writers_loft | How To Finish What You Start (Reply)

I've run across several posts lately about people having trouble finishing the stories they start. The common problems seem to be that they either lose interest after a while or they can't figure out what happens next and they can't finish.

Hi, I'm ariedraconia and I have trouble finishing the stories that I start too. I'm great at starting them but lousy at actually, you know, getting to the end.

So why do some of us have this problem? Some people might say that it is a lack of discipline and to some extent that's true but it isn't the whole of the problem. For me, the problem has a lot to do with not knowing what comes next. If I don't know what happens next the story peters out and dies. I couldn't seem to come up with what comes next and next after that all the way to the ending. I'd get frustrated and feel like the story wasn't working and I'd lose interest and abandon it to work on something new in the hope that the new and shiny story would carry on to the end. I have many beginnings of stories but no complete stories. So why weren't the new and shiny stories working any better?

I used to be an organic/pantser kind of writer, which meant that I never planned anything I wrote, I just wrote whatever popped into my head.
That method may work for a lot of people but I discovered that it wasn't working for me. I decided to try a new approach. I wanted a guide and some landmarks to help me stay with the story and get to the end so I'd never have the big uh oh, what happens next blank. Yes, I'm talking about the dreaded outline. When I started to make up a rough, short and simple outline I found that knowing where I was going in a general sense helped keep me on task and the story didn't just dry up. I can make shifts and adjustments in the outline because it is only a rough guide and it needs to be flexible.

So far, this method has helped me stay on task, stay better organized with the flow of the story and I've been able to stick with the story and get farther along with it than I have ever managed to do before. The journey from landmark A to landmark B is often times an organic process but I have the next point to aim for to help me go on. Do I ever get stuck or discouraged? Oh yes, but I have been able to continue and my current WIP has not dried up and died on me though I have felt, on occasion, like whacking it with a stick.

If you are also someone who has or had trouble finishing your stories what is/was it that hangs/hung you up and makes/made it hard for you to finish? How do you overcome it and what methods are working for you?