Ever totally messed up a story?

[EvelynEden]

So, I wanted to try my hand in the Voyeur/Exhibition category, with my story centering on the Voyeur side. I actually had an idea that really intrigued me, and I decided to write it for that category, I was actually pretty proud of it too and excited to share it- big mistake.

See I thought that I knew what this category entailed and stupidly went forth and conquered (well, not that last bit). I got the worst rating I have ever received on Lit and I was gobsmacked. A commenter kindly pointed out my wrongdoings and I just felt so silly. I really shouldn't have assumed to understand something that I didn't actually understand.

Oh well, live and learn. But, I was curious if anyone has had had a similar blunder- it doesn't have to be dependant on ratings or comments, even if it was just self-evident at some point. Could be that you didn't like the ending or maybe ended up despising the characters? Help ease my curious heart

 

[oggbashan]

I messed up my first erotic story written a long time ago on an IBM XT.

It would never have been suitable for Literotica since a major plot element is the sexual abuse the hero suffered as a child and his reaction to that as an adult.

It was about 10,000 words long when I decided on a major rewrite. I got to version five of the rewrite when I decided that the original version would be better. But the only version I still had of the original was on a 5.25 inch 360K floppy that was now corrupt. At the time my XT didn't have a hard drive. I have been unable to recover it.

I can't face rewriting again a story I could never post on Literotica. I have changed as a writer in the following twenty + years and I don't think I could rewrite it as it was, even if I wanted to.

 

[SimonDoom]

A few pieces of constructive criticism to help you get more responses to your posts:

1. Include a link to your submissions page in your posts, as others (myself included) do. This way it's easier for other contributors to get to your stories quickly to see what you're talking about.

2. Include a link to your submissions page in your public profile.

3. I.D. the story you're talking about, so we can follow your discussion better.

As for the substance of your post: the fact that you received negative comments doesn't necessarily mean you made a mistake. You wrote a story about male voyeurism. That's not wrong, or a mistake, but it's a less popular type of E&V story than one that focuses on exhibitionism, especially female exhibitionism (a subject I enjoy and write about often). I think the comments have a point that while your story is told from the point of the voyeur, it doesn't delve too deeply into his feelings and motivations. That would make it a more satisfying voyeur story. The story focuses more on the activities of those being watched.

I've written a few stories that received disapproving comments from readers that felt I included material that didn't belong in stories published in a certain category. I don't feel I made a mistake, and I wouldn't change what I did. I wrote a spoof BTB story that ended up being a cuckold story, with predictably harsh comments and the lowest grade I ever received, and I wouldn't change anything. I liked the story the way it was, found the comments amusing, and moved on. I've had readers of my incest stories complain about Anal content ("no mom would do that!") or too much exhibitionist activity (I like writing about exhibitionist moms so there's no way I'm going to take that content out).

What constitutes a mistake isn't necessarily determined by the category definitions or the peculiar tastes of your readers, so don't take the reaction too hard.

 

[beachbum1958]

One story I wrote stands out in this It was called 'The Art Of War' in the I/T category, and I thought it worked, I thought the readers would get the humour, I thought it was a good take on the Mom/Son/Sis triangle, with a twist, my editor thought it worked, and when it hit the site, what a barrage of shit came my way; if I'd written a story about virgin fawns being raped by werewolves in church it could hardly have gone down worse, and I still don't know why. The comments on the site were harsh enough, mostly of the 'get cancer and die', and 'your mother should have died of cancer the day after you were conceived, you limey prick' kidney, but the emails were horrifying, bordering on criminal and making of terroristic threats, stuff about my family, what they'd do to my wife if they caught her alone, what they were planning on doing to me, frightening stuff. Those got reported to Interpol and CIGN, the French version of the NSA, because I live in France, and making those kinds of threats electronically are a serious crime here, but the plain nasty ones I just had to delete and wait for the next one.

I still don't know what I did wrong, but the score at one point went down to 1.1; I could have just posted a blank page with my name on it and got a better score. After that fiasco I cut right back on what I was planning on posting to the site; gun-shy doesn't even come close, I was stunned, horrified, hurt beyond measure at such a vicious, vindictive barrage of hate, and I truly don't know what it was about the story that evoked such a hate-filled diatribe from so many (anon.) commentators. Guess I learned my lesson, so now maybe one or two stories per year are my planned output going forward, I'm not sure I have the strength to deal with that all over again. In fact, at some point soon I'll probably pull my stories and delete my account; life's too short to have to deal with this kind of nonsense.

