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The Official Authors' Hangout Winter Holidays 2017 Support Thread

oggbashan said:
Sometimes, when the Muses present me with a good plot bunny, I have been able to complete a story from start to finish in a single day.

Some of those 1-day stories have been good. But they also produce many of my stinkers. What seems to be a good idea when writing should have been rejected if I'd taken or a day or so to think the story through.
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That is impressive. I am a much slower writer. This is probably in part because english isn't my first language, but I also tend to over work some details.

What's your best tip for speeding up your writing?
 
tomlitilia said:
That is impressive. I am a much slower writer. This is probably in part because english isn't my first language, but I also tend to over work some details.

What's your best tip for speeding up your writing?
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Best tip?

Just write. Sort out the mess AFTER you think you've told the story.
 
oggbashan said:
Best tip?

Just write. Sort out the mess AFTER you think you've told the story.
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LOL I used to be able to do this. Now, I can't get past the plot holes and inconsistencies that crop up without stopping and fixing them immediately. They end up screaming at me so loudly that I can't press forward and ignore them.

My final edits rarely make any significant changes beyond grammar and word choice. The cutting room floor is already knee deep by the time I finish the first draft.

Of course, a lot of this is also me being over-critical. During my year-long hiatus where I didn't finish anything, I started a lot of things. Once I got out of the funk I was in, I revisited a lot of those abandoned drafts and couldn't figure out what I thought was wrong with them. Some of them were so close to finished that I ended up completing them in an hour or two with virtually no change to the "failed" drafts.

Fortunately, I don't throw away anything that has a reasonable amount of wordage on paper. I have a folder just for literary tailings that I sift through from time to time, looking for nuggets I missed.

I ended up writing a bit more on my Christmas story last night, getting up to 7400 words, and introducing the next flashpoint leading toward the ending.

This story is the third or fourth iteration of the same general plot I've been tinkering with for a while, using various characters. It just finally fits these three.
 
redzinger said:
46 entries now.

Anyone been bombed again?
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Both my stories have been bombed, but not into oblivion. I think the scores will rise, when the contest is over, and when the clean-up crew comes through. There are so many votes, as most of you know, that 5-stars only raise you a third to a half a point at a time, but 1-stars can drop you a point or two.

Lets say you have 200 votes and your score is 4.25. Your next score is a 5. You go from 850 total points to 855 total points. It only raises you .0037 points to 4.2537, which doesn't even register in this system. Let's say the next vote is 1-starred, then you go 851/201=4.2338. All of a sudden that next vote registers you down 2 points.

I know some on here have said that 3-stars are the new one bombs. I haven't noticed that. I've continued to get these drops as the contest has gone on. Also, the votes have dried up a lot since I have come off of the new stories page. I don't think many people are going to the contest page. I think, as most seem to do, that they check out the new stories page and look for hot stories.

Tell you something else I've noticed. Usually, when you check out a category, there are 5+ stories that will score as hot stories amongst the new stories. That seems to be down to maybe a couple in the major categories and they aren't contest stories, which seems to indicate that the Holiday stories are disproportionately getting bad scores compared to normal contributions.

Just observations. Curious what y'all think.
 
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Contest stories always take a hit in score compared to normal fare. Trolls take extra delight in trying to smash your chances of winning the contest.

Competition undoubtedly causes some low votes, though from what I've seen, I think the fanbases of the various authors has far more to do with it than the authors themselves. Once I started consistently telling my readers not to multi-vote or downvote the competition, my number of votes swept ( and more importantly, number of 5 votes swept ) descended sharply.

darkside_fanbase_cover.jpg


I was going to post that as an essay, but Laurel decided that the number of authors it would help could be outweighed by the number of rabid fans it would give bad ideas to. LOL

There are also those people who will vote more critically than they normally would in order to highlight those stories that they believe deserve it. Or rather, they're actually voting those 3s and 4s that they might normally not bother casting because they weren't in love with the story. I don't think this small pool of voters play a significant role in reducing scores through the contest, but they may very well be the deciding factor once the final sweeps have run, because their voting patterns aren't likely to ping any of the Hoover's sensors.
 
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RejectReality said:
Contest stories always take a hit in score compared to normal fare. Trolls take extra delight in trying to smash your chances of winning the contest.

