You as a writer, then and now.

lovecraft68

Bad Doggie
Joined
Jul 13, 2009
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Last night I received a e-mail through lit feedback on my first story here. It said the premise was fun and the action was pretty good, but my grammar was god awful.

I cannot disagree. If you went to that story you would see a couple of public comments telling me how bad the grammar is as well.

But it got me thinking that although I still get the occasional "you could use a proof reader" my work now is leaps and bounds better than what it was.

Several times I have thought about pulling the story and submitting a much better version. But I decided not to as it is a "where I came from" reminder.

So would like for people to post what their first story was here and how they think they have improved since and what they've learned from their time on lit and if there was a particular person you would like to acknowledge that may have helped along the way.

My first story is Almost Perfect(Ironically titled for how poorly it is written! and I admit the trolls were disappointing in not making a crack about it) it debuted 5/13/10 in the BDSM category.

In the three years since my grammar has improved greatly as has my story telling ability in general. Lit was also the first in a series of steps that got me the confidence to start publishing.

Lit also was a platform for me to post my "baby" Siblings with Benefits" that I had started writing all along thinking no one would read this because where the hell could I put it. Then someone told me of lit and its huge incest category.

On a downside I learned about trolls and the sad sad people who will drop bombs and make nasty remarks just to get off on it as well as screw with contests because they can. Having no prior "chat or social media" experience I was surprised by it, but now it seems like every day life.

I've had a few editors none of which are here anymore. The one that helped me the most I feel was Sydney Blake who edited the last 4 chapters of SWB and was able to get me out of some bad habits with encouraging remarks like "Keep making the same goddamn mistakes and I am done with you"

Also got a lot of support from some friends here. Three that I would like to call out are

1sickbastard(you ever going to finish your damn series?:mad:)

and lits hottest couple Litfan10 and Slave_

I consider myself lucky to know them and litfan10 should consider himself lucky I am not single or he might have found himself alone;)

The last thing I learned from drifting around these forums is no matter how twisted you think you are? There is someone far sicker than you:eek:
 
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You are a nut! :kiss:;)

Hot? lol... As for litfan though... OH YES!

I always love your writing. Thank you for such wonderful, very hot and thought provoking images!

:kiss::heart:
 
I just looked at my first one.

Its improved with age. 25000 reads. Voting turned OFF.

Its what I intended it to be, 50s porn with a '63 Corvette drive-train. A trailer tramp addicted to a loser, and a pussy that never stops itching.

Whom do I owe? Not a fucking soul.

What would I change? I'll add it to the noir series I'm writing. Maybe dress her in cut-off jeans and a tank-top, with a hot wife ankle bracelet.


FIRST: Wanda's ride from town put her out at the Quickie Mart parking lot near her home at the Rocky Point Trailer Park. From the car she slouched into the store, bought a pack of 305 cigarettes, and walked to her trailer. She ignored the state car and its driver parked in the driveway. Within a minute there was a knock, then a louder knock as she debated whether to open the door. She cracked the door, looked down at Woody standing on the steps, and said, 'What!'

LATEST:“I wish to Christ I could smoke in this place!” Carmela Rizzo said as she stuck her hand inside her blouse to adjust her bra…again.
 
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I just looked at my first one.

Its improved with age. 25000 reads. Voting turned OFF.

Its what I intended it to be, 50s porn with a '63 Corvette drive-train. A trailer tramp addicted to a loser, and a pussy that never stops itching.

Whom do I owe? Not a fucking soul.

What would I change? I'll add it to the noir series I'm writing. Maybe dress her in cut-off jeans and a tank-top, with a hot wife ankle bracelet.
.

Nah, replace the hot wife bracelet with a queen of spades tattoo that will really get the red neck LW fans roaring.
 
Nah, replace the hot wife bracelet with a queen of spades tattoo that will really get the red neck LW fans roaring.

And holes, runs, and tears in her WALMART panties. Especially at the crotch seams.
 
My first story posted Feb. 15, 2007. Filled with every error possible, the initial word count was below the required amount acceptable for Lit. That was the first story I ever wrote in my life.

