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For those who do post serial stories as they're written, I have a question. Don't you find that limiting? Doesn't your story ever take an unexpected turn that causes you to either have to go back and change an earlier segment or, failing that, abandon the new wrinkle? Just curious. [/B][/QUOTE]

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Sure, it can be a problem. You can't exactly 'change' the past. But I have found that the "past" in a story can be subject to considerable tinkering.

You can't say "Oops, I was just kidding. X wasn't dead after all."

Or, "Forget about when I said Y was a 27-year old redhead with big breasts; she's actually a 19-year old blonde with HUGE breasts." :-)

But with flashbacks, you can add to the past, give your characters new dimensions as they occur to you, and fill in all sorts of background to people, places, and things.

Just as you do, I make a lot of things up as I go along -- adding all sorts of subplots (which I hope are interesting). But everything has to be consistent with the general thrust and theme of the story -- I think one needs to know where one wants to end up. And I know where my long story is going to end up; but even after a year of re-writing, I'm not exactly sure of the precise route all of the characters will take to get there.

Obviously there are advantages to withholding everything until it's ALL complete. But there are great disadvantages to that too. If someone had told me a year ago that I would have to spend as many hours on my story as I have, I would have dropped it like a hot potato. But taking it one installment at a time makes it more or less manageable.

Installments also allow the author to get occasional feedback, which again is psychologically very important to most of us. I don't get a lot of "Attaboys", but I very much appreciate the few that I do get -- and I let my handful of communicative fans know it. A few of them have contributed very helpful ideas, as well. It would be impossible for me, I think, to write as much as I have written this past year without the occasional pat on the back that the installment format has generated.

About nine months ago I sent what I considered a very nice complete novel-length story to another well-known site for BDSM fiction. And got not a single response.

I won't do that again. <g>

Boccaccio