Unpredicted serials

The tabs above this post are links to pages where I store serials written in response to weekly prompts posted on the Prediction Fiction blog which I currently host .

The first - 'The Blacksmith's Wife' - ran to forty episodes and became an illustrated book.
I brought it to an end partly for fear of boring readers but also because I recognised that in several ways it is easier to generate the continuation of a tale than think up a new one each week, and thought I should try harder.

However, characters frequently refuse to die. 'From Rhodes' continued the 17th century 'The Blacksmith's Wife' while 'A change in focus' picked up and ran with characters who first appeared in a short story (John Pettinger so vividly that he also forced himself into a novel).

I did try to write a singleton. 'Threshold' was intended as a one-off. But, its narrator still nameless, it today lurched to its 139th episode. And I can't see an ending for it yet.

What I can see is the benefit of a weekly exercise wherein there is a necessity to incorporate three random words into an entertaining tale which extends to no more than 100 words. I've been practising on and off, under different hosts, since 2011 and kno
w how much my writing has benefited.

Downs and Ups

Yesterday finished disillusioned, crotchety and, although not fully despairing, bad enough to need a sneaky, well-heaped teaspoonful of chocolate spread to attempt to restore my belief that, sometimes, when the moon and stars were right, and in alignment, I could write.

The reason for this was I'd finished reading through my most recent work in progress.  Had, for much of it, been quite impressed, especially at the bits I'd no recollection of writing.   But the end.  Oh the end.  Was wrong and self-indulgent, irrelevant and totally off-topic.  Brought in new characters who really did not deserve their place, took attention away from the main character (who in any case was struggling to assert himself at times).
And I still have not quite decided how the second body came to be dead.  Still do not know which of the two most likely was finally responsible for the dastardly deed.  The evidence mounts up quite nicely, tension builds between MC and rival, there is character development (though not quite enough) - but only seventy-four thousand words.

This morning, with a couple of yesterday's tried-but-failed, prompt-led diversions rattling round my head, an idea for each took root, grew shoots, produced a lovely phrase or two, a voice, a phone conversation and a couple of neat endings.
Having polished them successfully, posted them, and put the washing out, I'm now ready to tackle Susannah Elphinstone again.