 

[SimonDoom]

One story I wrote stands out in this It was called 'The Art Of War' in the I/T category, and I thought it worked, I thought the readers would get the humour, I thought it was a good take on the Mom/Son/Sis triangle, with a twist, my editor thought it worked, and when it hit the site, what a barrage of shit came my way; if I'd written a story about virgin fawns being raped by werewolves in church it could hardly have gone down worse, and I still don't know why. The comments on the site were harsh enough, mostly of the 'get cancer and die', and 'your mother should have died of cancer the day after you were conceived, you limey prick' kidney, but the emails were horrifying, bordering on criminal and making of terroristic threats, stuff about my family, what they'd do to my wife if they caught her alone, what they were planning on doing to me, frightening stuff. Those got reported to Interpol and CIGN, the French version of the NSA, because I live in France, and making those kinds of threats electronically are a serious crime here, but the plain nasty ones I just had to delete and wait for the next one.

I still don't know what I did wrong, but the score at one point went down to 1.1; I could have just posted a blank page with my name on it and got a better score. After that fiasco I cut right back on what I was planning on posting to the site; gun-shy doesn't even come close, I was stunned, horrified, hurt beyond measure at such a vicious, vindictive barrage of hate, and I truly don't know what it was about the story that evoked such a hate-filled diatribe from so many (anon.) commentators. Guess I learned my lesson, so now maybe one or two stories per year are my planned output going forward, I'm not sure I have the strength to deal with that all over again. In fact, at some point soon I'll probably pull my stories and delete my account; life's too short to have to deal with this kind of nonsense.

That's a bizarre and disturbing account, and it's especially surprising given your track record of success with your stories.

My impression is that humor often doesn't fly here. People like their erotica straight, and they don't know what to make of it mixed with humor. Obviously, not everyone is this way, but the reaction you describe is really extreme. The other thing is that some readers seem to have trouble distinguishing reality from fantasy. I hope you haven't experienced anything like that since.

 

[KeithD]

As for the substance of your post: the fact that you received negative comments doesn't necessarily mean you made a mistake.

This. Can't tell for sure, though, because you don't lead us back to the story in question.

 

[BelleCanzuto]

Evelyn - I think I read (or skimmed at least) the story you're referring to. The one about the motel owner? If that's the correct one, I think the comment you got on it was really trying to be helpful.

The last story I published has my worst score (by far), and I'm not entirely sure what went wrong. I have an idea, but I haven't gotten any kind of substantive feedback from readers of that fetish to know. I got one mean spirited and utterly useless comment to the effect that it was boring, but that person hadn't even read the whole first page. The comment got deleted by the mods.

So, yeah, I've definitely messed up a story. I've had what I thought was a great idea that didn't translate into words (apparently), and I've written other stories where people objected to the dynamic between the characters because I didn't portray that well enough.

Most of us are still learning how to write here. I think it's only natural to have some big misses along the way.

 

[Liethra]

One story I wrote stands out in this It was called 'The Art Of War' in the I/T category...

Gotta say, I'm really curious to see this story now, to see what it's all about. I suspect though, that you just ran afoul of some group that wanted to shit over someone thoroughly and completely. Because it really sounds like a coordinated harassment effort rather than something a bad story would cause. Really sucks that it stifled your spirit though. I honestly think it was just shit luck, rather than anything you did on your account of it.

To contribute to the thread topic; I'm too new to have really botched something here on Lit yet. The most relevant would be sending a smut story to a flirt (who wanted to read it), who was very turned off by the content of it. Kind of a kinky/primal text. It wasn't so much of a flirt anymore after that

 

[Erlikkhan]

One story I wrote stands out in this It was called 'The Art Of War' in the I/T category, and I thought it worked, I thought the readers would get the humour, I thought it was a good take on the Mom/Son/Sis triangle, with a twist, my editor thought it worked, and when it hit the site, what a barrage of shit came my way; if I'd written a story about virgin fawns being raped by werewolves in church it could hardly have gone down worse, and I still don't know why.

Don't feel bad. My story about virgin fawns being raped by werewolves didn't go over so well either, so I took it down. It would have been better if they had been lambs or, if instead of werewolves, the rapists had been minotaurs. Live and learn.

Hey, if you thought it was a good story and so did your editor, then fuck the idiots that didn't like it. You seem to be doing quite well with all your other efforts. Wish I could write like that. Keep up the good work!

 

[vanmyers86]

Screwing up is how we learn, unfortunately. I have any number of false starts in my files. All we can do is dust ourselves off, learn from the mistake, and try again.

As for negative comments, I have never experienced anything like BB1958 describes. That would intimidate me! In my journalism career, I had days where the nicest thing anyone called me was "fucking bitch," but those were pretty rare, and I learned quickly not to take it personally.

 

[Heartsongs]

Good advice

Screwing up is how we learn, unfortunately. I have any number of false starts in my files. All we can do is dust ourselves off, learn from the mistake, and try again.

As for negative comments, I have never experienced anything like BB1958 describes. That would intimidate me! In my journalism career, I had days where the nicest thing anyone called me was "fucking bitch," but those were pretty rare, and I learned quickly not to take it personally.

