Who was your "Breaking Point"

[Wifetheif]

Like most authors, I became a writer because I encountered a published book that was so bad I said to myself, "I can write a better book than this!" My question is who for you was your "breaking point" the book or author so slipshod that you had to prove to yourself and your friends that you could do a better job?
I'll start. Nonfiction: a travesty entitled, "Angel's Haunted Halo" a book of baseball scandals, written by a complete non-entity named Danny Gallager. At one point, he related the tragic fate of Donnie Moore, a pitcher whose career turned on one pitch. Moore went into a downward spiral that ended with him shooting his wife and then committing suicide. Fortunately, his wife survived, but his daughter was so traumatized by the experience that she no longer dated black men. At this point, Gallager breaks the fourth wall to inform the reader that he had a black girlfriend in college and then proceeds to give her a shout-out!

Erotica: E.L. James who, I suspect is the tipping point for many on this board.

Your Turn!

 

[RejectReality]

No such thing for me. I started writing a story to tickle my wife's kinks and fantasies while simultaneously drawing her into the fantasy world of my PnP Role-playing game so she would have some context whenever it came up.

It worked, and she continuously encouraged me to share it with others until I broke down and did it.

There are a lot of authors I wasn't fond of, but never once did I think I could write better than them. Even when it came to erotica, I was apparently fortunate to choose works from the likes of Evil Alpaca and Mack the Knife. It was only after I'd been writing for a while before I thought I might just be better than a few people.

 

[SimonDoom]

It's a great question. There's no question that my desire to write stories arose in part from the way I responded to things I read. But my reaction is a bit different from the way you've phrased it.

I read stories at Literotica as early as 2002 or so -- I honestly don't remember when I started -- and I remember loving the stories but sometimes thinking, "If I were the author, I would tweak this story in this way or that way." The feeling built up for years and years until I started publishing in 2016.

50 Shades was definitely a catalyst for me. I read the whole damn trilogy. My objection to it wasn't so much the bad writing as that I felt James pulled her punches. She introduced her readers to a fun, salacious, BDSM relationship, and then for the rest of the trilogy she explained it as the product of childhood abuse. The BDSM then became something to overcome, rather than to embrace. It would have been so much more fun if both characters had truly embraced their BDSM relationship. It bugged me.

So when I started writing stories, a key motivation was (and remains) to write characters who find their true and whole selves in the exploration of their kinks, however weird or over-the-top they are. That remains a crucial theme of all my stories.

 

[NotWise]

I haven't written anything because some else disappointed me. I write because I want to write.

 

[Payne_Hall]

This isn’t exactly the same thing but I keep writing trying to chase the story high I got from watching Empire Strikes Back for the first time, back before the prequels and all the rest came out. It was the perfect movie. The only pitfall was Star Wars couldn’t be that perfect again.

Well, that’s how I started writing anyway. I write erotica to get some stray thoughts out of my head .

 

[Rustyoznail]

I didn't start writing here because I thought I could do better, but there are a couple of stories I had in mind when I did start.

"Day of the triffids". John Wyndham. Dull, heavy on detail, and dull. Did I mention it was dull? I read about halfway, then realised I'd already read the previous two dull chapters.

"11/22/63". Stephen King. A good concept ruined by a ridiculous ending. A man in a hat keeping the timelines in order. In his head? Come on, really?

Lessons learned
- Detail is fine but don't bore your reader.
- Don't bolt on an ending just to finish the story (I have been guilty of this one...)

 

[Wifetheif]

It's a great question. T

50 Shades was definitely a catalyst for me. I read the whole damn trilogy. My objection to it wasn't so much the bad writing as that I felt James pulled her punches. She introduced her readers to a fun, salacious, BDSM relationship, and then for the rest of the trilogy she explained it as the product of childhood abuse. The BDSM then became something to overcome, rather than to embrace. It would have been so much more fun if both characters had truly embraced their BDSM relationship. It bugged me.

