Revisiting your first story

[lovecraft68]

Organizing my badly disorganized folders and stumbled upon the doc for my first lit story. I opened it and... but I read through anyway and found it to be an interesting experience.

So got the idea for this thread. Post the link to your first story(or don't) and discuss it a little. What's the difference now and then? What have you learned? Would you do anything different? How was it received here...pretty much whatever you want to share about it.

 

[oggbashan]

My first Lit story? I posted several at once that had been in existence for some years before I found Literotica.

The main one was The Bridesmaids' Revenge. I couldn't and wouldn't write like that now. Two stinkers, related to that story, are Stag Party and Hen Party. For years I had intended to revise both significantly because they are badly flawed. Now I prefer to leave them as they were written to remind me why I don't write like that now.

My first ever erotic story had been significantly recast and rewritten but it is beyond redemption. I have used some of the ideas in it for later, better, stories but it had too much technical explanation, too little sex and some of that started far too early for Literotica. I had intended the early sex to be justification for why the characters behaved as adults but that early sex was too detailed. My excuse? It was my first erotic story and started long before Literotica existed. The first full draft dated back to 1986. The revised and finally abandoned draft was completed as far as it went in 1990.

There are other later stories that I ought to revise or delete. I won't. They are failed experiments but a few people like them as they are.

I can still write poor stories. But often I don't know whether a story works or not until it is posted. There are a few that I wasn't happy about when I hit the submit button yet they seem acceptable to some readers. There are others that I like but have low ratings.

What do I know? I only write the stuff.

 

[lovecraft68]

Almost Perfect 5/13/2010 category BDSM

Tag line A young man's attempt to please his Mistress falls short.

https://www.literotica.com/s/almost-perfect-2

First off....the title should have been "As far from Perfect as humanly possible"

Main thing: Grammar which is all but non existent. I'd been writing a couple months before I unleashed this gem upon literotica and it shows. I cringed when I read this. lack of punctuation, wrong punctuation, too many began and started and just...blech from a technical writing standpoint.

The biggest thing I take away from it is though I still need to work on it, compared to this story I look like a damn scholar now

On the plus side my strength has always been dialogue and painting a vivid picture as well as generally being able to tell a story. I see all three in their infant stages here and even then were the best parts of the story-in this one I'd say the dialogue was saving grace.

The story was received fairly well. It got very few votes and comments being in BDSM and me being brand new. But it had an H for awhile and the three comments it initially got-and that I was so excited to see-were positive in general.

As for what I see about it in the 'now'. The score is 4.12(soon to be lower posting the link I'm sure) and is my second lowest, but really the first because my horrible 2.88 is an LW flamer.

I think the score is a mix of legit low votes as the stories grammar was maddening and troll votes. Seeing it starts with an A its the first to get hit by serial trolls and having a low vote total 1's do quick damage.

One thing that stands out to me is I think if I posted it now-even a better written version-it would get flamed. Why?

Well if Ogg wanders through he can confirm this, but this story is femdom. The woman is the 'velvet dom' type. No bondage or whips or pain, just uses her body and the promise of it to keep her young lover enthralled and in line, serving her and hoping for a reward.

In 2010 it seemed that didn't set people off too much. But now? The LW trolls have come to life and they have devolved over the last few years and have spilled out of LW and light up any story featuring women not only cheating, but in any form of control or being...well anything but a submissive meek little woman.

If published now I'd get "Jeff was a fucking faggot and..." "If I were Jeff I'd have beat the shit out of Allison and raped her dead." "The author must be a real cuck to write this..." you get the point.

That's the biggest take I found I have on it, that a few years ago the readers seemed nicer and the 'real men' hadn't taken over yet.

