Story quality, once upon a time and today

[lovecraft68]

Pillow soft category on the whole.

The real wilding ones do break up the monotony a bit but there's real weighting on both ends of the spectrum (not much in the middle)

Soft, hetero normative, romance "destined to be" with light hurdles to overcome or some real terrifying, power freaks who aren't slowed even by long term familial bonds.



Why two brothers or sisters using the safety of home to work out their homosexual feelings turns much of the incest crowd into raving mad family values(?!!) protesters is beyond me.

I have one that is in the market, but could make its way here down the line that mixes a homage to some horror tropes, a family with a dark past, a prophecy that has to be fulfilled through siblings consummating a forbidden love, than gaining revenge of the descendants of the ones who hung their ancestor in a very...taboo way.

Its bro sis romance, but throw in a threesome with mom at the end and there's a pumpkin that's actually a character in and of itself. Its fun and something that I haven't seen anything like it here. I put a lot of work into, even wrote a poem/incantation spell for it that I posted here around Halloween in the poetry section.

https://literotica.com/p/the-great-pump-kin

I really need to get help.

 

[Euphony]

I really need to get help.

Disagree.

I'm pillow pillow soft and couldn't possibly write in your style even as an exercise. But I see the logic and the underlying humanity in most of it. (I think some of my struggles are not understanding the landscape, not some inherent badness)

Usually I find the catharsis or at least imagine I do and much of the thorns get forgotten about staring at the rose.

It's the brutal, blunt force sledgehammers who don't hide they are ONLY about the abuse/power/suffering/exploitation that freak me the F out. I read authors here b/c they are wildly talented but I KNOW I have to take multiple breaks throughout b/c I simply can't handle it full force.

There are plenty of authors who write much softer stuff but I get physically ill b/c there is no attempt at softening or reasoning the brutality. It IS the story and its sole reason for existence.

 

[lovecraft68]

Disagree.

I'm pillow pillow soft and couldn't possibly write in your style even as an exercise. But I see the logic and the underlying humanity in most of it. (I think some of my struggles are not understanding the landscape, not some inherent badness)

Usually I find the catharsis or at least imagine I do and much of the thorns get forgotten about staring at the rose.

It's the brutal, blunt force sledgehammers who don't hide they are ONLY about the abuse/power/suffering/exploitation that freak me the F out. I read authors here b/c they are wildly talented but I KNOW I have to take multiple breaks throughout b/c I simply can't handle it full force.

There are plenty of authors who write much softer stuff but I get physically ill b/c there is no attempt at softening or reasoning the brutality. It IS the story and its sole reason for existence.

I've had the incest kink since my teens, found an old paperback by 'anonymous' full of nasty sister and mom and daughter stories, some a little too rough for my taste, but it was the concept that did it for me. My first time being with a foster sister I lived with for five years who was older and called me her brother as she seduced me pretty much ensured the kink was going to be permanent.

But well before I began writing I used to dwell on more than the sex. What could lead people to this? The whole "mom's hot why not" is only fun in porn, its not a real story to me, so I got to where I figured something had to get those wires crossed...trauma, grief, desperation, drugs...and once I began writing those ideas took shape in some of my stories. I've always avoided outright abuse of power, at least I feel I have, and just played the trope of people broken in some way.

Then I have the fun goofy stuff to. Those are my guilty pleasures.

 

[Euphony]

I got to where I figured something had to get those wires crossed...trauma, grief, desperation, drugs...and once I began writing those ideas took shape in some of my stories. I've always avoided outright abuse of power, at least I feel I have, and just played the trope of people broken in some way.

I find it interesting what keeps you writing is where I write away from. I have (recent-ish) family grief, desperation, trauma, etc. and use writing as a sort of therapy, rewriting events into people who overcome difficulties for each other, not use them as "socially acceptable" reasons to bail.

You write trauma well, a little too well for me, which is my highest compliment.

Then I have the fun goofy stuff to. Those are my guilty pleasures.

"Familiarity breeds contempt."

Your output and general understanding of the landscape (and how it's grown/shifted through time here) would almost require this steam release.

I respect the hell out of you making a go of actual paid authorship and, generally, meeting your readers/customers needs while being clear in carving out your own space within your art.

"Guilty pleasure" might fit in the case of a marketplace relationship but, honestly, some times those fuckers need to stop gorging on your Big Macs to their death and try a few cruciferous offerings off your carefully selected crudité spread.

Lovecraft, now with FIBER!

