How much do you take away from readers comments or suggestions?

[Luv4hotwives]

People who are just mean I tend to ignore. And positive feedback means way more to me than they probably even realize. But I really do try to take constructive criticism to heart, it’s actually kind of exciting!

How much do you tend to listen to criticism? Or any other feedback for that matter?

One thing I find surprising is when I'm asked to write a story idea. I politely decline, because I already have so much unfinished stuff. What really shocks me about it though is I don't really consider myself a very good writer yet lol. I mean it's flattering that they ask, but still surprises me. What kind of unexpected requests do you receive?

 

[YDB95]

I listen to constructive criticism when it's useful.

For example, someone once commented on one of my stories that "the way you write women makes it clear you're not one". Well, that's true, I'm not a woman. But that comment didn't say anything about what I got wrong (for that matter, since the commenter was anonymous, it could have been from a man anyway). If that individual had said what I got wrong about my female characters, I would have certainly kept that in mind next time out.

 

[KeithD]

Practically nothing. This is the end of the line for most of my stories, posting here to expand readership and for its out-of-my-computer storage value after being in the marketplace for a long time. I'm not going to correct mistakes found and it's a free read.

 

[AvroAnson]

Opinions are like assholes ...

Okay, that was glib (but true), everything in my stories has been beta-tested so it's possible. Opinions offered are accurate for those offering the opinion but of course nobody else is required to share those opinions.

It's nice to get praise, but not necessary, I write for my own reasons.

 

[SimonDoom]

I try to take from comments whatever I can. Many aren't very insightful, but if I've given someone enjoyment from reading my story then I feel like I've at least done something right. I find that the most helpful types of comments are those that offer constructive criticism about something I've done with the plot or the characters -- like crossing the line of improbability. I don't strive for realism in my stories but I want them to work on their own terms, so if for some reason I've failed to do that for an intelligent reader it gives me something to think about when I write my next story.

The least helpful comment is by someone who simply does not share my kinks and fetishes and faults my story for not being simpatico with their preferences. For instance, I recently wrote a mom-son incest story where the son shaves the mother's pubic area, and several readers insisted that moms should have hair down there. To me, that's just silly. Readers are free to have their own kinky perspectives, but I'm not going to change mine to suit them.

 

[KeithD]

Most of the critical comment I get concerns a misspelled/misplaced place name or something like that, and, although it usually is a mistake that was made and that thirty-five reviews would probably have found, it almost always ticks me off and "thank you" isn't the first response to occur to me. That might be because I was trained in reviewing written works and picking one little detail--or even a medium-important detail--out of a complex written work to condemn the work isn't legitimate review or a fair response to a work of so many other parts being brought together than one detail of fact (or presumed fact by a reader--they don't always get it right either). So I don't usually take anything more out of a critical review on the content than minor irritation at myself for the story having gone all of the way through its life (including an editor) before this was found and irritation of the commenter for being so nitpicky over minor issues. If they want to tell me that I don't know how to write--or that I don't know how to write commercial fiction when they went no further than high school essays--or that they don't like the genres I write in (even though they've gone out of their way to read in the genre), I just think, "tough shit for you."

The last mistake pointed out to me was in putting a town on the West Virginia side of the state border when it's on the Maryland side of the border (a couple of hundred yards away)--but in only one mention, when it was correctly placed elsewhere in the story. Yes, that's a factual mistake--in one of multiple mentions. The story had been through an editor and the marketplace. The placement of the town had zero importance in the story and the story was three Lit. pages long. In addition to the comment, placed on the story rather than in a private message, the commenter voted it a 1. So, honestly, my response to the commenter was (and is) "Oh, eat shit and die, you worm, who, I'm sure, only can wish you were a writer too." So, sue me.

 

[PennameWombat]

Comments such as "really enjoyed it!" or one of my favorites "that woman could've been me!" I simply let cause a warm glow 'neath my shriveled heart. Not gonna lie, I write because I want to write but no way I don't get a bit of a tingle when someone actually writes such a comment.

As to criticism, it depends. One said they quite enjoyed a story but "occasional dialogue tags made it hard to know who said what." Ok. I reread the story with that criticism in mind and yeah, that commenter and I might not agree on all such cases but I have at times had a habit of conveying another character's reaction to the one who's speaking. I've kept that in mind since.

That's a comment that conveys useful criticism, even if like anything it's specific to that reader. But I can process it. Had "ending was predictable." Well, yeah. I failed to transcend the tropes. As to "this sucked." Ah, well. Thanks for reading!