Very good advice here. If I would have got comments like BB1958 I probably would have left Lit faster than I took to sign up. Cruel comments are uncalled for period; but they seem to hurt more with this site being of free service. I have received negative comments mostly contradictory to positive comments, which is just a reminder of everyone's right to an opinion.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Yep, just recently too.

 

[ElectricBlue]

One story I wrote stands out in this It was called 'The Art Of War' in the I/T category, and I thought it worked, I thought the readers would get the humour, I thought it was a good take on the Mom/Son/Sis triangle, with a twist.

I'm intrigued to know what the twist was, because it must have had a sting in its tail to garner a response like that.

That aside, the only place for attempts at humour, I think, is in Humor and Satire. Trying to pull off too much overt humour in the mainstream categories is probably a fail from the start, because what's funny to me isn't funny to you, and don't even try to navigate culture differences.

But your twist... there's something not being told, here, I reckon.

 

[Blind_Justice]

I have written myself into a corner several times, most notably in the final chapters of "Ghost In The Machine". Totally fucked up some timeline issues in the build towards the finale and it took some inspired hacking and prayers the readers wouldn't notice.

"The Faceless Executioner" has been criticized for being too disjointed, too vague in some placez and much too graphic in others. I wouldn't say I royally messed it up, I'd instead go for "should have cooked a bit longer" instead. Even so, I'll take it as a lesson learned. Just because it makes perfect sense to me does not mean it's a good read.

 

[RetroFan]

That's a bizarre and disturbing account, and it's especially surprising given your track record of success with your stories.

My impression is that humor often doesn't fly here. People like their erotica straight, and they don't know what to make of it mixed with humor. Obviously, not everyone is this way, but the reaction you describe is really extreme. The other thing is that some readers seem to have trouble distinguishing reality from fantasy. I hope you haven't experienced anything like that since.

I've noticed that a lot of readers don't seem to like humour as well, especially in Incest/Taboo. As I've mentioned on previous occasions, my Incest/Taboo fantasy series 'Body Swap With Sister's Boyfriend' was written to make people laugh, but while some readers did like it, it just seemed to make people angry. Very angry. 'Freddy Got Fingered' level angry. In a way, how angry they got was as amusing as the story series itself. Probably its better I don't try to make Loving Wives readers laugh.

Some of my funny stories have done well in Erotic Couplings and Fetish, but even there you get some negative comments. My EC story 'Cute Celebrity Chloe Comes To Stay' is as light and fluffy piece of erotica as you could find, but it did attract one very negative comment. The story was described as 'crap' and the main problem seemed to be the comedic start to the story, where a pair of dim-witted male twins are starstruck by the thought of meeting Chloe (an Australian soap opera actress) and ask no end of dumb questions about her, struggling to tell reality from the fictional soap opera.

Humour aside, other categories have readers who are fiercely defensive of their genre, and will get angry at anything that might stray from these boundaries. I haven't written a lot of Romance stories, but those I have done did well. However I got a negative review in one of my Romance stories where one of the characters was dead all along, the reviewer stating that ghosts had no place in Romance.

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

That's a bizarre and disturbing account, and it's especially surprising given your track record of success with your stories.

My impression is that humor often doesn't fly here. People like their erotica straight, and they don't know what to make of it mixed with humor. Obviously, not everyone is this way, but the reaction you describe is really extreme. The other thing is that some readers seem to have trouble distinguishing reality from fantasy. I hope you haven't experienced anything like that since.

Hey SD, since then he just gets the to-be-expected quotient of 'this sucks', 'Brits suck', 'suckishness written by a sucky Brit' stuff, the usual; most of the time he ignores it, he even leaves it up so, in his words, 'the world can see the lesser-brained pimply moron going about his day'; I'm the one who gets mad and deletes them, but very occasionally he'll surprise me and drop a 'went to buy a telescope today so I could look for the fuck I gave about your opinions; nope, didn't see them' type response, but normally he just rolls over and starts snoring with indifference again.

 

[Handley_Page]

Yes,
I have a directory full of 'em

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

I'm intrigued to know what the twist was, because it must have had a sting in its tail to garner a response like that.

That aside, the only place for attempts at humour, I think, is in Humor and Satire. Trying to pull off too much overt humour in the mainstream categories is probably a fail from the start, because what's funny to me isn't funny to you, and don't even try to navigate culture differences.

But your twist... there's something not being told, here, I reckon.

The only twist in the tale is that the hot 'mom' is actually the oldest sister, cue much of the humping stuff; that's all there is that differentiates it from his other, strictly bro-sis stuff, that and the humor...
PM me an email and I'll send you it so you can see for yourself

 

[ElectricBlue]

The only twist in the tale is that the hot 'mom' is actually the oldest sister, cue much of the humping stuff; that's all there is that differentiates it from his other, strictly bro-sis stuff, that and the humor...
PM me an email and I'll send you it so you can see for yourself

That'll probably be it, then. From what I can figure out, presenting a "trick" like that would upset the purists who seem to think that boffing your mom is one thing and boffing your sis is another (and each is individually quite fine), but combining the two (or confusing the two) - oh my god, the sky is falling. That's the category police just being silly.