 

[MillieDynamite]

The quality of any person's work is in the mind of any specific reader. The proclivity of kink covered, desire for the characters (or lack thereof), love or hatred of the scene, self-identification positively or negatively of mc, racial prejudice for or against characters, feelings about the author (real or imagined). Just saying the quality of the writing isn't what we judged are judged on here. Pure shit writing can be loved if it fills a need. A wordsmith with magic in his or her writing can be hated if they venture into the wrong crowd.

 

[Euphony]

The quality of any person's work is in the mind of any specific reader. The proclivity of kink covered, desire for the characters (or lack thereof), love or hatred of the scene, self-identification positively or negatively of mc, racial prejudice for or against characters, feelings about the author (real or imagined). Just saying the quality of the writing isn't what we judged are judged on here. Pure shit writing can be loved if it fills a need. A wordsmith with magic in his or her writing can be hated if they venture into the wrong crowd.

A trick I like it figuring out authors who can write insanely well but generally refuse to stick to category wants. Of course, you have to figure out the score "band" for each cat but when you do, you can find some incredible stories in the score space between the top of the category (often red meat to the base) and a couple .10ths down.

Begrudging votes are the hardest won IMO.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I'm an acquired taste, and my stores are scattered through the categories. I don't obsess over scores, don't care if I piss off INCELs, and please myself with my stories if readers like them, cool. If they hate them, also cool. My goal is a physical or emotional response.

 

[SimonDoom]

Isn't that offset, though, by understanding how much is involved in writing and offering up a story? I'd think that would soften rather than harden critique.

Definitely! But the issue here isn't the harshness of our critiques but our perceptions of past and present. My experience as a writer makes me tread somewhat lightly as a critic; I know how easy it is to make mistakes as a writer. But that's an intellectual matter. I can appreciate better than before how hard it is to write a good story, but it's so much harder now to look at stories with the sense of wide-eyed wonder I looked at them 15-20 years ago.

 

[PennameWombat]

Sturgeon’s Law: Ninety percent of everything is crap.

George Orwell wrote in 1946[1]:

In much more than nine cases out of ten the only objectively truthful criticism would be “This book is worthless”, while the truth about the reviewer’s own reaction would probably be “This book does not interest me in any way, and I would not write about it unless I were paid to.

If there are more stories being posted now than years ago, on a daily average, then this says that 90% of them are and always have been crap. But because of the increase in submissions, the absolute number of crap stories posted each day is larger than before.

It holds well if you look at what gets posted mainstream via KDP… unedited drafts that don’t seem to have been even given a cursory proofreading, punctuation applied randomly, and so on. People who ask “I finished writing my book, how can I publish it?” (And, by writing, they literally mean they just typed up the first draft of, uh, their 300,000 word masterpiece and why aren’t publishers already fighting over it...)

Finding the gems in any such stream thus becomes more difficult.

[1] Confessions of a Book Reviewer, George Orwell, appeared in the Tribune, May, 1946 (available at the link from the Orwell Foundation.)

 

[ElectricBlue]

If there are more stories being posted now than years ago, on a daily average, then this says that 90% of them are and always have been crap. But because of the increase in submissions, the absolute number of crap stories posted each day is larger than before.

The corollary is that the 10% that is decent is also bigger.

People have to look at it the right way around, and stop moaning about the amount of junk. Concentrate on the gems, because without a doubt, they're there.

 

[lovecraft68]

Sturgeon’s Law: Ninety percent of everything is crap.

George Orwell wrote in 1946[1]:


If there are more stories being posted now than years ago, on a daily average, then this says that 90% of them are and always have been crap. But because of the increase in submissions, the absolute number of crap stories posted each day is larger than before.

It holds well if you look at what gets posted mainstream via KDP… unedited drafts that don’t seem to have been even given a cursory proofreading, punctuation applied randomly, and so on. People who ask “I finished writing my book, how can I publish it?” (And, by writing, they literally mean they just typed up the first draft of, uh, their 300,000 word masterpiece and why aren’t publishers already fighting over it...)

Finding the gems in any such stream thus becomes more difficult.

[1] Confessions of a Book Reviewer, George Orwell, appeared in the Tribune, May, 1946 (available at the link from the Orwell Foundation.)

Glad you mentioned KDP. There is a school of thought out there that sites like Smashwords are full of garbage and hack trash because it has no standards(wonder who started this school of thought hmmm...) but Amazon screens books and requires quality and....yeah, as you point out bullshit.

Amazon's screening process makes Laurel look like she pours over every word of every story. There is as much junk there as anywhere else. But I've always felt that in erotica readers don't care as much. They want to get off to sex, not how amazing you are with commas

 

[lovecraft68]

I'm an acquired taste, and my stores are scattered through the categories. I don't obsess over scores, don't care if I piss off INCELs, and please myself with my stories if readers like them, cool. If they hate them, also cool. My goal is a physical or emotional response.

