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[nicksgal]

LOL Thank you for listing all these!  I did not know any of the rules besides #34.  I guess the fetish thing would fall within that one then.

I had to look them up again, but had a similar discussion with some of my friends this past summer. I think it does because the assumption is that if it's someone's fetish, they will inevitably seek out porn of it (and/or create it). The other rules are less funny, that's why I think we remember them less.

[nicksgal]

I assumed BMS would be about the same length as Broken (150 chapters), so I should have realized that was at least 1/3 of the way through.  I had no idea how long it was actually going to be.

I think I just sent the link to it out through the Yahoo Group.

You've gotta stop guessing how many chapters your story will be and just write or write in a way that it can stop at whatever number of chapters you planned, haha. If I was at 50 chapters and thought it would only be 1/3 of the way through an individual story, I would still feel really nervous. That's a lot of story to get through.

How did you stay so motivated?

I know!  I have figured that out about myself - if I make coffee and sit down with my computer first thing in the morning, I'm much more likely to get something written.  I wasn't feeling it yesterday, so I didn't force myself to do that.

I did make coffee today and have been on the computer all day and have written nothing LOL.  But I have been researching.  My Brother's Keeper is heavy on the research.  Thankfully I did a bunch of it before I started writing the story 3 years ago, organized all my bookmarks, and made some notes in my outline, so I had something to go off of and didn't have to start from scratch.  I am probably not going to get anything written today, but at least I'm thinking about it LOL.

I just can't function without my coffee, so it's a regular part of my day whether I plan on writing or not.

Research counts as writing work though. It's better to spend time researching before writing (even if it's just for the chapter you need it in) than starting to write and realizing that you don't know something, then researching it and realizing that whatever you had written was completely wrong, forcing you to start over.

I might be productive today. My stomach's been kind of wonky, so I decided it's better to stay home to watch the Super Bowl so I can lay on the couch if I want rather than going somewhere with my husband and wanting to leave. So I'll probably just sit here with my computer cheering on the fighting Nick Carters in my red pants and Now or Never shirt, haha. No Bucs gear.

OMG, I'm watching Super Bowl coverage right now and they're just letting Gronk talk... He sounds so ridiculous all the time.

[nicksgal]

I might be productive today.

I wrote 738 words during the game when the clock was stopped and took a tiny nap during halftime coverage (but not the performance, which was great). Going to call that pretty productive.

[RokofAges75]

You've gotta stop guessing how many chapters your story will be and just write or write in a way that it can stop at whatever number of chapters you planned, haha. If I was at 50 chapters and thought it would only be 1/3 of the way through an individual story, I would still feel really nervous. That's a lot of story to get through.

How did you stay so motivated?

Motivation was never a problem for me with those two stories.  I guess it was the perfect combination of a plot I found compelling and characters I loved writing about.

Research counts as writing work though. It's better to spend time researching before writing (even if it's just for the chapter you need it in) than starting to write and realizing that you don't know something, then researching it and realizing that whatever you had written was completely wrong, forcing you to start over.

Great point!  Very true. 

I wrote 738 words during the game when the clock was stopped and took a tiny nap during halftime coverage (but not the performance, which was great). Going to call that pretty productive.

That's definitely productive in my book!  I'm impressed.  I spent most of the game trying to decide on a name for a character I created for later in the story.  Names are the worst!!

[nicksgal]

1. Beginnings, Middles, or Endings: What is your favorite part to write in a story and why?

When I used to write in order, I think my answer would have been endings just like Julie. But now that I write whatever is interesting, I often find myself writing bits in the middle before I get there. So team middles!

2. Same question, but least favorite?

I could go either way between beginnings and endings. Sometimes it's hard to start, but once the inspiration gets rolling, it's fairly easy. If you end up getting to an ending and not wanting to write something you'd been building to, it can be so difficult to get that inspiration back. But I don't know, maybe now that I write whatever's interesting when I feel like it, maybe the end isn't so bad anymore.

3. When you're writing a beginning, how much time do you like to devote to backstory or do you intersperse it throughout the story?

I think most of your major plot backstory has to be within the first ten chapters at bare minimum, earlier is better. Whatever the driving force is behind the events of the story, readers need to know without an info dump, because those are boring. Character backstories can and should be interspersed throughout when it's the most interesting and knife-twisting.

4. What are backstory elements you know, but don't include? Are these conscious choices or more along the lines of "We're BSB fans reading BSB fanfics"?

