: Re: As a discovery writer, how do I complete an unfinished novel (which has highly diverged from the original plot ) after a time-gap? I am a reader more than a writer, and fantasy is my favorite

@Speyer920

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Mysteries:
Since you have the friend-group, you can crowd-source some of them. List some of the problematic mysteries, ask how they would solve them, and then run with whatever you like best (or perhaps a new one will occur to you.) (On SpaceBattles, this collaboration is often called a Quest -- sort of an RPG, but no dice, just collaboration with one person at the head.
Ending:
When I had my students do a "Write-O-Rama" (like NaNoWriMo, but smaller wordcount goals), I'd challenge students to do just the WORST version ever, just to get through something. The stupidest fight between protagonist and mentor. The most pointless final battle. So I advise you to just write the least satisfying ending that occurs to you the day you choose the challenge. Setting a timer may help -- whatever you can do in 30 minutes, say. or several 10 minute sprints over a few days, then that's it.
Why? Because then you have something which is always better than nothing. It may not suck as much as you feared. Or it will be as awful as advertised, and that gives you an idea of some more promising directions to go.
Starting Over
Once you have something resembling an ending, and some potential solutions to tricky mysteries, my personal recommendation is to shelve it and then write the book again from scratch. (Ideally, if sharing, share larger chunks than before -- chapters, not scenes, or every 10,000 words, not 2,000. But since sharing led you astray some last time, you may want to work privately this time, and just report progress in general terms to supporters.)
Why? You've grown. This was a useful pre-writing thing, but it was also a little more chaotic, as you responded to an audience by adding extra cliff-hangers, or maybe you had some fluff because you wanted to provide people with something on an update day.
If you look at your original draft, you'll be tempted to TWEAK, and make smaller changes. Starting over can free you from that -- your brain can regenerate the best of the earlier things (and you can always re-read the original before editing), but draft 2.0 will allow new directions, or drastic pruning.
Example: in Senior Year of college, we have January for writing our Essays. Mine was originally about Puck and Ariel (but I ended up dropping Ariel, due to having so much on Puck.) I was dutifully meeting my advisor every few days with some new paragraphs or re-arranging, but it now wasn't it's OWN thing -- it was just like when you work with cookie dough so much it becomes tough, like stale bread. So I started a NEW file (I think even on a lab computer so I couldn't just browse to my original document), and rewrote from scratch. I still had some edits, but it was like I pulled NEW cookie dough out from the mixer, and it now rolled smoothly and the cookie-cutter made crisp cuts when shaping it.
Or like if you keep trying to support legacy code, instead of just starting from scratch in a newer better language where you have modules you can call - a little more work at first, but by freeing yourself from COBOL, you can adapt everything else more smoothly, and use module libraries for outsourcing some details in coding -- in writing, it may be that you use an outline and some key character beats or scenes as your "library" that you will stick with.

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