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Even the “Neverending Story” had an ending… Me? I usually have a goal already in mind, an ending, so once I reach it, I reach it. Sometimes I mull over the exact cut-point… like that Halloween story, do I show Lana’s next action as a teaser, or do I save it as an epigraph to Toby’s story?

I’d love to tell you that I always know exactly when and how a story will end. And that’s often the case, but definitely not always, because I sometimes write stories that don’t have a real plot arc. The chapters are more like series of vignettes in chronological order. One of these stories is “Country Summer,” a furry fic about a city girl who goes to the country to spend a month on her aunt and uncle’s farm and has one sexual adventure after another with the far more sexually liberal country folk. I had no plan for how long it would go or what would happen in each chapter; I was just pantsing it. But while I was writing chapter 8, I started thinking, “This story has got to end at some point. What would be a good way to do that?” I ended up writing 3 more chapters—2 for the grand finale (a big birthday party with lots of sexy fun), and 1 for the denouement. And I think that worked pretty well.