What do you think about your stories as you're writing them?

Well, alcohol to begin the process. Then a wave of marvel and reverence with each word written, as I silently applaud the efforts my fingers are making.

Then I go back and edit the next day and am overcome by revulsion and general self-abuse. So I break out the wine again to cleanse the negative energy. Hooray!

StarryEyed665 said:

Well, alcohol to begin the process. Then a wave of marvel and reverence with each word written, as I silently applaud the efforts my fingers are making.

Then I go back and edit the next day and am overcome by revulsion and general self-abuse. So I break out the wine again to cleanse the negative energy. Hooray!

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The WoodEch is fucking hilarious!!
And so descriptive of some of my reactions to my own efforts!

I usually bounce between cautious optimism and wretched despair at achieving the effect I'd like. That's why I'd like comments on stories, to get some independent opinion. But I don't trust the comments blindly - I read the stories of the commenters, and I look at what they've posted here on AH. Quality control...

I'm printing Hypoxia's list and posting it on the back of my eyelids.

Funny to look at this thread as I just wandered away from my latest story to take a mental breath and think of what I can do to save this thing because.....It sucks!

Then what dawned on me is I can count on the fingers of one hand the stories that I have never thought that at some point so I guess its my process.

I'm also the type who is motivated by things like "Come on, asshole you can do better than that" so I think my self flagellation works to the positive for me.

It varies. Some are slow-moving and frustrating because the pace is too slow, the characters tell me they "wouldn't do that", or something of that nature. Others go from idea to finished draft in less than 24 hours and leave me so tickled that I'm practically giggling.

I rarely think anything is pure crap. It's almost always a scene, a section, a transition, or some piece of the story that I find repulsive on a refresher or editing read.

Aynmair said:

The WoodEch is fucking hilarious!!
And so descriptive of some of my reactions to my own efforts!

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Heh, my Ech is receiving a lotta love today.

Sometimes I'll think, "This is really good."

Sometimes I think, "This is okay."

But of course, everyone has their own opinions. When editing my own story, sometimes I'll think, "Wow, this is amazing. I can't believe I wrote this."

Then it'll get a low score.

Other times, stories will get a much higher score, and big reaction, when I just thought it was okay work.

The only category I can predict a score/views/votes/favs are with the Incest category. I can tell if a certain story is going to be popular or not. With other categories, it's up or down.

The funny thing is that my favorite stories that I've written are outside of incest, and they have low scores.

Bump.

Hypoxia said:

Stages of story development:

1) Spark of inspiration
2) Arrogant self-confidence
3) Easy endless dialogs
4) Hard draining fucks
5) Despair; lack of ideas
6) Panic; no end in sight
7) Hard edit cycles
8) Relief: SUBMITTED!
9) Oh fuck, the votes...
0) Next story: do it again

NOTE: I wrote this myself just now. I did not steal this from office samizdat, although it bears some relation to software development truisms, which usually have clauses like CYA and BLAME THE INNOCENT. Same principles apply.

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When I have an idea, I will think about it for a few days. I put together in my head different scenarios to make it work. Then i start to write it. After I have started I will often change the ideas that I started with because once they are written, they either mesh or they don't. I will then read what I wrote and decide whether or not the premise, and even the focus will work with the characters and what I want to accomplish. I think that actually reading the words back to yourself and putting yourself as the fly on the wall can flush out a lot of bad writing.

Some of the stories I have submitted are re-writes of ones i wrote years ago. I was writing for about 8 years before i submitted here. Once I gained some experience I went back and reviewed stories thinking that something would be good to submit with some heavy editing. But I would change quite a bit. Especially one that i submitted that I had written long before I got a handle on what i know now makes a good story. With the re-write I would see the original idea as a good one, but with some experience I was able to make it work better. One of my submissions is about an 80% re-write from the older version written 8 years prior. So the point I am trying to make is that it is possible that if you don't like something you have written, shelve it for a while and look at it later with a fresh perspective.

Trimming the trimmer is a story I wrote 8 years ago and it sucked. The rewrite was very successful, currently rated 4.5.

I have a few stories that are either rough drafts or not completed where I just decided that it wasn't working. At some point I may tackle them with a fresh perspective.

It usually happens on or near the full moon.

I wake up in my office chair late at night, shaking with an irrational fear, and upon checking my phone I realize that I have lost several hours of which I have no memory. My clothes are dishevelled and my muscles are sore in the way they become after extended periods of strenuous activities. On the desk is a finished manuscript written in blood - the ink probably originating from the drained corpse on the floor.


And then I just scan the fucker and submit it to Lit...

StarryEyed665 said:

Well, alcohol to begin the process. Then a wave of marvel and reverence with each word written, as I silently applaud the efforts my fingers are making.

Then I go back and edit the next day and am overcome by revulsion and general self-abuse. So I break out the wine again to cleanse the negative energy. Hooray!

Click to expand...

My process is basically the same, I just substitute beer and/or Jamesons for the wine, leading to delusions of grandeur along the lines of "I think this will definitely get an E or a W - probably both!"

The only difference is I usually wait at least a week to edit (the delusions take a while to fade) and, upon reading the attempted story again, am usually overcome by a similar sense of failure, whereupon the chronic rewriting begins.

I have a bad habit of rewriting endlessly, that's why I like the seasonal contests and FAWCs, they give me a deadline that forces me to stop rewriting, put my keypad down and submit the story.

