Stories That Aren't Fun

[Bebop3]

I'm not overly concerned about ratings. I've written two stories that were experiments, I thought that they would tank, I published them, they tanked.

I'm working on a new story and I'm running into a different situation. It's not an experiment, it's written as well as some of the other stuff I've published, but it's a bleak, dark story.

I'm relatively sure that, regardless of quality, it's going to tank because there's no happy endings. It starts bleak and it ends bleak.

Has anyone had any experience with publishing something like that? Can quality of writing get you through the lack of happy resolutions?

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Just went through something like that. Much of Dickens was pretty bleak, yet it was good literature.

So, in answer to your last question, yes. It beats the heck out of "Don't Worry, Be Happy!"

 

[BiscuitHammer]

It SHOULD be able to...

Buuuuuut, I find that's asking a little too much of the general locusts and consumers of free erotica who live on this site. Like angry baby birds, they demand to be fed, but also have a strain of finicky cat in them. If they don't like what you serve, no matter how artfully, they'll crap in your shoe for it.

Straight up, though. If you're not concerned about ratings, publish it dammit. I'm surely lots of Greeks screamed at Sophocles about the dismal ending of Oedipus Rex, but that doesn't mean it wasn't damned brilliant and worthy of appreciation by anyone with two neurons to rub together.

*re-reads*

Jeebus, I sound more and more like Dethklok every time I talk about the fans/readers here...

Go for it, dude. Just do it because it's the right thing to do.

 

[JasonClearwater]

I'm not overly concerned about ratings. I've written two stories that were experiments, I thought that they would tank, I published them, they tanked.

I'm working on a new story and I'm running into a different situation. It's not an experiment, it's written as well as some of the other stuff I've published, but it's a bleak, dark story.

I'm relatively sure that, regardless of quality, it's going to tank because there's no happy endings. It starts bleak and it ends bleak.

Has anyone had any experience with publishing something like that? Can quality of writing get you through the lack of happy resolutions?

My personal experience is that what I think of as my best writing (For Destruction, Ice), which is my darkest, is the least popular. It has a high score, but low reads, and low numbers of votes (5600 views in six months, 19 votes, score 4.79 after sweeps).

So, it depends on what you mean by 'tank'. Very few people finish this story and vote, but the scores are okay.

But then, we're all writing in different categories, with different styles, catering to different audiences.

 

[NotWise]

If there's a whole lot of humpin' going on then maybe it doesn't make a difference whether it's dark or not. If it's low on sex I suspect that the readers may not care for dark and darker.

 

[nosebone]

If there's a whole lot of humpin' going on then maybe it doesn't make a difference whether it's dark or not. If it's low on sex I suspect that the readers may not care for dark and darker.

Agreed. Lack of sex lowers scores as much as anything, IMO.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I'm not overly concerned about ratings. I've written two stories that were experiments, I thought that they would tank, I published them, they tanked.

I'm working on a new story and I'm running into a different situation. It's not an experiment, it's written as well as some of the other stuff I've published, but it's a bleak, dark story.

I'm relatively sure that, regardless of quality, it's going to tank because there's no happy endings. It starts bleak and it ends bleak.

Has anyone had any experience with publishing something like that? Can quality of writing get you through the lack of happy resolutions?

My Fall and Rise ends on a high note, but many of the individual chapters do not, and the lowest rated chapter is a 4.47. Chapter 12, which is pretty damn grim all the way through, has a 4.77.

I just think you write what you feel the need to write and do the best you can.

 

[Blind_Justice]

Agreed. Lack of sex lowers scores as much as anything, IMO.

...depends heavily on category. Sci-Fi/Fantasy has more than enough stories/chapters with little to no sex and still high ratings. I can vouch for that. Several chapters of "Ghost in the Machine" have no boinking, and "The Faceless Executioner" has very little, relative to it's length.

As for dark&dreary vs. ratings: Again, depends on category. Many people in Romance practically demand HEA endings while - from what I've read - the LW crowd demands justice by tormenting, breaking and ending the unfaithful party in the most heinous and drastic manner possible.

Don't worry about the votes though. Write the story how it wants to be told, post it and be surprised. There are readers out here for everything. Just make sure to place as many fitting tags as possible.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Has anyone had any experience with publishing something like that? Can quality of writing get you through the lack of happy resolutions?