 

[MColton84]

I usually gain a good bit from the comments when they are constructive. Because of comments, I know that I do well with dialog,
but need to be better with my continuity. Most of the time I get "Good job, enjoyed it, and part 2?", which is nice. Not to mention, that someone took a minute out of their day to tell me that I did well. That gives me a good feeling. I don't believe that I am beyond improvement, and love every opportunity to learn and grow. If the comment doesn't hold any weight on the quality of your work or your own satisfaction, then ignore it. That's just me though.

 

[SisterJezabel]

As a newer writer, I've taken a lot over the last year or so. I think I finally have pronouns down pat ;-)

I've had comments that have given me ideas for new stories and others that have baffled me.

 

[RejectReality]

The positive messages are nice encouragement to keep plugging away.

The negative messages are often so disjoined and absurd that they're more funny than disheartening.

If someone points out grammar mistakes or continuity errors, they get fixed in the base document with my thanks. If they're grave enough, I will put in an edit. Thankfully, they're not most of the time, so I just take my lumps.

If there's a question of the direction the plot goes, or character actions, or something like that, I take it into consideration. Most of it is just individual taste, a little is pure head-scratchers, and a little is criticism I have a hard time arguing with. If I agree and it's grave enough, I may put in an edit.

Usually, I just acknowledge the person who brought it up in a comment reply, and take my lumps.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I get positive comments appreciating that I write about experiences that aren't the Lit (or other) mainstream, which encourage me to keep posting. Negative comments tend to be illiterate and/or irrelevant which I usually keep for amusement ('mediocre poker piece' on a story with no poking at all, recently a 'No. Just no.' which wasn't very informative.)

In fact I've only really had one useful bit of criticism in 3 years on Lit. - on my recent Valentine's story where someone thought a fat woman's comments on her body were unnecessary. I'd been trying to show her accepting her partner's view of her as gorgeous and sexy, just resisting words aligned with stereotypical femininity like 'pretty', aware of the world's general opinion, and that both she and partner had insecurities. I re-read my story and am happy with most of it but some sentences could be clearer (I could say the same about everything I write!) I wrote a reply.

 

[tomlitilia]

It's admittedly nice to hear from readers who enjoyed a story. It still is, but it was particularly rewarding when I started out writing. I got a fair bit of praising comments on my first story, and I'm not sure how keen I'd been to continue writing if instead they'd been trashing it. Luckily, I didn't put my first story in LW

In terms of changing how I write, the only tangible thing I can think about are comments about making the story believable. I try to pay a lot of attention to both character development and plot details to make it entirely plausible that they all end up fucking in the end. From most comments, readers appear to appreciate this, but there are also comments about things I've missed. Some that stuck were about my story "The Wanton Flower," where a part of the plot was that the flower central to the story was called "The Scapegoat" by native people. Commenters pointed out that was implausible since the term scapegoat is biblical. The thing is, in a first draft, I had an explanation for this--simply that there had been missionaries visiting the islands, and the name had likely evolved from those interactions. Yet, I cut this since it felt like unnecessary details that distracted from the story.

The take home message: don't leave it to readers to fill in blanks.

In terms of taking on ideas, I always decline that. I have way more ideas than time to mold them into stories.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

With a grain of salt

I place a great amount of detail into most of my stories, because I enjoy the research and exploration required to capture the factual information and then to weave it into the story. Some readers enjoy the detail, others try to find errors in it. I appreciate mistakes being pointed out by readers when they discover them, but I get the biggest kick out of other readers correcting the ones criticizing.

I also tend to purposely leave a lot of details out of my stories, encouraging the readers to use their imagination to fill in the scene or set the tone in a way that meets their own beliefs, fantasies or fetishes. Again, some readers appreciate this approach and some don't. The same with 'cliff-hangers'.

Using most of the available technology to check spelling and grammar, followed by reviews from at least three proof-readers and one or two editors, some mistakes still can make it though. I can accept that and if someone points to SPECIFIC instances where an error has occurred, I value that feedback.

As I've mentioned in other threads, I have to shake my head though, at the imbeciles who take so much pride in not being able to recognize that the grammar they are criticizing is enclosed within quotation marks, making it part of speech and exempt from the rules of grammar that they are citing.

My most common feedback still relates to reader dissatisfaction over having to wait for chapters or parts of a completed story to get posted. There's nothing I can do about that except post the entire thing as a single submission and let the readers deal with how they handle the size of it.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Comments such as "really enjoyed it!" or one of my favorites "that woman could've been me!" I simply let cause a warm glow 'neath my shriveled heart. Not gonna lie, I write because I want to write but no way I don't get a bit of a tingle when someone actually writes such a comment!

Agreed 100% and better phrased that I would have.

