I just wanted to get a feel about writing a 20-30,000 word Epilogue to finish an. unfinished series here. It is marked incomplete around 2017. It's a coming of age story around a million words and has left quite a bit of unfinished story lines. Maybe that's not a done thing here, and was just a thought for me to venture into writing?
It's not something we do here. Finished or not, the copyright rests with the author. If you want to try your hand at writing, I suggest you start with something of your own. Find your style and hone your skills.
If the story and the author was/is popular, messing with the unfinished story will only give you all sorts of grief, even if you get the permission from the author and authorisation to access his account (very, very doubtful). Stepping into another writer's shoes is not as easy as you might think.
Just my 2¥.
I know a few cases where the estate of a deceased author has requested/allowed another author to continue an incomplete story. There is at least one case where the author of a story has permitted another to write sequels to their story.
Note that all the cases I know of, the person who completed those stories was either someone who had already posted several stories, or an editor with a good reputation.
The best thing to do is ask the webmaster. I believe he's amenable to the continuation of unfinished stories provided it's not against the original author's wishes.
2017 isn't all that long - the webmaster may still be able to contact the author.
Good luck,
AJ
To do a good job on completing another author's story, you have to adopt that author's writing style. Since you have no experience writing or style of your own, the odds are that you will fail.
You may want to think about how you would feel if another author were to step in and try to complete one of you unfinished stories. Before you attempt to finish someone's copyrighted story, you may want to do some research into copyrights and violating a copyright.
Warlord has a number of stories that are unfinished. I don't recall now how he did it but FantasyLover posted an epilogue. It is listed under FantasyLover and not Warlord.
Warlord passed away in 2019.
This is the comment that FantasyLover put with his conclusion.
This work is the conclusion of Scout, by Warlord, an unfinished story that captured my imagination and demanded a conclusion. Whether or not my conclusion is anything near what Warlord had originally planned, I have no idea, but it is what I came up with. I realize that my writing style differs from his, but I tried to maintain as much similarity as possible for as long as possible.
What everyone else said is valid, however there are some literary standards concerning such things (yes, I'm aware that few here give a damn about 'literary works', still, there are certain well-grounded and proven ways of handling these 'issues': 1) Always credit the original author, including a link to the existing story (when rewriting it, which again, isn't what you're doing), 2) In most cases, rather than 'completing' someone else's story, as you're doing, you'd instead take the story premise and write a completely original work, so you'd then own the copyright of your own efforts, while each author benefits from the additional views of each piece (i.e. the more rereads and the more new chapters, boosts both of your overall numbers (ratings, hits, views, etc.).
Yes, Lazeez does allow others to complete stories which have clearly been abandoned, just realize that it is a non-standard usage, with the corresponding legal copyright issues.
And I commend you, for not just 'taking over' the entire story, but just adding a new summary conclusion, wrapping up the unfinished, incomplete story threads. Thus, I have no reservations commended your approach. It also protects the copyright protections for each of you, since posting online grants you the same copyright protections that publishing does. Though if you'd just 'taken over' the work, distant relatives of the author could always launch a legal copyright suit, where you would be liable for (that's highly doubtful, yet it's still a possibility, so it's better covering your ass legally), though since it's 'not for profit', the worst they could do is issue a 'take down' notice to remove the story, so you're doubly covered here.
That said, once you have written the summary, you could easily write a subsequent sequel, under your own name, with the same stipulations (listing both works, for the same reasons) and since it's completely original, you're still covered. They could sue you, yet wouldn't stand to gain anything from it, so there's little reason to file ANY suit.
Which is why I keep urging authors to familiarize themselves with both copyright and plagiarism rules, as otherwise, you effectively have NO protection for any legal challenge.