In short, yes. Take a look at a couple of mind. Welcome to Nockatunga Station was a pretty bleak ending I think. Eaten alive from the inside out. Scored okay. The other one I'd say was bleak is Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow and that was just a downward spiral.

So maybe it depends on categories of bleak too.

 

[KindofHere]

.................

 

[SamScribble]

We need to remind ourselves (occasionally) that this e-storybook is for readers not writers.

Within reason, the lovely Laurel lets us publish pretty much what we like; but that doesn't mean that everything we publish is guaranteed a high readership or a high approval rating. Literary quality is a foreign notion to the majority of Lit readers.

If you want to write something a bit gloomy but well written, go ahead. Just don't look at the scoreboard.

Good luck.

 

[Captainnumnuts]

I'm not overly concerned about ratings. I've written two stories that were experiments, I thought that they would tank, I published them, they tanked.

I'm working on a new story and I'm running into a different situation. It's not an experiment, it's written as well as some of the other stuff I've published, but it's a bleak, dark story.

I'm relatively sure that, regardless of quality, it's going to tank because there's no happy endings. It starts bleak and it ends bleak.

Has anyone had any experience with publishing something like that? Can quality of writing get you through the lack of happy resolutions?

I'm doing something like that. While I'm not new to writing, I am new to taking it seriously and now looking into the publishing aspect of it.

 

[RetroFan]

My most recent story, a romance story called 'Learning to Love Louise' is a three tissue box story, but readers loved it despite being so sad, or maybe because it was so sad?

The last three stories I have written; the one above, a lesbian story between two young women who had very difficult childhoods (one a victim of serious physical and emotional abuse, the other having suffered from polio) and a Christmas story about the destruction of the Australian city of Darwin by Cyclone Tracy in 1974 are all quite serious stories (although with some comedy thrown in to lighten them a bit) and readers loved them, all having plenty of views, high scores and positive comments.

There definitely is demand on Literotica for sad and serious stories.

 

[BiscuitHammer]

My most recent story, a romance story called 'Learning to Love Louise' is a three tissue box story, but readers loved it despite being so sad, or maybe because it was so sad?

There definitely is demand on Literotica for sad and serious stories.

If you can effectively write sad, you're a better man than I am, Gunga-Din. Pretty sure I suck at it.

 

[RetroFan]

If you can effectively write sad, you're a better man than I am, Gunga-Din. Pretty sure I suck at it.

Nicholas Sparks has made a pretty handy living at writing sad stories, such as A Walk to Remember, The Notebook and At First Sight among others.

For the most part I write comedy, but given the positive feedback to my most recent works, perhaps I should write more sad stories.

For the 'Learning To Love Louise' story, one thing I found worked was listening to sad songs as I was writing it. It's like when I write stories that are set in the past (the majority of my work has a past setting) I'll listen to music I like from that era. That tactic may not work for other writers, but it does work for me.

 

[BiscuitHammer]

Nicholas Sparks has made a pretty handy living at writing sad stories, such as A Walk to Remember, The Notebook and At First Sight among others.

For the most part I write comedy, but given the positive feedback to my most recent works, perhaps I should write more sad stories.

For the 'Learning To Love Louise' story, one thing I found worked was listening to sad songs as I was writing it. It's like when I write stories that are set in the past (the majority of my work has a past setting) I'll listen to music I like from that era. That tactic may not work for other writers, but it does work for me.

Comedy/humour is my bailiwick, no question. I could possibly write a tragic, or pathos, story, but not sad in the conventional sense we normally mean it.

And yeah, period music is huge with me. I wrote a few chapters in one of my stories taking place in 17th century France, and I had baroque and proto-opera playing pretty much constantly.

And the Goblin City Chase music from Labyrinth, but we won't delve into that...

If I tried to watch something sad, so that I could write sad, I'd just end up too sad to write. I guess I suck at sad writing.

That makes me sad...

 

[oggbashan]

I wrote this story when the Erotic Horror category was introduced:

https://www.literotica.com/s/donna-1

It is bleak.

 

[Gentleman_G]

I guess I suck at sad writing.