For the characters? Lots. For the plot? Nothing. That's over-simplifying it. If the readers need to know a part of a character's backstory, it will appear at the right time. Like our buddy Nick, I've known his origin story in full since probably ch. 14 and had all the details solidified by ch. 24. But we're into our second story and y'all don't quite know yet. I hope it blows everyone's minds! Or doesn't if you've paid attention to all my clues. For the plot, I tell everything that needs to be known as soon as possible. But in PBox, for instance, I have a lot more information in my head about their warring states era history than a reader probably needs to know unless it directly impacts the characters.

And like I said before, writing BSB's entire history until reaching the current point in the novel would be awful and time consuming.

5. Do you always know your main character's (or characters') motivation when you start a story or does it come up later? and 6. "I won't start the beginning of the story until I know: ____________."

Always. I won't start a story until I know at least the main character's motivation and how it might change during the story.

7. What's the easiest thing about beginnings and the most challenging?

The easiest is probably figuring out what all the characters are up to. The most challenging is trying to decide the exact point to start.

After all my years with PBox, for instance, I feel like I actually should have started with chapter two. But here we are.

8. "In the middle of the story, I often: ______________ ."

Should be writing something other than the middle! Middles are fun. You get to have all of your fun little arcs in full swing and you get to focus on characters instead of set up or climaxes. Middles are just fun.

9. What's something overrated about middles? What's something underrated about middles?

This is a bad question, I'm sorry I asked it. Middles are awesome if done correctly, but if they're rushed through they feel kind of bleh. So I guess, middles themselves can be both overrated and underrated.

11. What's the easiest thing about middles and the most challenging?

Character development! The best time for it. The most challenging is making sure there's not too many things that will need to be tied up once you get to the end.

12. What's the easiest thing about endings and the most challenging?

When inspiration is good, it's exciting to get to the end. Most challenging is probably if you're not sure about your ending, but it's too late to change it.

13. "I won't end the story until I know: ____________."

That all the character arcs are over and the plot has reached its complete end.

14. Do you always know the end of a story when you start it? If not, when's the last possible point you must decide the ending?

Nope! I've given up on deciding at the beginning, but I have to know by the half-way point so I can build to it properly.

15. Do your stories always have an ending or do you leave them open-ended just in case?

They always have an ending even if it's meant to have an opening for a sequel. The opening will be so tiny that it still feels satisfying without it.

16. What types of endings leave you feeling most satisfied with your story? (Interpret that as you will.)

When the characters got to wherever I wanted them to go, even if that means the ending was sad.

17. Do you ever leave noodle incidents in your story without a resolution for fun?

Depends on the story. I can't think of any now, but I usually try to resolve even tiny things -- like the candles in the holiday story.

[nicksgal]

Motivation was never a problem for me with those two stories.  I guess it was the perfect combination of a plot I found compelling and characters I loved writing about.

I think that's great! I love when that happens, even though it can take a while. I guess I always worry that the longer it goes on, I'd lose steam. But we're different people.

That's definitely productive in my book!  I'm impressed.  I spent most of the game trying to decide on a name for a character I created for later in the story.  Names are the worst!!

I just told myself going in that I wouldn't bother trying to write anything during actual plays and I think it helped knowing I had little built in breaks.

B. Pringles. That's a great name. I wonder if he's part of the Pringles dynasty. 

[RokofAges75]

If you end up getting to an ending and not wanting to write something you'd been building to, it can be so difficult to get that inspiration back. But I don't know, maybe now that I write whatever's interesting when I feel like it, maybe the end isn't so bad anymore.

I like the idea of writing whatever's interesting when you feel like it.  What about the stuff that isn't interesting, but necessary?  Do you ever find yourself stuck on the scenes that are needed to fill in the gaps between what you've already written?

When inspiration is good, it's exciting to get to the end. Most challenging is probably if you're not sure about your ending, but it's too late to change it.

Have you ever had that happen, where you want to change your ending before you write it but feel like you can't?

They always have an ending even if it's meant to have an opening for a sequel. The opening will be so tiny that it still feels satisfying without it.

That sounds like a good compromise.  That way, you have options - you can write a sequel if you want to, but there's no obligation to, since the original story had a satisfying ending on its own.