Side note "Allison Saunders" is also featured on the other end of things, haing to submit in "The Breaking of Allison"

She went on to become "The Lady Pandora" of my BDSM group the Circle and has featured in several e-books. Almost perfect was rewritten three years ago and used in the full length novel "Welcome to the Circle"

So what started as crap written on a whim became...slightly less crappy stuff I've made a few dollars on.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Lol. My first here is a little awkward and clunky, but the wheels still go around even if they're not fully round. It betrays my signature traits - poetic wankerdom and mystical moments - but I do those better now. It went down ok with readers, holds a score of 4:34 off 111 votes. I've not read it for quite some time now. It's like an old paperback on a shelf, dusty but still readable if the inclination is there.

Curiously, my whole story file creeps forwards in terms of views at a roughly linear rate, which ramps up when I publish something new then falls back to its steady state. Nothing has stalled completely - it's a bit like reverse entropy, a curious thing. Shows people are reading away in the background.

 

[lovecraft68]

Lol. My first here is a little awkward and clunky, but the wheels still go around even if they're not fully round. It betrays my signature traits - poetic wankerdom and mystical moments - but I do those better now. It went down ok with readers, holds a score of 4:34 off 111 votes. I've not read it for quite some time now. It's like an old paperback on a shelf, dusty but still readable if the inclination is there.

Curiously, my whole story file creeps forwards in terms of views at a roughly linear rate, which ramps up when I publish something new then falls back to its steady state. Nothing has stalled completely - it's a bit like reverse entropy, a curious thing. Shows people are reading away in the background.

I remember reading Rope and Veil. Hadn't really looked at your entire page, you've written quite a bit. How is that Library series going? Good feedback?

 

[My I]

First story I posted here (Under my original acct) Was Weekend in the Mountains. It was actually a compilation of 4 stories that I re-wrote changing the perspective and I read through it considering re-posting it. It was then that I realized just how far I have come as an author.

As in ANY art form, as we work we grow and mature as an artist. Looking back might make you cringe at first but it is the only way to measure the advancement. If your latest story reads like your first, your journey is equivalent to walking in circles...

... in your bathtub.

 

[A_Little_Show]

My oldest story that's still on Literotica is https://www.literotica.com/s/the-show-must-go-on-2. It has also become my most popular story.

I wrote it in a hotel room in Gatlinburg TN while on family vacation. We couldn't watch TV or make any noise in the evenings because the kids were overtired and wouldn't go to sleep with distractions. I wrote to entertain myself. It took a few hours per night for about five nights, plus I stayed in the hotel alone for a few hours while everyone else visited the Upside Down Museum.

My first erotic stories were written while on a two week Alaskan cruise with my father. The average age of passengers on the ship was at least 60. Most dining room tables were adorned by oxygen tanks and walkers or wheel chairs. The food was institutional blah with a side of tasteless gray sauce. If a kind Indonesian waiter hadn't taken pity on me and provided some hot pepper sauce from his private stash, I would have jumped overboard. I'm convinced every item of food came out of the cheap section of the freezer isle at a 1970s grocery store. The ship's lights were turned off and everything closed at 10:00 PM every day, so I'd hide in the deserted lounges and write. If you ever want a taste of being trapped in a nursing home full of people who were dull in their prime, book a cruise on the Amsterdam. The stories I wrote on the cruise don't conform to Literotica requirements, or I would have posted them.