Three Lit authors took time from their lives to teach me dialogue, plot, editing, and more. Two no longer post on the AH. The third is here. They know how thankful I am for their part in my growth. But there are others. People I met when I first arrived on the forum. People who believed in my ability as an author far before I did. They will always be a part of my life.

I've come far but there is always more to learn.
 
My first long story was http://www.literotica.com/s/the-bridesmaids-revenge which was posted on Literotica along with several other stories in 2002.

The Bridesmaids Revenge was written in 2000 and slightly edited before posting here. I think it still works as a story, unlike:

The Stag Party and The Hen Party, still posted, which have remained as originally written. I ought to rewrite them, but I'm not sure that 13 years from their first version I could get back into that mindset.

My first ever fully completed story was published in a school magazine in 1951. Ouch!

My first mildly erotic story was started on a PC running CP/M and stored on a 5.25 floppy. I might still have it on that floppy, but I can't read it without setting up an ancient computer. I drastically cut and edited it in about 1993, and I still have that version on my hard drive.

It was set in the Balkans in the 1890s. The hero was a 'kick sand in my face' wimp who discovered he could move mountains with civil engineering training. He used those skills to defeat an invading army with the help of village women irregulars while the men were in the wrong place with the regular army. Of course he won the girl of his dreams as well as honours from his country. It was and is absolute rubbish as a plot and in the writing.

I abandoned it as beyond saving about 15 years ago. From time to time I look at it and shudder.

I knew I could write. I wrote reports, training manuals and even text books during my working life. What I didn't know was whether I could write fiction.

My Balkan story was my first serious attempt at creating a believable world for my characters to act in. It's a shame that I never believed in it myself, even as I was writing it.

Between the Balkan story and The Bridesmaids' Revenge I started attending evening classes for creative writing. I got off on the wrong foot. At the first session the tutor asked whether any of us had anything published anywhere. She insisted that it didn't matter whether it was fiction or factual. I admitted my professional publications. She asked for a list. I gave it to her because I had an extended CV in my briefcase. I was trying to change jobs at the time. That list, single-spaced in 10 point, covered 2.5 A4 pages.

She was shocked. For the rest of that term she would say 'This is the way to do it, unless <oggbashan> knows better'. I didn't. I had joined the class to learn how to write fiction, to create characters, scenarios, not how to assemble facts and write training manuals. But she couldn't or wouldn't understand the difference. I didn't enrol for the second term.

By then I had a significant number of stories that were not erotic in any sense. I won third prize in a local writers' contest with one of them.

A couple of years later I saw that another creative writing class was being set up that had a different tutor. That was a much more useful experience but my writing skills worried my fellow students. I could produce several thousand words between one week and the next, while they struggled to write a couple of hundred. I continued with that tutor for a year but by the end I had learned everything she could teach me - not everything I wanted or needed - but all she could give in a basic beginner's class.

During the summer recess I annoyed her by coming second in that year's writing contest when her story was unplaced. She has forgiven me since, but it rankled at the time.

Am I better, 13 years on? I can still produce stinkers, but sometimes I think I can get closer to what I want to write than I could then. I'm still learning, still practising, and I still can't write the real stories that only live in my head.
 
I started off trying to shock the reader by suddenly killing someone or a "Gotcha!" type of ending. Also, I rushed through stories.

As time wore on, I realized you can have a far more profound effect by expanding, elucidating and letting every part sink in to its entirety. I kept my darkness, but made it more of a permeating dread than a hammer-blow.

I'm writing a few hundred words every Sunday as a distraction from the job. If (big IF) I manage to submit something in the (far) future, I'll be interested to see how that turns out.
 
Funny that you ask today. Last night I was talking with hubby about the first stories I wrote, which are buried in my pajama drawer on page after page of graph paper. I wrote the first one the week my Bonus Baby was conceived. I was on strike for a month. Time off in the afternoon, raunchy talk with the guys on the picket line... You know.

Anyway, I was telling hubby how I don't even want to look at what I wrote. He, of course, really wants to read them. I think I'm going to just pretend that I can't find them! :eek: (Not really. I don't lie. Not often, anyway.)

I can't even imagine how bad they are.

