You know what's absolutley amazing?

[nakdsub]

The fact that readers feel they know your characters better than you do? In my last story, the wife DID NOT cheat on her husband. He jumped to conclusions and thought she cheated only to find it was a misunderstanding.

You can't believe how many people wrote me telling I didn't know what I was talking about, there was no way she wasn't cheating on her husband.

Do they realize, I MADE THE CHARACTER UP? I must have had 10 people tell me the husband was naive and accepted his wife's explanation too easily?

Since the story ran and most who are going to read it already read it, I can now tell the "surprise" ending.

I just can't believe there are those who can not understand, the characters in our stories are created by us, their actions are what we say they are.

Yeeeeesh!

 

[estragon]

It is absolutely amazing that you can convince people, and moreover people who have enough grasp of objective reality to be able to use a computer or other relatively sophisticated electronic device, solely by means of the written word and nothing else, that a set of characters whom you've created out of your experience and imagination, actually have an objective existence outside the world you created.

It's called art. And it's the highest testimonial a writer can get. Enjoy!

 

[Darkniciad]

They know what's really going on. You're covering up for that cheating whore! You probably didn't even use her real name in the story so her husband wouldn't find out the truth! You're probably the one fucking her, and you should be castrated before you die of AIDS!

*laugh* Gotta love the LW crowd and their ability to ignore what you write in favor of what they want ( or don't want ) the story to be.

 

[lovecraft68]

The fact that readers feel they know your characters better than you do? In my last story, the wife DID NOT cheat on her husband. He jumped to conclusions and thought she cheated only to find it was a misunderstanding.

You can't believe how many people wrote me telling I didn't know what I was talking about, there was no way she wasn't cheating on her husband.

Do they realize, I MADE THE CHARACTER UP? I must have had 10 people tell me the husband was naive and accepted his wife's explanation too easily?

Since the story ran and most who are going to read it already read it, I can now tell the "surprise" ending.

I just can't believe there are those who can not understand, the characters in our stories are created by us, their actions are what we say they are.

Yeeeeesh!

You're writing in a category that they don;t want to understand. They assume the worst and run with it.

Look at it this way though, you have to have done a good job to get them all riled up. There are times Infamy serves better than fame

 

[Etaski]

*applause*

(estragon and lovecraft68 both said what I wanted to)

Good work!

 

[nakdsub]

I guess if you look at it like that but...

sometimes my forehead get sore from me hitting it with my open hand. Yeeeesh!

 

[CWatson]

Buddy, here's the single problem with your story:

cheat

This is a hot-button topic for a lot of Lit readers. Write about it and and one demographic will jump down your throat for glorifying such a horrible, marriage-ending, traumatic thing, and others will complain that you didn't make it hot enough. If your story contains the following activity:

cheat

it will not receive a fair hearing. Period.

(Yes, readers are morons, why do you ask?)

 

[nakdsub]

Believe me, I would never ever

glorify the act of cheating!!!!! I have never done that in any of my stories. My last story, however, had NO cheating, only the misconception of cheating.

It was that fact that some readers would not accept.

They tell me I am naive if I really believe she wasn't cheating?

 

[CWatson]

My point exactly. The topic just has to exist in your story for everyone to explode into a froth of anger. What the story says or is actually about becomes largely irrelevant.

 

[sr71plt]

I put variations of sanctiond cheating in two of my stories and they did OK in LW. Very few negative comments.

 

[PennLady]

Everyone's right about cheating as a hot-button topic. My second story, "Guilt," was about a guy who'd cheated on his girlfriend, regretted it and wanted to apologize. Almost all of my feedback was torn -- people were mad about the cheating, and were glad he was sorry but were divided about whether she should take him back.

Keep in mind, this was one where the guy cheated. If it had been the woman, I'm sure the comments would have had a lot more vitriol.

 

[lovecraft68]

Everyone's right about cheating as a hot-button topic. My second story, "Guilt," was about a guy who'd cheated on his girlfriend, regretted it and wanted to apologize. Almost all of my feedback was torn -- people were mad about the cheating, and were glad he was sorry but were divided about whether she should take him back.

Keep in mind, this was one where the guy cheated. If it had been the woman, I'm sure the comments would have had a lot more vitriol.

I know there is no logic over there in the LW category, but isn't cheating what is to be expected over there? If it were literally loving dedicated wives and Husbands the stories would be in EC.

I find it amazing that these people get upset at these stories, but are drawn to them like moths to a flame.

My pet theory is it secretly turned some of them on to have their wives cheat and they can;t get enough stories about it. Then they get mad, their turned on and blame the author.