I'm a university professor, and I had already written three very successful/popular technical/textbooks before I ever attempted erotica. I thought I was a good writer, but I found out how much more challenging fiction can be than non-fiction. I had never written dialog before. None of my high school, college, or professional writing experiences ever required dialog. Even the creative writing course I took at about age 14 didn't include any dialog writing. I find dialog challenging, and I'm proud that I am getting much better at it now.

~~~~~~~

My father wrote erotica professionally in the 1980s and early 90s. His stories were published as pulp anthologies that were sold in airports and newsstands. His publisher would send lists of fetishes to him and paid 3 to 6 cents per word. My father usually received a box of his printed books when they came out, so they were laying around the house. As a naive but nosy teenager, I learned about all kinds of unusual kinks that way. I most remember a story my dad wrote about a woman whose hands and feet were hooves, and she ran free with the wild horses. When she had sex, she required her partners to mount her like the herd stallion who she secretly craved, but he couldn't be bothered by a mere human.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Organizing my badly disorganized folders and stumbled upon the doc for my first lit story. I opened it and... but I read through anyway and found it to be an interesting experience.

So got the idea for this thread. Post the link to your first story(or don't) and discuss it a little. What's the difference now and then? What have you learned? Would you do anything different? How was it received here...pretty much whatever you want to share about it.

I told you it sucked and you been pissed ever since then.

I learn shit every day. Mostly I learn most writers are inept and mediocre. Especially the best sellers. But occasionally I discover something like, prose should flow and elicit emotions as music does. The prose should play your feelings like a piano.

 

[SimonDoom]

What I remember is that my first published Literotica story wasn't the one that was supposed to be first.

I had been working on "In the Hallway" for a while. I meant for it to be my first story. But as I got close to the end I got bogged down. I was nearing the end, but I couldn't quite bring it to a finish.

Then I stumbled across the announcement regarding the Winter Holiday story contest. The deadline was only two days away.

The idea for "The Holiday Party" came from somewhere, in an instant, and I decided to stop working on my other story and work on the holiday story, instead. I started early in the morning, maybe around 5 a.m., and I finished the first draft in a little over two hours. I think it came easier because I didn't take it too seriously. It was a silly story about a guy who met a horny elf at a Christmas party.

The next day I spent maybe an hour or so editing, spell-checking, and revising, and I submitted it before the deadline, barely.

Getting that story done made it easier for me to turn back to In The Hallway and to get it done and submit it as my second Lit story a few days later.

 

[CharlieB4]

My first story, The Anniversary Weekend, (https://www.literotica.com/s/the-anniversary-weekend-1)

Looking back it's badly written with dodgy editing, cliched and actually pretty silly. Not much has changed.

 

[NotWise]

My first story was only a year and a half ago, so there isn't a lot of retrospective to be had. I wrote A necessary Seduction as an exercise to see if I could actually finish a story. Two of my three pre-literotica stories started out as shorts and expanded into a novel and a novella. I just couldn't stop myself.

I learned from it, though. I learned some about editorial standards and I'm still learning. I learned that scene changes need to be clearly marked. I learned that people are willing to correct my characters' grammar in dialog.

For me it is more interesting to go back to my pre-Lit stories. The one I finished just before signing on here is not Lit material because it has underage content. It also has some terrible editing. It was personally important for me to write it but I don't think there's anything in the story that I'll ever recycle.

My first story started as a short and ended as a large novel. The story line wandered all over the place; I had a wealth of ideas and they all went into the story whether they belonged there or not. The story itself was lost to a disc crash, but a lot of the ideas live on in my memory. "Oscar's Place" (linked in my sig) was a rewritten from that story and the idea of inherited memory in "A Valentine's Day Mess" started in that story.

The first seven or so submissions for "Unlikely Angels" (also linked in my sig) were written before Lit and submitted without any editing. They could use editing but I don't think anyone has commented on it. They also contain my idea of "keeping the readers connected to the place." I like the idea a lot, but it doesn't seem to be so important now.

