Forum: Author Hangout

A story should end at the right time

Switch Blayde 🚫
Updated:

My belief in story structure seems to be in the minority here, but I strongly believe in it so I'm going to… rant?

In another thread, I talked about plot=conflict and when the conflict is resolved the story is over. I'm reading a story that makes my point (I will not name the story).

The story is about a boy who desires his mother in more than a motherly way. So the conflict is his desire for someone he cannot have.

The author tries to create emotional tension caused by the conflict. (He would be more successful if he didn't head-hop between the boy and his mother, but that's another rant.) As you would expect, they get more and more intimate until his dick accidentally slips into her. Sort of accidentally. She is straddling him, rubbing her pussy on his cock, when he shifts and it slips in. The mother pauses, knowing that crosses a line, but she is consumed with lust and love so she lowers herself onto him. And now once they crossed that line, she agrees to do it again. They also profess their love for each other more than mother/son and think of themselves as husband and wife.

Conflict resolved. Story over.

But it's not over. I'm still reading chapter after chapter about them having sex. There is no more conflict. No more tension. It's rather boring now. It's like the author is looking for new situations for them to have sex.

The more I read these unnecessary chapters, the lower the score becomes in my head. The story would have been much better — stronger — if it ended in the correct place.

Replies: solreader50 Bondi Beach whisperclaw John Demille awnlee jawking samuelmichaels Crumbly Writer TMax Big Ed Magusson Rodeodoc

solreader50 🚫

@Switch Blayde

Excuse me for hijacking your topic with a related thought.

I am currently reading a story for the third time, I have already scored it with a 10 on first reading. It is a western and involved an extended family with six sons and six daughters. And we've reached the point where the boys and girls start to pair off with girls and boys that they met.

Nothing wrong with that. But the patriarch calls each couple to him for a quiet private chat about growing up and waiting to have babies and so on. First up is the top son and his girl. And we get the chat. Then another couple are called and they get the chat, the same chat.

And at the rate of about three chats per chapter we go through exactly the same chat with each pair. Surely this is just unnecessary padding.

Another "fault" which I see regularly is with each new plot twist, giving a summary of the story so far. I just find this too to be padding which is preventing me from getting on with what is otherwise a great story.

Oh, and i agree with you about some stories not ending soon enough. But then other stories you wish they had gone on longer. The best authors get it just right.

Replies: Crumbly Writer

Crumbly Writer 🚫

@solreader50

When you feel the story had gone on longer, that's because they did end the story at the right time, when readers are wanting more. As leaving them hungry, they'll be salivating for their next story.

Stories that don't leave readers wanting more and typically called "disappointing" stories.

Bondi Beach 🚫
Updated:

@Switch Blayde

Conflict resolved. Story over.

But it's not over. I'm still reading chapter after chapter about them having sex. There is no more conflict. No more tension. It's rather boring now. It's like the author is looking for new situations for them to have sex.

Exactly. In other stories, the mom – son pairing eventually includes other family members and I can think of a couple where it is done well enough to keep me intrigued and interested. Sex as padding is just that, padding.

~ JBB

whisperclaw 🚫

@Switch Blayde

I wholeheartedly agree. Part of me wants to blame it on pantsing, but plenty of published authors who write by pantsing still understand story structure including rising action, climax (not THAT kind) and conclusion. Still, it seems as though many writers here only vaguely understand what drives their stories, and without understanding that then they have a hard time understanding where to make the conclusion.

I've read some writers defend their stories as "slice of life" and thus exempt from normal story structure. I even recognize that there are readers here who enjoy it. I just happen to not be one. I will always rate a story with traditional structure higher than one that meanders with no self awareness.

Replies: sublock

sublock 🚫

@whisperclaw

Just curious, what do you mean by "pantsing"? It's not a term I'm familiar with.

Replies: Vincent Berg

Vincent Berg 🚫

@sublock

"Pantsing", those who write by the seat of their pants, vs. "plotters", those who have a precise, detailed chapter by chapter outline.

