Revisit one of your past stories

[lovecraft68]

Revisit one of your past stories

1-story name how long ago did it come out. Link if you wish

2-motivation/inspiration behind the story

3-what was your expectation of it? Did you think it would go over well, or a case of let's see what the readers think of this one.

4-did it fall short or exceed your expectations

5-What you would change about the story if you were to write it today with more experience and improvement as a writer since then

6-what would you keep the same

7-anything else you want to add

This is open to everyone, even if you only have a few stories and haven't been here long, go back to your first one and talk about what you've learned between then and now.

 

[SimonDoom]

OK. I'll go.

My third story, BTB, Incorporated, was published Jan. 2, 2017. Link: https://www.literotica.com/beta/s/btb-incorporated

I was a new author, having published my first story not quite one month earlier. Still figuring things out.

I have no memory of how I came up with this story. It's one of my weirder stories -- it starts as a kind of "burn the bitch" story told my a Mike Hammer-style detective investigating whether a client's wife is cheating on him. It's told in a very deliberately over-the-top Mickey Spillane parody style. It's got a twist at the end, which isn't that hard to see coming if you're paying attention. I really have no idea how I came up with it. It's much different from anything else I've written.

Not knowing much about Loving Wives at the time, I published it there, was quite proud of myself for what I'd done, and thought it might do well.

Nope. It got buried in venom and vile comments. Unfortunately, Laurel has deleted a lot of those comments since (not my doing and not per my request), so you can't see them, but I'm proud to say I think I received some of the nastiest, most hostile comments that anyone has ever received in response to a story. "Here, eat my condom" was one of the comments. "What's wrong with you?" was another I remember. I was assured by many commenters that I was sick, depraved, and completely horrible at writing.

It's my only story with a score below 4. It's slowly risen over the years to 3.76. It started off much lower than that. The nice thing is there are people who like it and I have some good comments to go with the bad. 34 people have made it a favorite. That makes me happy.

I've never published in Loving Wives since then, although I want to again, someday.

Would I change anything? Nope. It's a silly story and there would be no point in trying to make it anything else. I had a blast writing it. I was shocked at first by the comments and 1-votes, but in a way it was helpful because ever since I've been able to take bad comments and votes in stride.

 

[oggbashan]

OK, I'll bite.

1. https://www.literotica.com/beta/s/donna-1 April 2003

2. A local court case, one of many about abusive drunken males beating up their partners.

3. It was at the time of the introduction of the Erotic Horror category. While it was horror, in no way was it erotic. I was feeling my way with the category and in retrospect, this was too horrible with no redeeming features.

4. It met my expectations for social commentary but it was never really a Literotica story.

5. Change? I would write a much longer introduction to Donna's estrangement from her parents and Wayne's campaign to get her alone with him. I might tell about Wayne's attraction for Donna and their passionate lovemaking, totally unlike thet she had had with any previous boyfriend. I might extend the gradual decline as she became more obviously pregnant.

6. Keep the same? The downbeat ending.

7. I still like it as it is as a powerful piece of writing but whether I should ever have put it on Literotica? I'm not sure. It has constantly been rated in the middle 3s but the feedback and comments have been good.

 

[lovecraft68]

OK, I'll bite.

1. https://www.literotica.com/beta/s/donna-1 April 2003

2. A local court case, one of many about abusive drunken males beating up their partners.

3. It was at the time of the introduction of the Erotic Horror category. While it was horror, in no way was it erotic. I was feeling my way with the category and in retrospect, this was too horrible with no redeeming features.

4, It met my expectations for social commentary but it was never really a Literotica story.

5. Change? I would write a much longer introduction to Donna's estrangement from her parents and Wayne's campaign to get her alone with him. I might tell about Wayne's attraction for Donna and their passionate lovemaking, totally unlike thet she had had with any previous boyfriend. I might extend the gradual decline as she became more obviously pregnant.

6. Keep the same? The downbeat ending.

7. I still like it as it is as a powerful piece of writing but whether I should ever have put it on Literotica? I'm not sure.

I have to say, that the story as is...sounds like something I need to read and would be very pleased with, especially the downbeat ending....nice play on beat down by the way, even if it wasn't intentional.

 

[jehoram]

1-story name how long ago did it come out. Link if you wish

A Very Private Beach, from 2012

\\https://www.literotica.com/s/a-very-private-beach-ch-01

2-motivation/inspiration behind the story

I think it was to create some sort of Eden, where people can go nude and fuck in public surrounded by caring, intelligent people, and to find out something about themselves that they didn't know before. And also where the sex was more realistic ... women didn't always get orgasms, menstrual periods were part of one episode, and the MCs had doubts about where their relationship was going.

3-what was your expectation of it? Did you think it would go over well, or a case of let's see what the readers think of this one.
4-did it fall short or exceed your expectations

Like all my stories, I had no expectations about reader approval.


5-What you would change about the story if you were to write it today with more experience and improvement as a writer since then
6-what would you keep the same

I really don't think I've changed much, if anything. In one chapter, the woman started her period but not only fucked on the beach anyway, but did it in public so everyone could see the menses on their genitals. I thought that might be a turn-off. but it turned out to be one of the higher-rated chapters.