There people here mystified about how I have a recent story in LW that's at 2.83 and the consensus is its that way because all the characters are unlikeable, and they are. The story doesn't show the wife as the bitch and the husband as this poor victim which is what the incels want. The wife is a bitch, but upfront about it, the husband was told before marriage she would always play the field, and he accepted. He also did something shitty to someone which surfaces in the story and he's a mealy mouthed spineless sneak

The other man in the story is doing the wrong thing for revenge on the husband, then gets talked into fucking the wife for revenge instead. He did have an axe to grind so there is some understandable motivation for his behavior, but he chose sex and demeaning the husband over ruining his career which is what was done to him at one point by the husband, so he sold out the real payback to be sleazy and nasty.

People here asked why would I write a story with characters you can't root for or identify with, and my answer is in real life people are shit and do shit things. This is a realistic look at said shit, and I don't care what the reaction is.

However, even some of the negative remarks called out it was well written and polarizing, just not for them

That's a win if you write to write and aren't obsessed with score. That's a reaction and reactions are good.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

People here asked why would I write a story with characters you can't root for or identify with, and my answer is in real life people are shit and do shit things. This is a realistic look at said shit, and I don't care what the reaction is.

I agree with you when it comes to real people and their morals. You can always bet on real people acting like selfish assholes much of the time. Some people though, myself included, prefer to read about less realistic characters. Maybe that is why I like fantasy so much. Fact is, an average person is a weak willed, self-serving and ignorant individual and I would rather not read about such people in literature, as I get enough of them by looking at them and talking with them every day. That is why I dislike when my book is filled with such very realistic characters, as reading is a sort of escapism for me, among other things. I assume that is why some of your readers are criticizing your characters. Maybe they want to look at a better picture compared to the one they get to see every day.
You, on the other hand, clearly want your characters to be as real as possible and I believe many readers appreciate it, although seeing themselves in the mirror can be very annoying and result in some 1*

 

[MillieDynamite]

There people here mystified about how I have a recent story in LW that's at 2.83 and the consensus is its that way because all the characters are unlikeable, and they are. The story doesn't show the wife as the bitch and the husband as this poor victim which is what the incels want. The wife is a bitch, but upfront about it, the husband was told before marriage she would always play the field, and he accepted. He also did something shitty to someone which surfaces in the story and he's a mealy mouthed spineless sneak

The other man in the story is doing the wrong thing for revenge on the husband, then gets talked into fucking the wife for revenge instead. He did have an axe to grind so there is some understandable motivation for his behavior, but he chose sex and demeaning the husband over ruining his career which is what was done to him at one point by the husband, so he sold out the real payback to be sleazy and nasty.

People here asked why would I write a story with characters you can't root for or identify with, and my answer is in real life people are shit and do shit things. This is a realistic look at said shit, and I don't care what the reaction is.

However, even some of the negative remarks called out it was well written and polarizing, just not for them

That's a win if you write to write and aren't obsessed with score. That's a reaction and reactions are good.

I've avoided the LW since I got scorched there over a story where a woman thought of her one fling with an boss who had flings with all his female employees. She visited his grave a few days after his funeral to put single rose there, and the grave was covered with single roses. They hated her, she was married, they hated the man (some claimed he was a black man which he wasn't), they hated the story, they hated me. Some of them followed me to other categories to hate on those stories as well. I don't care about the votes, I don't most negative comments, but the personal attacks and using the system email function to send me hate mail in my inbox got a bit much. I'd post a link to the story, but then the trolls would start in again

 

[lovecraft68]

I've avoided the LW since I got scorched there over a story where a woman thought of her one fling with an boss who had flings with all his female employees. She visited his grave a few days after his funeral to put single rose there, and the grave was covered with single roses. They hated her, she was married, they hated the man (some claimed he was a black man which he wasn't), they hated the story, they hated me. Some of them followed me to other categories to hate on those stories as well. I don't care about the votes, I don't most negative comments, but the personal attacks and using the system email function to send me hate mail in my inbox got a bit much. I'd post a link to the story, but then the trolls would start in again

Understandable, everyone here has to decide for themselves how much crap they want to take and on a free site where there's no benefit to putting up with it.

I see it that I've been through to much real life hell to let words from the lowest form of life bother me. I think many people here could say the same, just some look at it that why should I, and I see it as why should I care?

Someone once left a comment in LW that reading my story was like trying to pick pieces of corn out of a pile of shit. I have since used that analogy when I post there, that the few decent comments are like picking through a pile of shit to find the few worthwhile remarks.

Who says you can't learn from anything from stupid people?