They're fairly common terms in writing communities. Of course no one exists exclusively on either end of a scale, as we all fit somewhere on a given spectrum. Still, it's a useful concept.

I'm technically a pantzer, despite keeping the entire story arc in my mind, as I find it gives me more creative freedom to adjust and modify the story if I don't don't write the plot outline, officially formalizing the story's trajectory.

I find that keeps the story open, allowing it to change over time from what I first imagined it to be. Thus I'm a mixture of the two, not quite pantzing, yet never platting either, splitting the difference.

John Demille 🚫

@Switch Blayde

Conflict resolved. Story over.

Completely agree.

My kink is incest, particularly brother/sister (few mom/son). To me, the whole conflict in the story is getting to the stage where every social rule is finally discarded and they do the deed. Once the deed is done, I finish the story.

However, I seem to always receive requests to extend the story for the sex, but I'm never interested in doing that as any additional sex is simply more of the same.

My longest story is where there are two sisters and a mother and getting each of the females to do it with the male is a mini conflict on its own.

Replies: Switch Blayde Crumbly Writer

Switch Blayde 🚫

@John Demille

However, I seem to always receive requests to extend the story for the sex,

I actually gave in to those requests once on ASSTR. The original "The Preacher's Wife" was 5 chapters. The conflict was that the woman was sexually repressed by her parents and preacher husband. The conflict was resolved when she was sexually liberated by a stranger so the story was over. She was now free.

But, like you, I kept getting requests to continue it. To put her in more and more sexual situations. Many even suggested what those situations were. So I relented and wrote 5 more chapters of her having raunchier and raunchier sex.

When I joined SOL, I re-read my stories on ASSTR and decided which ones to post on SOL. When I read the 10-chapter version of "The Preacher's Wife," I didn't like it. The 5 added chapters did nothing to improve the story. They actually weakened it. So I removed those 5 chapters when I posted it on SOL. I actually made other changes since by then I was a more experienced writer so on SOL it turned out to be 6 chapters. But it ends where it's supposed to, with her sexual liberation.

When I decided to try my hand at writing a novel, my novel "Sexual Awakening" was inspired by my story "The Preacher's Wife." But the main conflict was not the same so the plot is quite different. In fact, it's a story about revenge with 2 sub-plots that come together at the end, each having a protagonist with the same conflict. It's a romance novel. It's a murder mystery. But the conflict is what drives the story. So when the sexually repressed preacher's wife in the novel (mini conflict) is sexually liberated, the story is not over because that wasn't the main conflict resolution. It's over when the need for revenge ends, giving both protagonists peace.

Replies: Crumbly Writer

Crumbly Writer 🚫

@Switch Blayde

Yep, those are 'overlapping conflicts', which work equally well with alternate external (to the protagonist) conflicts as well as the protagonist's own internal conflicts (ex: guilt over what he's doing, concern with the effect he's having on his friends, conflicts over how to resolve the issues).

Crumbly Writer 🚫

@John Demille

A couple of points, having written plenty of pseudo-incest stories in my day. First, the whole idea of just glancing at a relative and immediately leaping into bed is … imbecilic. No one ever does that!

A better approach, is a slow build, where the couple are conflicting, struggling over their mutual attraction and not eager to wreck their relationship when it eventually fails. That's loads of story tension right there, which is well worth preserving.

Then, you add in other related conflicts. Others see the newly confident young man and feel attracted to him, only their attention makes his mother jealous (angry), while others notice how weird the mother and son get (classic 'Mama's Boy' scenario).

Thus, to mature and develop a healthy relationship of his own, he has to distance himself from his family, while the mother realizes she also needs to distance herself to protect them both from their affair becoming public knowledge.

How can anyone not notice those obvious conflict points. As the need to write repetitive, unimaginative sex scenes seems to cloud the authors rational thinking.