7-anything else you want to add

This story was actually continued on another site, where the main characters made contact with a larger community of like-minded people. It wasn't on this site because some of those people happened to be under eighteen. But I thought the story went about as far as it could on this site, so I pulled the plug at that point.

 

[nikisixx]

xxxxx

 

[NotWise]

1-story name how long ago did it come out. Link if you wish

That Little Bitch was my second story for Lit, published Oct. 6, 2015.

2-motivation/inspiration behind the story

I had a standing problem with starting what were supposed to be short stories that grew into novellas or novels. My goal for my first Lit story was to finish at around 3K words. For the second story I wanted it under 2K words.

The story is simple, and the female main character was inspired by my sister-in-law, who starved herself to death six years earlier on a diet that consisted mostly of boxed wine.

3-what was your expectation of it? Did you think it would go over well, or a case of let's see what the readers think of this one.

Being my second Lit story, and my first story in I/T, I really didn't have many expectations. I'd been warned that a taboo, sister-in-law story wouldn't be very popular in I/T.

4-did it fall short or exceed your expectations

In one sense, it exceeded my wildest dreams. It was at the top of the I/T hub on the morning it went up, and the number of views on the story jumped by thousands every time I checked on it. That took my breath away. It's still one of my most-viewed stories. It's also my lowest-rated story. In retrospect, I think it's rating is consistent with it's size and subject matter.

5-What you would change about the story if you were to write it today with more experience and improvement as a writer since then

I'd change the short description and tags. I'd also edit it. It's loaded with grammar and punctuation mistakes to the point of being embarrassing. My copy is "fixed," and maybe I'll upload the edits on some slack day.

6-what would you keep the same

I wouldn't really change the story itself. It is what I wanted it to be.

7-anything else you want to add

Writing the story was a tremendous learning experience. I'm still learning from it now.

 

[JuanSeiszFitzHall]

WHINE ALERT! RUN AWAY NOW, SAVE YOURSELF!

Point 1:
“3 Women, 3 Men, 3 Days.” Posted August 6, 2020.
https://www.literotica.com/beta/s/3-women-3-men-3-days

Point 2:
I sought to explore a group sex situation from the perspectives of all of the participants. As the story developed, I went in the direction of all of them doing this for the first time, but being already familiar (and intimate) with at least one other participant. Lest this sound too lofty, I also wanted to present several hot sex scenes that would please the readership and keep me, ahem, interested during the writing and editing.

Point 3:
My expectations covered a spectrum from very high to very low. This was my most ambitious project yet for Literotica, and I thought the characters and their interactions, and the sex act descriptions, would be received well. But the story is far and away my longest on this site (just shy of 37k words), and it’s diverse in the sense that four characters are black and the other two are white. (This wasn’t intended for the sake of diversity, I merely found these characters interesting to write about.) This didn’t seem like a big problem within the Group Sex readership here, but anyone hoping for stereotypical BBC/white cuck action would be disappointed. Also, my personal preferences (for sex positivity, people treating each other with respect, etc.) meant that the sex might in fact be too vanilla over the course of a story this long. So I could see there being downsides in reader response. Still, this was the story I wanted to tell.

Point 4:
In terms of actual declared response, what I’ve seen is at the high side of the spectrum: A high rating (for me), more favorites than on any of my other stories (I’ve posted 26 other fiction pieces, starting in July 2019), and a positive comment. But I have to conclude that nearly all of the reader opinions have been disinterest or disapproval. Even allowing for many viewers to make an immediate U-turn once they see how long the story is, maybe hundreds started reading and weren’t grabbed enough to keep reading. The view count is past 15k (the highest on any of my non-contest stories, and in less than a month), but there are only 11 votes.

Point 5:
This answer isn’t on content, but on presentation. I posted the entire story at once. The story breaks very neatly into three parts of nearly equal length. In an alternate universe, I would have posted it in three parts, on consecutive days. Each part would have been in the oft-declared sweet spot for story length (three to five Lit pages). My hunch is that this would have produced many more votes, at least on Part 1, but maybe a lower rating.

Point 6:
I would keep the content the same, except for a couple typos I observed, long after publication.

Point 7:
I can’t say that I learned anything useful from the experience, because I don’t expect ever again to write something this long and involved. But, as noted above, for better or worse, it’s the story I wanted to tell, and Literotica gave me a place to show it.

https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=5116173&page=submissions

 

[KeithD]

Good thread idea.

There are so many of mine, written over the past nearly two decades and posted here up to fourteen years ago that are jolted back in mind by being commented on or favorited and I go look at how they’ve done and am surprised either that they’ve done as well or that others haven’t rated them as I thought they should be rated (in either direction).

