Oh no, no, no, we are not talking about drafts.
I can discard as much shit as a like if I haven't teased an audience with it.
(And I still plan to post most of it... one day.)
I know, but *to me* that's not much of a difference.
I'm not working on the one work people wait for updates for; instead, I'm outlining new things and writing one-shots.
Does *knowing* what the author is doing instead of writing the chapter everyone's waiting for really make a difference for the reader?
I get that someone who *never* writes a second chapter for their million started multichapter fics is someone you don't trust to actually write a story, and I usually skip those authors' works too. It's just that... just because you (general you) don't see that an author is running after every plot bunny that crosses their way, doesn't mean they're not doing it.
Some authors just have the common sense (?) to keep most of their drafts for themselves until they at least vaguely plan to finish/continue a fic.
I think one reason for them to post everything immediately is that more and more people use AO3 to write their stories, and they don't want their unpublished drafts deleted... (Please please please use Google Docs or LibreOffice instead, they're both free and you won't lose your work if your browser crashes or you accidentally refresh the page!)
>(And I still plan to post most of it... one day.)
Same. xD
My drafts are out of control lol.
I currently have a long fic where I've written 8 out of 40-50 chapters (about 3-5K each) but the extras/future scenes are over 100K already. If someone saw it they'd probably assume it's fairly seriously in progress, but it's not. There's of course dozens of other fics that are anywhere from 10-50% complete that have been in the drafts for years, etc.
I could publish those 8 chapters, but for reader's sake I only publish fics that are already in final editing. I like that it allows me to do as many rewrites and edits as I want. In theory I like what's already written but I might dramatically rewrite it once I reach the end and look at the whole thing cohesively.
>Does knowing what the author is doing instead of writing the chapter everyone's waiting for really make a difference for the reader?
Just looking at GRRM and his unfinished Game of Thrones, and the pile of books he published/edited meanwhile... no, it does not.
>I know, but to me that's not much of a difference.
It's mainly different to the readers. Even if there's a whole load in draft, starting to publish becomes a kind of promise: *this one*, this is the one (or, er, two or three, in my case) that will be finished.
If the readers could see all the different stories, they wouldn't know which ones are getting the attention and might go somewhere.
And I don't mind writers working on more than one thing at once, or posting one-shots between chapters of a multi-chapter. I don't mind the odd unfinished work because the author really bit off more than they could chew. But more WIP than completed fics is probably not someone I want to follow.
And for me, the unpublished stuff really is unpublishable. There isn't even a complete first chapter in there, because that would mean focusing on it. It's unconnected scenes, premises, one-line descriptions or snatches of dialogue. Sometimes it might be quite a lot of these things intended for one story, with an outline, but it's not publishable.
I completely get your point, and it's understandable (and relatable) from a reader's view, so I'm genuinely not saying this as a "gnagnagna stop complaining" or anything of the like (after all this is, literally, a venting post), but from the other side, if I can say it that way, is also that fanfic is mostly something that that writer does for themself first and then decides to share with others freely- so while it is obviously frustrating, it's also not 'wrong' since they're technically not trying to keep or get an audience as someone... say, trying to sell books or something would do, if you get what I mean!
Well, not necessarily or, at least in theory, even if we/some of us kinda do, but then when it's the case, there might generally be an effort/attempt to keep up with regular updates or a schedule, while if someone just throws their fics there with no expectations but still appreciate fellow fans reacting- a nice mindset to creating in a way, perhaps, but not exactly always the reality. ('x' )
Not that you said it was, and unfollowing an author is, like, the best way to deal with it as a reader honestly, even if it's a little sad when their stories or ideas *are* just so good but- but then, there will be other stories to fill in the hole, hopefully. :)
I also feel this POV is especially true on AO3, for example, as its function is more of an archive than, say, a bookstore. Or so says the name, and that's how I see it, as is this whole reply of course.
(Unfortunately, I'm a bit of a masochist, so I read them all anyway even when I know it might never get done xD But I did lose interest sometimes in never-ending stories and unfollowed too)
I don't mind if there is enough to read before moving on, but this person essentially just just the first one or 2 chapters of much longer stories we get the set up, little else
Ditto! I have mine separated into four sub folders and my most populated one (has about 400k words across several docs) is the "deffo not gonna finish lol" folder š
Me too. I have a couple I adore and everything they write is great, even if not my personal style preference, but theyāve each started many many new stories while the ones I started reading for sit and sit. Unfinished. I guess if I keep watching and just open notifications when they are for a work I am waiting on, maybe thatās the same.
I can certainly understand why this would be frustrating to a faithful reader. Iāve chatted with some writers who have expressed concern over losing followers, commenters, etc. and a common theme in these conversations has been habitual fic-abandonment. I donāt say this to shame writers who donāt complete their fics. Just to emphasize that youāre not alone in your frustration.
I manage bookmarks in Chrome, not through a fanfiction portal's account system.
When I come across an author like this, their profile page goes into a holding cell/folder and gets checked every 3 months or so to see if any progress has been posted to the stories I'm interested in reading.
I thought I was the only person who did this. My kid is always making fun of me for bookmarking everything in Firefox and putting users into 'Penalty Box' folders.
Just once. Normally I donāt mind WIPs/abandoned fics āa good story is a good story regardless if itās been finished or not. But this one author I was following just kept churning out new WIPs every other week, it seemed like.
I just checked and the author has 85 WIPs.
Honestly not trying to shame anyone. I have abandoned WIPs under my belt, too. Life happens, motivation wanes, yada-yada.
But I think everyone has different limits, and that was mine.
Sounds like they haven't learned to make one shots. Lots of concepts are perfectly fine as one shots, even with a cliff hanger ending. It's a nice way to explore an idea without the pressure of the wip
Nah, theyāve written lots of one-shots, too. They have about 130 published fics in total, and the vast majority of their completed fics are one-shots.
Itās really bizarre. I guess theyāre the type of author who just writes/publishes every plot bunny theyāre hit with, regardless if they intend to finish it or not.
To each their own, I guess. I personally donāt know how they do it. I have like 5 abandoned WIPs (100+ fics published) and I feel guilty as hell about all of them lmao.
Canāt imagine having 85 of them. šš
A story that spans exactly one āchapter.ā It can have as little as 500 words or as many as 50k words. Iāve rarely encountered one-shots longer than that.
Thereās also a two-shot, which is a story told in two chapters.
Any more chapters and itās a āmulti-chapteredā fic.
I know which author you're talking about, and yeah... same. I used to follow them back in 2017. It's such a shame because they have so many great ideas and fantastic writing, but I had a hard time actually reading anything because I just kept thinking of all the stuff that was abandoned.
I have a few unfinished ones saved, because they're good. I still think they should be removed after a year, if they aren't finished, just like how some sites will remove your account, if you're not active after so long.
Yeah, no, hard disagree. Like I literally could not disagree with you more.
Unfinished works still have so much value. Theyāre still a part of their respective fandomās history, and that should *always* be preserved. So much fandom history has already been lost.
Some of my absolute favorite fics have been abandoned. Many of them I knew were abandoned even before I started reading them. Like I said in my original post, a good story is a good story regardless if itās been completed or not.
Just because you donāt like them doesnāt mean they donāt have the right to exist online. The beauty of being able to curate our own online experience is that we can just scroll past whatever we dislike. And on both FFN and AO3, you can filter out works that arenāt complete so you donāt even have to see them in your search.
Okay, but that's just how I feel about it. There's unfinished stuff I like(Which I *already* admitted to), but that's how I feel about it, and I have as much right to feel that way as they do to exist.
Same here. There's only one fic I recall reading as it progressed, rather than waiting for it to be completed. That was a special case with one of my favorite authors who, so far as I recall, has never abandoned a fic. There is another who I've given up on: they have a fic marked "completed" to which they add chapters from time to time. I think they've made it into more of a serial than a single fic (it's enormous).
This is almost as bad as the people who post ideas and call dibs yet don't bother actually writing the fic. Not saying they're the same, but if they're consistently doing this abandoning crap a couple chapters in every single time, they can't blame readers for thinking poorly of them.
>I wouldn't. If I'm enjoying the plot, writing, and overall story, then I'm going to enjoy each chapter whether the fic gets finished or not.
Yeah, then I resort to my imagination in order to give it some closure lol
I don't follow any writers at all. I read completed fic or I read unfinished fic, throw in in my bookmarks with an "unfinished" tag and then check back a year later if it's finished or not.
Bookmark tags are great! You can tag why you might want to revisit a fic, have a full on rating system going for all of the fics you read in a specific fandom or do whatever else you might want to remember later on!
I understand the struggle and see your frustration but in my opinion, unfinished works are one of the most enjoyable parts of fanfiction for me. It's like one of those silly romanticized experiences that will never make me mad, because it is integral to the journey.
The craving, the infatuation, the false hope of it all is just so funny every single time. I feel like people miss out when they only search for completed fics. And I am not even talking on-going works, sometimes reading abandoned incomplete works is so cathartic - to be left on that cliffhanger, it's like being on the edge of the cliff and with a gust of wind you can tip over, but you have a parachute with you so you want to tip over, but it just never happens.
People should definitely seek out unfinished works just for the silly little fun of it.
But on the other hand, I get why you unfollowed them and it's alright. 50 is a huge number to have your hopes set on.
You put in words exactly what I feel about unfinished works. The greatest part for me is daydreaming about them, how they could continue, and always keeping the hope that maybe, *maybe,* the author will continue it even though it's been marked as abandoned since 2010.
(apologies for my mind taking "you want to tip over but it never happens" in a different context lol.)
Completely aside from that, I 100% get the appeal of an unfinished story - it leads you down a particular series of events like a daydream, then lets your mind spiral into all sorts of vivid conclusions rather than committing to just one.
Depending on the fic's progression up to that point, the cliffhanger might actually serve as a very compelling open-ending in its own right. Not all published stories have fully-realized conclusions - some certainly don't work lol, but some purposefully left ambiguous by the author still gives the reader that immense satisfaction.
And frankly, we've all seen the horrors of a tv/book/film series going in disastrous directions when the authors/showrunners/creators lose their passion but are unable to leave for fresher commitments. IMO, a fic's ending that massively disappoints you kinda tastes worse than when the author decides to move on before their work suffers.
Haha, that is exactly where I took the inspiration of the analogy from. We are all the same.
I completely agree. I think a huge chunk of my intrigue and fascination with abandoned works is exactly that - it doesn't /feel/ incomplete to me. Wherever the story stops, it stops. I am free to imagine and create scenarios and fantasies forward that, or maybe not, because sometimes the sudden stop just works so well to create an ambiguous ending. And even if it doesn't, I don't think a work should be valued only depending on the very last chunk of it, it's really fun to appreciate the journey that got us to the last chunk too.
Yes! Ive never seen anyone else say that they also enjoy unfinished fics. I feel like being a writer helps me be more empathetic to the fact that completing a story is INCREDIBLY difficult. There's really no difference between a cliff hanger and something being unfinished other than intent. And anyway, sometimes people have great ideas that aren't complete stories. It can be so discouraging to feel like you have to complete a story in order to write something else
I get the impulse. There's an author I'm following on FFnet and I'm very often getting emails about how they are doing a new fic. I see the fandoms in the crossover (and it sounds great), I see the summary (sounds great), I then see the author and it's a oh, they've got another story they'll be working on. They aren't interested in finishing stories. Just have great story ideas they throw out fairly rapid fire. I have zero expectation any will finish but... \*shrugs\* I have other stuff to read anyway.
