Hey all, I'd like a quick straw poll on something where I am trying to work out whether its a good idea or not. I've been working away on and off for a long time on generaljiggler's excellent story 48 Hours as a Girl. My story arc has got pretty developed and has some fairly big ambitions. My contributions to this story are now pushing 22,000 words, and there is a hell of a lot more floating around in my head. What I've been doing, in the last couple of days, is writing out a series of chapters that tell pretty much the 'end game' of one of the ways I see my story arc concluding. It's helping me to stay motivated to keep going with the rest of the story as well as also helping to clarify the outcome that I'm building towards. But as things stand, this material won't get published to the story until waaaaaaaay in the future. So my question is, could it be a good idea to publish my end-game stuff now, and then keep working to fill in the gaps as I get the chances and the time? Once the story has reached the point where it's possible, I could delete the chapters or replace their content with other branches, so that the finished product would be chronologically coherent. Of course, generaljiggler, you should also have a say as it is your story, so please let me know if you feel strongly either way.
Sounds like a good idea to me. I think it may kill some of the anticipation and you might loose reader interest. Similarly, you may kill some of your own motivation to flesh out the story. I know jumping to the ending would do that with me. All depends on how you're motivated.
I wouldn't publish the end now. There would be only one exception, if the order of the story parts would be different. First the "start", then the (maybe surprising) "end" and at last the "gap", which explains, how it came to that end.
