F

MelissaBaby said:

... but then I get messages like the email I received from one reader who told me that what I had written about drug addiction had helped him understand what his son was going through, and it all seems so worthwhile, scores be damned.

Click to expand...

Copy this.

I received this comment:

Years ago due to cancer I had one of my breasts amputated at a young age and I then thought that this will make me very unattractive to men. So this story is a very moving one as it shows that when there is love there is always a way.

Click to expand...

That's very humbling, to read something like that from a reader.

electricblue66 said:

That's very humbling, to read something like that from a reader.

Click to expand...

It is indeed. Kudos to you.

MelissaBaby said:

I'd gladly trade 12 "Your story made me cum"s for one "I really liked your insight into relationships".

Click to expand...

Then you're likely on the wrong website. I don't have actual numbers, but it wouldn't surprise me if for every person here looking for insights, there are twelve or so looking to mess their underwear.

I mean if you think about it, looking for insights into relationships, on a porn site? Most of the readership here is here for fantasy incest. The "insights" they are looking for are the ones I'd ban if I ran a site like this (of course, I'd be out of business in a month.) It's great that I do in fact get praise on my insights, but every time I do I go see what else they've favorited. Occasionally the results are worrisome; there have been a couple of times when I've been praised by people who if I met personally, I'd try to push away with a sharp stick.

Basically, consider the source before looking for praise.

HandsInTheDark said:

Then you're likely on the wrong website. I don't have actual numbers, but it wouldn't surprise me if for every person here looking for insights, there are twelve or so looking to mess their underwear.

I mean if you think about it, looking for insights into relationships, on a porn site? Most of the readership here is here for fantasy incest. The "insights" they are looking for are the ones I'd ban if I ran a site like this (of course, I'd be out of business in a month.) It's great that I do in fact get praise on my insights, but every time I do I go see what else they've favorited. Occasionally the results are worrisome; there have been a couple of times when I've been praised by people who if I met personally, I'd try to push away with a sharp stick.

Basically, consider the source before looking for praise.

Click to expand...

I'm clearly not writing for "most of the readership." If your guesstimate is anywhere close to accurate, there are thousands of people here looking to engage their brains and hearts as well as their genitalia.

MelissaBaby said:

I'm clearly not writing for "most of the readership." If your guesstimate is anywhere close to accurate, there are thousands of people here looking to engage their brains and hearts as well as their genitalia.

Click to expand...

There's a surprising number of readers here who do engage their brains. I have some fascinating readers with backgrounds that always surprise me. They tend not to be regular lit readers after the initial discovery but they come back for my stories. Or so I'm told.

I'm sure a lot of it is in the readership ones stories draw. If you write incest, those are the readers you'll get. If you write stories about Chinese girls....

HandsInTheDark said:

Then you're likely on the wrong website. I don't have actual numbers, but it wouldn't surprise me if for every person here looking for insights, there are twelve or so looking to mess their underwear.

Click to expand...

Why is it the wrong website? You're making repeated, generalised, and sweeping statements that somehow you "know" what the "majority" of readers want, based on what?

Granted, you are very probably right, on the pareto principle alone, that the bulk of the readers here aren't expecting sophistication, aren't expecting emotional and relationships oriented material; but I can equally tell you, from the evidence base of my own story file alone (and nothing more than that and the feedback I receive), that there is a small group of readers who do indeed appreciate something "outside the norm", who do find more than just wank fodder in the broad range of material found here.

I'm with Chloe and Melissa on this - even 1% of the reader base on a site as large and sprawling as Lit gives some pretty tidy numbers that I doubt you'd see elsewhere. You shouldn't dismiss the minority, just because you think you "know" the majority (which I doubt).

By your own admission, you seem to think that human sexuality only exists between the ages of 18 and 25 or so. Maybe one day you'll turn 26, and join the legions of old farts. Then where will you be? Looking for another website?

electricblue66 said:

...from the evidence base of my own story file alone (and nothing more than that and the feedback I receive)...

Click to expand...

I only have the one story, published just last month, and it got a couple of positive comments about the depth of the relationships and how it wasn't a typical over-the-top stoker. So it's not just the Gurus with established followers who can get away with writing more sophisticated stories. There's an audience out there looking for deeper stories in the dregs of us Virgin authors as well.

