Hey! I hope this is OK to ask but do you have any tips on completing multi chap works? I’m in a pickle, I tend to create large complex plots with tons of chapters, but falter to actually write anything past the first five chapters. I do oneshots now & then to finish s o m e t h i n g, but i would really like to finish a bigger fish so to speak (oh but no pressure on answering if this makes you uncomfortable! Have a nice day! :] )

On one hand, I'm quite flattered and honored that you asked me this question, on the other hand, I wish I could give you better concrete answers because I have: 1) a huge, chronic WIP pile problem (I have over 600+ wips I've accumulated since 2016); 2) I am one of those people who finishes oneshots and posts them or I have extremely huge wips just...sitting there, unfinished (I can definitely list you word counts on those, they range from 12K to like...over 70K. I know, it's a problem lmao!); 3) Before 2016, I had a problem finishing multi-chaptered stories, and I promised myself to not write any more and now, I have one I haven't...finished either though I know how the entire story goes (mostly because it's going to go into some extremely dark/heavy topics and the climate right now I don't have the mental energy to deal with it).

For the times I've been consistently on a writing roll (one time I wrote over 100K+ of words within a month-ish, but not all on the same project, some were snippets, some were oneshots), what helped me a bit on that was actually have cheer readers? I had friends where I would literally post the works and they would read all excited. Granted, it was shared on discord, but the principle applies. They were people who supported me but also whose writing opinions I respected, I think that's key.

Honestly though, the differing kinds of advice I could give, I've only heard from friends I know. Some of them love outlining or doing detailed notes. Some of them just like talking about it and having someone to soundboard off. And the thing with long stories though is to have some kind of patience -- unless you end up zipping off and finishing something from start to finish something lengthy in one long burst and also potentially losing sleep -- these things take time to develop and grow, and actual physical energy to create: the act of typing, the brain energy it takes to actually think about the worlds, the characterizations, the plots, etc.

Some people I know like to take time to dedicate at least a "little" bit to putting the words into the story, either through timed sprints, or a word count limit (ex. "write 500 words for this draft this week") or whatever. I have a friend whose been working on this fic for over 15 years and it's not finished, but real life has gone in the way. You gotta work with your mental and physical health reserves and try to work with your life's schedule. It's fun to create but don't do it at the expense of your wellbeing or treat it like a job or something that'll make you hurt because then it'll make it harder to finish.

Also, I do remember reading a post about working up to being able to churn out a lot of words very quickly. The thing is, that's as much a skill, as anything else. And most people do not start out being able to write fast. Back in 2016, after I came off a 10 year writing hiatus, I didn't know future me would be able to concoct a 20k-ish draft of something in a day if I was inspired. I wrote oneshots that some ended up becoming longer than others and worked my way up. Some of that had to do with having a writing partner for a short while but another was just... to try to finish a draft of a longfic that was completed, even if I never posted it.

I still consider that an accomplishment, even if the way I went about it was NOT healthy (and I do not advise anyone to do what I did but I also recently at the time was out of college and unemployed at the time so I could do this), but I had spent over 36? ish hours typing this 12K story just taking stops for food and bathroom breaks. It wasn't the most prettiest of drafts and it's hella hella rough, but for the first time I was able to look at something I did and go: "Hey, it's a longfic. It's completed. It's done. Wow." (And then I ended up passing out for 18 hours.)

Perhaps doing something like that might help, along with people who might be able to read your work while you're working on it to be like 'AHHHH THIS IS GREAT I CAN'T WAIT' or whatever. Slowly work your way up to the kind of really complex story you want to write. Or you could reward yourself with something when you got to certain milestones in the fic you wanna write. And there's no shame in working on more than one fic at a time, if you can handle that. (I have some friends who are one story at a time people and that's totally ok.) There's nothing wrong either with taking a step back to breathe and have a fresh set of eyes on your story either.

I dunno if you've posted the first five chapters or not on some of your stories, some friends of mine suggested I do that to motivate me. If you haven't done this, maybe that might work for you! (Sadly, it does not work for me. My track record sadly speaks for itself lmao)

I do know for certain though, I end up writing more and putting more into the stories when I actually feel ok. As in I feel I have enough physical and mental energy, that my physical and mental health and things going in my life are doing moderately "ok". I haven't written much in months and my actual desire/urge to do so without it feeling painful has been going on for awhile. But I know right now I need to focus on that, and it's been kinda good, coming back in bits and pieces in the last week or so, but it's not there yet. I know it will be though.

So, honestly, anon, I am in the same boat as you and I wish I could give you some tried and true tips. All I can give you is examples of other friends' who have worked on things and their process and methods -- and these are people who have finished multi-chaptered works. Sometimes having small goals helps. Sometimes organizing things helps (outlines or detailed notes or some infographic timeline or etc). Having cheer readers around is nice (and does kinda work for me). Sometimes doing timed sprints (whether they're 5 or 10 minute or longer) by yourself or with others helps.

If anyone has any better suggestions, feel free to let anon know!