Do you want to know how the story was supposed to end? How I had I planned this thing to play out?
Well, one day, Lola would realize that she and her sisters are often unfair to Lincoln. Sure, they haven't been monsters, but in the show, they tend to single him out at times (No Such Luck, Brawl in the Family, etcetera). Lola, seeing this, felt bad. Lincoln had always been nice to her—playing the butler in her tea parties, teaching her to read—and she didn't like that he was sometimes treated by her and the rest of her sisters poorly.
So, she devised a plan. Lola would wait until Lincoln messed up somehow and got all of his sisters angry at him for a while. Not long after, he broke the model house, and this was her opportunity to strike. She called a sister meeting and manipulated the Loud girls into being angry at Lincoln, not just for the model house, but for all of the other times he messed up, too. She proposed that she and the rest of her sisters go to 'war' with Lincoln. Many are reluctant, but, eventually, they decide to go through with Lola's plan.
After this, the war goes on. The sisters make an initial attack, causing Lincoln to realize the situation that he is in and retaliate. Over time, some sisters leave Lola's team. Some join Lincoln's. Some become neutral. There was even a point where I planned for a third team to come into the fold, whose purpose was to try to stop the war altogether.
The story was supposed to come to a breathtaking conclusion—one final battle to end it all. In the final chapters, Lincoln, and his second in command, Lisa (yes, Lisa was supposed to eventually join up with Lincoln) would be sitting in their control room in her bunker, directing everybody that was on their side, talking through microphones that go into earbuds of their teammates. The battle would be fought all over Royal Woods, and the three teams would not only consist of Louds, but also of various other characters from the show. Eventually, when things go sour (people on Lola's team were found to be using frozen solid paintballs, and even beating people down until they were unconscious), Lincoln throws off his cape and hat (which Leni had stitched him earlier, there's a whole subplot there that I won't go into here) and runs into battle himself in a desperate attempt to stop it.
Lincoln surprises Lola by capturing her in the park located in the center of town. As Lola's team watches on, Lincoln walks up behind her and picks her up by her arms. She throws a tantrum, crying and flailing herself, although to no avail. Lincoln brings her all the way home and puts her to bed.
At this point, everyone realizes that Lola was wrong. They become very angry with her and even at themselves for being roped so easily into fighting Lincoln by a bratty 6-year-old.
From this point on, Lincoln is never once again singled out in the family. The ending was going to be bittersweet. Lola would be the center of hatred for causing the war. In turn, she becomes singled out among her family.
Months later, when Lola and Lincoln are alone, he asks solemnly, Why did you do it?
She smiles, and this surprises Lincoln. A tear comes to her eye, and she says that she was sick of how he was treated by the rest of his sisters. The whole war went according to plan—sure, she didn't plan every single part of it in advance, that would be impossible—but the end result was what she desired. Lincoln was no longer singled out… that was shifted onto Lola.
And it stayed that way.
Singled Out was my first story. I uploaded chapter 1 on August 8th, 2017, exactly one year ago today. I thought that on its anniversary, it would be appropriate to share the real ending and why it ended up the way it did.
So, why did it end the silly way that it did? Why didn't I write it as I originally planned?
In short, the story got out of hand. This was due mainly to poor planning and a lack of vision for the later chapters, mistakes on my part. It was my first story, and I admittedly had no idea what I was doing.
I considered multiple times deleting it and starting fresh. I never actually followed through with this idea, though, in fear of an angry reaction from the readers. After all, who would want a story that they've been invested in to suddenly start over, forcing them to reread the beginning parts all over again and then wait a long time for the story to process past the point it had been at before?
Ever since Singled Out, I've been very fearful of a story going off the tracks again. Long time readers of mine might remember a fic I once had on my profile called Where is He? It was a story about Lincoln disappearing (unoriginal, I know, but I had at least went about it in a unique way). I had just uploaded two chapters of it, and it had gotten over eighty favorites and lots of reviews. However, I became very fearful over the fact that I did not have a fully thought out vision for how I wanted it to end. Seeing that it was becoming much more popular than I anticipated, I deleted it before it was too late. I've deleted a number of stories since then (Lunatic Leni, Loved Despite of Great Faults, and a few others), and all for the same reason: I was scared of not having a clear vision and messing up like I had in Singled Out. Readers of mine know this, too: outside of Singled Out, I've never finished a story.
Yeah, that's right.
Look at my profile right now if you don't believe me. Other than for Singled Out, not once have I given a conclusion to any of my fanfictions. On top of deleting stories, I haven't ended any, either. The closest I've gotten to ending one since Singled Out is '10 Years Later', which I've actively writing and have high hopes for. It's a unique story, most of it being told in past tense—but that's not what I'm here to talk about right now.
Why have I said all of this? Well, I wanted to give you some perspective on why Singled Out ended up the way it did. It's not a problem isolated to this fanfiction alone—Singled Out went haywire because of my inability as an author to plan out stories. I was running out of ideas of things to have happen in the story, and I didn't feel I was ready to yet end it, so the off the wall stuff like Albert's motorcycle accident and the deportation of the Santiagos happened. That's really it.
By this point, the story was dead to me. Giving it the good ending that I had planned—the bittersweet one where Lola becomes the one that is singled out in the family—would be inappropriate. The story was bad, and it deserved a bad ending. Maybe, one day in the future, if I actually did decide to rewrite the story (and I eventually did—it's the story called Singled Out! on my profile, which I'll be working on most likely after I'm through with 10 Years Later), then I would give it the real ending, or at least something close to it, depending on how the events of the rewrite differed from the original.
That was my thought process. Call me wrong, call me a bad author, but after thinking extensively about how to handle the hot mess I had on my hands, that was the decision I made at the time.
If given the opportunity to go back in time and make a different choice, would have I? I don't know.
I'm getting better, though. I put my pen to paper a lot since I first uploaded to the site a year ago, and I think I've come a long way since. Look at the first chapter of Singled Out, and then look at the most recent chapter of my most recent story. There's a big difference. I have faith in myself that I'll be able to complete my current project, and, hell, after that, I'll probably even be able to go back and finish some old projects.
I am on a great adventure.