My first story here (summer 2011) is a fictionalized version of true events. I don't go back and read that one either. I shudder to think how awful that might be.

Good thread. Interesting conversation.
 
The first stuff I ever wrote period was some Lovecraft type stories back in my early teens.

My first erotic story was in 2009 and I wrote a bunch of them for my wife. They were all just quick scenes based on some role plays we had done.

Those role plays led to something big for me although I wouldn't know it then. My wife still has the original e-mail I sent her with a great idea for role plays.

It was about a group of 12 wealthy powerful dom/domme's that formed a secret BDSM group called the Circle nd it would provide endless role play ideas.

I started with two characters that we played. A Lawyer named Mark and an advertising exec named Allison.

Allison is in Almost Perfect and her and Mark are featured in The Breaking of Allison (also on lit and 3 years old and poorly written!)

But that broke the ice and I kept evolving the characters and gaining confidence and those scribbled role plays and lit stories became these.


http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/210652

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/269047

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/275108

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/292572
 
Very true. I have no doubt a couple of years from now I'll look back at 2013 and think, "Wow I've gotten better since then,"

I hope anyway.

David Mamet, my new hero who replaced you, says you really need to master a few things to be wonderful: Your subconscious does the real writing, guide it but don't get in the way; place things where they matter do not add shit like after-market fuzzy dice on a new car; writing is all about communion with readers.
 
About 2 weeks ago I got an email response to a story I wrote more than 10 years ago, the first bit of erotica I posted to the internet. My reaction was "OMG I forgot I had written that. I am afraid to look at how bad my writing was then. And the respondent is requesting a continuation? I'm pretty sure I'm incapable of matching that writing style now, not even mentioning that my interests have drifted pretty far from that content." Then I drifted off into philosophy, "Maybe the person who wrote that story wasn't realllly me... if getting drunk didn't put me to sleep immediately I wonder if I would write notes from "drunk me" that "sober me" would be startled by the next day..."
 
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I've reread some of my first stories and I like them. New Frontiers was done in '96 or '97. The thing that blew me away were the obvious mistakes that all my other proofreaders and I missed and I'll bet I went over it 50 times. If the story carries the reader it's a good story. Style is up to the author. There are lots of styles that don't fit with traditional English. I don't know why anyone wouldn't want to go back and read their old stuff. You'll find out it's still not finished, but/& it will inspire. My unsolicited thoughts.
 
My first story, "Our First Swing..." has held up surprisingly well. Then again I'd spent a lot of time working on it, before getting up the guts to create an account and submit it. 12 years and almost half-a-million views later, it's got a good score, but only 11 comments. For a brief time in 2001/2002, it flirted with the top spot on the Group Sex toplist. Now it's not in the top 250. The writing wasn't bad, but nothing to write home about.

My first series, Convenience Vs. Need (CvsN), was based on some real-life adventures, and I had no idea where I was going with it at the time. After just a few chapters, it was all fantasy, with no idea for a finish. Fast forward a dozen years, and 30 chapters, and I still don't have a great finish. I wrote one, and it was bombed so badly by my reading group that I scrapped it. Every time I abandon it for a while, it takes two solid days of reading to get ready to start writing again.

I recently (before NaNoWriMo) started editing it into a five book series, each volume about 120-140 pages, with a lot of changes and new stuff. The writing was disturbingly bad. I can't get past a single paragraph without wanting to make edits. I'm surprised it's done as well as it has, with six of the chapters having over 200K views, all 29 with the Red H. About a half-dozen chapters are littering various top-lists.

I look at my latest works, and believe they're much better, but still have a long ways to go. I figure this is a journey.

I was never a writer. No formal training, no classes, not much written since mandatory papers in high-school and college. But I'm a prolific reader, and I guess that's helped refine my writing. Since 2000, I've been going to a writer's workshop, studied at least a dozen books on writing, and read with a more discerning eye.

The workshop critiques have been invaluable. I'm fortunate to have more than a dozen published fiction novelists there, some extremely successful. (The website says we have more than 70 published authors, 300 published works - as of 2012 - and 100 publishers, but I haven't met most it seems.) Their feedback is great. There are numerous others who write for a living (newspapers, etc.), a couple of editors, and some script writers. Preparing stories for a writer's conference, to pitch to agents, was an immense chore the first time. I think it's all starting to pay off. There's something to be said about perseverance, and good help.