I think what I've learned most importantly that I'm an inexperienced writer. I have a lot to learn and I need to write more to learn it.

 

[lovecraft68]

My first story was only a year and a half ago, so there isn't a lot of retrospective to be had. I wrote it as an exercise to see if I could actually finish a story. Two of my three pre-literotica stories started out as shorts and expanded into a novel and a novella. I just couldn't stop myself.

I learned from it, though. I learned some about editorial standards and I'm still learning. I learned that scene changes need to be clearly marked. I learned that people are willing to correct my characters' grammar in dialog.

For me it is more interesting to go back to my pre-Lit stories. The one I finished just before signing on here is not Lit material because it has underage content. It also has some terrible editing. It was personally important for me to write it but I don't think there's anything in the story that I'll ever recycle.

My first story started as a short and ended as a large novel. The story line wandered all over the place; I had a wealth of ideas and they all went into the story whether they belonged there or not. The story itself was lost to a disc crash, but a lot of the ideas live on in my memory. "Oscar's Place" (linked in my sig) was a rewritten from that story and the idea of inherited memory in "A Valentine's Day Mess" started in that story.

The first seven or so submissions for "Unlikely Angels" (also linked in my sig) were written before Lit and submitted without any editing. They could use editing but I don't think anyone has commented on it. They also contain my idea of "keeping the readers connected to the place." I like the idea a lot, but it doesn't seem to be so important now.

I think what I've learned most importantly that I'm an inexperienced writer. I have a lot to learn and I need to write more to learn it.

At this point I've been writing 7 years and your last line still applies.

 

[TxRad]

The first thing I ever wrote wasn't the first thing I posted to Lit. The first thing I wrote is now posted here, all twenty chapters.Sweet and Spicy Horny Toads Ch. 01 Lots of edits have gone into it over the years. Short choppy sentences that would have made Hemingway proud was the main thing.

It started out as a short story about a memory on a boring day. The boring day was when i started writing it, not when the story started. In fact where the story originally started is now chapter three or four. Over all it got totally out of control from personal experience but still held some semblance of order. It has been edited by a very competent editor but i haven't had the time to do any updates. Maybe one day.

The first story i posted was.... Blindmans Bluff January of '05. Wow, has it only been that long? I've learned so much over the years. Funny thing is, some of my old stories show this lack of learning and others don't. I think it had to do with forcing a story over a story that flowed on its own.

A popular author of that time had an ongoing series by the same name when i posted mine. Being the newbie, I had no idea what was going on but i heard about it until enough people read mine. I also changed the title from Blind Man's to Blindman's. A purposeful misspelling to get the two stories apart.

Favorites 14, views 67.6k, score 4.77 on 453 votes, 24 comments. The comments make this story one of my all time favorites.

 

[_Lynn_]

My first stories posted ten years ago. Before then, I never wrote anything. I didn't have any interest in writing, either. The first pieces suck. Most of them didn't even meet the minimum word count requirement. If I remember right, they were originally around five hundred words. Despite that, the feedback wasn't bad.

Since then, I've learned a great deal. And although I still write erotica, my best work is non-erotic.

 

[sr71plt]

The first story I posted to Literotica, in July 2006, was the two-part Ranger Guided series (https://www.literotica.com/s/ranger-guided), only recently launched to the marketplace. It wasn’t the first erotica story I wrote, though, and I’d posted to other erotic Web sites before coming to Literotica.


http://www.bookstrand.com/files/books/thumbs/rangerguidedhbse250x350x72161029_102099150.jpg


The first erotica story I wrote is at Literotica in some form, though. It’s the first chapter, “On the Trunk of a Car” (https://www.literotica.com/s/house-on-park-ch-01), of the series House on Park, published first to the marketplace and later, in 2008, here at Literotica.


http://www.bookstrand.com/files/books/thumbs/houseonparkhbsecover250x350x72graymerged130526_082999150.jpg


The first erotica story written unfolded as a scene in a mainstream mystery novel I was writing (and was published), where I was writing along and it got out of hand and two characters had sex on the trunk of a Pontiac convertible. I had to excise the scene from that book, but it encouraged me to start writing erotica.

 

[Kantarii]

I'll deviate a little from the guidelines. My first storyline here was "My Brother's Ghost". The only thing I can say I ever did to that storyline was remove it from EROTIC HORROR and put it into Non Human.