I’ll pick one that isn’t just mine but that I shared in writing, as sr71plt/habu, with my coauthor, Sabb, under the author title Shabbu. This stands out because collaborations take a long time and are delicate transactions, this one was connected with the two of us having come close to actually meeting, and it included a complex setup merging our two national experiences together that worked phenomenally well, because we won the 2018 Literotica Valentine’s Day contest with it, a miracle, I think, because it was GM and I don’t know of any coauthored works doing that well on Literotica and because there was considerable skullduggery voting maneuvering going on at the time with another story.

It’s memorable because I was isolated, housesitting, as the contest was coming to a close and monitoring the voting in the contest, the story just held steady there at the top beyond the end and was being received so well in comments—not the attention my or Sabb’s stories usually get on Literotica, which can be quite lukewarm toward GM stories. There was so much jockeying by another story in what looked like fake voting that I was sure our story would be displaced. But it wasn’t; the sweeps swept it back into first place.

1. Shabbu, “The Forever Man” (https://www.literotica.com/s/the-forever-man), posted in January, 2018.

2. Motivation/Inspiration

When “The Forever Man” was written, Sabb and I had been writing and publishing GM erotica both together and separately for over a decade. We’d done so from across the world—he was living in Australia before moving to Spain and I live on the East Coast of the United States (with chunks of time in Cyprus and Key West). I went to the Australian Tennis Open in January 2009 in Melbourne, Australia, and then spent some time traveling in Australia and New Zealand. Sabb lived near Sydney. When I was in Sydney (I traveled within a couple of miles of where he lived at the time but we didn’t meet) I noticed the word “Forever” being chalked on the sidewalks around my hotel. I asked Sabb about that in an e-mail, and he said it probably was a copycat of when someone was mysteriously chalking “Eternity Man” on those sidewalks. In my mind I combined that with the mystery from my own area of someone leaving a bottle of cognac and a bouquet of flowers on Edgar Allan Poe’s grave on his birthday every year. That germinated in my mind and after a few years of mulling it we wove those two legends together into a third, fictional, one, entered it in the Literotica contest, and published it to the marketplace.

3. Expectation for it

The immediate expectation was to at last get something written on ideas we’d been batting back and forth for years. And we were talking marketplace publishing, not Literotica posting. The story fortuitously was finished right before the 2018 Literotica Valentine’s Day contest, though, and we both saw the work as a Romance, so we entered it. We didn’t expect it to win in the contest or even to come close to placing. GM stories do well in the contests but they don’t often place. We expected it to go over well with the literary set and those who like longer pieces (it’s eight Lit. pages). We were accustomed to our combined works being received well by our targeted audience. Although it no longer has a winning rating (it’s now at 4.82), it still is commented on well enough by those who stumble on it and we still receive favorable e-mails about it. (Our Summer Lovin’ contest entry last year, “A Season in Galicia,” finished with a perfect 5.00, but only twenty-four votes after the sweeping.)

4. Fall short/exceed expectations.

It well exceeded our expectations.

5. What would you change?

Our method is to set a dilemma and have some agreed idea of what the point is and how it ends. Then we each take the persona of one of the major characters and exchange chapters, each of us giving our character’s perspective of shared events and then projecting the action into the next chapter for the other author to take up. The danger here is of one of us projecting into action/events the other has a hard time seeing as where it should be going and then doing their bit with it. The sensitivity is in respecting where your partner is taking it and not fighting that. This happens in a point in this story, but it isn’t just my story, so I went with it and tried to guide it back into the channel I perceived for the story. If it was just my story and I was rewriting it, I’d redo this part. But it isn’t just mine.

6. What would you keep the same.

We’re pleased with it and are happy with it as it is (although my eyes still cross looking at one section and remembering what I had to do to get back on what I saw as the track but didn’t want to be pushy about it.)

7. Anything to add.

Writing with Sabb is an incredibility creative, uplifting process. What I regret is that his publishing house is also my main publisher and he is my editor and that I write so much on my own that he has to deal with that he doesn't have time enough anymore for us to write much together. Our current one has been on his plate for well over half a year and he hasn't been able to get to it.

 

[yowser]

Interesting notion, and oddly timed for me, since with the Summer Loving contest I dug up an old story (from 10 years back, before I had discovered Lit) and threw it in the mix. It can be disorienting to read one’s early works.

1.But to the stated challenge, from 2014, my fourth story submitted:
Penis Dialogues

2. I had been to a Vagina Monologues production (the local high school, amazingly) and basically did a counter-riff from a Penis-point-of-view perspective.

3-4. It was a complete brain-dump, the sort produced by one too many beers at a friendly local pub, unlike anything I had done. It was a lark and I was pleased.

5. Like what I would suggest for about 90 percent of written endeavors generally and universally, I would shorten it (even though it is a very short read to begin with.) Scalpel work almost never is a wasted practice.

6. The same narrator’s voice: self-centered, clueless, confident without reason, but a decent sort, not malicious.

 

[Omenainen]

This is open to everyone, even if you only have a few stories and haven't been here long, go back to your first one and talk about what you've learned between then and now.

Interesting thread idea. I’ve only been here for a couple of months, and I’m so fucking slow learning anything that absolutely nothing has changed for me in that time. Maybe I’ll get back to this in five years or so.