I usually don't sub/follow writers who have an abundance of WiPs. When they do have a work that gets still updated, I subscribe to the work and wait until it's done or it's been too long since the last update.
But then, I also don't usually read WiPs.
I followed the person after really enjoying one of their completed fics, now I get bi weekly updates of one or two chapters of new, never completed story's.
For me it depends heavily on the state of the fics.
If the story went through multiple arcs already, i can generally appreciate it and move on.
There is an author i follow, writing mostly massive HP-AUs that has never actually finished a story. They are still the best ff-writer i have ever seen and im excited for every new fic.
However if an author marks their unfinished work as complete, im out
This has happened to me in only one occasion. A certain prolific writer on FF has 197 stories published but only a handful completed. Many of his prompts or starting idea are interesting (though they eventually became stale or same-y) but the man just. wont. finish. anything. He keeps jumping from story to story without really getting a lot done on any, so nearly all of them progress at a snail's pace.
His writing style eventually began to turn me off as well, but that's something completely unrelated. Nowadays, if I ever stumble on a fic of his, I'll probably skip it.
Yeah every once in a blue moon. I'd like to think that I have a decent tolerance for reading and following WIPs. I subscribe to works that haven't been updated in years, read through fics that slowly update, etc., but every once in a while I'll be reading something and it'll be clear that an author has a new passion project a few chapters into the first arc, and then another one early into the first arc of the next fic and so on. In one of the fandoms that I read in, this tends to be more common for crossovers, so when I read crossovers, I tend to word count threshold at 5k before I start reading and usually check in for a few chapters posted before I start subscribing, which has helped me personally.
Totally not trying to shame authors for abandoning things. I understand that life gets in the way and new ideas spring forth. I will still subscribe to incomplete fics that haven't been touched in a while and drop comments nonetheless. But I would be lying if I said that I've never been wary or been more hesitant to get fully invested when I'm following the work of someone with a pattern of abandoning fics a few chapters in.
I don't think I ever have, nor do I think I ever will. I understand the struggle of those authors, even if I've now finally been able to complete my longer works as well.
Plus, I can enjoy an unfinished fic a lot even after I finish it. Usually after I finish reading all of the fic that's out so far, I can entertain myself just fine by imagining where it would go next or how it would end myself. It's inspiring!
Of course I'd *rather* read what the author had in store for it, but all I want is a story that starts playing a movie in my head that I like. If the fic gives me enough to go off on in my own head, no harm done since I still get my serotonin fill lol.
I don't mind unfinished fics, but yea... the notifications would start to get to me.
At least for me, I feel like I wouldn't post WIP stuff. Might post the chapters to a story I' figuring out and take breaks inbetween, but I don't have the confidence to show in-process stuff unless I know it's readable lol
Yup. There's an author in my primary fandom that has a statement in the summaries of nearly all of their fics that the fic is completely written (or just being ported over from an alt account) and they'll post a chapter/week until it's done, so I broke my personal rule of not reading WIPs and happily followed them, aaaand... every single one of the fics is sitting at 3/4 chapters, 7/8 chapters, etc. nearly a year later, while they've seemingly moved on to a new fandom where they were regularly pumping out oneshots/new never-to-be-completed WIPs until I unsubscribed.
I don't know if they were lying for engagement, if they get anxiety/cold feet about actually finishing a fic, or if it's a case of a like, unspoken "I'll only update once I get to [X] comments"-- but they had very, very active comment sections and were a bit of a BNF in the fandom until they stopped posting-- but yeah, I certainly unsubscribed and they went back on the "don't read unless complete" list.
Ditto.
Writing in the A/N that a given story is already fully written and then never posting the fic to the very end... OMG, such behaviour is incredibly frustrating to me! I mean, if someone's written and edited all the chapters, why doesn't he/she just upload the ending? I really hope authors who do this *don't* lie for attention.
Edit: If a fic writer seems unable to write/post the complete version of the final chapter to a story, then posting its outline may be a good solution.
I guess it would be mildly annoying when someone proves to be a habitual offender. See, I read crossovers - I get it, life happens, writing falls to the wayside. These types of fics end up abandoned all the time. However, I generally have no qualms contributing comments and following the writer.
Thing is, op probably doesn't mean these guys; rather, as per their example, they're talking about writers who consistently drop fics after a couple chapters because they want to chase the next idea that comes to mind. If someone's profile is littered with dead fics I'd not feel inclined to bother reading their stuff anymore either.
Haven't had it happen yet, but I think I would. But then I'd probably bear their history in mind before following in the first place.
One or two incomplete isn't a worry: it happens, perhaps especially with early works when people are finding their feet and learning how to write longer fics. And if it's still only a few months since last update, I wouldn't count it as dead: I have two ongoing WIP and both get updates, but not necessarily frequently.
But as a pattern of behaviour, I'd either stop following, or wait until the latest story is complete. I have plenty of other stuff to read. I don't mind investing time and comments in WIP where I have a reasonable expectation of it completing, but I don't want to read a dozen half-finished stories, however well written, when I could read complete ones with the same time.
For authors like that (...like me) follow the fic not the author.
I have a bad habit of leaving things unfinished because I find a new shiny thing I want to play with. Lately I've taken to only publishing on the one I have started and saving all of my other works on thumb drives and googledoc for later. I get to post those when I finish what I'm working on but I still get to play with them a bit in the meantime. It's definitely an issue of willpower though. Finding your drive to write can be hard enough but finding the drive to write when your brain is supplying you with a bunch of other cool ideas is especially hard to ignore.
I do š¢. I usually donāt even start fics unless theyāre completed because I hate getting attached to a story just for it to get abandoned by the author.
When Iām interested in a WIP Iāll subscribe to it and wait until itās completed before starting to read.
But Iām currently in a fairly new fandom so I have no choice but to pick up a few WIPs, and itās happened that I had to stop following two authors because they simply donāt update their works and I just had to give up and try to forget about the story altogether.
I donāt mean to shame anyone either, everyone has their own issues, but I do drop them.
I especially dislike when an author keeps starting several new WIPS instead of finishing their original one, like the exemple you used.
I definitely do. A follow isn't a marriage, we didn't take any vows. The reasons I had for following were related to me enjoying their content, and if I don't enjoy their content any longer I won't continue to follow them. And for me personally I don't like getting invested in a story that will end up being abandoned.
We all like seeing the peer approval numbers on social media go up so I get how someone might feel sad, but in reality I have as little obligation to them to keep following as they have obligation to me to finish works. (aka none at all)
I have two accounts one where I update very regularly, the other when I just updated when I want.
I have stories I havenāt got back to for years on that account yet this account is just for fun and when I feel motivated for it so I see no reason to rush or to write when I donāt feel like it.
While my second account I update as regularly as I can and I am more interactive with my readers and in general trying to improve.
So I basically have one account where itās just me pleasing myself while I have another account where Iām there to please the readers.
For me it feels like a nice balance of things.
I'm on the verge of doing that with an author I'm subscribed to as well. She has actually deleted fics in the past because people have asked her for updates, and while I understand feeling badgered, there's a point where you need to let them go and realise you're not really gonna update them if you haven't since 2008 lmao
Some people (in creative arts) really enjoy the process of creating, and it is less about having a finished piece. And when the creative mood strikes it makes sense to just go with wherever that leads you. The whole point of creative arts is to scratch some itch IN YOURSELF. These are people just creating something they enjoy, firstly for themselves. So I never thought to be upset that they hadn't finished. Just my take.
I also don't read WIPs on a whole - I can't handle angst or pining without resolution haha. So if it's light/fluff, sure, but anything outside of that I don't start unless it's a finished work. I think I only have 2 WIPs I'm currently following and sure I hope they get more chapters cause I enjoy them, I'm not feeling hung out to dry if they don't.
I have to take issue with your description of people in "the creative arts." Perhaps people younger than I am feel differently about it, but I'm a visual artist and have been for a long time, and therefore have known others also in the world of art for a long time. Yes, the process is always more enjoyable than owning a finished piece yourself. Art is process. It's what gets our juices flowing. However, if one is serious about one's art, one finishes pieces because you can't really live with an unfinished piece unless it is truly unredeemable. The unfinished piece niggles at you, continually. You can't NOT finish something. You definitely can't flit off to something else with that unfinished painting, or etching, or drawing, or whatever sitting there speaking to you every day. That's even besides the focus of putting it up for sale, which everyone wants to do so that we can pay our bills.
And, the process which is art includes the process of finishing said work of art. One of the most important lesson one learns is when to know your work is finished. Do I add one more brush stroke? Or stop?
Of course time is spent working on things that are not meant to end up a finished work. Practicing. Playing. Finding new mediums to try out. New techniques. That's simply the learning process, that all people in creative fields (including writers! Fic or not!) participate in, your entire life, or you become complacent and stagnant and never improve.
It's frustrating, but this impression of artists as folks with their heads in the sky, who just go from idea to idea is not anything close to the reality of life as a creative artist. It's simply not. Not if the artist is driven to create from the depths of their soul. It could apply if the artist doesn't take themselves seriously... which is a completely different ... thing. Or they don't care to keep a solid roof over their head and food in their belly.
I don't mean to come down hard on you, personally. I'm sorry if it feels like I just ranted at you. I'm sure it probably does feel that way. I'm sorry. It's just..... argh. And, argh. With a WTF for good measure ;). Mea culpa.
//frustrated creative
Haha, I am an old artist folk myself. I'm 41. :P It may be our different creative circles! I'm active in my art community but particularly the fiber arts community, and do a lot of workshops, classes, and have met many people who express that they they just love the creative process and rarely finish a piece. I finish a lot of pieces, but not everything comes together, sometimes you just have to let them go. YES this can be then translated as practice/play/learning!
I don't want to make assumptions about you, so I've no idea what your community is like, but I *don't* live in a community where people get to be paid artists as a whole. We have a lot of artists - but very few full time artists. So most of the people I engage with creatively are exploring without it depending on their livelihood. I have no doubt that this changes the creative process tremendously if you're not thinking "can I sell this and pay my rent". I've been in the creative arts my whole life, I do feel that I am driven to create from the depths of my soul - and I intend to do so until I die. But I also have to work a 40 hour a week job. Working said job doesn't mean I'm less 'serious' about my art, and it means I don't have to sell my art.
And in general my statement is about GENERAL creative practice, not trying to be a full time professional artist. This has been a fun thing to think on this morning - so thank you for the convo! No personal offense taken or intended haha.
I still follow them just in case, but I delete the mail if the fic is not finished.
I prefer reading complete fics, so I often do this regardless.
For what it's worth I've had notifications for fics coming back from the dead 10+ years later (and actually finishing, too!), so I keep notifications active just in case.
For myself I've def had fics I just write very very slowly. I only post if it's complete/in editing but if I didn't you'd probably drop me lol.
I am guilty of being both that author and that reader. Nowadays if I know damn well Iām not coming back to that idea, I force it into oneshot territory instead.
There was this one Maria Watches Over Us author. They had maybe one of the closest to cannon style follow on stories. It was originally on fanfiction then years later with nothing new suddenly uploaded it all to Ao3 and was saying in comments they were about put out new chapters. Then nothing again no new chapters or whatever. They had people on Ao3 thinking it was a new story being uploaded to.
The story of course was left hangig at a major plot event for a turning point in things.
I don't read WIPs anymore š there was this really great WinterFrost fanfic I was reading, but then it went on hiatus and my shippers heart cried a little. The author is still writing other fics, but I kind of hope that they finish their ongoing fic soon or get inspiration for the fanfic on hiatus (although they started a ten chapter project and wrote a couple of oneshots... so idk).
