ish range - and I'm using the same sort of Day-By-Day framing. But I also needed each day to have at least some meat on its bones. Thousand-word 'days' strike me as kinda thin, and I wanted the events to slowly escalate between the characters (well, given where they headed, I think an eight-day period of escalating teasing and escalating tension, leading to rabid weekend of sex, is pretty quick) which means I would be best to use more days.

Now at 15.3K words, the first 6.2K words from the first day and a half.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

Not restraining the story might actually be part of my problem.

My initial story (WiP) was framed as a long weekend between two characters, chaptered-out by days. I didn't want to have it only boy-jumps-girl, girl-jumps-boy, rinse & repeat... well, I suppose I do want that, but writing it like that makes it an awfully one-note event. I have much of the end material already but I'm hung up on then next piece where the girl recounts a GGG threesome to the boy and I'm stuck on trying to make it realistic from the girl's POV. I know what types of things I want to happen and what types to skip and have her say, after the story ends, what other things did or did not happen 'off screen.'

Let's just say that that is something of which I have no first-hand references.

It bloated pretty quickly.

Same thing with the one I'm playing with now that prompted my post.

I was expecting to have it be small - 10K-ish, then 15K-ish, now probably in the 20-22K-ish range - and I'm using the same sort of Day-By-Day framing. But I also needed each day to have at least some meat on its bones. Thousand-word 'days' strike me as kinda thin, and I wanted the events to slowly escalate between the characters (well, given where they headed, I think an eight-day period of escalating teasing and escalating tension, leading to rabid weekend of sex, is pretty quick) which means I would be best to use more days.

Now at 15.3K words, the first 6.2K words from the first day and a half.

Actually, sometimes limitations are a good thing. Keepe shit from getting too wild.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

Actually, sometimes limitations are a good thing. Keepe shit from getting too wild.

Yeah, I was about to say this @designatedvictim . You must strike some balance. Remember Chekov's quote? "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there." It's always quoted to bring up the Chekov's Gun trope, which to be fair is a good trope, but they are dismissing what the quote really meant: everything that you bring up in a story must contribute to it. If it doesn't add to the story, either discard it or don't bring it up in the first place.

You may have to clear up what is it that you want in your story. Write that down and put it somewhere visible. Next, you go over the manuscript with scissors and start cutting off pieces that don't add to it. Every single part that you read, read it with one question in mind: is this really important to the story? If not, cut it and drop it on another document. I don't say remove it, just cut it and put it somewhere else. You'd be surprised about how much cut content can be recycled into something new when you're out of ideas. Musicians like Beethoven wrote their pieces with cut content.

 

[ronde]

Yeah, I was about to say this @designatedvictim . You must strike some balance. Remember Chekov's quote? "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there." It's always quoted to bring up the Chekov's Gun trope, which to be fair is a good trope, but they are dismissing what the quote really meant: everything that you bring up in a story must contribute to it. If it doesn't add to the story, either discard it or don't bring it up in the first place.

You may have to clear up what is it that you want in your story. Write that down and put it somewhere visible. Next, you go over the manuscript with scissors and start cutting off pieces that don't add to it. Every single part that you read, read it with one question in mind: is this really important to the story? If not, cut it and drop it on another document. I don't say remove it, just cut it and put it somewhere else. You'd be surprised about how much cut content can be recycled into something new when you're out of ideas. Musicians like Beethoven wrote their pieces with cut content.

In order to reach the end of a story, you have to have more than just an idea of where to begin and the characters. You have to have at least some idea of how the story is going to end. Once you have an ending in mind, you can flesh out your characters into real people who would probably reach that ending and then write their actions to get to that ending. That's not to say the ending can't change in mid-writing, but to just start writing about some situation will seldom bring any author to a logical conclusion.

For me, writing is like driving. I have a starting point and the place where I want to go. How I get there can vary depending upon my characters, but without a destination, I don't know how I'd ever plan the trip. Yes, I know some of us claim to be "pantsers", but I have to believe they have at least a foggy idea of where their characters are going to end up.

The other thing I learned years ago on this same forum is that when you get to a stopping point, just stop writing. It's too easy to get to the end of the story and then think, "Gee, what if they did this?" That "what if" is the subject for another story or another chapter, and not a continuation of the story.

