Give us your worst

[Rob_Royale]

As opposed to mommification, the incest variant.

 

[redgarters]

I can't believe I'm doing this... sheesh.
Okay, 25 years ago (yep, I've been here nearly from the dawn of time) I had another username and published a stroker that's basically a collection of things that turned me on at the time. Then I soon forgot my password to that account and forgot about that story, thinking it was (happily) lost to the eddies of time. I was reminded of it a few weeks back, commenting on some thread here, and alas, it's still there

So I present Helen's Adventures by Obsidian, aka redgarters.

Published in Group sex, it still holds the respectable rating of 4.68, suggesting there are still people out there that are partial to freckled redheads letting loose. I accept that perhaps it's only cringy as hell to me and no one else, but to me at least, it is my absolute worst story on Lit.

 

[DeMont]

My first submission may have been my worst, it was rejected, because I used British punctuation. Cleaned up and resubmitted, Chasing Faeries is still my favorite story.

https://www.literotica.com/s/chasing-faeries-1

Another early submission, The Zebrafish, went into the LW category but it was told from the POV of the Other Woman, not the husband. Horrors! Perhaps my best sex scene, she does get pregnant, and I cried a lot writing how she handles it. But the SciFi element of re-animating a frozen Viking might not have helped with the LW readers.

Getting the Five_Inch_Heels treatment, a distant cousin in Minnesota talked me into writing a comedy story about the hapless Minnesota Vikings, and their biggest fan, the Norse God Odin. Lots of Minnesota specific humor from Beavis and Butthead type characters, it was more gross than funny.

@Jorunn,
So, my dear colleague, let me see if I got this right. You re-animated a cryogenically (naturally) frozen Viking who went on to have sex with the MC and she was upset that she didn't get pregnant? Is that right? And how did the Zebrafish ( Danio rerio: a species of freshwater ray-finned fish belonging to the family Danionidae of the order Cypriniformes) take the whole thing?

Beavis and Butthead Vikings (do you mean the football team?) I can roll with, in a 'Monty Python' sort of way but I have difficulty wrapping my head around American vs. English punctuation since the American language, apart from some spelling differences, is English, isn't it?

I do apologise everyone if I'm heading "off topic" but I am completely befuddled at this point... or did I miss the entire point?
Deepest respects,
D

 

[pink_silk_glove]

At least it's not a thread about sausage.

 

[big_cane_sugar]

The story I'm most ashamed of at the moment is Andrea Tells Her Boss to Shove It. It's just bland. The idea wasn't bad but my execution was pathetic. I've thought about deleting it as well as all my "BBC - Little White Lies" stories, which were my first attempts to do the kind of thing I did much better in the "Raoul" stories. I wouldn't want anyone to evaluate me as a writer from any of those stories but not everyone hates them, so for now I'm leaving them up.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Probably Sit on my face, tell me you love me. Its title was supposed to be the Monty Python quote, 'Sit on my face and tell me that you love me', only that didn't fit so I bodged it. It's not particularly bad, though a lot shorter than I remembered when I wrote it, so feels a bit rushed. and I hadn't yet realised that Lesbian Sex isn't very fond of BDSM, despite the tagline warning. I may rewrite it at some point.

Jack and Jill went up the Hill is derived from a writing exercise on this forum, which I extended into a quick and silly LW story. It's formulaic and shows I didn't put much effort in. It's just kind of meh. Some readers who like that sort of thing liked it.

Some would say I should be ashamed of Submissives of Catan, which I freely admit is mainly an excuse for over 50 board game-related puns. I put it in H&S which should be sufficient warning, and mentioned the puns in the description...

 

[Jorunn]

@Jorunn,
So, my dear colleague, let me see if I got this right. You re-animated a cryogenically (naturally) frozen Viking who went on to have sex with the MC and she was upset that she didn't get pregnant? Is that right? And how did the Zebrafish ( Danio rerio: a species of freshwater ray-finned fish belonging to the family Danionidae of the order Cypriniformes) take the whole thing?

Beavis and Butthead Vikings (do you mean the football team?) I can roll with, in a 'Monty Python' sort of way but I have difficulty wrapping my head around American vs. English punctuation since the American language, apart from some spelling differences, is English, isn't it?