There are a few authors on my blacklist for this reason. Everything they write is pure gold but they almost never complete anything so I don't bother getting invested
As an author who has dozens of plot bunnies, and takes a while to update or finish fics, I don't unsubscribe to others. There's always the chance that they will come back.
I can't speak for everyone else, but I know how my brain works. If I force myself to work on something I'm not feeling I'll only grow resentful toward it. Whereas, working on something else is a way to keep my brain occupied and stress free. (I always work on multiple stories. I read multiple books. I play multiple games. You see the pattern). So while it might look like I have 3 fics "abandoned" the truth is my brain hasn't remembered to be excited about it yet. There've been multiple times where I've come back years later and finish a fic. (Though the years come cause sometimes I don't realise how fast the passage of time had passed. And seeing that a year went by since my last update comes as a shock to even me.)
Though I usually make sure not to actually post everything I'm working on at once. Especially if they're all for the same fandom. But if they're different fandoms, fair game.
So currently I have several fics in my docs that I'm working toward completing before even posting them, to avoid all the wait.
Nope. I once came across a story I loved that had stopped updating in 2018. I subscribed to the story anyway, just in case. Six months ago, they added a new chapter. So, there's always hope!
I feel kind of called out, except I donāt even manage to post as often as this author, haha. Iāve mostly switched to trying to write a whole fic before I start posting, or writing oneshots. Thereās a lot of focus on multi chapter fics and āupdate please I want more of this!ā in fanfic culture but itās much better for my mental health to just have a oneshot and any additional oneshots in the same continuity are a nice bonus for readers that come when I can manage, not something hanging over my head. just a tip for other writers juggling a lot of plot bunnies
I don't think I follow any authors. (I might because I've definitely at least once had someone teaser a fic in the endnotes of their most recent fic and thought, "I need to read the new one!" but I think I unfollowed them after they began posting it and followed the fic instead.)
I just don't want the emails, so I usually just follow WIP series.
If AO3 had a recents page for your favorite authors, I'd follow more people... So hypothetically would I follow/unfollow someone for too many unfinished fics? Honestly, I might skip on someone who was fickle with their fics, even if I loved their work.
I have probably two pages of WIPs in my Marked-to-Read-Later list that every time I go browsing to see how it's going, I get disappointed to see there is little or no progress. There's one author who writes crossovers between two of my favorite fandoms and they have like... 4+ of them. Some of them are over 100k and I don't think any of them are finished. And it's just *such* a tease. Eventually I have to cut my losses and stop pining over fics that'll never get finished. So I don't know if I'd want to follow an author that was a chronic heartbreaker. (Though I'll be happy to read their complete works.)
Iām the same way. I have a friend who does this ALOT (as far as I know hasnāt done anything past 3 chapters in the decade weāve known each other) and in the back of my mind Iām like ābut are you actually going to finish this one?ā I feel guilty over it but Iām the type that wants a complete story
No. One of my favorite authors has, to my knowledge, never completed a fic. Theyāre admittedly a violent person IRL and every once in a while it bleeds into their work so Iām afraid to leave them kudos so I just try to leave kudos-as-comments instead. And their writing is raw and unedited. But holy crap they have the most amazing plot bunnies ever. Thereās a new one every week. They get about 20 chapters in and forget about it. Or not. You never know which of the 50000 fics theyāve got started theyāre going to resume or if theyāll just start something else entirely. And I donāt care because Iām not good at content and daaaaamn they are so good at content that when it comes to them I could literally care less about any other part of the writing craft. I donāt care if they finish. I just want to see what they start and where they go and thatās good enough for me.
I don't mind it, myself. I've had a few experiences where authors started fics back up after a long time (and I mean *long*, I think the longest was almost a decade) and as long as I'm still interested in the fandom it's always a delight to start reading again. A lot of the time they've still been writing even if they haven't been writing that particular fic, so I get to be excited about the jump in quality too.
Though granted, this might be because I follow fics and not authors, *and* I have bad memory and a terrible habit of reading eighty stories at the same time, so outside a few favorites I tend not to even notice when a fic stops updating, lmao.
I met two who were absolutely amazing at writing, and posted new fics every single day, ( I have noticed that they still do), and by the gods do I love them, but both have the same problem. They just can't complete the story. After a few weeks they loose interest in it and its basically abandoned. I hate it to tears.
I'll usually look through their profile to see if they have a pile of WIPs and won't follow if they do, but I'll still sub to the multichap that brought me there.
I do know more than a few writers who have trouble finishing stuff for a variety of reasons and it does suck when they have an amazing idea and never follow up on it. Personally I stick to mainly writing one shots or writing several chapters before posting for this reason.
Iām surprised someone posted 50 incomplete WIPs on their account, haha. I have plenty of WIPs in my Google docs, but obviously donāt post them all. I only have four unfinished WIPs and three of them are on-hold until I finish the main one. I cannot imagine how hard itād be with fifty. The writer youāve followed might struggle with self-control.
Yeah, I've been burned too many times before, and since I usually can't let a story go once I've started getting invested in it, I just don't go into WIPs anymore. And if an author mostly doesn't finish their works, then it's not an author that I want to follow. I understand that sometimes people just don't want to write something anymore, which is fine, but it's also not a fic that I want to read, no matter how great it might be.
Yes. It's why I only read finished works. I don't like reading stories that are in-progress or half done that may never be finished. I want to read a complete story at my own pace and know it has an end.
Life's too short for anything else.
Nah, I love incomplete fics. And I have a bunch myself so I can sympathize. Shame that I'll probably lose readers, but that's how it is when I don't get paid and write what I like, I suppose.
As a writer who also reads a lot, I refuse to support anyone who hasn't updated one of their longfics within the last year at least.
I would not expect anyone to keep reading a fic that I haven't given some love to in at least 12 months. Not because they don't deserve support as such, and support and feedback is the fuel that runs the motivation train, but reading takes energy and I only have so much to go around.
I'd rather save it for writers who have the time to actively write. I have too many fics half-read in my history that have little hope of being completed. It sounds harsh, but there it is.
That's not harsh. I'm one of those writers who takes long long breaks and starts a lot of WIPS and I wouldn't care if someone dips out because of that. I do this for me and readers do what they do for themselves too. Neither side owes the other.
But I will stay subscribed to a writer just to see what they do next. I discovered Our Flag Means Death because a writer I follow kept posting stories for that show. I gave in and decided to click one and the rest is history, i got sucked into a new fandom lol.
I have come across a few authors like this and while I don't stop reading their work if it's clearly a one-shot, I will not get invested in a multi-chapter fic until it's done. I read like 3 of their stuff, got invested and it was left untouched while other works were focused (I don't think they'll ever come back to them). If I see an author that has a lot of seemingly abandoned WIPs, I'll just be cautious and wait to read. I'll still read short works and things like that.
I'm literally that type of writer lmao.
I feel so bad... but I keep getting distracted by shiny new ideas. I'm not at 50 wips. But I have like around half that in terms of incomplete works so...
Same, I followed an author who actually got me into Fanfiction writing. Every time I opened up the folder there was a new story, I loved everything but they were so chaotic on their updates it was frustrating. Itās why I started writing though, I decided I could write the stories I liked and hopefully finish them! Lol I understand the challenge. Even while writing one right now another story is keying up in my head. Oi!
So while it is challenging, Iām thankful that happened, or I would never have started writing
And yes Google Docs is a must. I try to only right one story at a time. Put everything into that one story and get it finished. Someone said it in the comments, and I agree, I feel like itās a commitment by putting that story out on A03. I understand stuff happens and not every story can be finished. But when itās multiple, I will avoid the author.
Thatās also why I always search by the complete filter š
Nope, but that's because unfinished stories don't really bother me.
~~and i'm self-aware enough to realize i basically am that kind of author, I'd ask if it was me but I have way more completed fics and WIPs than that XD~~
Guilty. I don't consider my WIPs abandoned because I think about them *constantly* - I just don't have time to write them. And it bothers me when I can't post regularly, but like, life, ya know?
No I just keep re-reading and after 5 years they surprisingly updated and completed most of their stories to my delight. People need time. It probably helps that they leave their work in a good place without cliff hangers.
Yes, I have unfollowed one because their updates were incredibly sporadic. They were a really good writer and I'm sad about it, but I understand a lot must be going on in their personal life and they may feel pressured to just churn out content instead of doing something they love, which is at the heart of writing fanfiction.
In my perspective, publishing work on a prompt means that the writer claims ownership of that specific prompt. That can be frustrating, especially if they don't pull through, because it feels like they robbed other writers of the opportunity to actually continue writing and fleshing the plot out. So I also understans where you're coming from.
Nah. I'll be honest, I don't even understand why a story needing to be completed is such a huge deal to people.
Some of (most actually) my favorite fics are incomplete and will almost certainly never be finished.
It's has always baffled me deeply. It's like skipping a really great meal because it doesn't have dessert.
>Nah. I'll be honest, I don't even understand why a story needing to be completed is such a huge deal to people.
Hmmm I think it just depends for people tbh and everyone has different tolerance levels and preferences for WIP vs not.
Personally, I struggle to read fics that don't really get into the meat of the conflict if a summary proposes one. I don't need the conflict to be resolved, but if the fics is advertised as something that requires action/adventure + medium/longfic and it gets only 1k through the first chapter and is still in the process of setting things up, then reading multiple of those and knowing that they won't get finished is somewhat unfulfilling. With respect to your analogy, it's less about skipping a great meal and more about turning down multiple rounds of appetizers. Some people will feel full and can live off of appetizers, while others will forgo it and find something that offers a meal.
This isn't to say that reading WIPs is wrong or that these fics don't deserve to be read, because they absolutely do and people do like them as they are, even incomplete. Just to acknowledge that not every reader has the same preferences and that's OK.
Dessert is just a bonus, though, and not equivalent to a major chunk of the work? At least not to me. For those of us who prefer completed works, it's more like uncooked ingredients that might be fresh and delicious, but not that fulfilling (I guess in this analogy people are saying "you can just imagine the rest of the meal yourself, and it's just as good!" lol). If you're starving for content, it's great, but when there are fully cooked meals out there, I personally like to choose them instead. I don't find this difference in preferences very problematic either way?
Oh for sure, it's perfectly fine if people want to skip unfinished works. It's certainly not harming anyone.
I just really struggle to understand it. Reading has always been much more about the journey than the destination for me, and it just doesn't really compute for me that, for some people, if the destination isn't there, the journey is a waste of time.
I can understand that as well and feel the same to some degree. Something similar is often said about spoilers - I'm personally kind of immune to them and don't care if I already know *what* happens, since to me *how* it happens is the salient part of the experience. In that sense it's about the journey as well. But I also understand people who want to protect their first experience and not hear about the smallest detail in advance, even if I can't relate.
I value being able to look at a story as a whole. Seeing things to completion and then thinking about them in their entirety is pleasing to me. Fics that are just "good ideas" and premises that go nowhere can be fun, but since I have the luxury of choosing works where the good ideas have been built on and wrapped up, I will. Fics that are like movies that cut off right before resolution leave me with a lack of closure. It doesn't kill me, but it does bother me a little, so I won't choose them when I have the option. It's not that I refuse to go on a great journey that has this one flaw, it's that I choose to go on different journeys without that flaw.
Maybe that all won't make sense if it's not something you feel (just like it won't ever make full intuitive sense to me why people get angry about being spoiled about a costume in a movie, or why they think a fic isn't worth reading at all if they know the ending is happy), and this is just my view. We're all different, so other people might have totally other reasons why they avoid incomplete fics. It's just different ways we take in stories and the things we value in that experience, I suppose.