My story folder is full of *finished*stories that I haven't submitted because I know I haven't rewritten them enough yet. Maybe I just need more Jamesons to drown the OCR (obsessive/compulsive rewriting) urges.

Last night, after I had printed off the draft so far of 'Harold Saves Her Husband Part 03' my main thoughts were 'Oh Shit!'.

I had given a major and critical dialogue to a character I had killed off in Part 02; and comments on another part of the plot to a character who was not only not present, but wouldn't have known about that incident anyway.

I'm wondering if I need a cast list because Part 03 is generating more active characters that need names to identify who is speaking instead of walk-on unnamed Ladies, Priestesses, etc.

- and notes to me (to be removed before posting) about entrances and exits of characters e.g. "Enter stage left Queen Serena, Pushpa; stage right Harold, Lisa, and George" and later "Exit George pursued by an elephant".

The plot for Part 03 is getting more convoluted and the secret passages are multiplying with three, or is it four, distinct groups of women using them. The passages will need 'one-way' signs and traffic lights if this goes on.

Back to the title of this thread.

What I tend to spend a lot of effort thinking about is making sure that all the diversions from the main story are brought together by the end - to a complete conclusion.

As long as I can get the story that keeps racing trough my head and into words, I rarely have a "this sucks moment".

When I do have a "this sucks moment" in my writing it's usually when I am looking at some section or paragraph in a story and realize that what I wrote just doesn't match what was in my head. (I used to think it sucked when I misused the word "just", but I've come to terms with it and I am just going to keep doing it)

In general, I like everything I write. If I didn't, I would stop playing this game.

I don't go through attacks of self-doubt and lack of confidence like I used to writing papers in school. It helps that I don't have a lot of ego bound up in this whereas I do in other things like painting. Writing erotica is a big turn-on and costs nothing. I know very well when what I'm doing is crap. But sometimes you just have to write crap and get rid of it to write something decent.
When I come across really really amazing writers on this site I laugh at my pretensions. Ha ha ha. Ha. Never could I be that good. But I don't aspire to. I'm not a writer writer who happens to write sex. Im in it for the turn-on, and the writing is secondary.

Guess I go against the general grain here and am more like what FantasyXY described. Since I don't write from an outline and trust my subconscious to have worked at least the bare bones of a story out before pushing me to write it, I enter into writing with only hazy conscious understanding of what's going to be in the story. That being the case, I encounter more "hey that's neat" and "gee, so that's why I included that tidbit earlier" revelations as I'm writing the story. It's probably the major element in my finding writing fascinating and fulfilling.

I wonder will I ever get this thing finished is my main thought as most of my ideas take a long time to get to the "interesting" part; getting the plot and background right is important to me and so they are usually long stories. Usually I like what I am getting down but then often go over and edit it as I go along. My main problem is I cannot shut my brain down long enough to concentrate on one thing. At the moment I have five story plans written out, three at least on my dictaphone, about three or four in my head, one novel about a quarter of the way through and nine stories in progress; all between 4 and 9 literotica pages long! I wish I could switch my mind off long enough to get one completed but I jump from story to story as a thought arises.

I do have one I have just finished (about 12500 words, approx 7 literotica pages) which I have left with an open ending so will need a second chapter but at the speed I manage to complete one story that will not appear until next year! I'm not sure whether to submit it yet as it is a Christmas story (Yes I know it's still July!) but I'm still a way off getting any of the other stories finished so...

Any ideas on that one would be appreciated, I'd like to get it out there but is it just too early for Christmas?

Badbadman1965 said:

I do have one I have just finished (about 12500 words, approx 7 literotica pages)

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Just for clarification, 12,500 words is barely 4 Literotica pages. It would take over 22,000 words to open the 7th Literotica page.

Write now I'm wondering if this one will ever get done. Man it is dragging.....

I think as little as possible until the first rewrite

Thanks

sr71plt said:

Just for clarification, 12,500 words is barely 4 Literotica pages. It would take over 22,000 words to open the 7th Literotica page.

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Yes oops your right! I was basing it on what I had already submitted and for some reason my mind miscalculated the conversion from word pages to literotica pages! About six pages on word - approx 3000 words or so - became one on here. Thanks for pointing that out!

oggbashan said:

...

The plot for [Harold Saves Her Husband] Part 03 is getting more convoluted and the secret passages are multiplying with three, or is it four, distinct groups of women using them. The passages will need 'one-way' signs and traffic lights if this goes on.

...

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I've edited out the plot inconsistencies in the earlier post, but the secret passages are turning the villain's palace into an ant's nest. The proliferation of passages has gone from believable to ridiculous. More editing needed.

When I'm writing I don't tend to think about much except the next speech, the next situation, the next development - what is happening in the next few paragraphs. Always at the back of my mind is the intended ending.

When I start a story I have a premise and the denouement. How I get from the start to the finish is irrelevant at that stage. As the characters and plot lines start to form, the pattern for the transition from beginning to end becomes clearer in my mind.

I do not like going backwards in a part-written story to correct details. Once I have written a page or two, I tend to think of them as concrete, unchangeable, except for correcting typos. I almost think of the earlier pages as if they had already been posted on Literotica, and that changing them would confuse the readers. They aren't that fixed, but it takes a conscious effort to rewrite a section.

Back to Harold Part 03. I'm going to have to reduce the number of secret passages by half.

I wrestle with descriptions of arcane things. The HAND BRAKE above is a simple device but tough to describe.