But, are you going to answer yourself, lovecraft68?

 

[lovecraft68]

1-Home is Where The Heart is 2012

https://www.literotica.com/s/home-is-where-the-heart-is-1

2-My wife was pushing me to write a romance after I finished the dark depressing Siblings with benefits series. I was like, me? Yeah, right. But one day while I was sitting in a parking lot I was watching this young kid pan handling and a woman pulled over and gave him a coffee and they talked for a few minutes, she handed him a couple dollars and drove off.

he was smiling ear to ear and I could tell it wasn't about the couple of dollars

The story was born.

3-It was a contest entry(only my second) and I knew it would get eyes on it, but didn't have high hopes. I wavered between romance and mature for which category right to the day I submitted it, and reached out to Reject Reality who told me mature. I figured he knew best, but wondered if it would turn out to be the wrong move. I also had no faith in myself to write a flat out romantic story. Not just romantic, but I wanted heart warming and thought...right because you can pull that shit off.

So not high expectations.

4- I was blown away. The story started high and never wavered, it just missed placing in the contest, but better yet the comments were the best part. I'd apparently struck every chord I wanted, and people were thanking me for not just the story, but the message and how many said how emotional it made them and how it made them appreciate what they have.

The third comment posted to it read
Great story.
Great job. Next time I see a person at the light looking for a handout. I will see them in a different way.

That was also a motivation, as someone who was briefly homeless in my late teens, I wanted people to realize these people are not bums and dregs and losers and you don't know what their story is.

To this day its one my most highly scored, it has 450+ comments and not one negative one. its closing in on 10k votes and was number 1 all time in mature for months and might still be somewhere around the top ten.

Alwayswantedto who I idolized here for his mother son stories was recommending the story in the comments section of his latest story and reached out to tell me how good it was and it started a good friendship. The last message I received from him was the day he pulled his stories because he was terminally ill and told him I owed him for me sliding up a notch on the top list.

But none of that compares to a person who contacted me and told me the story inspired him to start writing. I won't say the name, but they have over 100 stories here now, have one contests and have had a lot of success here. To think that something I wrote inspired someone to be an author is the biggest compliment someone can receive here.

5-Change....the grammar is not good, the story is proof most here seem to read for story over technicals, but the main thing is too much telling, not showing. Dialogue, even back then, was my strength, but for some reason I went into a long flashback that was all exposition/narrative and could have been so much better if the flashback had the two characters speaking to each other, not the MC recalling everything about it.

Edited to add, this is in first person and a few years back I shifted into third person because I feel it works better. If I were to ever revisit and edit this, or any of my older stories, it would be in third person.

6-I'd keep it mostly the same. I was happy that the story was successful not just because we all want that, but I did it my way. It was a romance, but opened with a scene and mood of despair that I'm sure made a couple people say "This is for Valentine;s Day?" and kept up my style of taking someone on a dark path before bringing them to the light...besides I couldn't write anything completely mushy, I mean, come on.

7-I always find it funny that I'm know for my body of work in I/T but my 4 top stories are all romances and I've had a lot of people request I do more, but that's the kind of story you have to feel to be able to convey and I'm not that much of a closet romantic.

 

[stickygirl]

1- A Fishing Trip, but I'm the bait ( Series ) 2012

2- I wanted to see if I could even write erotica and I felt I would have more credibility posting on the forums if I was an author. Turns out in the GB the only qualification needed is a thick skin and anger.

3- I did it for fun, but it became more interesting as I went along: I couldn't figure out where it was all coming from in my head! I'd planned for two chapters but good feedback saw it run to eight before it ran its course.

4- Initially I surprised myself and I was touched by people's kindness in their comments.

5- Yea. I wanted to change the first chapters before I finished the last ones. I naively thought I needed to include more sex than was necessary for the story. Also I've changed a lot since then, so I've even thought about deleting it altogether. What I enjoyed most was the process of character development and making situations have integrity.

6- The humour, using small details to capture the essence of a scene and the dialogue.

7- There's a few reasons I stopped writing: time commitments being one, but perhaps fear of not meeting my own standards? Then there's the 'hook' - the seed of an idea that suddenly blooms in your imagination. As it happens, I have the germ of an idea right now, thanks to another writer here.

 

[RetroFan]

Story - Body Swap With Sister's Boyfriend

Published - 7 chapter series posted over 2 months, last chapter August 2019

Inspiration - I have really enjoyed some body swap movies, and thought that a story where a nerd brother and his bitchy twin sister's dumb jock boyfriend swapped bodies would make for an interesting Incest/Taboo story. I write comedy, so there is plenty of comedic material in this series. I also got to have an Australian Rules football match in the story, and it was set in a part of the world I love - Brisbane and the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia.

Expectation - I thought that the IT readers would love such a funny story, and given they like stories about people who share DNA having sex wouldn't be put off by toilet scenes, menstruation and immature humour such as jokes about the planet Uranus or how the ice-cream man goes to the toilet.