 

[JamesMiehoff]

Oh well, live and learn. But, I was curious if anyone has had had a similar blunder- it doesn't have to be dependant on ratings or comments, even if it was just self-evident at some point. Could be that you didn't like the ending or maybe ended up despising the characters? Help ease my curious heart

Of course just about everybody has managed to stick their wet finger in the wall socket at some point. That is how you learn not to do that. I chalk them up to "the stove is hot" type of learning. The bigger the burn, the less likely you are to try that again any time soon.

But that hasn't stopped me yet. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words, especially words from a 350 pound unwashed meatbag living in his mother's basement, who's right arm looks like Popeye's and his left arm looks like Olive Oyl's, will never hurt me.

James

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

Of course just about everybody has managed to stick their wet finger in the wall socket at some point. That is how you learn not to do that. I chalk them up to "the stove is hot" type of learning. The bigger the burn, the less likely you are to try that again any time soon.

But that hasn't stopped me yet. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words, especially words from a 350 pound unwashed meatbag living in his mother's basement, who's right arm looks like Popeye's and his left arm looks like Olive Oyl's, will never hurt me.

James

 

[galaxygoddess]

Writing under "thatawfulwowporno" I wrote a "sort of" non-consent story in which my main character Elunara pretended to be a helpless maiden taken by vicious orcs. I wrote the story based on the premise that it was before Elunara became who she is, a piece of her past when she was "emotionally broken" a character that had no emotional reaction to sex, just did it because she likes it, because she needs physical contact, and because, quite frankly she was a blood thirsty assassin who needed the information she was in the process of gathering.

Elunara is a complex and confusing character and I wanted it that way. I named it "the orc camp incident" and I wanted it to be on that edge of brutal, that was pushing even my own boundaries of comfort. I LOVED what I wrote. I thought it was brilliant. I still do. However, my readers, my followers and everyone who "didn't understand" Elunara's headspace at the time was not only turned off, but kind of appalled. "Would a person really be like this?" was one of the comments I got.

Unfortunately, due to how the site is arranged, all new readers see the prequels before the actual main story. People were reading this "horrible" backstory first and not even trying to read the rest. I eventually had it taken off the site. I still have it, I still re-read it and debate it. But I like what I did with it, it's just... not quite what I want people to come across first if they want to read the rest of the series.

 

[SimonDoom]

Writing under "thatawfulwowporno" I wrote a "sort of" non-consent story in which my main character Elunara pretended to be a helpless maiden taken by vicious orcs. I wrote the story based on the premise that it was before Elunara became who she is, a piece of her past when she was "emotionally broken" a character that had no emotional reaction to sex, just did it because she likes it, because she needs physical contact, and because, quite frankly she was a blood thirsty assassin who needed the information she was in the process of gathering.

Elunara is a complex and confusing character and I wanted it that way. I named it "the orc camp incident" and I wanted it to be on that edge of brutal, that was pushing even my own boundaries of comfort. I LOVED what I wrote. I thought it was brilliant. I still do. However, my readers, my followers and everyone who "didn't understand" Elunara's headspace at the time was not only turned off, but kind of appalled. "Would a person really be like this?" was one of the comments I got.

Unfortunately, due to how the site is arranged, all new readers see the prequels before the actual main story. People were reading this "horrible" backstory first and not even trying to read the rest. I eventually had it taken off the site. I still have it, I still re-read it and debate it. But I like what I did with it, it's just... not quite what I want people to come across first if they want to read the rest of the series.

You might try resubmitting it under a title that will not cause people to read it first.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Unfortunately, due to how the site is arranged, all new readers see the prequels before the actual main story. People were reading this "horrible" backstory first and not even trying to read the rest. I eventually had it taken off the site. I still have it, I still re-read it and debate it. But I like what I did with it, it's just... not quite what I want people to come across first if they want to read the rest of the series.

It's quite logical to read a prequel first.

That's not really a site problem, is it? More so the way you've constructed your exposition, surely?

 

[RejectReality]

I have a folder called "Half Baked" in my WIP directory, and it's my island of misfit toys, where all those failed ideas can enjoy each other's company for eternity. LOL

I sometimes mine bits of gold out of those failed stories such as a sex scene, a character, or something else, and give it new life in a story that comes to fruition. That's why I keep them instead of just putting them through the virtual shredder.

Once they reach that folder, the story has probably been in my main WIP folder for years, and there's zero chance it's going to work with anything other than a complete overhaul.