[nicksgal]

I like the idea of writing whatever's interesting when you feel like it.  What about the stuff that isn't interesting, but necessary?  Do you ever find yourself stuck on the scenes that are needed to fill in the gaps between what you've already written?

Right now I'm a tiny bit stuck on just what Kevin plans to do in the chapter I left off on, but on the whole I haven't had a problem filling things in. If an interesting thing isn't begging to be written, I do write in order as much as possible. I think there was one other day back during NaNo when I was coming up on a heavily researched chapter, but I needed a little more research and the intro to the chapter just wasn't coming to me. I paused and edited something in PBox that felt semi-relevant and then had a good beginning by the end of the night.

I'm looking through my documents now to see how out of order I've been writing. Y'all are on ch. 8 while I'm writing ch. 22 and ch. 25 (just finished ch. 24 today and it is a doozy for anyone who's been waiting to know the thing I finally revealed in it!) I also wrote this tiny smidge of the next novel that was begging to come out. Probably because it's related to ch. 24 in the grand scheme of things.

I had chunks of ch. 1 and ch. 2 written since I first tried in 2015, but back then I thought ch. 1 was actually ch. 1-3 and ch. 2 was ch. 4 -- it's much better this way. The first thing I wrote in September was the beginningish/middleish and end of ch. 3, then I wrote ch. 4 and ch. 5 in their entirety, then the beginning/middle of ch. 6, then the 3rd scene of ch. 7, then most of ch. 10, then the beginning and end of ch. 11 (but not the middle), then part of the end of ch. 12,  then most of ch. 17, then a decent chunk of what's this ch. 24 to ch. 29ish stretch (but they probably won't end up exactly as I'd written them then if ch. 24 was any indication, just mostly as is). So that was kind of my September and October. I also rehauled PBox ch. 10-12 some time during all this.

Then November hit and I decided I should make more of a concerted effort to write in order. So on November 1st, I went back and filled in starting at ch. 1. I know I wrote bits and pieces of ch. 19 and ch. 20 in early November before I got there and a little more of this ch. 24 to ch. 29ish stretch, but otherwise I tried to stick to going as much in order as possible then. Because that's the point of NaNo: write a novel, not just interesting bits. But I think knowing that those interesting bits were coming motivated me to get to them. They didn't count to my word count for the month, but they already existed. Oh, it looks like I also wrote more of ch. 11 before I got there as well. I found a bit where I called ch. 8 by title, but it was listed as ch. 11. I'm really glad I sped up the novel from my original thought. It would have dragged.

Before I switched to just summarizing the scenes for markers, I apparently got tired of mislabeling them "Assumed Chapter Number: Possible Title" and just started calling them things like "chapter something or other" and "chapter later still." It's actually really fun looking at this version history because I can see when I got to the chapter that these snippets were part of because it tracks me deleting them. Apparently December 6th is when I penned a very small bit of the ultimate end. And January 16th is when I committed to a title for that last novel and switched to summarizing the snippets to mark them. Good, because "chapter later still" is very confusing even when I put the snippets in chronological order! haha

Have you ever had that happen, where you want to change your ending before you write it but feel like you can't?

I mean, I'm thinking of PBox specifically here, knowing what I know about it now. But I feel like if I had figured it out and decided Brian could live, I wouldn't have had the six month slump. Poor AJ and Howie. I guess I just accepted you would die without hard feelings. I couldn't kill you guys again; you're all my little demon buddies! Also Nick would murder me in my sleep after the last time! Oh look, here he comes now screaming "THE *@&$ YOU SAY ABOUT KILLING MY FAMILY FOR THE PLOT?!?! VENGEANCE!!!!" And Kevin's standing behind him shaking his head, pulling out some bandages, and calmly calling "Your actions have consequences, Nick!"

That sounds like a good compromise.  That way, you have options - you can write a sequel if you want to, but there's no obligation to, since the original story had a satisfying ending on its own.

I'm also thinking of published series, even if they're planned series at that point. Where you can read one book and it's enjoyable on its own, but more enjoyable in the entire context. That would be the worst if everyone said things like "The first and fourth ones are really good, but I just can't reread two and three." Meanwhile as the author, you're like "But three is my favorite!  :'(" That was all hypothetical. I didn't want to call out any published book series in particular.

[mare]

I think in every book series, there’s always at least one weak book. It’s sucks when it’s the last one. It sucks for the author if it happens to be the first one. lol

I honestly can’t think of a single series (more than two books or stories) that there wasn’t one where I found myself thinking “well this one was unnecessary.”