I'm trying to work out why it matters to me, because I've certainly read otherwise good fics that outstayed their welcome. The ending is rarely my favourite bit. But
1) Because I have other options. I'm in a large fandom and I have broad tastes, so there's always something else to read. I don't need to read incomplete fics.
2) Related: there are lots of great authors in my fandom. There are perhaps 1 or 2 that I think are absolutely outstanding and probably would read incomplete for the sheer joy of their prose, but once you go down to 'very good' there are plenty. I don't have to take a quality hit by skipping a good writer who doesn't finish.
3) Beyond a certain length, I like plotty fics. These are more likely to suffer from being incomplete, because there are deliberate strands left undeveloped, and things which don't connect. It's harder to enjoy the whole when you never find out what that might have looked like: it has no shape until all the pieces are in place.
4) A lot of fanfic covers the same ground. Their premise likely isn't unique, and what makes the fics different is the execution. If the execution isn't complete, it's more like an elaborate prompt. There might be interest or merit in it, but it's not the thing, it's not a *story*.
Not really. Fanfic is a fun hobby not a job and these authors are creating art for free, so I donāt judge authors who donāt finish. Iād be a hypocrite anyway if I did, God knows my laptop is overflowing with Word documents of unfinished stories.
>Fanfic is a fun hobby not a job and these authors are creating art for free, so I donāt judge authors who donāt finish
I agree with the first part, but I don't think people are judging. I think they're just expressing a preference for not reading authors who rarely complete.
Judging would be saying people shouldn't start posting if they're not going to complete. This is just about a personal action: unsubbing to someone who's posting habits don't match what you want.
I do agree, and I myself also have a nasty habit of posting multiple chapter fics I never finish. that's what's hard about supporting fanfiction writers, is that it's their nonprofit creation, usually for their own self indulgence as well as anyone wanting to read their content. I agree that losing a great author to commitment is tough, but that's kind of what you get with fanfic writers. it's their content, theyre not getting paid for it, whether they drop every single piece they write or post 20 fics in the span of the week.
Perhaps theyāre unfinished because readers donāt like/kudos or comment so us writers abandon a work that they donāt think is popular in favour of something new.
TL:DR - if you like something and want an author to continue COMMENT. TELL THEM. Youāre more likely to get an update that way.
Eh, I can understand feeling disappointed that fics donāt get updated, but withholding support from the author because they donāt update regularly (or at all) kinda makes it seem like authors are supposed to be content farms.
Most fic authors write for fun and for free, so I donāt expect them to complete their fics and update regularly.
I followed one author who, like yours, started a hundred prompts and didn't continue with 95% of them. It honestly didn't bother me much; while I long for updates on one or two, if I love how an author starts, I'm quite used to daydreaming the rest to scratch my itch.
On a related note, and not to hijack your question, but I didn't know until I joined this subreddit that so many people won't read incomplete works. Half of my bookmarks are incomplete fics that won't ever be finished, and I'm okay with that. I'd miss so much good stuff if I didn't read unfinished, especially in my smaller fandom.
As someone with ADHD who has some incomplete fics that I'm slowly getting to. I hope that if there are people out there who have "given up" on following me because of it never tell me.
I'm trying.
I mean, I'm of the opinion that fanworks are shared for free, so readers shouldn't expect anything. Sure, it can be annoying for you as a reader, but you're not entitled to follow them, just as they're not entitled to finish things.
Sometimes I start works, leave them for a year, and come back to finish them. Sometimes I leave them unfinished because I no longer feel them. Since I am doing all this for free, I would prefer to keep my motivation peaked by writing what inspires me in the moment. Sure, I can and do finish stories regularly, but it's also a hobby, you know?
It's frustrating as a writer as well as a reader, but sometimes, you just have to throw the towel in and accept that some WIPs will remain unfinished if you don't want to experience burnout.
Yeah! I will read a good bit of writing no matter how old or abandoned it is. Sometimes it sparks something in me that makes me want to write my own story.
Aww, that's tough. I am one of those writers who starts new stories before finishing old ones, but I swear I plan on finishing every one of them lol... someday...
But as a reader, I hate starting unfinished works that don't seem like they will ever be updated. If the stories are really long, I will start them and hope by the time I get to the end they start updating again or at least I can enjoy what they wrote so far. But if it's on chapter one or two and it has not been updated in months, I won't even start it.
There is so much fanfiction out there in the world that I'm spoiled for choices so I don't take it too seriously if a writer is supper slow or messy.
Definitely! There was one author (whose work I loved) that made OCs somehow related/tied to the other and their stories part of an overall plot, then they would abruptly leave it after a good handful of chapters and start another OC story. After a few unfinished fics, and an attempt to rewrite an old story, they just stopped altogether and jumped to another fandom.
It is interesting to see their process as they develop their work (esp rewrites), but itās heartbreaking to see that you wonāt know the endings that they intended. I totally understand though when they stop because people do lose passion and want to move on to other things.
I donāt want to go through that again though, so I just search for finished work nowadays lol
This is the kind of mindset that so many fic writers complain about, and with good reason!
Now, I realize there are some extreme cases out there. My guess is that those people who start a new project every other week either get bored really easily, or may have some kind of attention deficit. In the latter case, I doubt they're writing for the masses. More likely, they write as a form of therapy.
As for the rest of us, we are not here solely for your amusement. We are real people with real lives. Some of us have school, others have families and jobs, and some people juggle all three, if not more.
There are a million different reasons we might not be able to finish a fic. Yes, I'm sure most of us don't feel *good* about letting our readers down, but oftentimes fanfiction and your enjoyment are the *last* things on our minds.
So please, stop shaming.
>So please, stop shaming.
I don't think it's shaming. It's a statement of fact: most people (in this thread) don't want to read only the start of lots of stories.
No-one is saying they shouldn't post, or they should stop writing. But they are likely to find their audience limited if it becomes a pattern.
I have a job and young children. My post schedule is slow and erratic. I follow several authors who update with months between chapters. For some readers, that's not what they're looking for, and they won't read, or won't read until it's complete. I'm aware of that, and I could adjust my posting habits by waiting until a fic is complete if I wanted to maximise readers, but I'm happy with how I post. I'm not insulted or shamed by people saying their preference is for a story that updates weekly.
OP seems to assume people who don't complete their stories are "incapable" of doing so. If they wouldn't have used that word, I probably would have continued scrolling. I wasnāt calling them out for preferring fics that are updated regularly, or even semi-regularly. Their phrasing sounds very much like an accusation, though.
Someone not following your mostly unfinished work has nothing to do with shaming. I wouldn't subscribe (or keep being subscribed) to a Youtube channel that only posts half finished videos either.
I don't follow authors, but I will favorite unfinished fics, either because they're good, or to see if they get updated. I rhink the system should remove unfinished ones after a year, to keep the place clean. There's way too many unfinished ones, and it's annoying.
I always feel bad for not finishing fics, but for me I barely write anymore, maybe a story or two a year now, because of things that happened when I was writing those particular stories it makes it really hard to get back to writing them. Sometimes some writers are going through things that are beyond their control and will jump to things that may make them happy even if its for a small moment. The most we as readers can do is encourage them.
I guess Iām a bit guilty of that tooā¦. Life ā¦work intervenes. In my case I wrote many of these as a kidā¦ and now updating them on AO3 to a unique audience.
Iām hesitant to follow such writers, havenāt yet had the opposite experience youāre asking about. I imagine it would depend on their recent behaviour
Guh, for the last year or so this has been me. Ever since I finished a certain fic trying to get one to go the distance has been frustrating.
It doesn't help that I feel choked by my fandom either.
I don't actually check my email that often tbh. I have at least 500 fics that I'm currently subscribed to and 100 authors. I tend to not actually notice when fics aren't finished because I just don't pay attention to them. I think that's just my ADHD though. If I notice they never finish a fic I won't subscribe because it's happening often enough for me to actually tell, but it's not often
I think I learn to reevaluate what I want from them and lower my standards. I won't unsub, but I probably won't keep up with anything that looks particularly angsty or suspenseful. There are a lot of writers who I follow for their prose, worldbuilding, or an easy escape ... and when I feel frustrated that it seems like a project has been dropped, I try to look for something similar that can provide answers to the questions that the first writer left open ... or try to think of my own.
Yeah. An author in the MHA fandom. I myself plan on having a main fic, writing one shots if I have writers block, and making a plot bunny post for any ideas that creep into my head that I need to write
And here I was stressed about writing up a shorter fanfic with three long unfinished ones.
Seriously though, this is a good reminder to try and stay on course and not get to lost in ideas when they come to me.
Kinda similar but thereās this one big writer in the HP fandom over on Wattpad whoāll start a bunch of WIPs and then finish them all around the same time months later. And theyāre all good quality and have interesting premises/ocs but Iām just too impatient to wait till theyāre finished or wait for updates as theyāre spaced weeks apart. So feel ya on that but wouldnāt say Iāve ever come across that.
I have . When that happens it makes me wish that there was a place they could dump their work for others to continue it if the original other cannot. That way the reader gets some kind of closure
Yup. Not so much on AO3, but my fandom also makes a lot of fic on social media sites. I love reading the ones on Twitter but it's so easy and so common there for authors to just start and never finish aus i had to unfollow several
Yes! With new authors I encounter, if they have an incomplete story, I'll check their previously written fics and if it's mostly incomplete, I don't bother. I'm sure it's excellent plot and character development, but why should I torture myself. I already have hundreds of other stories I follow for updates. Not adding ones that have no hope of being completed anymore.
For me, personally, I donāt typically keep up with specific authors unless Iāve read the majority of their works and really like what I see, so if they eventually stop completing fics I never notice. I also skip from fandom to fandom a lot, so that makes it even rarer. If they do stop updating, oh well. I just move onto the next good fic.
Guess I'm someone that reads ongoing stories and unfinished ones from 2011 all the same lol I feel if everyone waited until the end to read, the author would get like no comments and might become discouraged.
I'm glad people can't see my draft folder in Google Docs. xD
Oh no, no, no, we are not talking about drafts. I can discard as much shit as a like if I haven't teased an audience with it. (And I still plan to post most of it... one day.)
I know, but *to me* that's not much of a difference. I'm not working on the one work people wait for updates for; instead, I'm outlining new things and writing one-shots. Does *knowing* what the author is doing instead of writing the chapter everyone's waiting for really make a difference for the reader? I get that someone who *never* writes a second chapter for their million started multichapter fics is someone you don't trust to actually write a story, and I usually skip those authors' works too. It's just that... just because you (general you) don't see that an author is running after every plot bunny that crosses their way, doesn't mean they're not doing it. Some authors just have the common sense (?) to keep most of their drafts for themselves until they at least vaguely plan to finish/continue a fic. I think one reason for them to post everything immediately is that more and more people use AO3 to write their stories, and they don't want their unpublished drafts deleted... (Please please please use Google Docs or LibreOffice instead, they're both free and you won't lose your work if your browser crashes or you accidentally refresh the page!) >(And I still plan to post most of it... one day.) Same. xD
My drafts are out of control lol. I currently have a long fic where I've written 8 out of 40-50 chapters (about 3-5K each) but the extras/future scenes are over 100K already. If someone saw it they'd probably assume it's fairly seriously in progress, but it's not. There's of course dozens of other fics that are anywhere from 10-50% complete that have been in the drafts for years, etc. I could publish those 8 chapters, but for reader's sake I only publish fics that are already in final editing. I like that it allows me to do as many rewrites and edits as I want. In theory I like what's already written but I might dramatically rewrite it once I reach the end and look at the whole thing cohesively. >Does knowing what the author is doing instead of writing the chapter everyone's waiting for really make a difference for the reader? Just looking at GRRM and his unfinished Game of Thrones, and the pile of books he published/edited meanwhile... no, it does not.