I do apologise everyone if I'm heading "off topic" but I am completely befuddled at this point... or did I miss the entire point?
Deepest respects,
D

@DeMont - The MFC did have sex with the reanimated Viking and got pregnant. (Which is interesting as other threads want the women to get pregnant but don’t). She helped set him up in a secret fjord to live like as a Viking rather than shock him into the modern world. She visited him regularly. Her child could not bounce between these two worlds, so she had to decide which world to let their child grow up in.

Zebrafish embryos have been frozen and reanimated, offering scientific plausibility. I got kicked for this, but I saw a recent story where a 25 year old frozen human embryo was successfully used.

As my first story, my view of function came from British media. Use of ‘this’ instead of “this” in quoted conversation, and placement of periods in relation to quotes. Add in ESL.

 

[NuclearFairy]

I have difficulty wrapping my head around American vs. English punctuation since the American language, apart from some spelling differences, is English, isn't it?

I once had a conversation with a girl from Scotland about her trials with relearning to punctuate to post her stories. Because growing up she learned to write "dialog like this". Whereas most of online expects you to punctuate like an american, so she had to learn to write, "Dialog like this."

 

[Rob_Royale]

At least it's not a thread about sausage.

Give us your wurst? We'd have been inundated with dick pics.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Give us your wurst? We'd have been inundated with dick pics.

Precisely. ; )

 

[Kumquatqueen]

...I have difficulty wrapping my head around American vs. English punctuation since the American language, apart from some spelling differences, is English, isn't it?

I wouldn't give it that much credit...
Seriously, there's various grammatical differences, eg US speakers using the simple past tense where Brits use the present perfect. So Brits say "I've already eaten" versus Yanks "I already ate," or He's just gone home" vs "He just went home".

US English almost exclusively uses -ed for verbs where British uses -t, like dreamt or spelt. And the punctuation of speech is different, British is strictly logical so if the punctuation is part of what was said, it's inside the quotes. (Literotica is fine with that!)

Dialect can be pretty foreign (English teachers are delighted not to have to try to teach To Kill a Mockingbird any more), but the difference in tone is the main thing. It's not so noticeable here, possibly because we're all writers, but often in Lit stories or Quora answers or news articles there's a very straight, forthright, almost bossy tone from Americans - possibly the result of being taught to write 'topic sentences' and shit, whereas there's a more conversational indirectness to British stories that's often noticeable within a page. There's various theories about why these different styles came about...

 

[Voboy]

And the punctuation of speech is different, British is strictly logical so if the punctuation is part of what was said, it's inside the quotes. (Literotica is fine with that!)

Hmm. I've spent a lifetime in American schools, reading American books, and never once have I seen a punctuation mark placed outside the quotes. We learn it the same way you seem to.

That's why "Literotica is fine with that."

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Hmm. I've spent a lifetime in American schools, reading American books, and never once have I seen a punctuation mark placed outside the quotes. We learn it the same way you seem to.

That's why "Literotica is fine with that."

Ah, you lot never put them outside? I forgot which way round it was. From a style guide:
"the American style places commas and periods inside the quotation marks, even if they are not in the original material. British style (more sensibly) places unquoted periods and commas outside the quotation marks. For all other punctuation, the British and American styles are in agreement: unless the punctuation is part of the quoted material, it goes outside the quotation marks."

 

[Actingup]

Hmm. I've spent a lifetime in American schools, reading American books, and never once have I seen a punctuation mark placed outside the quotes. We learn it the same way you seem to.

That's why "Literotica is fine with that."

I've generally used Australian English, which is modelled on what we perceive as the Queen's English (sorry - still too early to say King's for me...) but with regional variation and some American influences. There hasn't been an issue except around punctuation in dialogue, and I think that the Literotica approach is more about following somebody's rules and being consistent.

 

[Voboy]

Ah, you lot never put them outside? I forgot which way round it was. From a style guide:
"the American style places commas and periods inside the quotation marks, even if they are not in the original material. British style (more sensibly) places unquoted periods and commas outside the quotation marks. For all other punctuation, the British and American styles are in agreement: unless the punctuation is part of the quoted material, it goes outside the quotation marks."

Oh. I see what you're saying. I had misunderstood your prior post.

Yes. We put everything inside the quotation marks, always. Some of us, in scholarly settings, might want to indicate that we're adding a period that wasn't in the original, and I've seen it done with brackets.

"Like this [.]" But that's cumbersome. Putting the periods outside the quotation marks, in any context, would look exceedingly odd to me.