This thread has me thinking I should up my game.

I think if you aren't getting lots of anonhate about your tastes or stylistic choices, you probably are writing for the majority, even if you don't realize it.

LoquiSordidaAdMe said:

I only have the one story, published just last month, and it got a couple of positive comments about the depth of the relationships and how it wasn't a typical over-the-top stoker. So it's not just the Gurus with established followers who can get away with writing more sophisticated stories. There's an audience out there looking for deeper stories in the dregs of us Virgin authors as well.

This thread has me thinking I should up my game.

Click to expand...

Yeah, more Quinn. She was pretty hot.**

That little story was good mainly because you quickly and efficiently gave the reader three characters each with their own personality, it bubbled along nicely, hit the strokes. And all quite credible. Keep writing, you'll do nicely.

Also, don't sweat the categories. Laurel generally knows what she's doing, especially when she changes category.

** very hot... (girls don't always need massive breasts to be smoking hot - Quinn worked so well because she wasn't the cliched blonde bimbo)

electricblue66 said:

Why is it the wrong website? You're making repeated, generalised, and sweeping statements that somehow you "know" what the "majority" of readers want, based on what?

Click to expand...

Some amount of experience with the readership. I'm willing to bet most of us have had it. It can be hard to avoid. It's ok to generalize from it as long as you make it clear that's what you're doing, and that's what I did.

There's admittedly a large swath of the readership I don't know - the incest readers and I think virtually all of the LW crowd. I'm comfortable assuming that most of those aren't raising the average sophistication of the readership.

Granted, you are very probably right, on the pareto principle alone, that the bulk of the readers here aren't expecting sophistication, aren't expecting emotional and relationships oriented material; but I can equally tell you, from the evidence base of my own story file alone (and nothing more than that and the feedback I receive), that there is a small group of readers who do indeed appreciate something "outside the norm", who do find more than just wank fodder in the broad range of material found here.

Click to expand...

Yes. That's exactly what I said. I don't of course know if 12:1 is a reasonable ratio, but you seem to be in violent agreement with me that people looking for anything deep here are in the minority, and probably by far.

By your own admission, you seem to think that human sexuality only exists between the ages of 18 and 25 or so. Maybe one day you'll turn 26, and join the legions of old farts. Then where will you be? Looking for another website?

Click to expand...

Um... I may well have passed 26 before you were born. Not if the 66 in your name means something, but who knows. And I'm pretty sure human sexuality exists after 26, for reasons I don't feel a need to explain; I'm just not interested in writing much about it. Not entirely uninterested; some of my male characters are in their 30s and one female is about 6,000.

Other than just about quoting my observations back to me and getting my age rather wrong, I'm not entirely sure what you accomplished. But thanks for taking an interest.

My stories reflect what I want to see in stories. To hell with everybody else.

Ten-inch cocks and 42DD tits don't do it for me. Never did. Stories about people discovering their sexual nature, dealing with it, learning from it, making themselves better people because of it ... that's what I want to see in stories, and that's what I try put in them. Yeah, there's a fantasy element: people on nude beaches fucking their brains out, for example. But if I haven't made them believable, with ordinary bodies and a few hang-ups, reveling in each other's new-found liberation from puritanism, then I've just wasted my time.

But to each his own, I guess. There are plenty of writers willing and able to provide stroke stories, and plenty of people who want to read them. No skin off my back.

There are two schools that I deal wth: Idealized and Reality based.
I sometimes love to write over-the-top outrageous scenarios, and have no problem giving idealized versions of men and women. I write stroke stories here, so I'm not going to use much time describing unflattering physical characteristics, because I feel my fiduciary responsibility is to my reader's boner. For my actual true stories, I recount events 100% accurately, perhaps leaving out elements that would identify the other parties involved.

I have written 'off-center' pieces here, and frankly, they don't fare that well.

I'm relatively new to the forums but I've been on the site a while, I have to say, this place is like a gold mine of good stories/authors as opposed to logging on and seeing whats new in the story section, ect. Even just randomly searching was a very low hit prospect. I've read yours which I thought was good and I've read a number of other authors here material as well, and thought the same. even though the category changed.

