Authors who aspire to literary writing...

Scotsman69

Literotica Guru
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Mar 6, 2008
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Hello. I'm an 'established' Lit author, and aspire to write serious 'literary' stories. Is it just me getting older and more fastidious in my reading and critical faculties, or has the average quality of stories posted to Lit been declining? My memory tells me that a few years ago, maybe one in ten stories were worth reading. Today, it's maybe nearer one in a hundred.

I have started a new three-chapter story, and am uncertain whether I should bother posting it amongst all the illiterate dross on Lit.

Might there be any support for a wee campaign to try to persuade Laurel and Manu that there should be a new Lit category, for those who aspire to write serious literary stories?
 
Hello. I'm an 'established' Lit author, and aspire to write serious 'literary' stories. Is it just me getting older and more fastidious in my reading and critical faculties, or has the average quality of stories posted to Lit been declining? My memory tells me that a few years ago, maybe one in ten stories were worth reading. Today, it's maybe nearer one in a hundred.

I have started a new three-chapter story, and am uncertain whether I should bother posting it amongst all the illiterate dross on Lit.

Might there be any support for a wee campaign to try to persuade Laurel and Manu that there should be a new Lit category, for those who aspire to write serious literary stories?

"Why so serious?"

Lol, the problem your going to hit with that is the fact that most writers think they are writing the "Lay of Gilgamesh" ( yes sex pun intended) when they post a one page strokes story that starts with "Oh yes Mommy, Fuck me now Mommy."

I tried to find a story so I began to read my way through one category. (Failed but I did find the story just recently) there is some truly terrible stories on this site.

There are also some beautiful ones among the dross.

To me the hunting was fun.

MST
 
The quality of writing is everywhere awful. People graduate school and college clueless of how to write basic essays of thesis, 5 supporting paragraphs, and a conclusion.

LIT poetry is terrible, to.
 
Sturgeon's Law: 95% of everything is crap.

Postings here included.
 
If what you write is serious enough in content, people will take notice. I started out one of my series, Blood of the Clans as a bit of fun about Highlanders fucking and fighting, then found it was turning out more serious than I had intended. I pulled the story, re-wrote the first half again and started posting it again under the idea of it being more serious a piece of history and conflict than it started out to be.

I've had many who call it brilliant and compelling, to being called a masterpiece. A separate category isn't needed to be recognized by readers as a serious writer. Novels and Novellas hold the stories that you're taking about and those that are looking for quality writing will find you.
 
Hello. I'm an 'established' Lit author, and aspire to write serious 'literary' stories. Is it just me getting older and more fastidious in my reading and critical faculties, or has the average quality of stories posted to Lit been declining? My memory tells me that a few years ago, maybe one in ten stories were worth reading. Today, it's maybe nearer one in a hundred.

I have started a new three-chapter story, and am uncertain whether I should bother posting it amongst all the illiterate dross on Lit.

Might there be any support for a wee campaign to try to persuade Laurel and Manu that there should be a new Lit category, for those who aspire to write serious literary stories?
We already have a category called"non-erotic" where you can submit your "literary" work. Perhaps you could define what 'literary' means. Perhaps it means only "snobbish".

However, if you are talking erotic literature on the scale of say Anais Nin, You will find very little of it. That is why she is famous and we are not!

Finally I would like to say that I have always found a great fault with erotic stories and movies and other art, that it fails to challenge the boundaries of society. Long ago when I viewed my first "porn" film, I was severely disappointed that its content could not be beautifully romantic, great art, and hotly sexual. It seemed the ideas were always mutually exclusive, In my erotic writing I try to break that stereotype by having romance and sex. How successful I am is for others to judge or not. We can only write what and how we write. Definitions of 'literary; and delusions of greatness are for time, history and Kismet.
 
I like to think that much of what I write is literary porn. I think there's a readership for it. I don't spend a lot of time worrying about what others on Literotica are writing, though--or looking down my nose at what they like to read or write.
 
I'm new, but I try to write a good short story first and hot sex second. I like romance and conflict, they both make sex better in my opinion. I think in any endeavor such as Literotica there's going to be a lot of chaff, weeding through it can be tedious, but it can be fun too.
 
Too bad there can't be a secondary rating system. The stars can be used for how well written something is, and maybe little erections could be used for the hot factor. That could help guide readers, no? Of course, if it was in LW, that would work about as well as it does now. :D
 
Literary porn, uh, I mean erotica.

Exactly how does that work?

I kind of go along with Pilot. I write my stories and try to make them sexy as hell but I also try and keep a story going with it.

As for what others write, I can't say.

Swilly, who is going to rate how well they are written. Laurel hardly has time to keep up with the mass of stories poring in to make sure they don't overstep the site rules.
 
I meant it as a joke, but if there was such a thing the readers would. Just like now.
 
Literary porn, uh, I mean erotica.

Exactly how does that work?


Easy enough...

Romeo my beloved. Pray let me suck thine cock lest it be too soft to enter mine ass and bang it to shreds.

I beg of you, have no such fear oh fair Juliet. The hardness of mine cock shall put to shame the heart of Shylock himself. BRING ON THE ASTRO GLIDE I say! For I shall not falter thee in this task of pleasure.



Doesn't get more "literary" than Shakespeare. ;)
 
Easy enough...

Romeo my beloved. Pray let me suck thine cock lest it be too soft to enter mine ass and bang it to shreds.

I beg of you, have no such fear oh fair Juliet. The hardness of mine cock shall put to shame the heart of Shylock himself. BRING ON THE ASTRO GLIDE I say! For I shall not falter thee in this task of pleasure.