 

[MrPixel]

At least it's not a thread about sausage.

We can certainly fix that.

 

[MK_Whimsy]

It's interesting how many people here are pointing to 750s as their worst stories, I wonder why that is?

Personally I enjoy that format a lot, it's like a little mental puzzle. My 750s seem to be on the low end of my story ratings, maybe 0.1 or 0.2 lower than most, but they were great opportunities to experiment with different ideas and narrative styles!

One of my lowest-rated stories is a 750-word one, though I'm not altogether unhappy with it. I suspect the issue as someone else pointed out is that it reads more as a setup to a larger story and probably comes across as incomplete.

 

[PapaRomantic]

One of the stories I'm least proud of in my collection is Trust Me. It's an incest romp that is filled with tropes, but the weird part is that it's a 9K offering written just for the two-word denouement at the end.

Tropes - you want tropes? 18 year old twins - he's tall and beefy in all the right places, she's short and mousy and hides her body behind layers of clothes that covers her entire body. The summer after they graduate high school, she comes out to the family pool one morning wearing swimwear, and brother decided he likes that and needs to have it. He spends the entire story creepily leading her to the point where they have sex, and with every new introduction to something sexy in his instruction, he uses the words "Trust me." This includes when they finally get ready to have sex and she worries about pregnancy - he tells her that she can't get pregnant her first time, and follows it up with "Trust me." Tropes? We got tropes.

A few weeks later, she brings him a positive pregnancy test. "Are you sure?" he asks.

The story ends with her answer - "Trust me."

Only one of the 30 comments mentioned the denouement. Most of the others? Various forms of "I hope they resolve their differences and get back together," and "Definitely needs to be more chapters." Many said it wasn't nearly as good as my first series, but it was never meant to be the same type of story.

I'll never take it down. But I'm not real proud of it. I still love the denouement!

 

[Cacatua_Galerita]

Picking a worst story is like picking the inferior child. Each are deficient in their own way.

To single out one as The Worst would divert shame from the (also inadequate) others. So let’s just assume that my very worst is yet to be published. We must all endure the anticipation.

 

[big_cane_sugar]

Picking a worst story is like picking the inferior child. Each are deficient in their own way.

To single out one as The Worst would divert shame from the (also inadequate) others. So let’s just assume that my very worst is yet to be published. We must all endure the anticipation.

Maybe some gentleman out there is telling his wife, "All our kids are mediocre. Let's keep trying until we really mess one up."

 

[DeMont]

Give us your wurst? We'd have been inundated with dick pics.

@Rob_Royale,
Or pictures of Bratwurst's...!
Respectfully,
D.

 

[DeMont]

Ah, you lot never put them outside? I forgot which way round it was. From a style guide:
"the American style places commas and periods inside the quotation marks, even if they are not in the original material. British style (more sensibly) places unquoted periods and commas outside the quotation marks. For all other punctuation, the British and American styles are in agreement: unless the punctuation is part of the quoted material, it goes outside the quotation marks."

@Kumquatqueen,
Hence the struggles I had with "business communications" when I arrived in 2013. What the heck I thought, vive la difference.
Respectfully,
D.

 

[DeMont]

Picking a worst story is like picking the inferior child. Each are deficient in their own way.

To single out one as The Worst would divert shame from the (also inadequate) others. So let’s just assume that my very worst is yet to be published. We must all endure the anticipation.

@Cacatua_Galerita,
Please be sure and keep us informed when it's published would you my dear colleague?
Respectfully,
D.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

It's interesting how many people here are pointing to 750s as their worst stories, I wonder why that is?

Personally I enjoy that format a lot, it's like a little mental puzzle. My 750s seem to be on the low end of my story ratings, maybe 0.1 or 0.2 lower than most, but they were great opportunities to experiment with different ideas and narrative styles!

I like doing them to some degree as the writing challenge they are. It's not their ratings that make them bad, it's the premise of those two, both I tried to tell too much with too little. I've written quite a few of them and experimented and played around. The best ones I've done on this account or my other one, are basically one scene. Like Uncut is 4.34 and is about sucking dick. An Erotic Dream is 4.45 on my other account, about a womam masturbating in a coffee shop.

 

[iwatchus]

I used a 750 (not yet published) as a means to get myself writing again a few months ago when I was wedged on everything else. I like it as a writing release, where I focus on the writing rather than the story.