Reaction - They absolutely hated it, blasting the story for everything and anything, with low scores, vitriolic comments and even telling me to go and kill myself. It quickly became Literotica's answer to Freddy Got Fingered.

Change/Same/Add - I wrote the story I wanted to write and which I had always envisioned, and wouldn't change it. Some readers did like it, perhaps like Freddy Got Fingered its one of those 'so bad it's good' cult classics that divides opinion. The only thing I noticed a year later is thanks to COVID 19 it now appears very dated 12 months on.

 

[Brutal_One]

Nice thread

In reality only one story arc (though 2 additional stand alone with the same main Character) this pertains to that arc.

1-story name how long ago did it come out. ROD Adventures. First chapter a few months ago now (18 June)

2-motivation/inspiration behind the story. It was a long story written years ago. Inspiration from exploring ideas and finding a way to make it plausible with some semi decent research early on re background central to plot. Locations too were part of the inspiration.

3-what was your expectation of it? Did you think it would go over well, or a case of let's see what the readers think of this one. I was curious about how the reaction would be and if readers liked the premise and would follow a series. Was pleased about initial reaction in having a reasonable score and some likes and a few early followers.

4-did it fall short or exceed your expectations. Expectation met. I could write a decent share a story series that had been written years ago that others might enjoy reading.

5-What you would change about the story if you were to write it today with more experience and improvement as a writer since then. Been working with an editor so better grammar in general also better understanding of good writing and how to make it more compelling.

6-what would you keep the same. The plot and idea and the main characters.

7-anything else you want to add. some better dialog of thoughts and motivations of what the real emotion and thoughts are of the characters, achieved in part in some early chapters but more of it.

Brutal One

 

[ElectricBlue]

https://www.literotica.com/beta/s/omalleys-bar

The second story I wrote, back in May 2014.

Inspired by a gay girl I'd met through Tumblr, and we each said, tell me something you've never told anyone. The story runs on from what she told me, with my "story belief" theory already in place - every story must have a foundation on a tiny grain of truth.

Motivation was pure self-indulgence (no change, there) with no expectations. My second story, still figuring out Lit. I got the category right, though.

Exceeded, in the long run. It still gets faved and comments. Someone read it in Audio, too. That was interesting, hearing her interpretation.

Change nothing. It is what it is, a short little something.

Even though it's short, it has typical EB signatures and beats - an emphasis on clothes, confident women getting what they want, or wanting to be taken, someone watching, a musical reference or two, breasts and nipples, fingers on assholes. What can I say, I write to arouse me .

 

[SamScribble]

For Research Purposes Only https://www.literotica.com/s/for-research-purposes-only-1

Sometime ago, I knew a woman who, for a writer, was remarkably unworldly. She almost seemed to have been parachuted in from another age. Georgian? Victorian? Or was it just that she was the only child of a rather old-fashioned clergyman?

In spite of being a bit chalk and cheese, she would often turn up at my place, armed with a large notebook and several Black Beauty pencils, to bombard me with questions. ‘I want to get the characters right,’ she would say. ‘I want to describe them. Convincingly. I want to understand how they think, and what they do when no one can see what they are doing. You know about these things.’ (I’m not sure that I did. But there you go.)

One day (while drinking Jasmine tea) she asked me how a character, a young woman without a mother or close aunt, might learn about men and sex. ‘Apart from watching animals,’ she said rather cautiously.

‘Perhaps she could hire a demonstrator,’ I said. And then I forgot all about it.

Fast forward a few years and my writer friend had died and, for some reason, I was thinking about her and about some of the strange things she wanted to ‘get right’, and I suddenly had the story idea.

I wrote the story quickly and tried to make it, not outright ‘laugh out loud’ funny, but at least amusing. And then I posted it. It attracted just one (rather brief) comment. But it got a respectable enough score. And when I re-read it recently, it made me smile.

What would I change? Probably nothing. It is what it is: a snippet of entertainment. And that’s probably how it should remain.

 

[Emirus]

Revisit one of your past stories

1-story name how long ago did it come out. Link if you wish
2-motivation/inspiration behind the story
3-what was your expectation of it? Did you think it would go over well, or a case of let's see what the readers think of this one.
4-did it fall short or exceed your expectations
5-What you would change about the story if you were to write it today with more experience and improvement as a writer since then
6-what would you keep the same
7-anything else you want to add
.

1. Bibi and Will. December 2018. https://www.literotica.com/s/bibi-and-will

2. Several/many years ago I spent the day in the company of a lovely lady, bubbly personality, great sense of humour, which you need if you’re going to spend any time with me.

3. I had no expectations of the story. I had hopes, but no expectations.

4. It exceeded my hopes far more than I could ever have thought possible and is my highest rated story at 4.86.

5. I wouldn’t change anything about the story because I don’t think I could make it any better. It was 5 of 12 (similar to 7 of 9 but without Jeri Ryan) and the first time I believed I really could write stories readers would enjoy.