 

[Rollinbones]

When do i know to stop? Usually when her thighs clap my ears hard enough to pop an eardrum and i'm frightened she's going to pull my hair clean out by the roots.

Honestly, i get disgusted with myself sometimes because i take so much licence and tag a whole bunch of schmaltzy happy ever after bullshit on after the horse has bolted, the gate's been long closed and the readers are gone.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I re-read it end-to-end and as I do and get to thinking: "Gee, maybe I could say this here,", "This would be a better turn of phrase to use here,", "Maybe this ought to be moved down a paragraph or two,", "Maybe add a brief bit to lay the groundwork for, or foreshadow, something I already put in a later section."

For me, it's all part of my process which is quite amalgamated. I am constantly plotting, drafting and editing at the same time, so changing something mid-writing happens all the time. If I feel the need to change something, I won't try the change, I will just change. That is because I rarely write stuff without great forethought. Generally I only write stuff down once I know that it should be in and I change stuff when I know that it should be changed.

If I feel the need to keep moving, then I will just jot notes down and come back later. For me, I am never worried about wording something exactly right. I know that I can always come back and word something better later, or I can just jot down a pile of ideas in notes and come back later and fill in any pretty words that I need. So if the ideas are coming too quickly to type out, I don't care how good or bad they sound. I just get them down.

So point form notes are my best friend. It solves so many problems. If I'm having trouble getting the words right, I just jot down notes and come back another time. If I have too many ideas too quickly, I just jot down notes really fast to avoid the bottleneck. If I'm plotting, notes are all I need. Drafting turns notes into sentences and paragraphs and editing turns sentences and paragraphs into polished prose. I have come to learn than turning crude notes into sentences is really no different than turning sentences into polished prose.

So that's how I do it.

 

[designatedvictim]

Remember Chekov's quote? "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there."

I was just re-reading your comment and something occurred to me, regarding Chekov's Rule:

If it the gun doesn't get fired by Act III, then it's usually extraneous detail, but you can also invert the trope by having someone in Act III glance longingly over at the gun and think wistfully "All of my current problems could be solved by using that, now. Unfortunately, that would create a whole new crop of problems to deal with."

 

[KittyOfSteele]

I was just re-reading your comment and something occurred to me, regarding Chekov's Rule:

If it the gun doesn't get fired by Act III, then it's usually extraneous detail, but you can also invert the trope by having someone in Act III glance longingly over at the gun and think wistfully "All of my current problems could be solved by using that, now. Unfortunately, that would create a whole new crop of problems to deal with."

Interesting. It never occured to me to invoke Chekhov's Gun like that.

I don't know why it reminded me of Mass Effect. When Tali was introduced in the first game she had a knife on her foot, and it didn't take her until 50% through the third game to finally use it, just that one time, and that only happens if you make the choice. I always wondered how would the devs would've approached the fact that she's always had that but never used it. The times that I played in which I didn't allow her to use that knife it was never referenced again. No one even acknowledged she had that knife.

 

[designatedvictim]

Interesting. It never occured to me to invoke Chekhov's Gun like that.

I don't know why it reminded me of Mass Effect. When Tali was introduced in the first game she had a knife on her foot, and it didn't take her until 50% through the third game to finally use it, just that one time, and that only happens if you make the choice. I always wondered how would the devs would've approached the fact that she's always had that but never used it. The times that I played in which I didn't allow her to use that knife it was never referenced again. No one even acknowledged she had that knife.

You know... now I'm gonna have to work something like that into some future story.

 

[mirafrida]

Having said that, I quickly fell into my usual rinse/repeat cycle where I add material and save it to my Kindle to review and edit.

I re-read it end-to-end and as I do and get to thinking: "Gee, maybe I could say this here,", "This would be a better turn of phrase to use here,", "Maybe this ought to be moved down a paragraph or two,", "Maybe add a brief bit to lay the groundwork for, or foreshadow, something I already put in a later section."

What frequently annoys me is that I find myself constantly editing and re-editing the same complete-ish sections when I need to be moving on to newer material.

This resonates tremendously. I edit and re-edit a lot. And yes, it's usually the same damn passages that I come back to over and over, trying to clobber them into the shape I know they could be.

I generally find it to be worth the effort, exasperating though it can be.