Competition undoubtedly causes some low votes, though from what I've seen, I think the fanbases of the various authors has far more to do with it than the authors themselves. Once I started consistently telling my readers not to multi-vote or downvote the competition, my number of votes swept ( and more importantly, number of 5 votes swept ) descended sharply.

darkside_fanbase_cover.jpg


I was going to post that as an essay, but Laurel decided that the number of authors it would help could be outweighed by the number of rabid fans it would give bad ideas to. LOL

There are also those people who will vote more critically than they normally would in order to highlight those stories that they believe deserve it. Or rather, they're actually voting those 3s and 4s that they might normally not bother casting because they weren't in love with the story. I don't think this small pool of voters play a significant role in reducing scores through the contest, but they may very well be the deciding factor once the final sweeps have run, because their voting patterns aren't likely to ping any of the Hoover's sensors.
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Personally, I have no problem with anyone giving 3s or 4s, but a 1-star should be reserved for illegible/incoherent stories with no story or character development, not because a story doesn't suit your personal tastes. A 2-star should be given to a little more legible/coherent story with a little bit of character development that doesn't suit your taste. 3-star is for a story that may be be decently written, but it doesn't suit your tastes, because of concept, flow, grammar or character development (a very average story that may start well, but something happens that turns you totally off and takes you out of the mood). 4-star is for a story that may suit your tastes, but it doesn't quite get you there because of a few flow, concept, grammar issues that turn you off. A 4-star might even get you there, but it still leaves you with some disappointment. 5-star is for the pop-shot. The story has good flow, the concept fits your mind, there is good character development, the grammar is pretty close to perfect, and it fancies your imagination leaving you wanting more. If I find a 5-star, I'll follow that author and favorite that story and I'll be waiting for the next chapter or next new story. I probably will leave a comment of encouragement, hoping that they will carry on. I don't ever leave negative, open-ended, ambiguous comments to discourage contributors.
 
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Yep, I'm definitely on track. 9k words now. I'm rolling on the final scene, and the main thrust of the story is about to spring.

If I can keep this up, I might even have time to do a full edit of the piece before posting — and that not even at the last second.
 
Mine is 99% done. I need to think more about the tags and short description.

If I were to post an anonymous comment to my own story it might be 'Too much damned fucking.'
 
NotWise said:
Mine is 99% done. I need to think more about the tags and short description.

If I were to post an anonymous comment to my own story it might be 'Too much damned fucking.'
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There's no such thing as 'Too much damned fucking' on Literotica. :D
 
oggbashan said:
There's no such thing as 'Too much damned fucking' on Literotica. :D
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Well, maybe not. In my limited experience it seems like stories that do well (say, top 10) usually have more going for them than a stroke potential.

I was entertained by thinking of what I might post as an anonymous comment on my own story.
 
The Fantasizer said:
Both my stories have been bombed, but not into oblivion. I think the scores will rise, when the contest is over, and when the clean-up crew comes through. There are so many votes, as most of you know, that 5-stars only raise you a third to a half a point at a time, but 1-stars can drop you a point or two.

Lets say you have 200 votes and your score is 4.25. Your next score is a 5. You go from 850 total points to 855 total points. It only raises you .0037 points to 4.2537, which doesn't even register in this system. Let's say the next vote is 1-starred, then you go 851/201=4.2338. All of a sudden that next vote registers you down 2 points.

I know some on here have said that 3-stars are the new one bombs. I haven't noticed that. I've continued to get these drops as the contest has gone on. Also, the votes have dried up a lot since I have come off of the new stories page. I don't think many people are going to the contest page. I think, as most seem to do, that they check out the new stories page and look for hot stories.

Tell you something else I've noticed. Usually, when you check out a category, there are 5+ stories that will score as hot stories amongst the new stories. That seems to be down to maybe a couple in the major categories and they aren't contest stories, which seems to indicate that the Holiday stories are disproportionately getting bad scores compared to normal contributions.

Just observations. Curious what y'all think.
Click to expand...

I'm always confused the way people know or assume when they get one votes. Unless one is there constantly watching the vote tally and calculating after each vote how does one know for sure. Generally by the time I know my story is up it will already have a decent amount of votes. During the first 24 - 48 hours is when the trend will be set and a story will get the greatest number of votes. Once the votes slow enough it may be possible but unless you are watching how do you know you received two 3's or a 1 and a 5.It must be exhausting to always be monitoring the vote tally.
 
rutger5 said:
I'm always confused the way people know or assume when they get one votes. Unless one is there constantly watching the vote tally and calculating after each vote how does one know for sure. Generally by the time I know my story is up it will already have a decent amount of votes. During the first 24 - 48 hours is when the trend will be set and a story will get the greatest number of votes. Once the votes slow enough it may be possible but unless you are watching how do you know you received two 3's or a 1 and a 5.It must be exhausting to always be monitoring the vote tally.
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I have been watching these two stories, since I submitted them last week and I did the math. You multiply the previous number of votes times the vote score and then take the next vote and you can figure out what the score was. If you had 30 votes and had a certain score and then the next three votes yield 3 total points, then what combination gets you a variable vote total? It really isn't rocket science.

