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- May 27, 2013
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* * * * Author’s Notes for revised story * * * *
As I said in the intro to the revised version of the story, I published “A Week At The Lake With My Sister” as a five-chapter series in 2018. The ratings were low for me, I got some negative comments on chapters 4 and 5, but overall I was fine with the story. It was a very different from the usual I/T story with a very manipulative FMC, so I wasn’t surprised by the less than overwhelmingly positive response.
But over the years, the negative comments on chapters 4 and 5 kept coming. I read every comment, and I began to dread it when one of those chapters got a comment. After a while, I started thinking about rewriting the last two chapters, but not seriously.
Then on 2/10/21, the commenter lilshymynx sent me a review of several of my stories. She said about “A Week At The Lake With My Sister”:
That got me to take the idea of rewriting chapters 4 and 5 seriously. I posted the following comment on chapter 5:
That drew a number of comments. One was a very long one from WildJokah that I thing does a good job of discussing the problems with the story:
As I wasn’t happy with my ideas for the rewrite at this point, I pushed the project aside. And then in February, I got the idea of Joanna telling Kaitlyn and Brandon about how she used Kaitlyn’s interest in Brandon to become her best friend. Suddenly, the pieces came together. And then I did something I never do - I read one of my own stories. Once I publish a story, I never read it again. I prefer having a warm, vague idea of what I wrote as opposed to the cold reality. I forced myself to read “A Week At The Lake With My Sister”. The only additional insight was that Kaitlyn was a poorly drawn character, and it wasn’t clear what Brandon saw in her or why she was so crazy about Brandon.
I finished the rewrite of chapter 4 and sent it to Lilshymynx. She loved it except she thought Brandon agreeing at the lake house to subletting an apartment still was not plausible. I then remembered that Joanna and Kaitlyn had planned on getting an apartment together if Joanna’s Mom’s boyfriend moved in. So I changed the plot so that Brandon says no to Kaitlyn’s initial proposal to get an apartment together, but goes along when Joanna feels she has to move out.
I shared with Lilshymynx my general plans for chapter 5, and she felt that Kaitlyn still came across as evil and manipulative. I realized that I need to have several conversations between Kaitlyn and Brandon to build chemistry between the two. At this point, the long conversations in chapters 4 and 5 between Brandon and one of the girls was with Joanna. I felt the chemistry between Joanna and Brandon was fine. I rewrote the conversations between Joanna and Brandon to be between Kaitlyn and Brandon and added more dialog between them. Originally, Kaitlyn was going to throw down that she wanted Joanna to share Brandon equally with her, and Joanna was the one who explained everything about why she was fine with it. I changed that so that Kaitlyn makes a long proposal, cutting back on what Joanna had to say.
Kaitlyn and Brandon’s first fuck was mostly the same as their first fuck in the original chapter 5. I tossed into chapter 5 a couple of new sex scenes. They were fun to write. The second one “Baby One More Time” I thought didn’t add too much to the plot, so I tried to summarize it as much as possible. The final sex scene is an edited version of the final sex scene in the original story.
Is the time I spent rewriting the story going to be worth it? Probably not. I don’t expect the rating of the new version to be much higher than the rating of the prior version; I/T readers aren’t into stories where non-family members feature prominently in the story. The main benefit I think I’ll get is that the new version hopefully will get mostly positive comments instead of the steady stream of negative comments the original chapter 4 and 5 get.
As I said in the intro to the revised version of the story, I published “A Week At The Lake With My Sister” as a five-chapter series in 2018. The ratings were low for me, I got some negative comments on chapters 4 and 5, but overall I was fine with the story. It was a very different from the usual I/T story with a very manipulative FMC, so I wasn’t surprised by the less than overwhelmingly positive response.
But over the years, the negative comments on chapters 4 and 5 kept coming. I read every comment, and I began to dread it when one of those chapters got a comment. After a while, I started thinking about rewriting the last two chapters, but not seriously.
Then on 2/10/21, the commenter lilshymynx sent me a review of several of my stories. She said about “A Week At The Lake With My Sister”:
I also really wanted to love ‘A Week a the Lake…’ but after the 4th and 5th chapters I just couldn’t. Bottom line is that Kaitlyn is a manipulative little bitch and letting her “win” just rewards bad behavior. By the end I just felt sorry for Joanna. She’d had such horrible luck in relationships and here was her chance to have a great one with Brandon on her own, were it not for Kaitlyn. Knowing that Paul was such a shitty boyfriend with his gaming obsession and poor performance in the bedroom and Kaitlyn still pawns him off on an unwitting Joanna so she can steal Brandon. It just made the whole triad relationship at the end tainted for me.
That got me to take the idea of rewriting chapters 4 and 5 seriously. I posted the following comment on chapter 5:
If I were to redo this story...
I've been thinking for a while about taking down these five chapters and republishing the story as just one big story. Today, for the first time, I thought about rewriting chapters 4 and 5 if I did so.
Option 1 is for Kaitlyn and Paul to break up at the start of Chapter 4. Kaitlyn wakes up horny, Paul just wants to play his game, and Kaitlyn decides she's had enough playing second fiddle to Paul's game. Brandon and his dad drive Paul home. The whole drive, Paul tells Brandon about his game. They drop Paul off, come back to the lake house, and ????. Kaitlyn would definitely go with her parents when they take their evening walk. The only chance Brandon and Kaitlyn would have to have sex would be once everyone is back home, but by then the passions would have cooled down. Brandon and Joanna are a happy couple. I don't see Brandon and Kaitlyn ever having sex.