 

[lovecraft68]

although seeing themselves in the mirror can be very annoying and result in some 1*

I think this is the hammer to the nail on why people in LW are so angry. They either went through this and read out of self flagellation or they like it, then take it out on us that they did. One side or the other its knee jerk responses to their own conflicted issues.

The truth really sucks.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I think this is the hammer to the nail on why people in LW are so angry. They either went through this and read out of self flagellation or they like it, then take it out on us that they did. One side or the other its knee jerk responses to their own conflicted issues.

The truth really sucks.

What lovecraft said.

 

[Gamblnluck]

As I read through the responses, I have to agree with many. I am more picky about the quality of a story. I read through about 20 stories written by one who was called a 'great'.
My response was he was indeed a great. A king of the half story. Dropped plot lines, half explained threads etc. And I am not talking the types of story made great by O.Henry. (look it up)
Most stories are half written. I have talked with a few. They say they don't want to fill out their story as they want to tell a story within a certain page limit. They have 20 plot lines but touch on 2. Some are well written and could become a good story. many do not. like this post.... they fizzle.

 

[SimonDoom]

As I read through the responses, I have to agree with many. I am more picky about the quality of a story. I read through about 20 stories written by one who was called a 'great'.
My response was he was indeed a great. A king of the half story. Dropped plot lines, half explained threads etc. And I am not talking the types of story made great by O.Henry. (look it up)
Most stories are half written. I have talked with a few. They say they don't want to fill out their story as they want to tell a story within a certain page limit. They have 20 plot lines but touch on 2. Some are well written and could become a good story. many do not. like this post.... they fizzle.

Interesting that you mention O. Henry, who was definitely a master of the craft. An interesting thing about his stories is that they're generally about 3500 words, or something like that. That's less than 1 Lit page, much shorter than the average successful Lit story. But I don't think anyone complains that his stories are under-developed. His stories show you that you can fully develop the characters and plot in few words if you really work at it.

 

[Bramblethorn]

As I read through the responses, I have to agree with many. I am more picky about the quality of a story. I read through about 20 stories written by one who was called a 'great'.
My response was he was indeed a great. A king of the half story. Dropped plot lines, half explained threads etc.

The dilemma there is that some readers want things filled in and explained to a degree that other readers would find way too much.

For instance - another author on this site has a series which begins with the protagonist waking up with a hangover. Then she makes plans to watch a game with her roommate, ending with "I'll get us a six-pack". Then she goes bowling, and the first point of conversation is who's buying beers. After she's drunk enough beer to get buzzed, a couple of things happen that put her in a bad mood. She promptly slams down a double of the tequila and then has ill-advised sex with a stranger in a bathroom.

Beginning of Chapter 2, she gets home from work and immediately grabs a beer from the fridge. She makes plans to hit a dance club, have a few cocktails, and try to pick somebody up, but thinks about how she hates being hungover when she visits her grandma. Then she does it anyway, ends up getting in a fight and banned from the bar.

And so on through several more chapters: she punctuates her life with alcohol, both as a social habit and as a reflex when she's feeling bad. Eventually it gets out of hand to the point where she has an accident while DUI and is at risk of losing her job, so she finally goes into rehab for alcoholism and eventually, reluctantly, admits she has a problem with alcohol.

End of Chapter 7, a reader complained about the character's "sudden portrayal" as an alcoholic and how the previous chapters didn't support this angle at all. The early chapters are told from the perspective of somebody who's in denial about her problem, so it wouldn't make sense to explicitly say "by the way, I drink every time I'm upset". But there's no shortage of hints for the reader who's paying attention; any more and I'd have thought it heavy-handed.

Some readers love getting a chance to fill in the blanks. In my story "Loss Function", Nadja Kapustina's partner/eventual wife nicknames her "cabbage". I expect most readers just thought it was a generic cutesy name. But "cabbage" in Russian is "kapusta", and I heard back from one reader who spotted the implied backstory and was tickled by it. I'd rather give one reader that delight of figuring it out than kill the joke by explaining it to another ninety-nine.

I think this is partly cultural. As a sweeping generalisation with many exceptions, American films/TV seem to prefer more detailed explanation, whereas British shows are a bit more willing to leave gaps for the audience to bridge. That kind of thing makes it impossible to write for everybody.

(I have no idea whether that was the issue with the author you read - sometimes a poorly-explained story just is poorly explained. But if so many people liked his stories, presumably he had something going for him.)

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I track my pageviews closely, and the stories that I wrote in 2006 and 2008 are practically ignored compared to the stories I wrote 8 months aog.

My oldest story still averages around 1800 views per month, but it is the foundation story for a universe that I keep adding to, so that tends to motivate new readers to seek it out.