Feedback for LuckyGuy96?

Hi everyone,

I've been having a blast converting my journal of real sexual adventures to stories on literotica. The gist of what I've produced is all true, changing places and names, and sometimes in the spirit of not using brand names in text, I've had to take liberties with places, business names, website names, and product names. The situations are completely true otherwise. I didn't bother converting materials about missed dates or lousy sexual situations, because I'd felt that those weren't worth writing about.

Before writing erotica, and man, have I always loved reading erotica, first on USENET and later (and now!) on literotica. I had actually published a bunch non-erotica over the years, in the realm of technology, so writing erotica turned out to be a very fun and liberating experience -- for someone who enjoys writing and telling stories.

Thing is: My stories will finish at Chapter 10, and I'd like to keep writing stuff here. I have some completely fictitious ideas in mind, but it would be good to have some feedback about my existing stories to gain an understanding of my core strengths and weaknesses are as a writer. Basically, if I move completely into the realm of fiction, what does that mean for my normal writing style and how I frame a story? What are some bad aspects of my style and so forth?

Thanks for reading, and looking forward to what you have to say!

https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=2533303&page=submissions

It helps to provide a link:

https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=2533303&page=submissions

sr71plt said:

It helps to provide a link:

https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=2533303&page=submissions

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My apologies, and thank you for doing this!

(That's weird, looks like your stories are showing in duplicate on your author page)

After reading chapter 1, I felt the intro could have done with a lot of pruning. Stuff like this:

I found one of the major swingers sites on the internet and created a free account. The free account let me look at some ads, but at the same time was limited to maybe 4 or 5 a day, and after that I lost the ability to see ads and pictures. The cost wasn't all that high for the site, but at the same time I wanted my "acquired tastes" to be hidden from people that I might know from work, or socially, or heck, even weirder if they were family members!

I decided to give it a rest for a day or two so that I could regroup. Eventually I decided to get a new bank account that was separate from the account from where I paid my rent and my bills. I tied that to a debit card and signed up for the site. I took some more pictures of myself in various stages of dress and undress and posted those too.

This felt a bit like reading "and then I brushed my teeth with Colgate toothpaste using a medium-soft brush and went to bed."

Nothing against slow-build stories - I often write that way, and I use a lot of detail sometimes, but I try to do it with some storytelling purpose in mind. If my protagonist tells you that she gave her friend Ruth pencils, it's not because I care about pencils, it's because I want to indicate something about the relationship between them: Ruth is poor enough that she can't easily afford to buy pencils, and that ties in with the bigger picture.

In your story, I felt a lot of the detail wasn't really carrying its weight. It felt like "this happened IRL so I'll put it in, in the order it occurred". You don't have to do that, and even where some of the detail is important, a linear blow-by-blow account may not be the best way to tell it. That tends to leave me thinking "so where is this going?"

Bramblethorn said:

(That's weird, looks like your stories are showing in duplicate on your author page)

After reading chapter 1, I felt the intro could have done with a lot of pruning. Stuff like this:

I found one of the major swingers sites on the internet and created a free account. The free account let me look at some ads, but at the same time was limited to maybe 4 or 5 a day, and after that I lost the ability to see ads and pictures. The cost wasn't all that high for the site, but at the same time I wanted my "acquired tastes" to be hidden from people that I might know from work, or socially, or heck, even weirder if they were family members!

I decided to give it a rest for a day or two so that I could regroup. Eventually I decided to get a new bank account that was separate from the account from where I paid my rent and my bills. I tied that to a debit card and signed up for the site. I took some more pictures of myself in various stages of dress and undress and posted those too.

This felt a bit like reading "and then I brushed my teeth with Colgate toothpaste using a medium-soft brush and went to bed."

Nothing against slow-build stories - I often write that way, and I use a lot of detail sometimes, but I try to do it with some storytelling purpose in mind. If my protagonist tells you that she gave her friend Ruth pencils, it's not because I care about pencils, it's because I want to indicate something about the relationship between them: Ruth is poor enough that she can't easily afford to buy pencils, and that ties in with the bigger picture.

In your story, I felt a lot of the detail wasn't really carrying its weight. It felt like "this happened IRL so I'll put it in, in the order it occurred". You don't have to do that, and even where some of the detail is important, a linear blow-by-blow account may not be the best way to tell it. That tends to leave me thinking "so where is this going?"