Story conflict really isn't that difficult of a concept, it's a failure to act on it that is a wholly new concept.

Replies: Switch Blayde Bondi Beach

Switch Blayde 🚫
Updated:

@Crumbly Writer

First, the whole idea of just glancing at a relative and immediately leaping into bed is … imbecilic. No one ever does that!

I watch old episodes of the TV show "Gunsmoke" during dinner. One of the 1/2 hour episodes today was a guy holding up a stagecoach and taking the female passenger with him because she's so beautiful. He wasn't a robber. He was just out of luck and needed money to keep his ranch going.

The woman was heading to Dodge City to meet the guy she was to marry. He won her in a card game. She hates him.

But she likes the kidnapper and they finally go into Dodge City for him to give up and return the money. The woman says she won't testify against the man and when Marshall Dillon pressures her as to why, she tells him she loves him. Dillon asks her if she wants to marry the man. When she says yes, he explains that a wife can't testify against her husband.

She only knew the man for a few days and she loves him and wants to marry him. Who said these stories are realistic?

Bondi Beach 🚫

@Crumbly Writer

A couple of points, having written plenty of pseudo-incest stories in my day.

"Pseudo-incest" doesn't deliver the same punch as real incest does, unfortunately, no matter how silly the storyteller portrays the latter.

~ JBB

(Who doesn't care for decaf coffee, either)

Replies: awnlee jawking

awnlee jawking 🚫

@Bondi Beach

(Who doesn't care for decaf coffee, either)

I drink decaf green tea late in the evening in the hope the lack of caffeine near bedtime will help me sleep better.

AJ

Replies: Bondi Beach

Bondi Beach 🚫

@awnlee jawking

I drink decaf green tea late in the evening in the hope the lack of caffeine near bedtime will help me sleep better.

Bedtime Chamomile (Sleepytime) drinker here. Real coffee only until noon.

~ JBB

awnlee jawking 🚫

@Switch Blayde

A story should end at the left time, when the antagonist has left the picture :-)

AJ

Replies: Argon

Argon 🚫

@awnlee jawking

A story should end at the left time, when the antagonist has left the picture :-)

But what if the steel-jawed henchman of the antagonist still lurks?

Replies: awnlee jawking

awnlee jawking 🚫

@Argon

But what if the steel-jawed henchman of the antagonist still lurks?

Since Ed Miliband is on a mission to close all the UK's blast furnaces, the steel won't be very strong so the henchman isn't a major problem. Besides, how will he function without someone to formulate cunning plans?

AJ

samuelmichaels 🚫

@Switch Blayde

Denouement needs to be of the right length, which is of course entirely subjective. I've seen stories that barely reach the conflict resolution (sometimes it's even hinted at) and then ... "The End". For a short story that works. For a long story, I'd like to see that the conflict is definitely resolved -- e.g. in your example that the couple are happy with what happened and intend to keep doing it.

Maybe just a hint of future direction. I've seen several incest stories end with some version "we moved to another city where nobody knows us and are living happily as a married couple".

But I agree, endless fan service without a challenge to overcome is detracting from the story, rather than contributing to it.

Replies: Crumbly Writer

Crumbly Writer 🚫

@samuelmichaels

Having written several novel series, that's an easy one. You have a main series conflict and also individual story conflicts, so once the story/novel wraps up, the main conflict has evolved, still overriding the story but now stronger than ever.

That way, each individual conflict is resolved while the bigger conflict keeps shifting, making the protagonist work harder to keep up, much less overcome for forces aligned against him. Those are 'alternating mounting conflicts'.

Crumbly Writer 🚫

@Switch Blayde

Sadly, this is a common story trope, as they just add a new girl every so many chapters and nothing changes at all as it's more repetitive sex with no conflict and no real plot of any kind. If I've read one SOL story like that, I've read at least a thousand, likely many times that much. And frankly, after the first few chapters, they're all boring as hell, even without the AI writing every chapter.