I'm the only Literotican (I think) out of about 200 current members, (no more than 40-70 attend a week, usually), although two others have attended in the past. Any DFW writers out there who'd like to attend, let me know. It'd be nice to have another smut writer there. Although two of the women publish "Romance" and one grandmother made me blush, when she read her latest Harlequin Blaze.

I doubt I'll ever be happy with my writing. Everything of mine I read, I want to go back and make changes a few months later. But at least I'm happy with the progress. Maybe in another dozen years I'll be content with some of it.
 
When I first started posting on Lit., I was interested in reading and writing a different type of story than what I read or write now. At that time, my focus was on (purportedly) true stories. The first stories I submitted were slightly fictionalized accounts of my own experiences. Despite earning decent scores and a few comments, they were not well-written. The grammar and sentence structure were good, but there was no dialogue, and they were all telling and no showing. There was nothing compelling about either of them.

Shortly after I started writing my third story, I happened across a story by a Lit. author named urbanslut, titled "The Chess Game." I've never had any contact with her, but more than anything else that story showed me the vast chasm separating my feeble efforts from those of other authors. It was at that point that I learned the difference between a real story and a mere stroker. I realized I had to aim much higher if I ever wanted to become good at this.

I have worked with various editors over the past four years, and I have to credit my first one, Alabasterthighs, for helping me get over some of my persistent flaws, such as improper use of it's/its, laying/lying, etc.

Finally, I feel that I've turned a corner this year. Much of that is due to just working harder on character development and plot lines, but I also want to credit my beta reader, Etaski, who continually pushes me to work on the weaker sections of my drafts, and never allows me to take the easy way out. My latest story, Deep Undercover, is without a doubt my best work to date.
 
I post my epics from an alt account. Theyre long for me (8K-12K) and take a long while to piece together. They are not available for AH trolls to disparage with Flaming Asshole Attacks, and the writing is superior to what I post from this account. Its superior for the reason that I strive to push the prose as close to poetry as I can. One of them took 5 years to research write and polish. It got a Green E but few reads.

This morning a PATIENTLEE story inspired me to start an epic story based on her hurricane/vacation cruise themes. My proposed themes are hurricane/yellow fever epidemic/devotion. That is, a ship laden with yellow fever infected passengers docks at a Florida port circa 1870s, where it unleashes the virus. First at the port Marine Hospital, then thru the city. MDs are recruited to repair to the port to treat the afflicted. A local woman, immune to the fever, volunteers to nurse at the hospital. Soon enough a hurricane comes to the port, and the Marine Hospital is in harms way. The effects could be nuthin much, or something as destructive as a tsunami. The patients at the crisis of their disease cant flee. One of the MDs elects to stay, and the nurse stays. I haven't decided on an ending. But Titanic Class disasters speed up relationships. I prolly have a book fulla source material so far.
 
I post my epics from an alt account. Theyre long for me (8K-12K) and take a long while to piece together. They are not available for AH trolls to disparage with Flaming Asshole Attacks, and the writing is superior to what I post from this account. Its superior for the reason that I strive to push the prose as close to poetry as I can. One of them took 5 years to research write and polish. It got a Green E but few reads.

This morning a PATIENTLEE story inspired me to start an epic story based on her hurricane/vacation cruise themes. My proposed themes are hurricane/yellow fever epidemic/devotion. That is, a ship laden with yellow fever infected passengers docks at a Florida port circa 1870s, where it unleashes the virus. First at the port Marine Hospital, then thru the city. MDs are recruited to repair to the port to treat the afflicted. A local woman, immune to the fever, volunteers to nurse at the hospital. Soon enough a hurricane comes to the port, and the Marine Hospital is in harms way. The effects could be nuthin much, or something as destructive as a tsunami. The patients at the crisis of their disease cant flee. One of the MDs elects to stay, and the nurse stays. I haven't decided on an ending. But Titanic Class disasters speed up relationships. I prolly have a book fulla source material so far.