Option 2 is for Joanna and Brandon to not break up, but for them to swap partners for fucking the night of Ch 04. When they get home, Kaitlyn breaks up with Paul. Paul now knows that Kaitlyn and Brandon have fucked, and has no reason to not tell everyone. And then ????. I don't see why Joanna would then invite Kaitlyn to join her and Brandon in a relationship.
Option 3 is for Joanna and Brandon to not break up. They swap partners for fucking the night of Ch 04, but only Joanna and Paul fuck. Kaitlyn and Brandon make cookies in the kitchen instead, with the promise from Joanna that she'll let them fuck when they get home. When the get home, Kaitlyn breaks up with Paul. Some night, Kaitlyn and Brandon fuck, maybe at Joanna's apartment when her mom isn't home? Joanna won't watch them. The passions would have cooled down, so Kaitlyn and Brandon would really feel awkward about fucking. And then ????.
That drew a number of comments. One was a very long one from WildJokah that I thing does a good job of discussing the problems with the story:
”WildJokah” said:I saw on your blog you might post alternate versions of chapters 4 & 5 of this series along with another post pointing out how unhelpful most negative comments are, so I decided to come back to this story and try to give some opinions I hope are constructive and helpful.
There’s been a few times across your works where characters give long explanations of details that seem like the writer is taking them over to give information rather than the character sharing something. That’s present here too but compounded by the amount of revelations about the plotting and manipulations going on, which makes dealing out that information harder to do naturally. I also think the story’s hindered by the ‘stuck at the lake house’ aspect. In general a group at a lake house is a pretty fun plot point but here I think it didn’t feel necessary for anything that happens and hindered the story to a degree.
Focusing on the later chapters, I think the plot makes it hard to not get more negative feedback than normal since it basically shifts toward cuckolding, which always gets some degree of negativity when the story isn’t centered on those aspects. I find stories that go there tend to be more enjoyable when the protagonist is the bull or otherwise gets more out of things, basically the readers want the protagonist to ‘win’ and generally see the bull as the winner. Here it feels like Brandon’s lost as even his victory of having a 3some with Kaitlyn and Joanna is tainted by Paul’s intrusion in their relationship.
From the beginning Paul felt needlessly tacked on. I think you could’ve had basically the same story if not improved it by not including him and focusing more on the girls and Brandon, especially since by the end Paul just adds a needlessly complex aspect to the relationship that’s inherently unappealing to many readers. Even the money aspect doesn’t seem relevant since it’s not entirely unbelievable that 3 people could get a decent place by pooling their money.
The fourth chapter makes Kaitlyn come across like a villain that’s gotten everything she wanted while Brandon seems like a powerless idiot. That’s basically cemented when he accepts Joanna not only coming back to him immediately after dumping him for someone with a bigger wallet, but doing so knowing she’s going to continue to have sex with the other guy. Having them talking about how they love each other makes her seem even worse, and makes him seem more pathetic. Him being with Kaitlyn, whose manipulations make her far less appealing, doesn’t seem like a victory, certainly not enough of one to counter any emotional reaction to being dumped by someone he supposedly loves. Having him readily accept everything happening to him without putting up a fight or having any negative reaction makes it seem like he has no agency. Because of these things Brandon comes across moronic, passive, and spineless which makes both women’s interest in him questionable and further strains the story. By the end the story feels like the tale of a Brandon, living dildo for a manipulator and a gold digger. Essentially, Brandon doesn’t win, everyone else wins and he’s just along for it.
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As I wasn’t happy with my ideas for the rewrite at this point, I pushed the project aside. And then in February, I got the idea of Joanna telling Kaitlyn and Brandon about how she used Kaitlyn’s interest in Brandon to become her best friend. Suddenly, the pieces came together. And then I did something I never do - I read one of my own stories. Once I publish a story, I never read it again. I prefer having a warm, vague idea of what I wrote as opposed to the cold reality. I forced myself to read “A Week At The Lake With My Sister”. The only additional insight was that Kaitlyn was a poorly drawn character, and it wasn’t clear what Brandon saw in her or why she was so crazy about Brandon.
I finished the rewrite of chapter 4 and sent it to Lilshymynx. She loved it except she thought Brandon agreeing at the lake house to subletting an apartment still was not plausible. I then remembered that Joanna and Kaitlyn had planned on getting an apartment together if Joanna’s Mom’s boyfriend moved in. So I changed the plot so that Brandon says no to Kaitlyn’s initial proposal to get an apartment together, but goes along when Joanna feels she has to move out.
I shared with Lilshymynx my general plans for chapter 5, and she felt that Kaitlyn still came across as evil and manipulative. I realized that I need to have several conversations between Kaitlyn and Brandon to build chemistry between the two. At this point, the long conversations in chapters 4 and 5 between Brandon and one of the girls was with Joanna. I felt the chemistry between Joanna and Brandon was fine. I rewrote the conversations between Joanna and Brandon to be between Kaitlyn and Brandon and added more dialog between them. Originally, Kaitlyn was going to throw down that she wanted Joanna to share Brandon equally with her, and Joanna was the one who explained everything about why she was fine with it. I changed that so that Kaitlyn makes a long proposal, cutting back on what Joanna had to say.
Kaitlyn and Brandon’s first fuck was mostly the same as their first fuck in the original chapter 5. I tossed into chapter 5 a couple of new sex scenes. They were fun to write. The second one “Baby One More Time” I thought didn’t add too much to the plot, so I tried to summarize it as much as possible. The final sex scene is an edited version of the final sex scene in the original story.
Is the time I spent rewriting the story going to be worth it? Probably not. I don’t expect the rating of the new version to be much higher than the rating of the prior version; I/T readers aren’t into stories where non-family members feature prominently in the story. The main benefit I think I’ll get is that the new version hopefully will get mostly positive comments instead of the steady stream of negative comments the original chapter 4 and 5 get.
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