Once I can run through it on text-to-speech without catching any audible mistakes, AND once I can leave it for a day or two and then come back and read through it start to finish without any passages nagging me as 'hm, something's not quite right,' then I publish it. Anything less and I come back to it again tomorrow. Rinse and repeat.

If you're still adding to it, maybe it means that whatever you had in your mind grew out of proportions, and is asking more room to breathe.

I definitely agree with this too. I've learned, and continue to learn, that it's wise to be open to adding to the story even when you've hit what you thought would be your ending. I doubt I'll ever have a story expand or morph hugely - but listening to what the story needs to be, and allowing it to expand if necessary, can lead to very good things.

 

[gunhilltrain]

You know... now I'm gonna have to work something like that into some future story.

Maybe you're a novelist, not a short story writer. True, a series is sort of like the chapters in a novel. Even though some people think this is the wrong way to go, I've never completed a series first and then published it. Yes, sometimes that goes awry.

Since you are working at a completely different, and bigger, scale . . . Novels take a long time to write, and I've never had the patience to spend months or whatever on one. It requires a kind of focus and technique that is different from much of what usually done here. Maybe you are doing it right after all.

 

[designatedvictim]

Maybe you're a novelist, not a short story writer. True, a series is sort of like the chapters in a novel. Even though some people think this is the wrong way to go, I've never completed a series first and then published it. Yes, sometimes that goes awry.

Since you are working at a completely different, and bigger, scale . . . Novels take a long time to write, and I've never had the patience to spend months or whatever on one. It requires a kind of focus and technique that is different from much of what usually done here. Maybe you are doing it right after all.

Brevity has never been a virtue of mine.

I never intended my original WIP to run so long... it just happened.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Brevity has never been a virtue of mine.

I never intended my original WIP to run so long... it just happened.

I noticed that you put all but one chapter of The Long Weekend in the Novels and Novellas category, so I assume you must already recognize what your writing inclinations are. That series looks like it's going to go on for a while yet. I guess your original post means that you'd like to do another separate one? If you can do two simultaneously - well, that's okay if you can handle it.

Just curious, why didn't you use a real university, like perhaps the one you went to? I have no problem doing that because it's been fifty years since I was at college and I don't care about who might still remember me. (A couple of them are on Facebook, but they've never mentioned Lit.) It is nice to have all of the geography worked out.

 

[FidelityBoss]

I'm taking a brief break to do a bit of a story experiment (the details of which aren't germain to this post).

Last weekend a short story (at about 11.5K in with a 15K-ish target) popped into my head and needed out, so I started the new side-project.

Having said that, I quickly fell into my usual rinse/repeat cycle where I add material and save it to my Kindle to review and edit.

I re-read it end-to-end and as I do and get to thinking: "Gee, maybe I could say this here,", "This would be a better turn of phrase to use here,", "Maybe this ought to be moved down a paragraph or two,", "Maybe add a brief bit to lay the groundwork for, or foreshadow, something I already put in a later section."

In and of itself, that's my editing process, poor as it may be.

What frequently annoys me is that I find myself constantly editing and re-editing the same complete-ish sections when I need to be moving on to newer material.

The story gels, but doesn't set.

What I suppose I'm asking is "When do you stop?"

"When is it done?"

Ah, the eternal struggle of the writer! It sounds like you're caught in the classic loop of perfectionism vs. progress. Here's a casual thought: a story is "done" when it feels alive enough to stand on its own, even if it’s not perfect. Maybe set a rule for yourself, only allow one full editing pass per section before moving on. Once you hit your 15K target, step back and let it breathe for a bit. Often, distance gives you the clarity to see what truly needs fixing. Remember, done is better than perfect, you can always polish later!

 

[FidelityBoss]

For me, it's all part of my process which is quite amalgamated. I am constantly plotting, drafting and editing at the same time, so changing something mid-writing happens all the time. If I feel the need to change something, I won't try the change, I will just change. That is because I rarely write stuff without great forethought. Generally I only write stuff down once I know that it should be in and I change stuff when I know that it should be changed.

If I feel the need to keep moving, then I will just jot notes down and come back later. For me, I am never worried about wording something exactly right. I know that I can always come back and word something better later, or I can just jot down a pile of ideas in notes and come back later and fill in any pretty words that I need. So if the ideas are coming too quickly to type out, I don't care how good or bad they sound. I just get them down.