When you submit stories, you are going to have a keen interest about how readership views them... at least I do, so I check them out several times periodically to see how they are received, especially when they have first been submitted. Now months or years after a story is submitted, you aren't going to be paying as much attention. I screenshot my numbers periodically also to see where I stand over time.
 
I just launched "Pixie by the Fireside" into Mature space. We'll see how that goes.
 
The Fantasizer said:
I have been watching these two stories, since I submitted them last week and I did the math. You multiply the previous number of votes times the vote score and then take the next vote and you can figure out what the score was. If you had 30 votes and had a certain score and then the next three votes yield 3 total points, then what combination gets you a variable vote total? It really isn't rocket science.

When you submit stories, you are going to have a keen interest about how readership views them... at least I do, so I check them out several times periodically to see how they are received, especially when they have first been submitted. Now months or years after a story is submitted, you aren't going to be paying as much attention. I screenshot my numbers periodically also to see where I stand over time.
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I submitted two stories in this contest and by the time I knew my first story (in EC) was up it had gotten well over a hundred votes so there was no way to know what each was and within a few days it had received over 350 votes. If a story is in a less read category it is easier to track no doubt, but still it can only be done accurately if it receives only a few votes a day or if one is checking the vote tally numerous times throughout the day. Even if you do it won't change the votes any and all it seems to accomplish is to get the writers upset and cause them to vent on forum. I guess that's a function of a forum but it doesn't seem a productive use of one's time. Write some more or read another story or do something fun or productive but to each their own.
 
Mine's at 11k words, and this last scene is going on longer than I expected, same as the first. :p

I still think I'll finish the first draft late this evening. That gives me two days for it to sit and stew while I work on other things to get it out of my head. Then I can do my first pass edit on Tuesday ( my last day off ) and get it off to my editor.

With nine days remaining after that, it shouldn't be an issue to get through final editing, even if my editor is busy as hell.
 
rutger5 said:
Even if you do it won't change the votes any and all it seems to accomplish is to get the writers upset and cause them to vent on forum. I guess that's a function of a forum but it doesn't seem a productive use of one's time. Write some more or read another story or do something fun or productive but to each their own.
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People seem to vent more about things they don't know than about things they do know. I find it is worth the time because understanding the votes keeps me from getting upset about the results.
 
Most of my stories (and jeanne's) do not have a Red H. It doesn't bother me. Sometimes I write stories that have a very limited audience and other readers can be puzzled or irritated by them.

It is pleasant to have some Red Hs but I don't modify my writing to get them. Some of my stories are meant to annoy anonymous - and do. :rolleyes:
 
oggbashan said:
Most of my stories (and jeanne's) do not have a Red H. It doesn't bother me. Sometimes I write stories that have a very limited audience and other readers can be puzzled or irritated by them.

It is pleasant to have some Red Hs but I don't modify my writing to get them. Some of my stories are meant to annoy anonymous - and do. :rolleyes:
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I used to have straight Hs, but a few have dropped due to recent bombing. I was somewhat please by the straight flush, but I don't care much. It's the blue W I desire these days. They can't be bombed away :)
(Better go work on that damn Christmas party gangbang story I started two years ago)
 
Damn this scene. LOL

I'm almost there as I close in on 15k words. Didn't quite finish it tonight. I'm too tired to visualize now without nodding off. Little doubt I'll be able to wrap up the first draft tomorrow, though.
 
RejectReality said:
Damn this scene. LOL

I'm almost there as I close in on 15k words. Didn't quite finish it tonight. I'm too tired to visualize now without nodding off. Little doubt I'll be able to wrap up the first draft tomorrow, though.
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Keep going. You'll get there.

My current draft for the next Winter Holiday story keeps being interrupted by a Valentine's Day story. I added about 1,000 words yesterday but most were for Valentine's Day.
 
Hitting the fringes of regular stories as usual. My latest collection of shorts had the same number of votes as when I last looked yesterday, but went up by .04 in score. So must have been some lowballs swept and replacement fives come in.

Still creeping toward the end of my contest story.
 
16,640 words, and the first draft is finally done.

Closed the document the moment I typed the last period, and I'm not looking at that sucker again until Tuesday. :D
 
My first story of this contest went up .05 points. That's a pretty significant bump after the first noticeable sweep. The next story is at the same level. I look at the "favorites" and they are pretty significant for what the scores are, especially in comparison to my other submissions. Like I said, I'll have to take the good with the bad.
 
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