The Official Authors' Hangout Summer Lovin' 2025 Contest Support Thread

[crookedletter]

The scores listed on the stories' pages at this time are 4.95, 4.92 and 4.88.

Edit: nope, they've already plummeted.

Really interesting how that works.

But also, thanks for grabbing those. I was grumbling about my sudden dip, fretting about being pulled out of contention, but the highest mine got there near the end was 4.86. So a non issue it seems.

Congrats to the winners! Fun contest.

 

[NotWise]

The scores listed on the stories' pages at this time are 4.95, 4.92 and 4.88.

Edit: nope, they've already plummeted.

They may be swept at least once more over the next week or so.

 

[bosombuddies]

The winners have been announced!
https://www.literotica.com/s/summer-lovin-contest-2025-at-literotica

Congrats to @bosombuddies, @SalemNightfox and @Infernalcock, and to everyone who wrote or read a story!

Wow! There were like five stories scoring higher than mine as of this morning. That's wild. What an awesome way to come back to writing after a 10 year hiatus! So many good stories this year.

 

[Soixenta]

Congratulations to the winners!

 

[FrancesScott]

Really interesting how that works.

But also, thanks for grabbing those. I was grumbling about my sudden dip, fretting about being pulled out of contention, but the highest mine got there near the end was 4.86. So a non issue it seems.

Congrats to the winners! Fun contest.

Yours was directly below mine at the finish line. Some went up in the sweep, some went down.

 

[FrancesScott]

Congratulations to all of them. At 4.85 I wasn’t very far off.

I also note that NONE of these more savvy authors used the competition tags. Something for me to learn for the future. This place is a maze!

I also probably have the dubious distinction of simultaneously having one of the lowest rated stories (3.47) and one of the highest rated stories (4.85) in the same competition.

Two learnings for me:

1. Never use the competition tags
2. Never darken Loving Wives’ door again

 

[TheLobster]

Congratulations to the winners! Mine finished at 4.8 so nowhere close to the podium, but I’ll take all the followers and comments that I’ve got from it

 

[GoldenMaia]

Woo!! Contgrats to the winners! I got a 4.88 (not enough votes) and 4.80 -- I am SUPER happy with that result.

What should I write next?

 

[EmilyMiller]

4.73 is a meh! score for me. Then I think it took me just a few hours over three days to knock it together. It was a fun story, but much too lightweight to place.

Congratulations to the winners. For those licking their wounds, and thinking there is no justice, may I suggest:

Halloween 2025

 

[Erozetta]

1. Never use the competition tags

That's not necessarily true. I used it for Halloween last year and still placed.

 

[SouthernCrossfire]

Congratulations to the winners and to all who entered!

 

[SyleusSnow]

Always happy to return your support and have a beta read in future.

Well, thanks. I may take you up on that. Wouldn't have helped in this case... I submitted 2 hours past the deadline. While camping

Kudos to Lit for including my steaming pile of words in the contest despite that.

Congrats to the winners!

 

[FrancesScott]

That's not necessarily true. I used it for Halloween last year and still placed.

It was striking that NONE of the winners exposed themselves in this manner, not one. I’m sure there are exceptions, but there seems to be a lot more needed to do well in these things than I had assumed.

It also appears that writing a novella length story gives more grist for the sweep mill to grind. As with most things in life, multiple things lead to success.

We live and learn.

 

[Omenainen]

Congrats to the winners! Mine didn't gain significantly during sweeps, and didn't get much attention overall, but it was still nice to participate in this again.

 

[Erozetta]

It was striking that NONE of the winners exposed themselves in this manner, not one. I’m sure there are exceptions, but there seems to be a lot more needed to do well in these things than I had assumed.

It also appears that writing a novella length story gives more grist for the sweep mill to grind. As with most things in life, multiple things lead to success.

We live and learn.

It largely comes down to luck and getting the right readers looking at your story to be honest. The right title, the right tagline, and the right category for your story increases your odds of winning significantly. Particularly if it's in a well read category and it's written to the category expectations.

Or, you can just wing it and have fun instead of trying to work out the details that make a winning story, which is the better option in my opinion.

My placing was clearly a fluke. 'Cause I did absolutely none of that and mine was written in a few days and dropped off without much thought.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

Congratulations to the winners and all who entered.

 

[FrancesScott]

Or, you can just wing it and have fun instead of trying to work out the details that make a winning story, which is the better option in my opinion.

I would loathe taking a formula-based, audience-driven approach to writing. That’s not writing at all in my opinion. If that’s what it takes, then I’m out.

But I now see that I was extremely naive to include competition tags, and that now was not the right time to dip my toe in the acid bath of Loving Wives. Both of those were avoidable gaffes. Giving the margin between me and third place was a mere 0.03 (possibly lower) small things make a big difference.

Oh well, thinking ‘what if?’ is a fool’s errand.

 

[MetaBob]

Many congrats to the winners. My entry got a rating as high as 4.79 before getting clubbed down to 4.70, then hovered there until two days ago when the last rounds of sweeps kicked in. Apparently I got a lot of one-star ratings, because my number of ratings dropped from 311 to 299 while my rating rose from 4.70 to 4.78 as of this morning.

So, congrats one-star bombers, you win again, but this is kinda discouraging. I know the site does its best to root out manipulators, but in this case it makes me not want to enter any more contests.

I've made some modifications to the story as well as the sequel I submitted yesterday, so I'll probably submit an edit for the original story. I submitted an edited version of the sequel a few minutes ago, which had been in Pending status but had not yet been assigned a posting date. Not sure yet what I'll do about part 3 of what I imagine will be a trilogy. I had planned to submit it here in a week or so but now I'm not so sure.

 

[RoyalAuthor]

Congratulations to all of them. At 4.85 I wasn’t very far off.

I also note that NONE of these more savvy authors used the competition tags. Something for me to learn for the future. This place is a maze!

Also pulled a 4.85. One of these days, I'll crack the top three. Congratulations to the winners!

 

[honeymore]

Big congrats to the winners! Fun contest. The ratings rollercoaster at the end was crazy. I thought authors just wrote fun stories, had no clue we'd be taken for a ride too.

 

[lovecraft68]

Congrats to the winners. Good to see some new names up there.

 

[nicksouth]

I have never had stories rate so high in anything I've put up before. Even though it looks like winners need to score a 4.9 to win, I'm okay with just being able to please readers. Hope I can continue to do so!

Yeah I don't know how to get a 4.9

 

[FrancesScott]

Big congrats to the winners! Fun contest. The ratings rollercoaster at the end was crazy. I thought authors just wrote fun stories, had no clue we'd be taken for a ride too.

It was very stochastic at the end. A chaotic system whose final state was impossible to predict based on normal factors. I’m getting the impression that this is ‘normal’ for around here. Not sure what I think about all the ancillary factors.

 

[nicksouth]

Congrats to all winners!

 

[bosombuddies]

Congratulations to all of them. At 4.85 I wasn’t very far off.

I also note that NONE of these more savvy authors used the competition tags. Something for me to learn for the future. This place is a maze!

Much as I'd like to say that I am a "savvy author" I honestly just forgot about the contest tag, lol. If it did make a difference, I just got lucky this time.