[nicksgal]

I think in every book series, there’s always at least one weak book. It’s sucks when it’s the last one. It sucks for the author if it happens to be the first one. lol

I honestly can’t think of a single series (more than two books or stories) that there wasn’t one where I found myself thinking “well this one was unnecessary.”

[RokofAges75]

I think in every book series, there’s always at least one weak book. It’s sucks when it’s the last one. It sucks for the author if it happens to be the first one. lol

I honestly can’t think of a single series (more than two books or stories) that there wasn’t one where I found myself thinking “well this one was unnecessary.”

[RokofAges75]

I feel like as the author, you should do your utmost to make it not be the first one! Then there won't be any others. Unless it's after everyone reads all of them and decides that the first one ended up being the weakest? That might not be the most terrible thing if it was good enough to read the others, but then the others were just that much better in the grand scheme of things? I don't know.

Now I want specifics on the books you thought were unnecessary! haha. Like the most unnecessary Harry Potter or something.

LOL I replied to Mare before I read your post.  In some ways, the first Harry Potter is my least favorite book of the series, but I would never call it weak because it establishes the wizarding world and sets up the whole series.  It's important.  It's just not my favorite because so much of it is introduction, and it's more juvenile than the rest of the books in the series.

The fifth book, Order of the Phoenix, is my other contender for least favorite HP book because I don't love emo Harry, and my favorite character gets killed off, but it scores points for containing my favorite villain, Umbridge.  I still love it, just not as much as the other books around it.

[RokofAges75]

For those of you who have written a series, which do you think was the strongest and weakest story?  Do you think any stories were unnecessary?

[nicksgal]

LOL I replied to Mare before I read your post.  In some ways, the first Harry Potter is my least favorite book of the series, but I would never call it weak because it establishes the wizarding world and sets up the whole series.  It's important.  It's just not my favorite because so much of it is introduction, and it's more juvenile than the rest of the books in the series.

The fifth book, Order of the Phoenix, is my other contender for least favorite HP book because I don't love emo Harry, and my favorite character gets killed off, but it scores points for containing my favorite villain, Umbridge.  I still love it, just not as much as the other books around it.

That said, there definitely other series that have this problem.  It does suck when it's the last book.  My favorite HP is Deathly Hallows, but in other series that I've read in their entirety (which is really not that many that I can think of), the last book was my least favorite.  They either felt unnecessary or just went off the rails crazy.  Twilight (Breaking Dawn) and Hunger Games (Mockingjay), to name a couple examples.

Great minds think alike, obviously. I think the juvenileness.. . juvenality... (this is going to bother me...) the fact that it's more juvenile than the others is a strong point of the first book when you consider that the main cast is only eleven. That's how the wizarding world feels to them; obviously they're not all up in the politics and drama of it until later in the series. But of course reading (or rereading) it as an adult, you lose some of that "growing with the characters" that was a pinnacle of coming of age in a world where Harry Potter existed. And then all that business JK Rowling has going on these days, but that's unrelated to this topic.

See, my original joke was going to be that the entirety of Twilight was unnecessary, but it felt mean to say.

The last series I read was most of the Sookie Stackhouse series and I can't remember which one I liked the least that I read... The fourth one was definitely the best one, I remember that. I looked them up and apparently didn't read the last four of them, oops, so maybe the 9th one was the worst one.

Also Nick would murder me in my sleep after the last time! Oh look, here he comes now screaming "THE *@&$ YOU SAY ABOUT KILLING MY FAMILY FOR THE PLOT?!?! VENGEANCE!!!!" And Kevin's standing behind him shaking his head, pulling out some bandages, and calmly calling "Your actions have consequences, Nick!"

Also, I'm glad we got an interesting discussion about series going, but I am sad no one else thought this was as funny as I did, because it popped into my head a couple times today and I laughed to myself like an idiot for a long time every time.

For those of you who have written a series, which do you think was the strongest and weakest story?  Do you think any stories were unnecessary?

I will let you know eventually and get the nice little "It's been more than 120 days since someone posted in here. Are you sure?" message.

[mare]

I didn’t enjoy Chamber of Secrets. I found it really boring and hard to finish, almost to the point that I almost stopped reading it altogether. Keep in mind, I was late to the HP train and read them well into the movies which I have to admit is the only way I got through that book. lol sorry.