 

[nakdsub]

Here's an example;

Now you have to understand, this is a story where the wife absolutely, under no circumstances, cheated on her husband. I thought it would be a nice change of pace to actually write a story about a loving wife for the loving wives category. Okay?

Here is the last comment I just received on my story.

"the moral to the story is
when you have some information - do some more investigation before you spill the beans. the bitch will duck and cover until you get all secure and then make a fucking cuckold of you again."

Not only that, they have killed me in the scoring.

I really thought I wrote a story the trolls would even like because it contained, "fidelity" instead of "infidelity." I guess you just can't please them no matter what.

 

[CWatson]

I guess you just can't please them no matter what.

Exactly. They don't want to be pleased. They just want a chance to throw a tantrum and hear their own voices.

It's too bad. One could write any manner of interesting, thought-provoking and even sexy stories about infidelity. But they'll never be seen here.

(Though... I suppose one could counter-troll by posting a story that claims to have infidelity in it but actually, by content, does not. Then all the screamers would get up in arms and you could totally have a PR field day. Hmm... )

 

[Darkniciad]

Been there, done that. Didn't reveal that the "stranger" she was screwing was actually her husband until the final few paragraphs.

The score isn't the greatest ( High 4.3s ) but the comments are overwhelmingly positive.

There are actually quite a few bait-n-switch stories like that in LW. They're usually received pretty well, from what I've seen.

My actual cheating story is scoring higher ( Mid 4.5s ) and tops it on every other stat as well. A few more negative comments, but the positive ones outweigh those by a fair margin as well.

Honestly think it snuck in under the radar because of the length, though. Short attention spans in LW.

 

[RedHairedandFriendly]

I had one reader send me a flaming email yelling at me for allowing the neighbors to put their noses in their friend's business! How dare they and they had no right to do that and if they had friends like that they would distance themselves from them.

 

[nakdsub]

The best one was the...

death threat I received because I had the nerve to write a story where the couple reconciled after she cheated on him.

 

[sr71plt]

Before you all unload the entire truck on folks who react badly to cheating on spouses, that's a pretty legitimate "not good" activity in the real world. There are some who expect adherence to a declaration of commitment to be a good thing. Yes, it's weird for readers to take fictional stories about it as hard as many of the commenters in LW wives do, but it's also a little crazy to just keep writing the stories that set them off, posting them to LW, and then coming to the forum time and time (and time and time) again to complain about how the stories are received.

 

[RedHairedandFriendly]

death threat I received because I had the nerve to write a story where the couple reconciled after she cheated on him.

I got a death threat once too as well as an email telling me that my daughters were abominations and I should die along with them as well.

 

[Bellatrixie]

Ironically my highest rated (and my only story with an "h" on it lol has cheating implied. I mention her husband in the story and she is fucking a tradesman so yeah she's cheating. It's an audio story though so it isn't in a cheating category so maybe that is the difference?

 

[CarlusMagnus]

I guess you just can't please them no matter what.

But you did please them. You gave them exactly what they're looking for: Someone to troll.

 

[Dagwood_B]

The fact that readers feel they know your characters better than you do? In my last story, the wife DID NOT cheat on her husband. He jumped to conclusions and thought she cheated only to find it was a misunderstanding.

You can't believe how many people wrote me telling I didn't know what I was talking about, there was no way she wasn't cheating on her husband.

Do they realize, I MADE THE CHARACTER UP? I must have had 10 people tell me the husband was naive and accepted his wife's explanation too easily?

Since the story ran and most who are going to read it already read it, I can now tell the "surprise" ending.

I just can't believe there are those who can not understand, the characters in our stories are created by us, their actions are what we say they are.

Yeeeeesh!

Good Job! When the reader gets so involved in the story they start telling the author what the characters are really doing, then you know you have gotten inside the readers head. The goal of every fiction writer is to create a fantasy so real that the reader becomes emotionally involved. When that happens, you know that you have a good story.

 

[jane marwood]

I got a death threat once too as well as an email telling me that my daughters were abominations and I should die along with them as well.

Being relatively new here, I have only just realised that readers, or perhaps none readers, seem prone to some form of attack. Whether it be an assault on your score, or just anonymous rude comment.
I admit that I write within such a narrow genre that it is sexually atypical for the vast majority of readers. So I would have presumed that they would abandon the story and read something else. But it seems that the author has to be punished for having the temerity to write such a story. Rather disappointing after the effort of getting it posted.

 

[sr71plt]

Yes, that will happen to anything you post on the Internet.

 

[Cruel2BKind]

...

I believe this thread is the reason I will NEVER submit a story to LW

There are others, sure. Like women being icky to write about, and the fact that every story I write is (eventually) about a loving sweet couple that doesn't have fidelity problems, but this thread is the reason I will never try to experiment