Also its nice to chat with peeps, kinda wish i stumbled across this place before. Hope that doesn't sound like a bunch of incoherent babble but whatever.

I guess if I had a point from a readers standpoint , write whatever. I found much better stuff here in the matter of minutes than spending days trying to find anything that even mildly stimulated me ( mind or other , in fact both )

I guess this speaks to the Lit site itself how it presents new stories in any given section and how a regular reader can access them.

IDK just my two cents.

I've read yours

when I said yours I meant LoquiSordidaAdMe

lickitandstickit said:

I found much better stuff here in the matter of minutes than spending days trying to find anything that even mildly stimulated me ( mind or other , in fact both )

Click to expand...

Agreed. I didn't get on the forums until I started writing, but I'd been reading for years. I found a couple of names I recognized on the forums, but the Author's Hangout has been a treasure trove of real talent that I never would have come across randomly. I suspect that the only authors who bother with the forum are the ones who care about the craft of writing. I just wish I had more time to catch up on the backlog of the authors I've discovered.

It's funny - I've been reading here maybe since the very early days (at least by 2005), and somehow decided to enter a stroke story I'd written in 2011 and then completely forgot about it. I had never visited the forums. I had joined another site back in January, and discovered the forums (WAY too 'troll heavy' for my tastes), but I was on here one day in June and noticed there were forums, and realized that I was already a member (I've always been the guy with his head in the clouds who ends up walking into a tree).

There are trolls, but not nearly as many, and now that I've really been here a couple of months, I love it. I know this isn't the true nature of the thread, but it seems to be where the last few posts have been going.

My $ .02

They're stories. As in, fiction. As in, made-up stuff.

Yes, they often deal with emotional, real-world issues.

They are not textbooks nor reports nor proposals for action.

They are fiction. More or less entertaining, hopefully.

Das Kapital was a novel too. Look what resulted.
______

Oh yeah, character flaws. Just write-em as normal fucked-up humans.

Hypoxia said:

Das Kapital was a novel too. Look what resulted.

Click to expand...

What on earth are you on about? Marx was an economic historian, journalist and a theoretician.

Das Kapital, when it was written, was a contribution to a serious field of study - economics. He later indulged in polemics, sure, and others ran with his ideas, but his work was not fiction.

electricblue66 said:

Hypoxia said:

Das Kapital was a novel too. Look what resulted.

Click to expand...

What on earth are you on about? Marx was an economic historian, journalist and a theoretician.

Click to expand...

That's the problem; people take it seriously.

Marx's Das Kapital: A Biography (Books That Shook the World)

In this brilliant book, Karl Marx biographer Francis Wheen tells the story of Das Kapital and Marx's twenty-year struggle to complete his unfinished masterpiece. Wheen shows that, far from being a dry economic treatise, Das Kapital is like a vast Gothic novel whose heroes are enslaved by the monster they created: capitalism.

Click to expand...

It makes sense if read as a precursor to Stoker's DRACULA.

Hypoxia said:

That's the problem; people take it seriously.

Marx's Das Kapital: A Biography (Books That Shook the World) It makes sense if read as a precursor to Stoker's DRACULA.

Click to expand...

Ah, OK, I've seen that spin before. It's nonsense, in terms of what Marx himself was trying to do - and is a cautionary note to the quality of goodreads commentary

It's a bit like saying Proust's Remembrance of Things Past is about a young man who wakes up and jots down a few notes on what he did that day....

I try to be realistic in my stories.

Even in my SciFi/Fantasy or Ghost stories I try to be internally consistent, building a scenario that has its own stated rules.

But - even in my stories set in real periods, periods that I have lived through, I get comments complaining that details of my story are unrealistic when I am writing based on my own experience.

Of course, what was happening in 1960s London might seem unbelievable to someone who was in rural America then, but that's how it was. As has been said of 1960s London "If you can remember it, you weren't in the scene."

I was, but my recreational drug of choice was alcohol, not LSD. At the time I had a ridiculously high tolerance of alcohol and could function effectively when others were unconscious under the table.