So when I started writing stories, a key motivation was (and remains) to write characters who find their true and whole selves in the exploration of their kinks, however weird or over-the-top they are. That remains a crucial theme of all my stories.

I agree with all of this, a reader will put up with a lot if the story is good. Dan Brown is an especially bad stylist for example but he tells interesting stories and keeps things moving along in a rapid clip. He's the equivalent of a popcorn movie and that is fine. Fifty Shades would have been SO much better if it dealt honestly with BDSM. Very few people are one hundred percent vanilla all the time. It COULD have opened the doors to more "kinks" in consumer literature but it didn't, meaning that James did all other writers a disservice. True erotica is bigger now than ever but it could have gone mainstream and flowed into TV and movies like LBGTQ stories have, for example. Now men can kiss on screen but bring out the handcuffs and you get an R rating!

 

[gunhilltrain]

I don't compare myself to other writers, although Faulkner would say I've learned something from them anyway. I respect anybody would can accomplish publishing a book, even if it's one I don't like or "get."

I've never E.L. James, but I've read reviews of her books. Frankly, I'd think they would be more fun if Anastasia switched things at times and gave Christian Gray some smacks on his self-righteous rear end. I bet he'd be the kind of guy to like it too. A few strokes of her riding crop on his bare booty, and he'd be going, "Thank you, mistress. May I please have another?"

 

[PennameWombat]

I've never been so confident that I could do better than any specific book I've read. Doesn't mean I haven't been disappointed by any number of books, but that's different than believing I could do better.

I write because for so long I've had some ideas for stories. Not because they're unique, they're not (wrapping stories around aliens secretly on Earth has been done), but they're mine. But I just never took the time to sit and do it. A variety of life transitions pushed me to take a couple of workshops to focus on fiction narratives and here we are.

 

[LAHomedog]

Sorry, that is not my experience in anyway. I have never done that.

I have spent my life in the collaborative arts. That means there is always an audience of some kind and an immediate response. That exists on here. Someone can read one of my stories and respond if they want to.

Because of that, I like the venue. Simple as that.

 

[Athalia]

As regards erotica, I found so much on the internet that failed to meet even the lowest standards of decent writing that I was encouraged to try my hand at it, figuring that at my worst I was still ten times better than the last piece of dreck that I'd read.

For more mainstream literature, I found that Gay Telese's "Thy Neighbor's Wife" left me cold. Somehow the erotic elements had all been boiled away, leaving me with a sense of having associated with a rather cheesy voyeur.

And I confess that I may be a handful of people who have never been able to get more than fifty pages into "Game of Thrones."

 

[LAHomedog]

And I confess that I may be a handful of people who have never been able to get more than fifty pages into "Game of Thrones."

Me too. Also, can't read the "Rings" or anything like that. Not my cup of tea.

 

[SamScribble]

I started writing short stories, many years ago, after reading an anthology and wondering if I could write something that would not be out of place in said anthology. I sent my story to a magazine, and the magazine sent me a cheque.

About 15 years later, I started writing erotica after visiting a lawyer friend who I thought was working from home. It turned out that he wasn't actually working. He was having a 'duvet day' with a lady editor he knew. They were in bed, taking turns to read to each other from an impressive collection of smut.

After a bit of a chat and a cup of coffee, Jo said that she thought that I could probably write smut, and she gave me three or four paperbacks to take away and study. The rest (as they say) is history.

 

[ElectricBlue]

When I first discovered Lit and sampled its wares, I realised it really was a site open to all. After reading some exceptionally good content (easily comparable to the best erotica I'd read anywhere else - and I've been reading for a very long time) and dozens more stories where I exited after a couple of hundred words, I figured, well I may not be able to write as well as the best of them, but I sure as hell can write better than the worst.

So I put my words where my mouth was and gave it a go. And got better at it, discovered my style, got better at that, and kept writing. And kept on surprising myself with the stuff that scurried up from my psyche, and built up an audience who liked what scurried up. I enjoy doing what I do, got some folk saying, that's pretty damn good, write more. So I do.