TMax 🚫

@Switch Blayde

Out of curiosity, if you do not like a story, why do you continue to read it? Maybe I'm old (too old to read all the cool stuff getting written right now), but I decided that rather than "tough" it out, I generally stop and move on to something interesting, and honestly, who cares about story structure if you enjoy the story?
What's the saying - something like, people will forgive anything except boredom.

Cheers,

Replies: Switch Blayde

Switch Blayde 🚫

@TMax

Out of curiosity, if you do not like a story, why do you continue to read it?

I don't.

With this particular story, I did like the story and had already invested a lot of time in it and the characters so I kept reading. If it had gone on much longer I probably would have stopped reading, but thankfully it ended.

I was simply saying that if it had ended sooner, it would have been better. It was an example of a post of mine in another thread. I guess I knew the boy and his mother were going to go all the way, but it was interesting to read how that unfolded. But once they committed themselves to each other there was no more tension to make it exciting. Nothing to get me to keep turning the pages.

Who cares about story structure? Me. And I thought it was a good example of how I view conflict in a story.

Part of me cares because I studied the craft of writing fiction for years and see things as an author while reading — good and bad things. I can't help it, just like I correct typos and grammar in my mind while reading.

But part of me cares as a reader. When I'm enjoying a story and suddenly get bored with it, I usually quit reading.

Big Ed Magusson 🚫

@Switch Blayde

A couple of thoughts:

First, you're generally correct. A story should wind down with a denouement after the main conflict has been resolved.

The question is how to handle the denouement. As other folks in this thread have mentioned, there's a decent fraction of the audience that wants that denouement to include detailed sex scenes. One sex scene where they "finally do it" is not enough for them.

Another issue is that that the denouement has to establish whether we've moved to a "new normal" or the climax was "one and done." If it's a "new normal," that needs to be established somehow. I tend to go into macro scenes. E.g., "we spent the next day screwing our brains out. We did X, Y, and Z." I let the readers' imaginations fill in the details. It's easier to wrap up if it's a one and done.*

*That said, I often have my "one and done" stories involve two rounds of explicit sex to make it clear that it was a choice by the two characters. Round one may be "oops" but round two is deliberate.

Final comment is that one challenge is writing stories where the tension isn't the obvious one. In my story What Happens in Europe, the tension is explicitly not will they/won't they, but how far will they go? If that's not an interesting plot for a reader, they should bail in chapter 2.

Rodeodoc 🚫

@Switch Blayde

The story is about a boy who desires his mother in more than a motherly way

Describes about 75% of the stories on the site right now.

Replies: Dominions Son

Dominions Son 🚫

@Rodeodoc

Describes about 75% of the stories on the site right now.

I decided to test that thesis with the category search.

Displaying stories 1 through 10 of 61150
Showing:
Removing: 2nd POV

Sorted by date: 275 posted so far this month.

Displaying stories 1 through 10 of 3809
Showing: Mother [AND] Son
Removing: 2nd POV

Sorted by date, 26 posted so far this month.

So, 6.2% over all and 9.5% of stories posted this month.

Replies: awnlee jawking Rodeodoc

awnlee jawking 🚫

@Dominions Son

I bet they occupy a rather bigger percentage than that of the SOL homepage.

AJ

Replies: Dominions Son

Dominions Son 🚫

@awnlee jawking

I bet they occupy a rather bigger percentage than that of the SOL homepage.

Maybe on particular days, but overall no. All of the stories end up on the homepage when first posted. So if Mother/Son stories are only 10% over all, they can't be more than 10% of the stories on the homepage over time.

Replies: awnlee jawking

awnlee jawking 🚫

@Dominions Son

So if Mother/Son stories are only 10% over all, they can't be more than 10% of the stories on the homepage over time.

I disagree. A story posted in small bites will appear on the homepage more times than the same story posted in one chunk.