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This is fair criticism, and I appreciate it. The first 3 or 4 stories I had not been working with an editor. I changed my approach after I had struggled with the fourth one getting approved. I think it's made a world of difference.

When I've published technical stuff before, it's always been, well, if x=y, then tell us where y started, and if y started from somewhere else, tell us that, too, and if the predecessor of y started somewhere, tell us where it all started. That has been where my stories have been tough to swallow. I hope to avoid that same pattern in future fiction efforts.

ps - I had no idea about the duplicates! If I could reach someone on literotica directly then I would ask why!

LuckyGuy96 said:

This is fair criticism, and I appreciate it. The first 3 or 4 stories I had not been working with an editor. I changed my approach after I had struggled with the fourth one getting approved. I think it's made a world of difference.

When I've published technical stuff before, it's always been, well, if x=y, then tell us where y started, and if y started from somewhere else, tell us that, too, and if the predecessor of y started somewhere, tell us where it all started. That has been where my stories have been tough to swallow. I hope to avoid that same pattern in future fiction efforts.

ps - I had no idea about the duplicates! If I could reach someone on literotica directly then I would ask why!

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For technical issues, send a private message to Manu (make sure your own PMs are turned on for replies).

I had a look at chapter 4 for comparison, and yeah, I don't know if it was the editor but this one flowed a lot better. Even though the storyline was less relevant to my interests than #1 (nothing to worry about, just personal tastes), I thought you told it more smoothly. You had enough info to set the scene without making me start checking my watch.

I do a fair bit of technical writing in my day job, and even there I think it's sometimes better not to get caught up in telling every detail in the order it occurred. When I do have to go into detail, I'll try to outline what I'm going to discuss and where I'm going with it, so they can figure out where individual pieces of information fit in. Reading or listening to technical material sometimes feels like trying to put a jigsaw together without being able to look at the picture on the box!

I agree with Bramble. And I read two of your stories, one from early, one later. It seems both could use an editor. I see lots of grammatical errors and typos, but the main problem is that your stories red like newspaper descriptions of sex acts. You would capture your reader better, I think, if your tale was less true and more dynamic. The history of how the protagonist came to be involved in swinging should be half as long. Each episode should begin with a zinger that captures our attention. The actual sex scenes Should contain graphic descriptions of everything, What did every cock look like, smell like, taste like? Was her pussy tightly closed or wide as the Holland Tunnel? did the inner lips protrude from withn? Were they dark? Or pink?

As far as switching to fantasy is concerned, you will have to pay more attention to developing your characters into actual people with personalities and errors and flaws, with actual physical features. It isn't enough to tell us she kept crossing and uncrossing her legs, what did that look like? What effect did it have?

If you want our attention give us the five senses.

robertreams said:

The actual sex scenes Should contain graphic descriptions of everything, What did every cock look like, smell like, taste like? Was her pussy tightly closed or wide as the Holland Tunnel? did the inner lips protrude from withn? Were they dark? Or pink?

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That one's very much a matter of individual preference. Some readers want that sort of detail, others find it a turn-off. Me, I'm more interested in the personalities and emotions involved; if the description starts to get too clinical I feel like I'm reading a description of a steak

edit

I said "I think" that means "in my opinion" but I could hardly speak from anyone else's experience. If i try to be generalist in my suggestions, I am called a "grammar nazi". Anyway, I was suggesting romance, eroticism, not "clinical description"

robertreams said:

I said "I think" that means "in my opinion" but I could hardly speak from anyone else's experience. If i try to be generalist in my suggestions, I am called a "grammar nazi". Anyway, I was suggesting romance, eroticism, not "clinical description"

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This is a fair point as well (as illustrated in your previous response). If you want to drop me a PM, maybe you can help with edits as the next generation of stories evolve?

Thank you very much for taking time to respond, BTW. It brought a welcome criticism, points of which I had never considered before, and made me think of new ways to frame a story: to develop characters and to bring it to fruition.

For people who have liked my stories, they have all stated that they enjoyed the realism of the stories -- precisely due to the fact that they came across as being true in nature -- but successful storytelling in general obviously pulls things off in a different way.

robertreams said:

I said "I think" that means "in my opinion" but I could hardly speak from anyone else's experience. If i try to be generalist in my suggestions, I am called a "grammar nazi". Anyway, I was suggesting romance, eroticism, not "clinical description"

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I didn't think you were trying to speak for everybody. Just noting that there's a range of preferences on this one. The sort of detail you describe would likely be a turn-off for me.