What irritates me slightly is that some anon commentators think because my stories are realistic that mild BDSM or femdom would instantly lead to divorce and/or arrest for physical abuse. Some anons seem to see stories of strong women being even mildly controlling as a severe threat to their masculinity.

What I write is FICTION. Some people don't seem to understand the concept of fiction and think all erotic stories MUST BE true. Most aren't even if they start "This happened to me"...

I understand that some cultures cannot accept the concept of fiction at all. But too many readers on Literotica believe everything they read, whether on Lit or on political websites.

I write to entertain, to entertain myself as well as the readers. If you don't like my stories, and I don't expect anyone to like ALL of my stories, then don't read them and get annoyed because you don't like the category.

let's make it real

Ferax said:

A lot of talk about Believability in stories. Not everyone is all some sexcrazy double d nympho. Some are flabby out of shape aging wrinkled dysfunctional humans. And not every sex act SHOULD be mind-blowing fireworks. Sometimes consent is withdrawn after the fact, sometimes after drunken unremembered sex, pardons are given. A believable nonconsent could be two people who got drunk. It could also be a formerly lovig relationship.

Likewise, believability of something like incest or cheating wives springs out of the relationship between two people. The careful probing or inconvienient slip that tells the other partner a relationship might be possible, and the awkward fear of being wrong. If you are trying to write something that has at least some plausablity, don't do it "hungry". Don't do it thinking of the most satisfying sex for all parties in the moment. Think instead of the relationship between the characters. Of the events that lead up to them hooking up. Get into the "she had the best orgasm of her life from the 20 foot long penis after seventeen hours of sex" after those awkward first times. Let your characters be flawed, because to be flawed is to be human, and if you are trying to write humans that aren't human, well believability would be difficult, wouldn't it?

Click to expand...

I agree 100% I myself first of all , can only get into fantasies about real people , people I know. It usually would be something that happed or something someone said relating to sex. The cock size get's me, I think some don't realize that, a cock 2 inches thick and 7 inches long is huge, some would think it's a little cuckolds dick, Take a tape measure . I like telling stories about situations that have happen in my life. Like the guy that worked with my wife that was calling her late at night. OR hearing my sons friend saying his mom's a milf. I'd write about him wanting to cuckold me because of what he said.

My wife liked this guy that use to work with her, so of cause , I had him fucking my wife after work. But these are real people we know and situations that have happened to help make it real. I ALWAYS describe my wife in her real light . 5'3" 140 a plump mature 60+yo ass and nice big hanging 36C tits. I have a small 4 1/2 inch dick.

jehoram said:

My stories reflect what I want to see in stories. To hell with everybody else.

Ten-inch cocks and 42DD tits don't do it for me. Never did. Stories about people discovering their sexual nature, dealing with it, learning from it, making themselves better people because of it ... that's what I want to see in stories, and that's what I try put in them. Yeah, there's a fantasy element: people on nude beaches fucking their brains out, for example. But if I haven't made them believable, with ordinary bodies and a few hang-ups, reveling in each other's new-found liberation from puritanism, then I've just wasted my time.

But to each his own, I guess. There are plenty of writers willing and able to provide stroke stories, and plenty of people who want to read them. No skin off my back.

Click to expand...

I've known Jehoram a long time, and agree for the most part with what he's said. And as I've said in other posts, I write for my own amusement, to provide the stories that I myself would like to read, the kinds where I can see myself in them with all my imperfections and lusts. If other people like them, fine.

But I don't write "stroke" stories. I don't think I even could. I think I would break down in uncontrollable giggles by the hundredth word.

In my stories, I try to create characters that I would like to spend more time with and get to know, even after the orgasm. That's the difference.

Athalia said:

In my stories, I try to create characters that I would like to spend more time with and get to know, even after the orgasm. That's the difference.

Click to expand...

Exactly! Well said.

Athalia said:

In my stories, I try to create characters that I would like to spend more time with and get to know, even after the orgasm.

Click to expand...

AFTER the orgasm? No. Sleep time. Shut up, I'm trying to sleep here. You want to get to know me, make me eggs tomorrow morning. And don't burn the damn toast.

Yes, I'm kidding. But consider the fact that a lot of the readership isn't too interested in what happens after sex. I celebrate the ones that are...