AJ

Replies: Dominions Son

Dominions Son 🚫

@awnlee jawking

I disagree. A story posted in small bites will appear on the homepage more times than the same story posted in one chunk.

The vast majority of those are small, posted in a single chunk. But AFIK even for a multi chapter story, If you post 4 chapters in one day, it only shows up on the homepage once for that day.

Replies: awnlee jawking

awnlee jawking 🚫

@Dominions Son

danbaifen has 4 mother/son incest serials on today's homepage. I noticed several other stories containing mother/son incest (including Dark Apostle's, which doesn't mention son in the 'tags'), plus at least two stepmom/son incest stories. That's less than I expected but I reckon that should beat 10% even without the stepmom stories.

AJ

Replies: Dominions Son

Dominions Son 🚫

@awnlee jawking

That's less than I expected but I reckon that should beat 10% even without the stepmom stories.

As I said, it might beat the longer term trend on individual days, but that can't sustain over many days, or the longer term trend would show higher numbers.

Replies: awnlee jawking

awnlee jawking 🚫

@Dominions Son

Your assertion is not logical. It contradicts reality.

AJ

Rodeodoc 🚫

@Dominions Son

There you go confusing the issue with facts and science. (That's a little joke). Your numbers are interesting. The day I made my snarky comment, eight of the first ten stories on the home page were sons banging their mothers. Our Chinese AI friend had cranked out 3 stories, all with the same premise of sons raping or dominating their mommies.

Psychologists claim that most mass murderers have mommy issues. That doesn't bode well for the community.

Frankly, writers can write and readers can read whatever they want. It's not a genre that has any appeal to me so I don't even open the stories.

Replies: Bondi Beach awnlee jawking

Bondi Beach 🚫

@Rodeodoc

Our Chinese AI friend had cranked out 3 stories, all with the same premise of sons raping or dominating their mommies.

Who is the "Chinese AI friend"?

~ JBB

awnlee jawking 🚫

@Rodeodoc

Our Chinese AI friend had cranked out 3 stories, all with the same premise of sons raping or dominating their mommies.

Lots of chapters, posted regularly. They're always going to have a disproportionate presence on the SOL home page.

AJ

Replies: Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster) Dinsdale

Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

@awnlee jawking

He has 29 serials in the system with chapters scheduled for automatic release. So yeah, plenty.

He's the reason that I enforced no more than 1 chapter per author in each automatic release time slot.

Dinsdale 🚫

@awnlee jawking

Lots of chapters, posted regularly. They're always going to have a disproportionate presence on the SOL home page.

That was a reason I was so pleased when exclusion by author / code was extended to the home page, I'm not sure if he was on my blacklist before that change or if he was one of the first to be added afterwards.

Replies: Bondi Beach

Bondi Beach 🚫

@Dinsdale

Who is this guy, Mr. AI Chinese?

Replies: John Demille

John Demille 🚫

@Bondi Beach

Mr. AI Chinese?

I think they're all referring to danbaifen.

Replies: awnlee jawking

awnlee jawking 🚫

@John Demille

I think they're all referring to danbaifen.

There are others, but not so prolific.

AJ

Replies: Bondi Beach

Bondi Beach 🚫

@awnlee jawking

Thanks very much, AJ and JD.

I've excluded AI from my feed, but apparently his stuff is not coded AI. I attributed awkwardness in the couple of things I read to non-native speaker of English, but I guess it could be AI.

~ JBB

Replies: awnlee jawking Dominions Son

awnlee jawking 🚫

@Bondi Beach

I attributed awkwardness in the couple of things I read to non-native speaker of English,

Non-native English would be my guess too, but I'm not sure whether that's author and/or translator.

AJ

Dominions Son 🚫

@Bondi Beach

I've excluded AI from my feed, but apparently his stuff is not coded AI.

He does have one story tagged as AI generated.
My guess would be computer/AI based/assisted translations of existing Chinese stories.

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A story should end at the right time

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