6. What would I change? Absolutely nothing.

7. I like every story I’ve written (if I didn’t like a story I would have had it deleted) but 2/3 I would rewrite because I believe, if I had the time, I could make them much better. It wasn’t a quick and easy decision to choose and I haven’t chosen Bibi and Will because of its score. I have more than one story written from my own experiences but this is the most accurate. Dominica ran it a close second.

Dominica. https://www.literotica.com/s/dominica

I wrote Bibi and Will as one story but then made the mistake of submitting it as five one page chapters. It bombed and the highest score was 4. After Dominica was published I resubmitted Bibi and Will and the rest, as they say, is history. The majority of those who have read my stories seem to think I’m okay.

The response to my Summer Lovin’ entry has really astonished me, particularly with the great writers who also submitted entries. I’m very proud of Kidnapping and believe I’ve succeeded in doing what I wanted which was to actually write an interesting, and plausible, story in which the sex was an integral but relatively small part. I’ve read many stories like that including my favourite by someone called *********##.

Kidnapped. https://www.literotica.com/s/kidnapped-53

 

[gunhilltrain]

Thanks for giving us a chance for some self-promotion. Actually, I did edit this story last month but I haven't told anybody about it yet.

1. A Hot Day in December. https://www.literotica.com/s/a-hot-day-in-december. It was published on July 21, 2018 and it was one of my early stories here.

2. The inspiration for the story: before I joined Literotica, I was trying to do a novel about 1970s New York as seen by a group of students in the City University system. When I got here, I decided to publish certain pieces of it as stand-alone stories. Unfortunately, the results got rather disjointed.

3 and 4. I wanted to show the point-of-view of one of the female characters named Judy Weinberg. She's a virgin, but she covets the boyfriend of her best friend Michelle Hanley. The story is about her masturbation fantasy about him - she does this while on campus. Afterwards, she puts her boots back on but she doesn't wear her tights and panties for the trip back home. She wonders if she will feel sexy by being bare under her skirt, and she finds out that she enjoys it.

The story didn't do that well here, and the one comment was very negative. Yet when I published it almost unchanged on another site about a year later, a woman commented that I had captured Judy's feelings well: "Very nice opposite-POV showing a coed's introspection and ambivalence about branching out from solo to 'boyfriend' sex and getting some of that 1970s liberation for herself."

5. I have earlier stories that I didn't think held up well, and I eventually rewrote some of them and either published them here with new names or put them on other sites.

For this one, all I changed were some secondary things about her friend Michelle, who is described but doesn't appear. Originally, I had it so her boyfriend is having an affair with yet another girl, but she accepts it anyway. That didn't seem plausible, so I changed it last month so that she has suspicions about him but can't confirm it.

6. As I said, some of my stories, to me anyway, haven't held up well over time. But when I revisited this one, I kept about 90% of the original.

7. I hope to have two series, back to back, that will cover events from June, 1974 to about December, 1975 and will - if I can pull it all together - finally have a continuous storyline (although it will be somewhat different from what I envisioned in 2017-2018). It won't be a novel, but maybe it could be defined as a novella.

And Judy definitely loses her virginity.

 

[vanmyers86]

1-story name how long ago did it come out. Link if you wish
Miko's Mountain It was an entry in the 2019 Winter/Christmas contest

2-motivation/inspiration behind the story
Having written several hetero and lesbian romances, I wanted to try something a little different, a story with plenty of action and sex, and involving a long-standing relationship. I'd had the basic plot to this one in mind for a few years - a couple witnesses a would-be murderer right before the crime - and finally felt I had the skill and knowledge to get it down.

3-what was your expectation of it? Did you think it would go over well, or a case of let's see what the readers think of this one.
After I submitted it, I felt a quiet confidence that it would do well. Then I watched the score drop, and drop some more, over the next few days. (It rebounded some in the sweeps). The funny thing was that it got nothing but positive comments, but it remains my lowest-rated story.

4-did it fall short or exceed your expectations
This was a definite case of reality not meeting my expectations. I try not to get caught up in the scores, but I remember feeling so disappointed at the time. I've over that now - we all have to have a story at the bottom of our catalog, and that one's mine. But I still think it's a good yarn.

5-What you would change about the story if you were to write it today with more experience and improvement as a writer since then?
This is a really good question - I just don't know. I took a couple of risks that I would deal with differently, perhaps - give definite dates to the flashbacks, for instance - and I probably would have placed it in a different category - EC, I think, rather than Mature.

6-what would you keep the same
Other than the changes I mentioned, I would keep the bulk of it as it is. Overall, I remain pleased with the work because I think I met the challenges I set for myself.

7-anything else you want to add
The tepid reception caused me to write a second story for that same contest, which did a whole lot better and is in my top three.
The big lessons for me with this story are:

• You can't ever know what the readers will respond to.
• If you write to please yourself, and damn the consequences, you'd better be able to handle those consequences.

 

[rebel_code]

Revisit one of your past stories

OK, sounds like fun.

High Tide came out a bit over a year ago.

I had a vision of the main event of the story - a huge wave inundating a couple in the throes of passion on the beach - and thought that would be an opportunity to inject a bit of magic realism into erotica. No doubt that's been done before, but we all have our first time.