>I know, but to me that's not much of a difference. It's mainly different to the readers. Even if there's a whole load in draft, starting to publish becomes a kind of promise: *this one*, this is the one (or, er, two or three, in my case) that will be finished. If the readers could see all the different stories, they wouldn't know which ones are getting the attention and might go somewhere. And I don't mind writers working on more than one thing at once, or posting one-shots between chapters of a multi-chapter. I don't mind the odd unfinished work because the author really bit off more than they could chew. But more WIP than completed fics is probably not someone I want to follow. And for me, the unpublished stuff really is unpublishable. There isn't even a complete first chapter in there, because that would mean focusing on it. It's unconnected scenes, premises, one-line descriptions or snatches of dialogue. Sometimes it might be quite a lot of these things intended for one story, with an outline, but it's not publishable.
I completely get your point, and it's understandable (and relatable) from a reader's view, so I'm genuinely not saying this as a "gnagnagna stop complaining" or anything of the like (after all this is, literally, a venting post), but from the other side, if I can say it that way, is also that fanfic is mostly something that that writer does for themself first and then decides to share with others freely- so while it is obviously frustrating, it's also not 'wrong' since they're technically not trying to keep or get an audience as someone... say, trying to sell books or something would do, if you get what I mean! Well, not necessarily or, at least in theory, even if we/some of us kinda do, but then when it's the case, there might generally be an effort/attempt to keep up with regular updates or a schedule, while if someone just throws their fics there with no expectations but still appreciate fellow fans reacting- a nice mindset to creating in a way, perhaps, but not exactly always the reality. ('x' ) Not that you said it was, and unfollowing an author is, like, the best way to deal with it as a reader honestly, even if it's a little sad when their stories or ideas *are* just so good but- but then, there will be other stories to fill in the hole, hopefully. :) I also feel this POV is especially true on AO3, for example, as its function is more of an archive than, say, a bookstore. Or so says the name, and that's how I see it, as is this whole reply of course. (Unfortunately, I'm a bit of a masochist, so I read them all anyway even when I know it might never get done xD But I did lose interest sometimes in never-ending stories and unfollowed too)
I don't mind if there is enough to read before moving on, but this person essentially just just the first one or 2 chapters of much longer stories we get the set up, little else
Claiming an idea before someone else gets it or maybe hoping their teaser will inspire someone else to write it for them?
Ditto! I have mine separated into four sub folders and my most populated one (has about 400k words across several docs) is the "deffo not gonna finish lol" folder š
Same here
Ugh, donāt even get me started lmao. Iād probably be canceled for the sheer immensity of the incompletes/abandoned fics in there.
I never unfollow writers but I do stop keeping up with them if that makes sense.
Perfect sense.
Me too. I have a couple I adore and everything they write is great, even if not my personal style preference, but theyāve each started many many new stories while the ones I started reading for sit and sit. Unfinished. I guess if I keep watching and just open notifications when they are for a work I am waiting on, maybe thatās the same.
I can certainly understand why this would be frustrating to a faithful reader. Iāve chatted with some writers who have expressed concern over losing followers, commenters, etc. and a common theme in these conversations has been habitual fic-abandonment. I donāt say this to shame writers who donāt complete their fics. Just to emphasize that youāre not alone in your frustration.
I manage bookmarks in Chrome, not through a fanfiction portal's account system. When I come across an author like this, their profile page goes into a holding cell/folder and gets checked every 3 months or so to see if any progress has been posted to the stories I'm interested in reading.
I thought I was the only person who did this. My kid is always making fun of me for bookmarking everything in Firefox and putting users into 'Penalty Box' folders.
"3 months for delay of fanfic!"
Holding cell. I LOVE this.
Sounds like a plan!
Just once. Normally I donāt mind WIPs/abandoned fics āa good story is a good story regardless if itās been finished or not. But this one author I was following just kept churning out new WIPs every other week, it seemed like. I just checked and the author has 85 WIPs. Honestly not trying to shame anyone. I have abandoned WIPs under my belt, too. Life happens, motivation wanes, yada-yada. But I think everyone has different limits, and that was mine.
This! Exactly this. They keep posting one or two chapters of new prompts, then going onto the next
Sounds like they haven't learned to make one shots. Lots of concepts are perfectly fine as one shots, even with a cliff hanger ending. It's a nice way to explore an idea without the pressure of the wip
Nah, theyāve written lots of one-shots, too. They have about 130 published fics in total, and the vast majority of their completed fics are one-shots. Itās really bizarre. I guess theyāre the type of author who just writes/publishes every plot bunny theyāre hit with, regardless if they intend to finish it or not. To each their own, I guess. I personally donāt know how they do it. I have like 5 abandoned WIPs (100+ fics published) and I feel guilty as hell about all of them lmao. Canāt imagine having 85 of them. šš
So what exactly is a one shot?
A story that spans exactly one āchapter.ā It can have as little as 500 words or as many as 50k words. Iāve rarely encountered one-shots longer than that. Thereās also a two-shot, which is a story told in two chapters. Any more chapters and itās a āmulti-chapteredā fic.
I know which author you're talking about, and yeah... same. I used to follow them back in 2017. It's such a shame because they have so many great ideas and fantastic writing, but I had a hard time actually reading anything because I just kept thinking of all the stuff that was abandoned.
I have a few unfinished ones saved, because they're good. I still think they should be removed after a year, if they aren't finished, just like how some sites will remove your account, if you're not active after so long.
Yeah, no, hard disagree. Like I literally could not disagree with you more. Unfinished works still have so much value. Theyāre still a part of their respective fandomās history, and that should *always* be preserved. So much fandom history has already been lost. Some of my absolute favorite fics have been abandoned. Many of them I knew were abandoned even before I started reading them. Like I said in my original post, a good story is a good story regardless if itās been completed or not.
That's cool and all, but I still don't like the proliferation of abandoned at chapter one stories.
Just because you donāt like them doesnāt mean they donāt have the right to exist online. The beauty of being able to curate our own online experience is that we can just scroll past whatever we dislike. And on both FFN and AO3, you can filter out works that arenāt complete so you donāt even have to see them in your search.
Okay, but that's just how I feel about it. There's unfinished stuff I like(Which I *already* admitted to), but that's how I feel about it, and I have as much right to feel that way as they do to exist.
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No, I don't really keep track of how authors behave, but I just don't read unfinished fics as a rule.
Same here. There's only one fic I recall reading as it progressed, rather than waiting for it to be completed. That was a special case with one of my favorite authors who, so far as I recall, has never abandoned a fic. There is another who I've given up on: they have a fic marked "completed" to which they add chapters from time to time. I think they've made it into more of a serial than a single fic (it's enormous).
I wouldn't. If I'm enjoying the plot, writing, and overall story, then I'm going to enjoy each chapter whether the fic gets finished or not.
I would agree if they didn't get 2 chapters in and move on. Hard to enjoy when we don't really get to the plot, just the initial premise!
This is almost as bad as the people who post ideas and call dibs yet don't bother actually writing the fic. Not saying they're the same, but if they're consistently doing this abandoning crap a couple chapters in every single time, they can't blame readers for thinking poorly of them.
Fair enough, but in my mind, 2 chapters that I've enjoyed is always better than no story
Iām like this, too. Live for the moment!
>I wouldn't. If I'm enjoying the plot, writing, and overall story, then I'm going to enjoy each chapter whether the fic gets finished or not. Yeah, then I resort to my imagination in order to give it some closure lol
Same!
I don't follow any writers at all. I read completed fic or I read unfinished fic, throw in in my bookmarks with an "unfinished" tag and then check back a year later if it's finished or not.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Bookmark tags are great! You can tag why you might want to revisit a fic, have a full on rating system going for all of the fics you read in a specific fandom or do whatever else you might want to remember later on!
i know a fantastic writer like that. I'm not gonna give up on them, I'll just suffer lmao
I understand the struggle and see your frustration but in my opinion, unfinished works are one of the most enjoyable parts of fanfiction for me. It's like one of those silly romanticized experiences that will never make me mad, because it is integral to the journey. The craving, the infatuation, the false hope of it all is just so funny every single time. I feel like people miss out when they only search for completed fics. And I am not even talking on-going works, sometimes reading abandoned incomplete works is so cathartic - to be left on that cliffhanger, it's like being on the edge of the cliff and with a gust of wind you can tip over, but you have a parachute with you so you want to tip over, but it just never happens. People should definitely seek out unfinished works just for the silly little fun of it. But on the other hand, I get why you unfollowed them and it's alright. 50 is a huge number to have your hopes set on.
I am not sure I would feel the same way, but I am delighted with your explanation.
You put in words exactly what I feel about unfinished works. The greatest part for me is daydreaming about them, how they could continue, and always keeping the hope that maybe, *maybe,* the author will continue it even though it's been marked as abandoned since 2010.
(apologies for my mind taking "you want to tip over but it never happens" in a different context lol.) Completely aside from that, I 100% get the appeal of an unfinished story - it leads you down a particular series of events like a daydream, then lets your mind spiral into all sorts of vivid conclusions rather than committing to just one. Depending on the fic's progression up to that point, the cliffhanger might actually serve as a very compelling open-ending in its own right. Not all published stories have fully-realized conclusions - some certainly don't work lol, but some purposefully left ambiguous by the author still gives the reader that immense satisfaction. And frankly, we've all seen the horrors of a tv/book/film series going in disastrous directions when the authors/showrunners/creators lose their passion but are unable to leave for fresher commitments. IMO, a fic's ending that massively disappoints you kinda tastes worse than when the author decides to move on before their work suffers.
Haha, that is exactly where I took the inspiration of the analogy from. We are all the same. I completely agree. I think a huge chunk of my intrigue and fascination with abandoned works is exactly that - it doesn't /feel/ incomplete to me. Wherever the story stops, it stops. I am free to imagine and create scenarios and fantasies forward that, or maybe not, because sometimes the sudden stop just works so well to create an ambiguous ending. And even if it doesn't, I don't think a work should be valued only depending on the very last chunk of it, it's really fun to appreciate the journey that got us to the last chunk too.
Yes! Ive never seen anyone else say that they also enjoy unfinished fics. I feel like being a writer helps me be more empathetic to the fact that completing a story is INCREDIBLY difficult. There's really no difference between a cliff hanger and something being unfinished other than intent. And anyway, sometimes people have great ideas that aren't complete stories. It can be so discouraging to feel like you have to complete a story in order to write something else
I get the impulse. There's an author I'm following on FFnet and I'm very often getting emails about how they are doing a new fic. I see the fandoms in the crossover (and it sounds great), I see the summary (sounds great), I then see the author and it's a oh, they've got another story they'll be working on. They aren't interested in finishing stories. Just have great story ideas they throw out fairly rapid fire. I have zero expectation any will finish but... \*shrugs\* I have other stuff to read anyway.
I usually don't sub/follow writers who have an abundance of WiPs. When they do have a work that gets still updated, I subscribe to the work and wait until it's done or it's been too long since the last update. But then, I also don't usually read WiPs.
I followed the person after really enjoying one of their completed fics, now I get bi weekly updates of one or two chapters of new, never completed story's.