Doesn't get more "literary" than Shakespeare. ;)

And many a spear has been shaken over literary porn
 
For people who want to read and write fine literature, go for it.

Me? I'm just going to keep trying to write story driven erotica and have fun and make some money beyond that I am not concerned with how people take my "illiterate dross"
 
Everything I write is strictly for my private amusement. To that extent I grant that my own work is not available for critique one way or the other.

I feel nevertheless that the OP has to be supported in his assertion. There is genuinely very little of any merit in the vast majority of stories posted on Literotica... and this applies against virtually any yardstick you care to name.

Even when you hold your nose and disregard the basement quality of general literacy displayed in most offerings, you then have to get past the lack of more subtle writing skills such as appropriate scenario, plot and character description. If you find you are still on board despite these shortcomings, then that final hurdle, the absence of ability to present anything imaginative, compelling or original will probably unseat you eventually.

Truly, I am sorry to have to say this but the only force of the first three letters of the website's name resides in the fact that we are dealing with words made of letters and not remotely in any loftier connotation of 'literature'.

To those who will see this as snooty, I say 'too bad'. I am no spring chicken and am well past being politically correct about sensitivities when it comes to the appalling standards in the use of English which I see in the world around me and, more particularly, here.
 
Everything I write is strictly for my private amusement. To that extent I grant that my own work is not available for critique one way or the other.

I feel nevertheless that the OP has to be supported in his assertion. There is genuinely very little of any merit in the vast majority of stories posted on Literotica... and this applies against virtually any yardstick you care to name.

Even when you hold your nose and disregard the basement quality of general literacy displayed in most offerings, you then have to get past the lack of more subtle writing skills such as appropriate scenario, plot and character description. If you find you are still on board despite these shortcomings, then that final hurdle, the absence of ability to present anything imaginative, compelling or original will probably unseat you eventually.

Truly, I am sorry to have to say this but the only force of the first three letters of the website's name resides in the fact that we are dealing with words made of letters and not remotely in any loftier connotation of 'literature'.

To those who will see this as snooty, I say 'too bad'. I am no spring chicken and am well past being politically correct about sensitivities when it comes to the appalling standards in the use of English which I see in the world around me and, more particularly, here.

You didn't have to call out your age. Straight shooters are a thing from a bygone age.

Now allow me to return the fire.

This is a free site. In other words you get what you pay for.

Want great literature and plot and compelling imaginative stories?

Pay for it.
 
True there's a lot of crap here, Jesus yesterday I gave up on one story after the first line, but there are also some really good writers. I'm not sure it'd be possible (nor necessarily desirable) to impose a divide along a line as abstract as quality.

Besides, sometimes a balls-out unapologetic barrage of plotless filth is exactly what one may want.
 
Hello. I'm an 'established' Lit author, and aspire to write serious 'literary' stories. Is it just me getting older and more fastidious in my reading and critical faculties, or has the average quality of stories posted to Lit been declining? My memory tells me that a few years ago, maybe one in ten stories were worth reading. Today, it's maybe nearer one in a hundred.

...

Some of my stories are 'serious literary'. Some are not. Some are parodies of classic authors e.g. Swift and Kipling. Some are rubbish.

But I think your memory is possibly selective. The quality of the entries to the themed contests has improved significantly over the last five or so years.

What hasn't changed is the proportion of dross to worthwhile stories. There are many more stories posted every week than there used to be, but the stories worth reading are still in the minority, as they always were.

There are many authors whose stories are worth reading. It can be a disheartening experience trying to sort through all the new stories to find an exciting author you haven't read before. The good stories are there, in their hundreds, but swamped by the thousands and tens of thousands of average, poor, and [expletive-deleted] awful ones.
 
Conversely, it's possible that no one has read enough of the more than 300,000 stories on Literotica to make an accurate judgment on what proportion of them are "crap"--even taking into account that one person's crap is just exactly what another person might have been looking for when they clicked into Literotica.
 
What good is great literary writing when your audience, on average, only reads at a 8th or 9th grade level?

You can write all those big words you want, but if you readership doesn't know what you are talking about they are more likely to put it aside than pull out a dictionary.

All I want to do is tell the story so that everyone can understand what is happening. If that means using several small words instead of one big one, then so be it, just so the small words are put together the right way to tell the story.
 
If your work is of such a high caliber that you don't want to toss pearls in with the swine of Lit, then why are you?

E-publishing is so simple now that a chimpanzee could do it. Take it to the marketplace and let people pay you for your prose.

If there's any reduction in the percentage of gems vs. junk in Literotica's new stories lists, that's why. A lot of authors have taken their work to a paying audience.
 
What the hell makes you think you know what the average education level of my readers is, Zeb? :D

Maybe you should speak only for your own readership.
 
What makes a story literary? Big words? Does a committee of librarians get together and give it a stamp of approval? Does a talk show host tell the world to read it? Does it have to make it onto a university's English class reading list?

If you feel strongly about the cream rising to the top, tag your story with the tag "literary." I suspect that some readers will shy away from that tag for a variety of reasons, but it would distinguish the story from the rest.
 
What makes a story literary? Big words? Does a committee of librarians get together and give it a stamp of approval? Does a talk show host tell the world to read it? Does it have to make it onto a university's English class reading list?

If you feel strongly about the cream rising to the top, tag your story with the tag "literary." I suspect that some readers will shy away from that tag for a variety of reasons, but it would distinguish the story from the rest.

What makes literary?

Ego.
 
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