 

[RejectReality]

I've never finished more than a chapter and a half of anything by Stephen King. I don't think he's bad... There's just something about the way he writes that loses me. I end up forgetting what I read a sentence or two earlier, getting lost, going back, and then giving up. Haven't even considered looking at one since.

Of the two I did ( Langoliers and The Stand, I think ) one of them was loaned to me by a girl I was sweet on, or I never even would have tried. I wasn't much of a reader to begin with. It just so happened that she also loaned me Dragons of Autumn Twilight, and that I absolutely devoured once I tossed King aside.

Drove 45 minutes on no sleep to the nearest book store, purchased the rest of the trilogy, and then I was off the next day to pick up the Legends trilogy as well, and it just expanded exponentially from there.

The second King book I tried because my sister had it, and I thought maybe it was just the last remnants of my reader apathy that had kept me from getting into the first one.

Nope. Just can't read King.

 

[SimonDoom]

I've never finished more than a chapter and a half of anything by Stephen King. I don't think he's bad... There's just something about the way he writes that loses me. I end up forgetting what I read a sentence or two earlier, getting lost, going back, and then giving up. Haven't even considered looking at one since.

Of the two I did ( Langoliers and The Stand, I think ) one of them was loaned to me by a girl I was sweet on, or I never even would have tried. I wasn't much of a reader to begin with. It just so happened that she also loaned me Dragons of Autumn Twilight, and that I absolutely devoured once I tossed King aside.

Drove 45 minutes on no sleep to the nearest book store, purchased the rest of the trilogy, and then I was off the next day to pick up the Legends trilogy as well, and it just expanded exponentially from there.

The second King book I tried because my sister had it, and I thought maybe it was just the last remnants of my reader apathy that had kept me from getting into the first one.

Nope. Just can't read King.

Did you ever try reading Salem's Lot? That was a great read. One of his earliest novels, and my favorite of all his books. It didn't go on too long, as most of his novels do. The best vampire novel I ever read.

His short story collection Night Shift is good, too.

 

[Emirus]

Literotica was the word

I’d been reading stories on this, and other sites, for a couple of years or so, had a lot of fantasies in my head from over the years and decided to write them down and submit them. I suppose reading stories on here, good and bad, had something to do with it but not that my consciousness is aware of.

I would imagine a lot of writers on here began because they thought they could write stories as good as they had read or thought they could write better stories than they had read. There are writers with zillions of stories to their name who just regurgitate the same plot and I’m certain they could do better if they went for quality over quantity and brevity.

 

[KeithD]

No such thing for me.

I agree with this. I haven't approached writing anything from that angle.

 

[RejectReality]

Did you ever try reading Salem's Lot? That was a great read. One of his earliest novels, and my favorite of all his books. It didn't go on too long, as most of his novels do. The best vampire novel I ever read.

His short story collection Night Shift is good, too.

At the time I tried the second one, I was going through a novel a day. Which was exactly the problem. I'd exhausted Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms at that point, and I was waiting for the next release. This is before I discovered Eddings, Feist, etc.

So, I was essentially starving, and I still couldn't get into it. Borrowed a Louis L'amour off my brother-in-law, and blew straight through it despite never having read a Western before. I ended up borrowing something Sci-Fi, and then Madwand by Zelazny. Devoured. So, it wasn't the genre change. It was King.

Nobody to borrow books off of now, ( My sister borrows mine ) and there's no chance in hell I'm spending good money on something that's as likely as not to end up as a paperweight. LOL

 

[Payne_Hall]

At the time I tried the second one, I was going through a novel a day. Which was exactly the problem. I'd exhausted Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms at that point, and I was waiting for the next release. This is before I discovered Eddings, Feist, etc.

So, I was essentially starving, and I still couldn't get into it. Borrowed a Louis L'amour off my brother-in-law, and blew straight through it despite never having read a Western before. I ended up borrowing something Sci-Fi, and then Madwand by Zelazny. Devoured. So, it wasn't the genre change. It was King.