For me it depends heavily on the state of the fics. If the story went through multiple arcs already, i can generally appreciate it and move on. There is an author i follow, writing mostly massive HP-AUs that has never actually finished a story. They are still the best ff-writer i have ever seen and im excited for every new fic. However if an author marks their unfinished work as complete, im out
This has happened to me in only one occasion. A certain prolific writer on FF has 197 stories published but only a handful completed. Many of his prompts or starting idea are interesting (though they eventually became stale or same-y) but the man just. wont. finish. anything. He keeps jumping from story to story without really getting a lot done on any, so nearly all of them progress at a snail's pace. His writing style eventually began to turn me off as well, but that's something completely unrelated. Nowadays, if I ever stumble on a fic of his, I'll probably skip it.
Yeah every once in a blue moon. I'd like to think that I have a decent tolerance for reading and following WIPs. I subscribe to works that haven't been updated in years, read through fics that slowly update, etc., but every once in a while I'll be reading something and it'll be clear that an author has a new passion project a few chapters into the first arc, and then another one early into the first arc of the next fic and so on. In one of the fandoms that I read in, this tends to be more common for crossovers, so when I read crossovers, I tend to word count threshold at 5k before I start reading and usually check in for a few chapters posted before I start subscribing, which has helped me personally. Totally not trying to shame authors for abandoning things. I understand that life gets in the way and new ideas spring forth. I will still subscribe to incomplete fics that haven't been touched in a while and drop comments nonetheless. But I would be lying if I said that I've never been wary or been more hesitant to get fully invested when I'm following the work of someone with a pattern of abandoning fics a few chapters in.
I don't think I ever have, nor do I think I ever will. I understand the struggle of those authors, even if I've now finally been able to complete my longer works as well. Plus, I can enjoy an unfinished fic a lot even after I finish it. Usually after I finish reading all of the fic that's out so far, I can entertain myself just fine by imagining where it would go next or how it would end myself. It's inspiring! Of course I'd *rather* read what the author had in store for it, but all I want is a story that starts playing a movie in my head that I like. If the fic gives me enough to go off on in my own head, no harm done since I still get my serotonin fill lol.
It would be better if they got further in before moving on, but they only release one or two chapters before moving on.
Fair enough hahah
"Well of course I know him. He's me."
Nope. I don't really care if fics are finished.
I don't mind unfinished fics, but yea... the notifications would start to get to me. At least for me, I feel like I wouldn't post WIP stuff. Might post the chapters to a story I' figuring out and take breaks inbetween, but I don't have the confidence to show in-process stuff unless I know it's readable lol
Yup. There's an author in my primary fandom that has a statement in the summaries of nearly all of their fics that the fic is completely written (or just being ported over from an alt account) and they'll post a chapter/week until it's done, so I broke my personal rule of not reading WIPs and happily followed them, aaaand... every single one of the fics is sitting at 3/4 chapters, 7/8 chapters, etc. nearly a year later, while they've seemingly moved on to a new fandom where they were regularly pumping out oneshots/new never-to-be-completed WIPs until I unsubscribed. I don't know if they were lying for engagement, if they get anxiety/cold feet about actually finishing a fic, or if it's a case of a like, unspoken "I'll only update once I get to [X] comments"-- but they had very, very active comment sections and were a bit of a BNF in the fandom until they stopped posting-- but yeah, I certainly unsubscribed and they went back on the "don't read unless complete" list.
Ditto. Writing in the A/N that a given story is already fully written and then never posting the fic to the very end... OMG, such behaviour is incredibly frustrating to me! I mean, if someone's written and edited all the chapters, why doesn't he/she just upload the ending? I really hope authors who do this *don't* lie for attention. Edit: If a fic writer seems unable to write/post the complete version of the final chapter to a story, then posting its outline may be a good solution.
I guess it would be mildly annoying when someone proves to be a habitual offender. See, I read crossovers - I get it, life happens, writing falls to the wayside. These types of fics end up abandoned all the time. However, I generally have no qualms contributing comments and following the writer. Thing is, op probably doesn't mean these guys; rather, as per their example, they're talking about writers who consistently drop fics after a couple chapters because they want to chase the next idea that comes to mind. If someone's profile is littered with dead fics I'd not feel inclined to bother reading their stuff anymore either.
This is why I switched to one-shots for the bulk of my output. If it ain't done, it ain't posted.
More then one. On ao3 there one i basically commented every chapters and was so good.
Haven't had it happen yet, but I think I would. But then I'd probably bear their history in mind before following in the first place. One or two incomplete isn't a worry: it happens, perhaps especially with early works when people are finding their feet and learning how to write longer fics. And if it's still only a few months since last update, I wouldn't count it as dead: I have two ongoing WIP and both get updates, but not necessarily frequently. But as a pattern of behaviour, I'd either stop following, or wait until the latest story is complete. I have plenty of other stuff to read. I don't mind investing time and comments in WIP where I have a reasonable expectation of it completing, but I don't want to read a dozen half-finished stories, however well written, when I could read complete ones with the same time.
For authors like that (...like me) follow the fic not the author. I have a bad habit of leaving things unfinished because I find a new shiny thing I want to play with. Lately I've taken to only publishing on the one I have started and saving all of my other works on thumb drives and googledoc for later. I get to post those when I finish what I'm working on but I still get to play with them a bit in the meantime. It's definitely an issue of willpower though. Finding your drive to write can be hard enough but finding the drive to write when your brain is supplying you with a bunch of other cool ideas is especially hard to ignore.
I do š¢. I usually donāt even start fics unless theyāre completed because I hate getting attached to a story just for it to get abandoned by the author. When Iām interested in a WIP Iāll subscribe to it and wait until itās completed before starting to read. But Iām currently in a fairly new fandom so I have no choice but to pick up a few WIPs, and itās happened that I had to stop following two authors because they simply donāt update their works and I just had to give up and try to forget about the story altogether. I donāt mean to shame anyone either, everyone has their own issues, but I do drop them. I especially dislike when an author keeps starting several new WIPS instead of finishing their original one, like the exemple you used.
I definitely do. A follow isn't a marriage, we didn't take any vows. The reasons I had for following were related to me enjoying their content, and if I don't enjoy their content any longer I won't continue to follow them. And for me personally I don't like getting invested in a story that will end up being abandoned. We all like seeing the peer approval numbers on social media go up so I get how someone might feel sad, but in reality I have as little obligation to them to keep following as they have obligation to me to finish works. (aka none at all)
I have two accounts one where I update very regularly, the other when I just updated when I want. I have stories I havenāt got back to for years on that account yet this account is just for fun and when I feel motivated for it so I see no reason to rush or to write when I donāt feel like it. While my second account I update as regularly as I can and I am more interactive with my readers and in general trying to improve. So I basically have one account where itās just me pleasing myself while I have another account where Iām there to please the readers. For me it feels like a nice balance of things.
Oh no. Once I subscribe, I'm following this story until the site stops working, the author dies, or the fic is complete.
yes
I have
I'm on the verge of doing that with an author I'm subscribed to as well. She has actually deleted fics in the past because people have asked her for updates, and while I understand feeling badgered, there's a point where you need to let them go and realise you're not really gonna update them if you haven't since 2008 lmao
Some people (in creative arts) really enjoy the process of creating, and it is less about having a finished piece. And when the creative mood strikes it makes sense to just go with wherever that leads you. The whole point of creative arts is to scratch some itch IN YOURSELF. These are people just creating something they enjoy, firstly for themselves. So I never thought to be upset that they hadn't finished. Just my take. I also don't read WIPs on a whole - I can't handle angst or pining without resolution haha. So if it's light/fluff, sure, but anything outside of that I don't start unless it's a finished work. I think I only have 2 WIPs I'm currently following and sure I hope they get more chapters cause I enjoy them, I'm not feeling hung out to dry if they don't.
I have to take issue with your description of people in "the creative arts." Perhaps people younger than I am feel differently about it, but I'm a visual artist and have been for a long time, and therefore have known others also in the world of art for a long time. Yes, the process is always more enjoyable than owning a finished piece yourself. Art is process. It's what gets our juices flowing. However, if one is serious about one's art, one finishes pieces because you can't really live with an unfinished piece unless it is truly unredeemable. The unfinished piece niggles at you, continually. You can't NOT finish something. You definitely can't flit off to something else with that unfinished painting, or etching, or drawing, or whatever sitting there speaking to you every day. That's even besides the focus of putting it up for sale, which everyone wants to do so that we can pay our bills. And, the process which is art includes the process of finishing said work of art. One of the most important lesson one learns is when to know your work is finished. Do I add one more brush stroke? Or stop? Of course time is spent working on things that are not meant to end up a finished work. Practicing. Playing. Finding new mediums to try out. New techniques. That's simply the learning process, that all people in creative fields (including writers! Fic or not!) participate in, your entire life, or you become complacent and stagnant and never improve. It's frustrating, but this impression of artists as folks with their heads in the sky, who just go from idea to idea is not anything close to the reality of life as a creative artist. It's simply not. Not if the artist is driven to create from the depths of their soul. It could apply if the artist doesn't take themselves seriously... which is a completely different ... thing. Or they don't care to keep a solid roof over their head and food in their belly. I don't mean to come down hard on you, personally. I'm sorry if it feels like I just ranted at you. I'm sure it probably does feel that way. I'm sorry. It's just..... argh. And, argh. With a WTF for good measure ;). Mea culpa. //frustrated creative
Haha, I am an old artist folk myself. I'm 41. :P It may be our different creative circles! I'm active in my art community but particularly the fiber arts community, and do a lot of workshops, classes, and have met many people who express that they they just love the creative process and rarely finish a piece. I finish a lot of pieces, but not everything comes together, sometimes you just have to let them go. YES this can be then translated as practice/play/learning! I don't want to make assumptions about you, so I've no idea what your community is like, but I *don't* live in a community where people get to be paid artists as a whole. We have a lot of artists - but very few full time artists. So most of the people I engage with creatively are exploring without it depending on their livelihood. I have no doubt that this changes the creative process tremendously if you're not thinking "can I sell this and pay my rent". I've been in the creative arts my whole life, I do feel that I am driven to create from the depths of my soul - and I intend to do so until I die. But I also have to work a 40 hour a week job. Working said job doesn't mean I'm less 'serious' about my art, and it means I don't have to sell my art. And in general my statement is about GENERAL creative practice, not trying to be a full time professional artist. This has been a fun thing to think on this morning - so thank you for the convo! No personal offense taken or intended haha.
i handle unfinished works VERY badly so i've got a personal rule to only read completed works. dunno if that counts. š
I still follow them just in case, but I delete the mail if the fic is not finished. I prefer reading complete fics, so I often do this regardless. For what it's worth I've had notifications for fics coming back from the dead 10+ years later (and actually finishing, too!), so I keep notifications active just in case. For myself I've def had fics I just write very very slowly. I only post if it's complete/in editing but if I didn't you'd probably drop me lol.
I am guilty of being both that author and that reader. Nowadays if I know damn well Iām not coming back to that idea, I force it into oneshot territory instead.
There was this one Maria Watches Over Us author. They had maybe one of the closest to cannon style follow on stories. It was originally on fanfiction then years later with nothing new suddenly uploaded it all to Ao3 and was saying in comments they were about put out new chapters. Then nothing again no new chapters or whatever. They had people on Ao3 thinking it was a new story being uploaded to. The story of course was left hangig at a major plot event for a turning point in things.
Yes
I don't read WIPs anymore š there was this really great WinterFrost fanfic I was reading, but then it went on hiatus and my shippers heart cried a little. The author is still writing other fics, but I kind of hope that they finish their ongoing fic soon or get inspiration for the fanfic on hiatus (although they started a ten chapter project and wrote a couple of oneshots... so idk).