Now, chapter 1 of "A Slut's Triangle" has been deleted, edited, reedited, and trolled more than any other chapter I have written for this site. I am proud of that chapter as it defined my love affair with first person writing. It also set the tone for me to explore a heavily dialogue driven storyline that gives the reader a greater understanding of who I am as a person, where I have been and where I have progressed as a person. It tells bits and pieces of my life experiences, personal information, thoughts and fantasies, etc.

Overall, I am pleased with how Chapter 1 finally turned out. Would I do anything different? I probably should have posted the entire storyline in Erotic Couplings instead of Transexuals & Cross Dessers. Not many people in that category appreciate a good story. It's a category filled with people that think a Transgender's life is centered on fantasy, porn and expect all the stories posted there to be as such.

I'm a human being, not a sex object of fantasy and the entire storyline tries to convey that.
--------
https://www.literotica.com/s/a-sluts-triangle-pt-01

---------

 

[Areala-chan]

https://www.literotica.com/s/best-friends-18

There it is, the first story I published on Lit all the way back in January of 2003, originally written in 1999 when I was still in college. 1 page, lesbian angst-y as all hell, and while I read it and see a thousand cringe-worthy things I'd like to think I've grown past in the intervening fourteen years, I still like it for what it is: an attempt by a young woman to try and understand who and what she was in the aftermath of four very confusing years in high school.

Still, 10 favorites, 48,000 reads, 4.11 rating with 105 total votes? Yeah, I'll take that any day of the week. I've written much better since then, it's the lowest-rated piece I have here, but this one is easily the most personal and it'll always have a special place in my heart.

 

[NotWise]

https://www.literotica.com/s/best-friends-18

I read it (actually, I skipped the sex because that's almost never the story) and it seems to me like a very good start. It's all about story telling, isn't it?

 

[Areala-chan]

It's all about story telling, isn't it?

It is indeed. I love when I read a good story that still works if you remove the sex. You can't do that with all of mine, but I still find it a goal to strive towards.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I remember reading Rope and Veil. Hadn't really looked at your entire page, you've written quite a bit. How is that Library series going? Good feedback?

My Library series is my shaggy dog yarn, that morphed and evolved as I wrote. It introduced a major plot twist half way through with a whole 'nother set of characters who had to be bolted onto the first set. Time travel, dontcha know, comes in handy - I had a Mr Welles help me out there. It is fully resolved, thank God. I reckon a loyal set of readers had settled in by chap 3 or 4 who stuck through to the end. I think I can tell how many went back and read a chapter twice, by the anomalies in the number of views. Filthy bastards, they just go back and read the best sex bits

Not huge amounts of feedback on that one. EH readers are shy and retiring, I think - although one person did confess that they had NEVER left a comment in their life, but the story inspired them to do so, so that was quite touching.

Commentary wise my best collections are the Rope and Veil series, Sisters #2 pleased some folk, and Floating World #1 worked way better than I expected.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I deleted 108 stories when I became NOIRTRASH.

I've always treated LIT like a sketch-pad more than an exhibit, because I mastered the art of kill your darlings long ago. I recall my first LIT story but it was nuthin worth remembering. Better stuff is at my PAPERBACKWRITER account.

 

[NotWise]

It is indeed. I love when I read a good story that still works if you remove the sex. You can't do that with all of mine, but I still find it a goal to strive towards.

I do like to read stories where the plot isn't a weak setup for more sex, but my stories are usually a little different. A lot of them (even going back to my first pre-Lit story) have events during sex that are important to the plot. If the reader skips the sex they won't know how they got where they are when it's over.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

LIT is the only place I know of where writers start off perfect and get better, right LOVE CRAFT?

 

[sr71plt]

LIT is the only place I know of where writers start off perfect and get better, right LOVE CRAFT?

You couldn't leave an interesting nonconfrontational writing thread alone, could you?

 

[TxRad]

You couldn't leave an interesting nonconfrontational writing thread alone, could you?

He never can. It is always, hey look at me. Too bad all the crap he posted here as JBJ got deleted. His total ignorance of writing shined through like a diamond in a goats ass.