Nobody to borrow books off of now, ( My sister borrows mine ) and there's no chance in hell I'm spending good money on something that's as likely as not to end up as a paperweight. LOL

Oh, man, this is all everything I love.

Zelazny’s Book of Amber was amazing too. Modesitt’s Recluce is my go-to for a happy story. Terry Brooks was tricky for me as the writing style was strange but once I learned that he wanted to write LotR in the style of Three Musketeers, it helped a ton.

Dragonlance you already named, but God, it really is so good. I know a lot of people who hate on Drizzt and I can see why, but the nerd in me just… gets so happy lol!

Terry Goodkind was another one that I was weird about. I shouldn’t have loved it through to the end as much as I did, with the wild fantasy cliches and political start and yet, I burned through that series.

Neil Gaiman is one I will always go back to. Any of them. The Sandman for graphic novels. Coraline, Stardust, The Graveyard Book, and American Gods for all the rest.

For more modern, Mark Lawrence, Joe Abercrombie, and Brandon Sanderson are the immediate ones that will always come to mine. I can’t put a Sanderson book down once a new one comes out. Rhythm of War should have lasted me a lot longer than two days but I just couldn’t stop. I would say Patrick Rothfuss as well but I don’t think he’ll ever finish Kingkiller.

But as the last one, I have an obsession with Wheel of Time that’s a mile wide and is the only reason I discovered Sanderson.

For King, it started to help me a lot after reading The Dark Tower through because it connected all of his stories in the same world and gave me Easter eggs to look for, to be honest. Otherwise, it would still be hard for me to stay interested sometimes.

 

[YDB95]

As someone already said upthread, I write because I love to write. It's not against anyone else, it's for me.

As far as erotica is concerned, I started writing my own because I couldn't find anyone else's work that quite fit what I liked. It was no one person.

 

[lovecraft68]

I started writing on whim. My wife and I used to role play every weekend over dinner and we'd spend the week developing the characters we'd be playing. One weekend se was out of town for work and I had this great idea and scene vivid in my mind and something made me open a word doc and type up descriptions, then some dialogue and I kept going and did a sex scene.

I don't think anything I've ever done has been based on what someone else has done either to emulate them or think I can do better. I get it in my head to do it, I do it.

I will add when my wife found lit she pushed me to try it out and did make the comment, "You should see some of the crap on there, you're better than that"

She left out there was and still is a lot better than me on here.

 

[Blind_Justice]

R.A. Salvatore, several of his books. He basically was my gateway drug into RPG fiction. The man has flashes of brilliance and he can cook up jaw-dropping fight scenes, but at the same time, he relies way too often on character-breaking stupidity just to get the plot where it needs to go.

Example: In "The Hunter's Blades" trilogy, his lead character, the only "good" Dark Elf, sees a tower where his friends have taken shelter, crumble and eventually collapse. Instead of rushing to their aid, seeing if anyone survived, he goes the opposite way "because he couldn't stand the thought of looking at their corpses".

Why? Because the whole story revolves around said lead character finding new allies. As far as using sledgehammers and crowbars to make plots work, this has to be up there with the egregious examples. Also, Salvatore seems to confuse "thoughtful" with boring and "emotional" with whiny. Seriously. In the first few books, Drizzt's philosophical thoughts were okay-ish attempts to flesh out the character, but the longer the saga drew, the less interesting and often cringe-inducing they became.

The graduation scene in "The Dark Elf Trilogy", in which Drizzt's sister tries to seduce him, was a catalyst for me wanting to write my own version of kinky fantasy stuff. I may not be as imaginative with fight scenes, but I don't need to brute force my plots.

 

[TadOverdon]

I started writing fanfic because I wanted to do what people I admired were doing and because I wanted them to tell stories they weren't telling.

I wasn't really good at it.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Like RR I didn't start writing because I read something bad, I started writing what I would like to read and there were only a few authors here at the time that were.

I didn't expand my writing to other things, that I would like to read, but not because of an author lack of doing something good.

Other than that I now write to fill my time and besides, it's fun.