If you suck at sad writing, make your storytelling sad. Put your characters through the wringer and make them feel anxious and depressed. Kind of like the separation in your story. That made me feel sad. Well, for a while. You didn't even manage that for an entire chapter

As for me, anxiety works wonders. I mean, I love characters that doubt themselves and need to rediscover their own identity, their own ethics. My own story, botched as it is, tries that too. I imagine that readers like that too, if they're not hung up on jacking off, of course. But then they shouldn't read my stories in the first place

 

[BiscuitHammer]

If you suck at sad writing, make your storytelling sad. Put your characters through the wringer and make them feel anxious and depressed. Kind of like the separation in your story. That made me feel sad. Well, for a while. You didn't even manage that for an entire chapter

You've met my characters, I don't wanna do that to them. They're swell people! ;_;

 

[Hypoxia]

I tend to start some tales bleakly but brighten them up later. A bleak ending should be a twist.

 

[member9458]

I don't know if this has much bearing on the conversation at hand, because I don't really traffic in bleak storytelling. But I wrote one story, Stay Sweet, that dealt with a domestic abuse victim and the guy she used to babysit (he grew up, obviously) falling for each other. Now I had read stories like this before, and I always felt the guy in these scenarios tended to be a little, you know, patronizing? In his attempts to woo the girl. So I wanted to go the other way, show a guy who really liked this girl, but also knew that the right thing to do was to probably give her space and not pressure her. Of course, the twist was that she really liked him a lot and was going to do most of the pressuring.

I want to be clear: Even though I scored well, I think I could've done a lot better, and I got a lot of decent, well-meaning feedback to that effect. But other replies to the final chapter were pretty telling: "I hate psychobabble." "Too much angst and introspection." And my favorite, "He is a cuck in waiting." And this was listed under Romance, where you'd think readers would be conditioned to slow burns and character drama!

Again, I'm sure some of it's on me for not selling the drama well enough, but I really do think a strong contingent of LE readers want their fuck scenes, want them now, and want them without complications.

 

[weftandwarp]

I think a good writer has an agility with which they can write on many subjects in many ways. It has to be developed. If it is absent the work becomes boring to both write and read. It also helps to have some direction or purpose to the writing, building a foundation with nothing to put on it makes no sense. So, if the difficult, unhappy stories can help build the writing abilities and there is a purpose to it, I think it is good. I find dark and depressing writing often breaks open humour which I treasure. Of all the categories that is the one most poorly done in my opinion.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I'm relatively sure that, regardless of quality, it's going to tank because there's no happy endings. It starts bleak and it ends bleak.

Has anyone had any experience with publishing something like that? Can quality of writing get you through the lack of happy resolutions?

I have one in EH where the protagonist freezes to death on a glacier after a fruitless search for her lover. It's done quite well, vote-wise, so I guess people found something in it. I did try to signal up front that this wasn't going to be a HEA.

 

[NotWise]

I have one in EH where the protagonist freezes to death on a glacier after a fruitless search for her lover. It's done quite well, vote-wise, so I guess people found something in it. I did try to signal up front that this wasn't going to be a HEA.

That reminds me of a novel I was made to read in college. It was written by a Professor at the University of Minnesota who was of Norwegian extraction, and it was intended to discourage Norwegian farmers from relocating to the US northern plains.

As I remember, It followed an immigrant family through the hardships of starting a farm in what is now eastern South Dakota, and ends in the winter when the wife (who goes crazy in the summer during a locust plague) falls ill and the husband puts on his cross-country skis to get help. He freezes to death. She dies. I think the kids may have survived, but I'm not sure.

Certainly, a good time was had by all.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I'm not overly concerned about ratings. I've written two stories that were experiments, I thought that they would tank, I published them, they tanked.

I'm working on a new story and I'm running into a different situation. It's not an experiment, it's written as well as some of the other stuff I've published, but it's a bleak, dark story.

I'm relatively sure that, regardless of quality, it's going to tank because there's no happy endings. It starts bleak and it ends bleak.

Has anyone had any experience with publishing something like that? Can quality of writing get you through the lack of happy resolutions?

I have written several of those...just lately. They just poured out of my fingers. I thought I did a good job on them, but there were still the keyboard professors out there, who by the way are writers themselves, complaining about he odd typo, etc. Even though their works have the same problems.

Anyway, comments were two to one against, although a lot more people still have them as favorites. And the funny thing...really funny...is the ending was happy...the couple stayed together. Correct...Loving Wives.