===

I'm happy to see constructive criticism. I view it as an attempt to help me get better, which is Good in my books. Sometimes it does help and that's great.

Snarky, bitchy comments simply get deleted. They can deal with their failed lives in their own space, not mine.

I've had a couple of comments (anonymous, of course) correcting my use of words and phrases I didn't use in the story and those are a bit weird. As an example: um.. it’s savoir faire and not savior faire (pretty sure you weren’t talking about “J.C.”). Neither 'savoir faire' nor 'savior faire' were in the story.

 

[MColton84]

I've had a couple of comments (anonymous, of course) correcting my use of words and phrases I didn't use in the story and those are a bit weird. As an example: um.. it’s savoir faire and not savior faire (pretty sure you weren’t talking about “J.C.”). Neither 'savoir faire' nor 'savior faire' were in the story.

I’ve had those as well. I've received one private message condemning me for "Terry's comments". As far as I know, I have never used a character by that name. Or "There's no Sheets on Pleasant Valley rd." Which is hilarious considering that that's where I was when I read the comment.

 

[Ginlover]

The other day I read a well written story posted in BDSM. I wrote a thought out review saying the writing was excellent, but I had not scored as the content was abuse and manipulation not consensual kink or a D/s dynamic. I referenced the author mentioning safe and sane in the story dialogue were a character said it was required in a partner but the author had missed referencing consent and SSC is a well known acronym in kink. I did this under my user name.

The next day my review had been deleted. Coincidentally, the day after that my stories all got a one bomb.

It was a new account and first published story, but that reaction doesn’t exactly encourage real feedback to be left on stories and I personally won’t bother to write long thought out relevant reviews again.

 

[NotWise]

I never know when someone makes a potentially useful, critical comment whether they represent anyone but themselves. That's especially true if the story's rating and the comment don't align. As a result, I either have to get similar comments from elsewhere and/or come to believe it myself before I do anything about it.

One example. I had a reader complain when I led my main characters to the brink of sex, then had them back out. If was a first-time story, so some starting and stopping seemed natural. On the other hand, I've seen similar comments on other stories, and I can understand that reaction from one-handed readers.

I don't usually plan for one-handed readers, but a couple times since then I've avoided the starts and stops.

Of course, like anyone else, I just love over-the-top compliments. I don't know what to do about them, but I love them just the same.

 

[Ginlover]

I don't know the story and, obviously, I don't know what you'd written, but I do know that the preachy tone from some of the BDSM-gurus can become quite annoying; the constant pointing out to SSC being one of the main issues.

For some reason, some of the readers don't accept the idea of inexperienced people fooling around a little, having some fun while ignoring the risks. According to some, everything has to go according to the books. Like that's happening in real life...

Sure, the Loving Wives community can be quite vocal and 'interesting' in voicing their preferences, but the BDSM clique isn't far behind in some aspects.

I stand by my comment/review fully. It was a non consent story wrapped up as kink, promoting all out abuse. Preachy or not lots, of people initially explore BDSM via writing and there are equal numbers of predators who rely on this fact to use the umbrella of kink to hide under and claim their abuse is just BDSM. And there are a lot of new people targeted because they think a story demonstrates rl dynamics, especially well written stories. Stories posted as kink normalising abuse lead to newbies being abused in real life. If that compares me to the LW brigade because I want to protect new people - often young women - I’ll accept the comparison.

 

[oggbashan]

If they point out errors like my frequent confusion with names? I take notice.

The rest? Not much.

 

[ScrappyPaperDoodler]

Save the nice comments, 'cause you might want to revisit them when you get nasty ones. Commenters have really helped me understand my audience, but it's helpful to remember that the people who comment are a minority, and probably have a very different approach to reading your work than most.

Useful things I've picked up from comments are that I need to work on my pacing, that my protagonists are a bit flat, and that I can get lost in the weeds when it comes to the sex. Legitimate critique and pointing out errors is one thing, but some commenters ask for changes to characters or the story. I'd say that should be entirely up to you, and that while their suggestions may be useful, always tell the stories that you want to tell.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I stand by my comment/review fully. It was a non consent story wrapped up as kink, promoting all out abuse. Preachy or not lots, of people initially explore BDSM via writing and there are equal numbers of predators who rely on this fact to use the umbrella of kink to hide under and claim their abuse is just BDSM. And there are a lot of new people targeted because they think a story demonstrates rl dynamics, especially well written stories. Stories posted as kink normalising abuse lead to newbies being abused in real life. If that compares me to the LW brigade because I want to protect new people - often young women - I’ll accept the comparison.

We have this discussion every few months, so I'll summarise. The main point of contention is stories which present unsafe/abusive acts labelled as "BDSM" where the author doesn't seem to recognise that these are unsafe/abusive.