What was my expectation of it? I hoped it would do well, but you never can tell with this crowd. C.f. every story I've published here so far.

It turned out to have had the fewest views of all my stories, but did OK on ratings - over 4.0 but not 'H' territory.

I think one section that was intended to establish characters was a bit forced - the one at the restaurant. I'd do that over if possible.

What would I keep the same? I like the first-person narrator's back-story and the whole bit about the beach shack and how he built it with her in mind. That stuff just flowed. I did a fair amount of location research and hope that showed. I've been getting the idea of establishing time and setting more and more. It's been a journey, that I hope will continue.

 

[PennameWombat]

Revisit one of your past stories
1-story name how long ago did it come out. Link if you wish
2-motivation/inspiration behind the story
3-what was your expectation of it? Did you think it would go over well, or a case of let's see what the readers think of this one.
4-did it fall short or exceed your expectations
5-What you would change about the story if you were to write it today with more experience and improvement as a writer since then
6-what would you keep the same
7-anything else you want to add

This is open to everyone, even if you only have a few stories and haven't been here long, go back to your first one and talk about what you've learned between then and now.

I’ve only been here since mid-2018 so can’t go too far back. But I won’t focus on my earliest submissions. Sure, when I read them I see they’re a bit clumsy here and there but overall they told the stories I meant to tell.

1) So I’ll go to my “Nude Day 2019 contest” entry, “City of Angels” (link in sig.)

2) In my “Geek Pride 2019” entry my twins (Asha & Aron) weren’t quite human but how and why was left unclear. So “City of Angels” was essentially their origin story but it focused on their mother, Janet. “Geek Pride” had implied the twins as teens (20 years old in the story) had a role in the deaths of their parents. But, why? “City of Angels” was also meant as an attempt to stretch myself as a writer.

3) My expectations were mixed. It’s in Erotic Horror so I knew I had latitude, but wasn’t sure how much, from the readers.

• Janet’s amoral use and abuse of her victims was clear, in fact, I knew I was skirting the ‘snuff’ boundary and wrote carefully to stay the right side of it (it was posted without changes.) Janet would have sex and then she’d absorb her male or female lover’s life force/energy.
• She didn’t intentionally kill them but left them brain dead. It also had some challenging set pieces - Janet hypnotised men and women to engage in orgies in a public library and at a church after Sunday services. And the Reverend of the church did die after she absorbed his life force.
• Her goal was to create news events so her mate could find her, they’d killed a bunch of aliens who’d been travelling to Earth but when they escaped from the doomed starship they’d landed far apart, Janet in California and Fred in Ohio.
• There’s also Marsha... see the last item.

4) It - mostly - met my expectations. It’s always skated just below the “H” rating but I don’t know if it’s the story, the fact a ‘baddie’ wins (although she’s friendly, loves children, is dedicated to her mate...), or the structure (see next point.) A couple of comments indicated appreciation for my sick mind, especially around the church orgy. Since I never expected it to be in with a shout for winning the “Nude Day” contest I wasn’t disappointed about that.

5) But this is where we get to why I chose it for this discussion. Two items:

• To keep the word count down and to finish in time for the contest I left the ‘battle’ between Janet and Janet short. Janet was your run of the mill small town 23 year old redhead in 1963 Los Angeles. Janet was the alien brain parasite who landed in her head. Janet took her over too easily and caused the havoc described. In any imagined revision, this would still happen but it’d be longer and more complex, especially in Janet wondering what’s happening to her... The submitted story was clearly Janet’s POV, so the change would start with Janet and then morph to the parasite as she asserted control.
• I wrote it in chronological order (Thur, Fri, Sat, Sun, Mon, two months later, two years later.) Then I rejiggered so Sat came first in the submitted story and tweaked the text. I still roll this around in my head whether this was a good idea or not. I think my effort at a more complex story structure ended up making it less accessible. Although, it had an alien brain parasite energy vampire wreaking havoc across LA... so who knows.

6) I’d keep everything else. Including the church orgy. Especially the church orgy. It was off-screen but Fred told Janet once they were together he’d engineered the deaths of multiple people (including a woman and her toddler) to ensure he’d inherit lots of money from the employer of the man whose brain he landed in. He eventually saw the news reports and found Janet in LA.

7) This is about the only case where I feel sorry for what I did to one of my characters! Marsha was Janet’s first victim. She was a lesbian in early 1960s LA who’d always had a crush on Janet (who was a beautiful and curvaceous redhead.) Janet used that to get close to her and attacked her and left her in a vegetative coma... Yes, she got away cleanly with it. And, despite the fact Janet was still in her own brain too and was horrified by most of what Janet did, she was somewhat pleased at what happened to Marsha... Hey, Janet was a religious girl from small-town Iowa where she’d grown up in the 1940s and 50s... And Marsha, as a lesbian of that time, wasn’t overly popular with many of the women where they worked (typists for a TV and movie studio) so it wasn’t like people were overly fussed to find out how she’d ended up in the hospital...