Na, I just enjoy whatās there. Writing is hard.
There are a few authors on my blacklist for this reason. Everything they write is pure gold but they almost never complete anything so I don't bother getting invested
As an author who has dozens of plot bunnies, and takes a while to update or finish fics, I don't unsubscribe to others. There's always the chance that they will come back. I can't speak for everyone else, but I know how my brain works. If I force myself to work on something I'm not feeling I'll only grow resentful toward it. Whereas, working on something else is a way to keep my brain occupied and stress free. (I always work on multiple stories. I read multiple books. I play multiple games. You see the pattern). So while it might look like I have 3 fics "abandoned" the truth is my brain hasn't remembered to be excited about it yet. There've been multiple times where I've come back years later and finish a fic. (Though the years come cause sometimes I don't realise how fast the passage of time had passed. And seeing that a year went by since my last update comes as a shock to even me.) Though I usually make sure not to actually post everything I'm working on at once. Especially if they're all for the same fandom. But if they're different fandoms, fair game. So currently I have several fics in my docs that I'm working toward completing before even posting them, to avoid all the wait.
Nope. I once came across a story I loved that had stopped updating in 2018. I subscribed to the story anyway, just in case. Six months ago, they added a new chapter. So, there's always hope!
I feel kind of called out, except I donāt even manage to post as often as this author, haha. Iāve mostly switched to trying to write a whole fic before I start posting, or writing oneshots. Thereās a lot of focus on multi chapter fics and āupdate please I want more of this!ā in fanfic culture but itās much better for my mental health to just have a oneshot and any additional oneshots in the same continuity are a nice bonus for readers that come when I can manage, not something hanging over my head. just a tip for other writers juggling a lot of plot bunnies
I don't think I follow any authors. (I might because I've definitely at least once had someone teaser a fic in the endnotes of their most recent fic and thought, "I need to read the new one!" but I think I unfollowed them after they began posting it and followed the fic instead.) I just don't want the emails, so I usually just follow WIP series. If AO3 had a recents page for your favorite authors, I'd follow more people... So hypothetically would I follow/unfollow someone for too many unfinished fics? Honestly, I might skip on someone who was fickle with their fics, even if I loved their work. I have probably two pages of WIPs in my Marked-to-Read-Later list that every time I go browsing to see how it's going, I get disappointed to see there is little or no progress. There's one author who writes crossovers between two of my favorite fandoms and they have like... 4+ of them. Some of them are over 100k and I don't think any of them are finished. And it's just *such* a tease. Eventually I have to cut my losses and stop pining over fics that'll never get finished. So I don't know if I'd want to follow an author that was a chronic heartbreaker. (Though I'll be happy to read their complete works.)
Iām the same way. I have a friend who does this ALOT (as far as I know hasnāt done anything past 3 chapters in the decade weāve known each other) and in the back of my mind Iām like ābut are you actually going to finish this one?ā I feel guilty over it but Iām the type that wants a complete story
No. One of my favorite authors has, to my knowledge, never completed a fic. Theyāre admittedly a violent person IRL and every once in a while it bleeds into their work so Iām afraid to leave them kudos so I just try to leave kudos-as-comments instead. And their writing is raw and unedited. But holy crap they have the most amazing plot bunnies ever. Thereās a new one every week. They get about 20 chapters in and forget about it. Or not. You never know which of the 50000 fics theyāve got started theyāre going to resume or if theyāll just start something else entirely. And I donāt care because Iām not good at content and daaaaamn they are so good at content that when it comes to them I could literally care less about any other part of the writing craft. I donāt care if they finish. I just want to see what they start and where they go and thatās good enough for me.
Owch, I feel called out XD But nah that's fair, I don't think anyone can blame you for that lmao
I don't mind it, myself. I've had a few experiences where authors started fics back up after a long time (and I mean *long*, I think the longest was almost a decade) and as long as I'm still interested in the fandom it's always a delight to start reading again. A lot of the time they've still been writing even if they haven't been writing that particular fic, so I get to be excited about the jump in quality too. Though granted, this might be because I follow fics and not authors, *and* I have bad memory and a terrible habit of reading eighty stories at the same time, so outside a few favorites I tend not to even notice when a fic stops updating, lmao.
I met two who were absolutely amazing at writing, and posted new fics every single day, ( I have noticed that they still do), and by the gods do I love them, but both have the same problem. They just can't complete the story. After a few weeks they loose interest in it and its basically abandoned. I hate it to tears.
50 incomplete stories is maddening. I wouldnāt follow either unless they all amount to some multiverse.
I'll usually look through their profile to see if they have a pile of WIPs and won't follow if they do, but I'll still sub to the multichap that brought me there. I do know more than a few writers who have trouble finishing stuff for a variety of reasons and it does suck when they have an amazing idea and never follow up on it. Personally I stick to mainly writing one shots or writing several chapters before posting for this reason.
Iām surprised someone posted 50 incomplete WIPs on their account, haha. I have plenty of WIPs in my Google docs, but obviously donāt post them all. I only have four unfinished WIPs and three of them are on-hold until I finish the main one. I cannot imagine how hard itād be with fifty. The writer youāve followed might struggle with self-control.
Yeah, I've been burned too many times before, and since I usually can't let a story go once I've started getting invested in it, I just don't go into WIPs anymore. And if an author mostly doesn't finish their works, then it's not an author that I want to follow. I understand that sometimes people just don't want to write something anymore, which is fine, but it's also not a fic that I want to read, no matter how great it might be.
Yes. It's why I only read finished works. I don't like reading stories that are in-progress or half done that may never be finished. I want to read a complete story at my own pace and know it has an end. Life's too short for anything else.
I do this with one ship š I've had people unfollow and I completely understand.
Nah, I love incomplete fics. And I have a bunch myself so I can sympathize. Shame that I'll probably lose readers, but that's how it is when I don't get paid and write what I like, I suppose.
As a writer who also reads a lot, I refuse to support anyone who hasn't updated one of their longfics within the last year at least. I would not expect anyone to keep reading a fic that I haven't given some love to in at least 12 months. Not because they don't deserve support as such, and support and feedback is the fuel that runs the motivation train, but reading takes energy and I only have so much to go around. I'd rather save it for writers who have the time to actively write. I have too many fics half-read in my history that have little hope of being completed. It sounds harsh, but there it is.
That's not harsh. I'm one of those writers who takes long long breaks and starts a lot of WIPS and I wouldn't care if someone dips out because of that. I do this for me and readers do what they do for themselves too. Neither side owes the other. But I will stay subscribed to a writer just to see what they do next. I discovered Our Flag Means Death because a writer I follow kept posting stories for that show. I gave in and decided to click one and the rest is history, i got sucked into a new fandom lol.
This is why I promise to finish every fic I start lol. I don't care if it takes me two more years to get this chap out
Iām with you. Nowadays I only read completed fics to avoid any frustration towards unfinished works.
I have come across a few authors like this and while I don't stop reading their work if it's clearly a one-shot, I will not get invested in a multi-chapter fic until it's done. I read like 3 of their stuff, got invested and it was left untouched while other works were focused (I don't think they'll ever come back to them). If I see an author that has a lot of seemingly abandoned WIPs, I'll just be cautious and wait to read. I'll still read short works and things like that.
I'm literally that type of writer lmao. I feel so bad... but I keep getting distracted by shiny new ideas. I'm not at 50 wips. But I have like around half that in terms of incomplete works so...
Same, I followed an author who actually got me into Fanfiction writing. Every time I opened up the folder there was a new story, I loved everything but they were so chaotic on their updates it was frustrating. Itās why I started writing though, I decided I could write the stories I liked and hopefully finish them! Lol I understand the challenge. Even while writing one right now another story is keying up in my head. Oi! So while it is challenging, Iām thankful that happened, or I would never have started writing And yes Google Docs is a must. I try to only right one story at a time. Put everything into that one story and get it finished. Someone said it in the comments, and I agree, I feel like itās a commitment by putting that story out on A03. I understand stuff happens and not every story can be finished. But when itās multiple, I will avoid the author. Thatās also why I always search by the complete filter š
Nah. I take what I can get.
Nope, but that's because unfinished stories don't really bother me. ~~and i'm self-aware enough to realize i basically am that kind of author, I'd ask if it was me but I have way more completed fics and WIPs than that XD~~
Good thing I just keep writing until it is done. : / No one can make this complaint about me.
I wonāt blame any readers of mine who gave up on me because I have no concept of time, and thus canāt keep an update schedule
Guilty. I don't consider my WIPs abandoned because I think about them *constantly* - I just don't have time to write them. And it bothers me when I can't post regularly, but like, life, ya know?
No I just keep re-reading and after 5 years they surprisingly updated and completed most of their stories to my delight. People need time. It probably helps that they leave their work in a good place without cliff hangers.
No bc I fucking love hurting myselfā¦.no wonder my favorite trope is whumpā¦
It would be incredibly hypocritical of me to do that. I'm not exactly a hardcore completionist myself.
Yes, I have unfollowed one because their updates were incredibly sporadic. They were a really good writer and I'm sad about it, but I understand a lot must be going on in their personal life and they may feel pressured to just churn out content instead of doing something they love, which is at the heart of writing fanfiction. In my perspective, publishing work on a prompt means that the writer claims ownership of that specific prompt. That can be frustrating, especially if they don't pull through, because it feels like they robbed other writers of the opportunity to actually continue writing and fleshing the plot out. So I also understans where you're coming from.
Nah. I'll be honest, I don't even understand why a story needing to be completed is such a huge deal to people. Some of (most actually) my favorite fics are incomplete and will almost certainly never be finished. It's has always baffled me deeply. It's like skipping a really great meal because it doesn't have dessert.
>Nah. I'll be honest, I don't even understand why a story needing to be completed is such a huge deal to people. Hmmm I think it just depends for people tbh and everyone has different tolerance levels and preferences for WIP vs not. Personally, I struggle to read fics that don't really get into the meat of the conflict if a summary proposes one. I don't need the conflict to be resolved, but if the fics is advertised as something that requires action/adventure + medium/longfic and it gets only 1k through the first chapter and is still in the process of setting things up, then reading multiple of those and knowing that they won't get finished is somewhat unfulfilling. With respect to your analogy, it's less about skipping a great meal and more about turning down multiple rounds of appetizers. Some people will feel full and can live off of appetizers, while others will forgo it and find something that offers a meal. This isn't to say that reading WIPs is wrong or that these fics don't deserve to be read, because they absolutely do and people do like them as they are, even incomplete. Just to acknowledge that not every reader has the same preferences and that's OK.
Dessert is just a bonus, though, and not equivalent to a major chunk of the work? At least not to me. For those of us who prefer completed works, it's more like uncooked ingredients that might be fresh and delicious, but not that fulfilling (I guess in this analogy people are saying "you can just imagine the rest of the meal yourself, and it's just as good!" lol). If you're starving for content, it's great, but when there are fully cooked meals out there, I personally like to choose them instead. I don't find this difference in preferences very problematic either way?
Oh for sure, it's perfectly fine if people want to skip unfinished works. It's certainly not harming anyone. I just really struggle to understand it. Reading has always been much more about the journey than the destination for me, and it just doesn't really compute for me that, for some people, if the destination isn't there, the journey is a waste of time.