In discussing that, there are two major camps:

- On the one hand, people who mostly aren't involved in BDSM IRL, who take the position that it's fiction and fiction doesn't need to be realistic as long as it's fun.

- One the other hand, people who do do BDSM in real life, and who feel that even when these stories are labelled as fiction they can have problematic RL consequences.

This is an imperfect parallel, but: suppose that this site had a category labelled "Ethiopian Stories", and about one-third of the stories in that category were actually set in Ethiopia and written by people who might actually have been there, with the other two-thirds set anywhere from Cape Town to Casablanca to Cairo, all of them full of famine, flies, and AIDS.

And suppose that any time you interact with a lawyer, social worker, police officer, or a doctor, there's a good chance that most of what they "know" about Ethiopia comes from reading those stories, and others like them. So that before you even mention that your wife comes from Ethiopia, you have to stop and figure out what weird and possibly harmful assumptions these people are going to make from that information.

(I suspect that isn't a huge stretch to imagine, sadly.)

Does that help understand why BDSM folk sometimes get crabby about those stories? I think there's some middle ground to be found in between "this is fiction and fiction by definition can't be harmful" and "these stories are bad and should be bombed and banned".

If people are getting off on reading 50SoG pastiche, I'm glad they're happy. But it's not really great to have to stop and ask myself "can I tell my doctor/psych/etc. about this relationship or will they stereotype it as abusive because 50SoG pastiche is their main point of reference?"

 

[KeithD]

The bottom line is that no "how to" club owns the right to limit expression in fiction. There are no universal rules to BDSM. If tying up is included, it's bondage. If someone is bossing someone else, it's domination. If someone is getting a kick out of causing pain to another, it's sadism. If someone gets a kick out of being caused pain by another, it masochism. These are basic acts. They don't have to be experienced/done one way or another or correctly by some self-proclaimed club's rules. There are no club rules. Those who insist on there being rules about BDSM in writing can suck grapes and go off and play their games among themselves.

 

[SisterJezabel]

The other day I read a well written story posted in BDSM. I wrote a thought out review saying the writing was excellent, but I had not scored as the content was abuse and manipulation not consensual kink or a D/s dynamic. I referenced the author mentioning safe and sane in the story dialogue were a character said it was required in a partner but the author had missed referencing consent and SSC is a well known acronym in kink. I did this under my user name.

The next day my review had been deleted. Coincidentally, the day after that my stories all got a one bomb.

It was a new account and first published story, but that reaction doesn’t exactly encourage real feedback to be left on stories and I personally won’t bother to write long thought out relevant reviews again.

That is so disappointing. If I notice it is an author's first published work under that name I try and read it and leave a comment under my user name. I rarely, if ever, leave anonymous comments.

 

[lovecraft68]

BDSM is not an act broken down by giving examples of what each letter stands for(google is your friend, I see.)

BDSM is a lifestyle and has three rules, two fluid, one solid.

Fluid is Safe and Sane....every person has a different realm of what those mean, which is where boundaries are set between the two parties.

Consent is the solid rule, and good old Keith is always saying that's not true. But of you don't have consent, you have non consent for fictional purposes, and the crime of rape in real life.

The people who, because they can't understand something, try to force their ignorance upon others then try to insult them for not agreeing with them are the exact thing they're calling out.

Saying no one can force their rules on someone, but making sure to inform them that if you don't agree with their rules that's different, because they know.

You don't know Jack or shit about BDSM that's glaringly obvious in your posts and your weak attempts at it, and that's fine, until you try to impose your ignorance on others who may want to know what its really about.

People in the community blame 50 shades for a lot of the misinformation out there, but they're wrong, its existed from long before those books came out, you're proof of it.

 

[gunhilltrain]

People who are just mean I tend to ignore. And positive feedback means way more to me than they probably even realize. But I really do try to take constructive criticism to heart, it’s actually kind of exciting!

How much do you tend to listen to criticism? Or any other feedback for that matter?

One thing I find surprising is when I'm asked to write a story idea. I politely decline, because I already have so much unfinished stuff. What really shocks me about it though is I don't really consider myself a very good writer yet lol. I mean it's flattering that they ask, but still surprises me. What kind of unexpected requests do you receive?

Based on the scores you've gotten so far, you must be doing something right. You also have five red H's on your first thirteen stories, which is a very respectable start.

I guess this is flattering, but I do get requests - expectations, actually - for a sequel or sequels to stand-alone stories. I often have to respond, "I'll think about it, but I don't have anything right now." Sometimes I do get inspired and I think of a follow-up to the original plot.