So point form notes are my best friend. It solves so many problems. If I'm having trouble getting the words right, I just jot down notes and come back another time. If I have too many ideas too quickly, I just jot down notes really fast to avoid the bottleneck. If I'm plotting, notes are all I need. Drafting turns notes into sentences and paragraphs and editing turns sentences and paragraphs into polished prose. I have come to learn than turning crude notes into sentences is really no different than turning sentences into polished prose.

So that's how I do it.

Love this approach! It’s like you’ve built a system that works with your brain instead of against it. Notes are such a lifesaver, they let you capture the chaos of creativity without getting bogged down in the details. And the way you see drafting and editing as part of the same flow is spot on. It’s all about shaping the raw material, whether it’s a messy note or a rough sentence. Sounds like you’ve got a solid process that keeps you moving forward without overthinking.

 

[designatedvictim]

I noticed that you put all but one chapter of The Long Weekend in the Novels and Novellas category, so I assume you must already recognize what your writing inclinations are. That series looks like it's going to go on for a while yet. I guess your original post means that you'd like to do another separate one? If you can do two simultaneously - well, that's okay if you can handle it.

I knew from the outset that The Long Weekend would be... well, long. Maybe not quite as long as it is, though.

My framing mechanism (I may be misusing the term, here), is one-day per chapter, starting early evening on a Thursday going to very early Tuesday morning, with an added short day set four weeks later, as an epilogue, of sorts.

I put that one piece in EC, instead of NaN, as an experiment. First, to see if the site would allow pieces of one story collection to exist in different categories, and second, to see if a new category might boost views - it didn't, in this case.

After the current roadblock I have in the last piece of Saturday (about 5K words), I have another 38K words already written, but I just counted a depressing number of [Insert Scene] tags in that block that need addressing.

Most of those tags undoubtedly represent [Sex Goes Here].

As for doing two simultaneously, I pretty much left TLW to simmer while I worked on A Week of Sunrises.

That one is still pending. I wrote it as an experiment.

Just curious, why didn't you use a real university, like perhaps the one you went to? I have no problem doing that because it's been fifty years since I was at college and I don't care about who might still remember me. (A couple of them are on Facebook, but they've never mentioned Lit.) It is nice to have all of the geography worked out.

The geography was modeled after the university I attended, I was just being nebulous, not being too specific about the locale. The arrangement of North Campus and the Hall for the movie marathon and where the ex's car was parked in the quad are all real.

Wow... it wasn't until I wrote this that I realized that I'd had movie marathons in both works.

I need to diversify.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I knew from the outset that The Long Weekend would be... well, long. Maybe not quite as long as it is, though.

My framing mechanism (I may be misusing the term, here), is one-day per chapter, starting early evening on a Thursday going to very early Tuesday morning, with an added short day set four weeks later, as an epilogue, of sorts.

I put that one piece in EC, instead of NaN, as an experiment. First, to see if the site would allow pieces of one story collection to exist in different categories, and second, to see if a new category might boost views - it didn't, in this case.

After the current roadblock I have in the last piece of Saturday (about 5K words), I have another 38K words already written, but I just counted a depressing number of [Insert Scene] tags in that block that need addressing.

Most of those tags undoubtedly represent [Sex Goes Here].

As for doing two simultaneously, I pretty much left TLW to simmer while I worked on A Week of Sunrises.

That one is still pending. I wrote it as an experiment.


The geography was modeled after the university I attended, I was just being nebulous, not being too specific about the locale. The arrangement of North Campus and the Hall for the movie marathon and where the ex's car was parked in the quad are all real.

Wow... it wasn't until I wrote this that I realized that I'd had movie marathons in both works.

I need to diversify.

That's a lot of words to describe about four or five days. It's almost like a time distortion of some kind. It's like something from James Joyce. June 16, 1904 must have been a hell of long day. Some person attempted to map it all out. Let's see if this works.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/יוליסס.png

You've set yours in 1985. I assume that you were in college at that time. I always set college stories the 1970s, when I was at City College of New York. (No, it isn't all happy times fantasies in those stories.) But I use every detail I can remember (some of it has been replaced since then). An aerial view from the 1940s (Harlem is to the right):

https://mrmhadams.typepad.com/.a/6a015434a64eda970c0167688f0697970b-800wi

 

[gunhilltrain]

By the way, if you have movie marathons, mention which films are in them. It's not trivial info, I suspect.