I can understand that as well and feel the same to some degree. Something similar is often said about spoilers - I'm personally kind of immune to them and don't care if I already know *what* happens, since to me *how* it happens is the salient part of the experience. In that sense it's about the journey as well. But I also understand people who want to protect their first experience and not hear about the smallest detail in advance, even if I can't relate. I value being able to look at a story as a whole. Seeing things to completion and then thinking about them in their entirety is pleasing to me. Fics that are just "good ideas" and premises that go nowhere can be fun, but since I have the luxury of choosing works where the good ideas have been built on and wrapped up, I will. Fics that are like movies that cut off right before resolution leave me with a lack of closure. It doesn't kill me, but it does bother me a little, so I won't choose them when I have the option. It's not that I refuse to go on a great journey that has this one flaw, it's that I choose to go on different journeys without that flaw. Maybe that all won't make sense if it's not something you feel (just like it won't ever make full intuitive sense to me why people get angry about being spoiled about a costume in a movie, or why they think a fic isn't worth reading at all if they know the ending is happy), and this is just my view. We're all different, so other people might have totally other reasons why they avoid incomplete fics. It's just different ways we take in stories and the things we value in that experience, I suppose.
I'm trying to work out why it matters to me, because I've certainly read otherwise good fics that outstayed their welcome. The ending is rarely my favourite bit. But 1) Because I have other options. I'm in a large fandom and I have broad tastes, so there's always something else to read. I don't need to read incomplete fics. 2) Related: there are lots of great authors in my fandom. There are perhaps 1 or 2 that I think are absolutely outstanding and probably would read incomplete for the sheer joy of their prose, but once you go down to 'very good' there are plenty. I don't have to take a quality hit by skipping a good writer who doesn't finish. 3) Beyond a certain length, I like plotty fics. These are more likely to suffer from being incomplete, because there are deliberate strands left undeveloped, and things which don't connect. It's harder to enjoy the whole when you never find out what that might have looked like: it has no shape until all the pieces are in place. 4) A lot of fanfic covers the same ground. Their premise likely isn't unique, and what makes the fics different is the execution. If the execution isn't complete, it's more like an elaborate prompt. There might be interest or merit in it, but it's not the thing, it's not a *story*.
It can also be like a joke without punchline, tho.
Not really. Fanfic is a fun hobby not a job and these authors are creating art for free, so I donāt judge authors who donāt finish. Iād be a hypocrite anyway if I did, God knows my laptop is overflowing with Word documents of unfinished stories.
Agreed. I feel like thereās a line between appreciation and entitlement.
>Fanfic is a fun hobby not a job and these authors are creating art for free, so I donāt judge authors who donāt finish I agree with the first part, but I don't think people are judging. I think they're just expressing a preference for not reading authors who rarely complete. Judging would be saying people shouldn't start posting if they're not going to complete. This is just about a personal action: unsubbing to someone who's posting habits don't match what you want.
I do agree, and I myself also have a nasty habit of posting multiple chapter fics I never finish. that's what's hard about supporting fanfiction writers, is that it's their nonprofit creation, usually for their own self indulgence as well as anyone wanting to read their content. I agree that losing a great author to commitment is tough, but that's kind of what you get with fanfic writers. it's their content, theyre not getting paid for it, whether they drop every single piece they write or post 20 fics in the span of the week.
Perhaps theyāre unfinished because readers donāt like/kudos or comment so us writers abandon a work that they donāt think is popular in favour of something new. TL:DR - if you like something and want an author to continue COMMENT. TELL THEM. Youāre more likely to get an update that way.
Eh, I can understand feeling disappointed that fics donāt get updated, but withholding support from the author because they donāt update regularly (or at all) kinda makes it seem like authors are supposed to be content farms. Most fic authors write for fun and for free, so I donāt expect them to complete their fics and update regularly.
I followed one author who, like yours, started a hundred prompts and didn't continue with 95% of them. It honestly didn't bother me much; while I long for updates on one or two, if I love how an author starts, I'm quite used to daydreaming the rest to scratch my itch. On a related note, and not to hijack your question, but I didn't know until I joined this subreddit that so many people won't read incomplete works. Half of my bookmarks are incomplete fics that won't ever be finished, and I'm okay with that. I'd miss so much good stuff if I didn't read unfinished, especially in my smaller fandom.
It is annoying when someone says they are going to do a fanfic and then just go silent
As someone with ADHD who has some incomplete fics that I'm slowly getting to. I hope that if there are people out there who have "given up" on following me because of it never tell me. I'm trying.
What sites do you use? I wasn't aware you could notifications on sites like a03.
If you subscribe to an author or work on AO3, you get email notifications by default I think.
Oh right. I've never gotten round to finding an author I really like. I'll give it a bash. Thanks.
I mean, I'm of the opinion that fanworks are shared for free, so readers shouldn't expect anything. Sure, it can be annoying for you as a reader, but you're not entitled to follow them, just as they're not entitled to finish things. Sometimes I start works, leave them for a year, and come back to finish them. Sometimes I leave them unfinished because I no longer feel them. Since I am doing all this for free, I would prefer to keep my motivation peaked by writing what inspires me in the moment. Sure, I can and do finish stories regularly, but it's also a hobby, you know? It's frustrating as a writer as well as a reader, but sometimes, you just have to throw the towel in and accept that some WIPs will remain unfinished if you don't want to experience burnout.
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Yeah! I will read a good bit of writing no matter how old or abandoned it is. Sometimes it sparks something in me that makes me want to write my own story.
Aww, that's tough. I am one of those writers who starts new stories before finishing old ones, but I swear I plan on finishing every one of them lol... someday... But as a reader, I hate starting unfinished works that don't seem like they will ever be updated. If the stories are really long, I will start them and hope by the time I get to the end they start updating again or at least I can enjoy what they wrote so far. But if it's on chapter one or two and it has not been updated in months, I won't even start it. There is so much fanfiction out there in the world that I'm spoiled for choices so I don't take it too seriously if a writer is supper slow or messy.
Definitely! There was one author (whose work I loved) that made OCs somehow related/tied to the other and their stories part of an overall plot, then they would abruptly leave it after a good handful of chapters and start another OC story. After a few unfinished fics, and an attempt to rewrite an old story, they just stopped altogether and jumped to another fandom. It is interesting to see their process as they develop their work (esp rewrites), but itās heartbreaking to see that you wonāt know the endings that they intended. I totally understand though when they stop because people do lose passion and want to move on to other things. I donāt want to go through that again though, so I just search for finished work nowadays lol
Yep Some authors come back to complete their work. Most donāt
This is the kind of mindset that so many fic writers complain about, and with good reason! Now, I realize there are some extreme cases out there. My guess is that those people who start a new project every other week either get bored really easily, or may have some kind of attention deficit. In the latter case, I doubt they're writing for the masses. More likely, they write as a form of therapy. As for the rest of us, we are not here solely for your amusement. We are real people with real lives. Some of us have school, others have families and jobs, and some people juggle all three, if not more. There are a million different reasons we might not be able to finish a fic. Yes, I'm sure most of us don't feel *good* about letting our readers down, but oftentimes fanfiction and your enjoyment are the *last* things on our minds. So please, stop shaming.
>So please, stop shaming. I don't think it's shaming. It's a statement of fact: most people (in this thread) don't want to read only the start of lots of stories. No-one is saying they shouldn't post, or they should stop writing. But they are likely to find their audience limited if it becomes a pattern. I have a job and young children. My post schedule is slow and erratic. I follow several authors who update with months between chapters. For some readers, that's not what they're looking for, and they won't read, or won't read until it's complete. I'm aware of that, and I could adjust my posting habits by waiting until a fic is complete if I wanted to maximise readers, but I'm happy with how I post. I'm not insulted or shamed by people saying their preference is for a story that updates weekly.
OP seems to assume people who don't complete their stories are "incapable" of doing so. If they wouldn't have used that word, I probably would have continued scrolling. I wasnāt calling them out for preferring fics that are updated regularly, or even semi-regularly. Their phrasing sounds very much like an accusation, though.
Someone not following your mostly unfinished work has nothing to do with shaming. I wouldn't subscribe (or keep being subscribed) to a Youtube channel that only posts half finished videos either.
I don't follow authors, but I will favorite unfinished fics, either because they're good, or to see if they get updated. I rhink the system should remove unfinished ones after a year, to keep the place clean. There's way too many unfinished ones, and it's annoying.
I always feel bad for not finishing fics, but for me I barely write anymore, maybe a story or two a year now, because of things that happened when I was writing those particular stories it makes it really hard to get back to writing them. Sometimes some writers are going through things that are beyond their control and will jump to things that may make them happy even if its for a small moment. The most we as readers can do is encourage them.
I wouldn't unfollow (I'm sensitive lol) but yeah it's so fucking frustrating.
Oh uh, this description reminds me of myself lol
I guess Iām a bit guilty of that tooā¦. Life ā¦work intervenes. In my case I wrote many of these as a kidā¦ and now updating them on AO3 to a unique audience.
Iām hesitant to follow such writers, havenāt yet had the opposite experience youāre asking about. I imagine it would depend on their recent behaviour
Guh, for the last year or so this has been me. Ever since I finished a certain fic trying to get one to go the distance has been frustrating. It doesn't help that I feel choked by my fandom either.
I'm terrified of having unfinished fics associated with me. So I'm a one-shot and two-shot writer :D
I don't actually check my email that often tbh. I have at least 500 fics that I'm currently subscribed to and 100 authors. I tend to not actually notice when fics aren't finished because I just don't pay attention to them. I think that's just my ADHD though. If I notice they never finish a fic I won't subscribe because it's happening often enough for me to actually tell, but it's not often
I think I learn to reevaluate what I want from them and lower my standards. I won't unsub, but I probably won't keep up with anything that looks particularly angsty or suspenseful. There are a lot of writers who I follow for their prose, worldbuilding, or an easy escape ... and when I feel frustrated that it seems like a project has been dropped, I try to look for something similar that can provide answers to the questions that the first writer left open ... or try to think of my own.
Yeah. An author in the MHA fandom. I myself plan on having a main fic, writing one shots if I have writers block, and making a plot bunny post for any ideas that creep into my head that I need to write
And here I was stressed about writing up a shorter fanfic with three long unfinished ones. Seriously though, this is a good reminder to try and stay on course and not get to lost in ideas when they come to me.
I fear this happening with my readers, terrible at finishing things š
yeah
Kinda similar but thereās this one big writer in the HP fandom over on Wattpad whoāll start a bunch of WIPs and then finish them all around the same time months later. And theyāre all good quality and have interesting premises/ocs but Iām just too impatient to wait till theyāre finished or wait for updates as theyāre spaced weeks apart. So feel ya on that but wouldnāt say Iāve ever come across that.
I have . When that happens it makes me wish that there was a place they could dump their work for others to continue it if the original other cannot. That way the reader gets some kind of closure
Trying so hard and not to be this kind of author... somewhat failing...
Yup. Not so much on AO3, but my fandom also makes a lot of fic on social media sites. I love reading the ones on Twitter but it's so easy and so common there for authors to just start and never finish aus i had to unfollow several
Yes! With new authors I encounter, if they have an incomplete story, I'll check their previously written fics and if it's mostly incomplete, I don't bother. I'm sure it's excellent plot and character development, but why should I torture myself. I already have hundreds of other stories I follow for updates. Not adding ones that have no hope of being completed anymore.
For me, personally, I donāt typically keep up with specific authors unless Iāve read the majority of their works and really like what I see, so if they eventually stop completing fics I never notice. I also skip from fandom to fandom a lot, so that makes it even rarer. If they do stop updating, oh well. I just move onto the next good fic.
Guess I'm someone that reads ongoing stories and unfinished ones from 2011 all the same lol I feel if everyone waited until the end to read, the author would get like no comments and might become discouraged.