 

[yukonnights]

Revisit one of your past stories

1-story name how long ago did it come out. Link if you wish

2-motivation/inspiration behind the story

3-what was your expectation of it? Did you think it would go over well, or a case of let's see what the readers think of this one.

4-did it fall short or exceed your expectations

5-What you would change about the story if you were to write it today with more experience and improvement as a writer since then

6-what would you keep the same

7-anything else you want to add

This is open to everyone, even if you only have a few stories and haven't been here long, go back to your first one and talk about what you've learned between then and now.

1) Probably the story that I botched the worst was the first one I ever wrote and posted here; How Did I Get Here — published 04/25/2007

2) Motivation for writing the story is pretty simple; I had discovered Literotica, read some stories and thought — I can do that. It is a MMF story which expressed what was going on inside my head at the time. Actually, I had written a few erotic stories but not for sharing beyond the person they were written for. So I guess Literotica was me going big-time

3) As a new writer, I don't recall having any expectations — just enjoyed the idea of someone else reading it. I thought it was pretty good, and would fit in on Lit just fine. I had been reading a lot of SR71's stories at the time and knew there were readers here who liked this subject.

4) It fell way short of my hopes. However, most, if not all, of the bad life this poor story has lived is due to a sever case of "newbie ignorance" by it's author It had male/male sex as well as wife sharing. I thought; Loving Wives described the perfect category for my masterpiece — It didn't take me long to see the error of that assumption. It's languished there all these years.

5) The stupidest thing I did on this one was to split it apart from the continuation. The second part builds on the first part and it is predominately about the two men while the wife was out of town visiting family. This second part is all Gay Male content (apart from the wife's send off by her two men). Today, I would publish the two part as a one shot story in Gay Male. I've toyed with the idea of deleting the original and re-publishing it as a 'prequel' to it's mate in the category it should be in. I may yet do that if I can get motivated enough.

6) I wouldn't change any of the actual story — it would just be the Category and Title to make it obvious these are the same story. (The second part has a completely different Title — like I said, newbie moves ain't very smooth)

 

[YDB95]

1-story name how long ago did it come out. Link if you wish
My greatest hit to date, Grand Island, second place in the Winter 2013 contest

2-motivation/inspiration behind the story
I got the idea while walking home from the LRT (light-rail transit) stop in Singapore. Because it was Singapore and it wasn't raining, it was an extremely hot day and I was trying to think cold. It doesn't get much colder than the Midwest in December.

I had also recently re-read The Great Gatsby in anticipation of the movie, and it features my all time favourite two paragraphs in all literature, which always sets my imagination on fire:

“One of my most vivid memories is of coming back West from prep school and later from college at Christmas time. Those who went farther than Chicago would gather in the old dim Union Station at six o’clock of a December evening, with a few Chicago friends, already caught up into their own holiday gayeties, to bid them a hasty good-by. I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This-or-that’s and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances, and the matchings of invitations: “Are you going to the Ordways’? the Herseys’? the Schultzes’?” and the long green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands. And last the murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railroad looking cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside the gate.

When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour, before we melted indistinguishably into it again.

Among other things, that got me curious about "the old Union Station" in Chicago. After some research, it turned out that while that station was still there in 1906 (which would also be about the time Nick Carraway was coming home from prep school), it was actually LaSalle Station that served the line my story was set on. Once I discovered that, I ended up doing a lot of research, most of which I don't remember at this point - but I do remember the winter of 1906 really didn't have much snow in Chicago, just as is mentioned in the second paragraph! I also considered borrowing the name Ordway for the family Bill meets on the train as a direct tribute to Fitzgerald...I can't recall why I ended up using Brockway instead.


3-what was your expectation of it? Did you think it would go over well, or a case of let's see what the readers think of this one.

I did not expect it to do well at all. It's long and wordy, and there are only two sex scenes, neither of which is the hottest I've written. I even said, "I can't imagine this is going to place" in the support thread when I presented it.

4-did it fall short or exceed your expectations

It came in second out of something like 75 stories, has a 4.8 rating, 58 favourites last time I checked and still gets another one now and then seven years later. "Exceed" is putting it mildly! I was out of work at the time and the prize money meant I could buy my wife a Christmas present I otherwise couldn't have afforded, too. Thanks again.


5-What you would change about the story if you were to write it today with more experience and improvement as a writer since then

First of all, the Brockways' youngest son suffers a sort of Chuck Cunningham syndrome as the story progresses. Truth is, I forgot about him! So I'd definitely want to change that. I also might try to give Bill's mother some sort of redeeming quality. As it is, she's pure evil. (I wrote it under the heavy influence of Downton Abbey...but Violet did have a heart under all that snobbery.)


6-what would you keep the same
If the sex scenes aren't very explicit, they do fit the tone of the story well. I think Bill and Mary's chemistry worked out better than I gave myself credit for at the time, too.

 

[KeithD]

"Exceed" is putting it mildly! I was out of work at the time and the prize money meant I could buy my wife a Christmas present I otherwise couldn't have afforded, too. Thanks again.

Awww. That's worth another story right there.