 

[designatedvictim]

That's a lot of words to describe about four or five days. It's almost like a time distortion of some kind. It's like something from James Joyce. June 16, 1904 must have been a hell of long day. Some person attempted to map it all out. Let's see if this works.

You're not wrong.

I freely admit that I don't know when to shut up!

The first day weighed in at about 14.7K because it started in the early evening.

The second day weighed in at about 32.5K.

The third day (including the unfinished last segment) currently weighs in at about 43K.

My characters get talky and are trading previous boyfriend/girlfriend stories.

If history is any guide, my existing 38K or so of exiting material for Sunday through the epilog will turn out to be about 75K when I'm done expanding the [Insert Scenes].

 

[designatedvictim]

By the way, if you have movie marathons, mention which films are in them. It's not trivial info, I suspect.

Well, in TLW, I mention a sampling of the movies (comedies and dramas), but the movies themselves aren't relevant to the characters first meeting at a day-long movie-fest.

In AWoS, it's a nightly Star Wars marathon, one movie a night (with Rogue One and A New Hope as a one-off double feature) as a framing mechanism for the characters to escalate their interactions. I also add some pithy comments about each movie in an MST3K-ish fashion.

I could probably have stripped it out without adversely affecting things, but I liked adding the commentary!

 

[gunhilltrain]

Well, in TLW, I mention a sampling of the movies (comedies and dramas), but the movies themselves aren't relevant to the characters first meeting at a day-long movie-fest.

In AWoS, it's a nightly Star Wars marathon, one movie a night (with Rogue One and A New Hope as a one-off double feature) as a framing mechanism for the characters to escalate their interactions. I also add some pithy comments about each movie in an MST3K-ish fashion.

I could probably have stripped it out without adversely affecting things, but I liked adding the commentary!

I'm not sure why the movies would be important, but it seems to reveal something about the characters' interests. Or at least, if it's at a theater, it has to be something that was in release in that time frame. I may figure out if the film means anything to the characters, or maybe not. It is amusing during sex scenes in theaters or drive-ins when the participants stop for a moment and are baffled by what is happening on the screen.

In the Uncle Hank drive-in story set in 1948, Hank is so engrossed by the opening of The Naked City that he briefly forgets about his girlfriend. Does that suggest that they have such different tastes that this will be their last date ever? Maybe, even if it's only one hint.

 

[Glassnslate]

I have written a lot of stories but not published many, mostly because it’s fun and partly to preserve the memories. The ones I have written for myself I do not really worry about too much since I am my own audience.

The ones that I anticipate publishing though I do wonder about character, plot, and back ground information. For example currently I am writing a series about a young man and his middle aged female coworker. There were a lot of small conversations and little things that took place between the two of them for an extended period of time before their intimacy began. In my mind it is fun and interesting part of how two people got to where they are, but not everyone in the audience likes that much background information. How do you know when enough background information is good before the kissing starts?

 

[Dreamerman77]

I'm taking a brief break to do a bit of a story experiment (the details of which aren't germain to this post).

Last weekend a short story (at about 11.5K in with a 15K-ish target) popped into my head and needed out, so I started the new side-project.

Having said that, I quickly fell into my usual rinse/repeat cycle where I add material and save it to my Kindle to review and edit.

I re-read it end-to-end and as I do and get to thinking: "Gee, maybe I could say this here,", "This would be a better turn of phrase to use here,", "Maybe this ought to be moved down a paragraph or two,", "Maybe add a brief bit to lay the groundwork for, or foreshadow, something I already put in a later section."

In and of itself, that's my editing process, poor as it may be.

What frequently annoys me is that I find myself constantly editing and re-editing the same complete-ish sections when I need to be moving on to newer material.

The story gels, but doesn't set.

What I suppose I'm asking is "When do you stop?"

"When is it done?"

I have found it useful to listen my own stories. MS Read Aloud is my mostly used tool for editing. It is easy to notice the parts that don't "flow" and find lines that don't match with the athmosphere of the scene.

When the scene flows I know it's ready.