Which stories have you killed before finishing?

[cadeauxxx]

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.

This is the way to go about it. I'm the same. Never delete them. You might want to come back later on and have new ideas to fix it and make it better.

 

[SyleusSnow]

I never kill any story I've started.

But many have starved to death due to neglect

 

[karina_jayde]

Oh, tons. Most of them are ones that I write in a frenzy and get so far into them that I realized there are key structural issues that would take a significant amount of work to fix. I still save them and use parts of them in other stories. For one in particular, there were some really hot sex scenes (but the overall story around them was a mess), and it was an easy matter to rip those sex scenes out, tweak a few things, and slot them into another series.

Some of them are sequels to my finished fantasy series, and after a few thousand words in I realized the sequels would be better from another viewpoint, so I shelved them and redirected my efforts.

 

[RejectReality]

Well, here's my half-baked folder. As you can see from the scroll bar, it's not insubstantial.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I have lots of fragments, from 50 to 5000 words, which have stalled. There's a good story relating to each of them, but I'm just not into that one right now. But often ill pick one up later.

My most recent story (first chapter), Bad Brat Girl, was about half written over a year ago. A lot of my stories benefit from a long break before I return to them. The April Fools story that was a few paragraphs last year grew to about 5k words this year, but I didn't have time or energy to do it justice. So it may get done for next March, probably about 15k words.

Stories that will never see the light of day? There were many mental drafts (in both senses) while I had Covid. Crossovers of certain totally normal characters of mine with random fandom characters, in particular.

 

[Paul_Chance]

I routinely abandon stories (and delete the files) if, after I've started, I don't like it or the way it's going. Story ideas I keep and rarely abandon. They just stay in the idea folder. If I finish a story, reread it, and don't like it, I might let it sit a day or two, then check it again and if I still don't like it, delete it.

 

[RejectReality]

I delete some stuff, but most of it hangs around somewhere. Even if the story isn't going anywhere in present form, that doesn't mean there isn't something useful in there. I might even have an epiphany later that fixes whatever was wrong with it.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Just one. Working title - Don't Stand So Close to Me.

Female college professor (divorced) finds it difficult to date in a a college town, so she hires an escort outside of town and has a series of amazing encounters.

Imagine her surprise when she's introduced to her new TA who is a masters student transferring from another college.

I just couldn't figure out how I wanted it to end for a variety of reasons.

 

[Pabiporffor]

After a social media driven crime wave the government ask AI to devise a new punishment. In exchange for a long prison sentence criminals can sit on a dick coated in "anagasm" which brings on a nonstop lengthy anal orgasm. All of which is done in front of their friends and family.

Members of the public are called up for dick duty and the story started with Derek doing his duty and seen from his viewpoint. I wanted to swing it around full circle and eventually have Derek witness his daughter squirm on a dick but I just hit a wall and couldn't move the story on in a way I was happy with.

 

[burgwad]

I abandon so many, many more than I finish. I consider myself a prolific writer. I churn out hundreds of pages a month. Aaand I have like … five works up on Lit? A few over on AO3?

What keeps a story going for me are characters I can really kill time with, whose motives I understand, and whose voices I can hear clearly in my head. Every writing project I do, no matter how inspired or exciting to work on, hits inevitable bumps, and having solid, flesh-and-blood characters there in the trenches with me when the going gets tough makes all the difference. If I finally get out of a writerly bind, it always tends to feel like a concerted team effort, and like me and my characters should go out for drinks after.

If I don’t get out of a writerly bind, well, then that’s how I wind up with the stories this thread is asking about. They stay bound. Abandoned to their fate.

I have abandoned a high school principal whose daughter got caught with an OnlyFans, a twin who donated a piece of his brain to save his sister, a man whose severely repressed feelings for his daughter manifested as a Scrooge-like abhorrence of sex, a recently disabled widower whose overly accommodating sister offers to help him masturbate, and … many more. Note, it’s the characters I feel I have abandoned. Their stories are circumstantial.

Sigh. I liked this prompt, op. Even if it’s got me feeling blue about this gosh dang hobby of mine.

 

[Paul_Chance]

I'd add that, often, even as I abandon story drafts that aren't working, the underlying story idea resides in my idea folder. It's quite possible to write multiple stories from the same idea, by changing theme, POV, characters, etc.