[META] Some quick advice about story structure

Hello everyone. I haven't actually posted anything on reddit before so if I got something wrong with the formatting feel free to correct me

I'm a writing tutor at my university and I thought I'd jot down a small post about a common problem I see with the stories on here. Although most have great beginnings, it's rare to see a series or short story stick the landing. The most common problem isn't that the ending is done badly, it's that it's not done at all. This whole community is based around a single premise (for the most part) and a lot of the stories I see are creative variations of this. That's not a bad thing, but when your story is based around the exploration of the premise (i.e. 'human gets abducted and is stronger than all the aliens' or something even more specific like 'humanity is destroyed but one remains as an AI') you should be very careful to stick to that. Especially in short stories like the ones common here, there's a tendency to exhaust your premise and then just keep going.

I understand the reasoning behind that. You're attached to your characters and your universe and probably a bit excited if people really like what you're writing. But don't be afraid to stop your story and start a new one. It's better to put a cap on it than risk having your baby turn into a novel-length series that has to keep rebooting every time you finish your newest premise. Stopping your story doesn't even necessarily abandoning your characters. Write a new story about them if you want to. But I would encourage people to return to them later and try something new and exciting in the now. Go out of your comfort zone!

I'd give some examples of this, but I'm not sure of the etiquette around calling people out (even constructively) and I'm just hammering this post out before work so I don't have time to go and ask the authors for consent. Instead, let's look at a story that avoided this pitfall. My go-to example for this is the Chrysalis series by u/BeaverFur . He starts out with a great premise, goes until it's natural conclusion and then stops. He includes an epilogue for people who are still hungry for more, but keeps the posts to a nice 16 chapters long. He has a distinct end point in mind (or several) and isn't afraid to kill off his main character to put a bow on everything.

Edit: Also I think I can safely give the example of every single Jenkins-verse story I've read as one that has lost sight of where it started, and ends up as some sort of buddy-cop road trip subplot around chapter 102 or something. But I've only read 4-5 in the universe so I'm sure there are some that have avoided this.

That's where I'll stop it for now. Tell me what you think! I love hearing other perspectives, and I'll try and reach out to the authors of some examples I had in mind and ask them if it's ok to use them. Thanks for your time.

Tl;dr don't be afraid to kill your baby and start over again. Better to have a satisfying a definitive finish than putter on way past it's natural end point.

1st Edit: Hey everyone. Thanks for your thoughts. I got a response from one of the authors that I contacted, u/bellumaster, the writer behind Interactive Education. And he said it was fine for us to use him, so let's dive in! Interactive education uses a pretty standard setting for HFYs, focusing in on two characters and their relationship as it progresses. I'm a sucker for character dramas and cultural comparisons, so I was immediately able to buy into his premise. And he executes it masterfully for 30-40 chapters. Rarely did I lose interest or feel that an action was out of character. Eventually, the plot started to drift a bit. u/bellumaster shifted away from the comparative sociology/slice of life aspects and focused in on a growing geopolitical subplot the eventually begins to dominate the story, perhaps even more than the burgeoning romance between our two protagonists. Now, remember that I'm not saying you should never try a shift like this. Many stories can and do execute this kind of change successfully, and I wouldn't say the Comparative Education has failed to do so. But you should ask yourself whether this is the story that you want to be telling, and only keep at it if you're truly passionate and feel that it's the best way to explore the setting and characters, if that's your goal. u/bellumaster did pretty well with his transition, and if this is the direct he wants to go then he should run with it. The author himself noted, however, recent ratings drops and several people in the comments mentioned feeling that they were reading a different story than they started. In the end, it's a personal choice. The transition could have definitely gone a lot worse. If u/bellumaster had some slice of life ideas bouncing around his head that he didn't get to explore that the current stage of the story doesn't allow (maybe he wants to protagonists to go get coffee or something but the surface wastes of an alien planet are distinctly lacking in classy cafe's) then I might suggest either splitting the story in two, or even just publishing some extant chapters of the characters in scenes that never made it into the final cut.