Oh my god. I can't believe you read that. I shouldn't even have put it on Lit. I was just looking to amuse hubby while we had no power and I had the kids at my mom's. Very little fiction in that one.

Glad I could be of service. Sounds like a good story. I look forward to reading it.

Still cringing to think anyone read that. Fair warning- Don't read the ones I posted before Sept. 2011. Not good.

Good luck with that story.
 
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Oh my god. I can't believe you read that. I shouldn't even have put it on Lit. I was just looking to amuse hubby while we had no power and I had the kids at my mom's. Very little fiction in that one.

Glad I could be of service. Sounds like a good story. I look forward to reading it.

Still cringing to think anyone read that. Fair warning- Don't read the ones I posted before Sept. 2011. Not good.

Good luck with that story.

I'm always looking for ideas to run with.

Many of my tales are autobiographical, and it always amazes me when readers think theyre bullshit.

So far your stuff is pretty good.
 
So would like for people to post what their first story was here and how they think they have improved since and what they've learned from their time on lit and if there was a particular person you would like to acknowledge that may have helped along the way.
First story was gay male: "Bittersweet." It was a two-parter and one of the first comments I got on part 1 was "where's the sex?" :confused:

I didn't realize that readers of most categories wanted sex in every chapter. :eek: The sex didn't happen till nearly the end of part 2, something I probably wouldn't do now.

As for improvements...I think my storytelling and sexual descriptions, in general, have gotten better—but, alas, not my spelling or punctuation. I've worked on both, but it seems like I've gotten worse.

And Stella was one of the people who helped me the most here.
 
I sucked when I started and little has changed in this regard. I still suck.

But hey - I've only been doing this stuff for about half a year. Gimme a break, ok? In a few years the only way of telling a story by Ernest Hemmingway from one of yours truly will be the hot sex...

:rolleyes:
 
I enjoy small exercises like this. "The look back" is always a good one. Makes me think of school a long time ago in a galaxy far far away when our teacher had us compare our handwriting at the end of the year to our current handwriting. The change was drastically noticeable. It never fails... if you don't do something often enough, you'll lose your touch and obviously never ever improve.

I don't need to say that my first "what tha hell" submission here was subpar. When I look back on the things I've written, I always see what I could've done better, how amateur I was at this or that. My first entry here, "Girls' Night" was sort of me testing the waters here. I submitted a lesbian story/fantasy of mine hinging on my wife's bisexuality and it was exactly what I dreamed it could be... at the time.

Looking back now, all I see are plot errors and discrepancies with plausibility and so forth. But I accept every glaring mistake. It's why I edit nothing here at Lit after its been submitted, even the most juvenile of mistakes. I wear those stories like scars, to remind me of where I came from and what I've learned. I have stories here that I cringe to reread, but I leave them as inspiration for the future. Like a tattoo in a way, you know you were young and stupid and impulsive when you chose that design for the precious space on your bicep, but you can never rid yourself of the memories you retain from that specific time in your life.

I wrote long before Literotica, and I'll wager to say that the erotic is NOT my primary preference of subject matter. I reserve that for fear and horror. I've never been published, you'll not soon see my name on any author's list, not here nor mainstream. Writing is one of my favorite hobbies, though I reserve it for my own enjoyment, so long as it makes me happy. There is so much more of my writing, occupying hidden bytes of space on my computer that I will yet show. The terrors in Lake Haven. The struggle of the man cursed of the Breathing Death, Jack, and the young woman who threw it all away for a better cause with him, Grace. There are things that lurk in your attic and garden and mattress that are not found anywhere but my hard drive and paper.

Will they ever be out there? Time will tell. But I love to look back and see what time already tells me. Even if it's as simple as a story I wrote about people fucking here at Lit. I grow older, and I learn more from my misgivings, and I get stronger, not weaker.

And if no one is ready to roll with me, I'll roll right over them. Learn from yer past. Make better your tomorrow. A damn fine lesson I think.
 
Are you talking to yourself? Sounds like you're the one who needs to give you a break.

Sometimes I need to talk to somebody who truly loves, respecs and understands me :)

The dog is always willing to listen of course, but I suspect he's mainly in it for the food...
 
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