Am I Any Good?

[PrairieDad]

I like to write. I have an imagination and idea's. But, is my writing any good? The lack of positive comments and a low score tells me NO. I need help. I don't want to quit writing but I do want to have people enjoy my writing. I write under the name PrairieDad. Thank you for your responses and input.

Link to story
https://literotica.com/s/my-summer-with-lisa-pt-03
https://literotica.com/s/my-summer-with-lisa-pt-02-ken-and-melanie

 

[SimonDoom]

You've done well with your first story. The score and number of views so far for chapter 1 are good and you've picked up some favorites and nice comments. Don't be discouraged that there aren't more comments -- comments are few, in general.

I encourage you to keep writing if you enjoy it. If you work at it you'll keep getting better and better.

A few more specific thoughts:

1. I agree with what others wrote in the other thread. The main reason your subsequent stories haven't done as well is you are mixing up erotic genres. The first chapter, which focuses on the older man and much younger woman, is the best. It hangs together the best of them. But after that the story changes completely. The incest not only turns off some readers; it comes across as too unbelievable. If you care about the reader reception you get (some authors don't, and writing purely for your own pleasure is legitimate), I'd recommend following a general guideline of "one major kink per story." If you want to branch out into a different kink, then start a new story with new characters.

2. The chapters get shorter, too, and shorter chapters tend not to score as well.

3. You have the ability to tell a story and a good vocabulary but I strongly recommend working on editing and proofreading. There are several fundamental things to tighten up in your writing. For instance, you shift points of view too often -- not just from one character to another, but from first person to third person. It's confusing. It's OK to shift the POV from one character to another at the end of a scene, but I recommend using third person POV to do this rather than first person.

4. You shift tenses a lot, seemingly without thinking about it, from past tense to present tense. If I were you I'd stay in past tense throughout, but if you prefer present tense, then use that. But stick with one or the other.

5. Your dialogue formatting is very inconsistent, and often not properly punctuated. I recommend reading some of the How To articles at Literotica about hot to write dialogue to clear up some of the issues. I'll give you a few examples from the first story:


"I didn't mean to scare you" giggling, "Sorry."

Should be: "I didn't mean to scare you." She giggled. "Sorry."

"My names Lisa. pleased to meet you neighbour."

Should be: My name's Lisa. Pleased to meet you, neighbour." You left out an apostrophe and a comma and didn't capitalize "Pleased," which is the first word of that sentence.

"Pretty nice eh Ken" smiling at me.

This either needs a proper dialogue tag, like "she says," or you need to end the sentence with a period after "Ken" and start a new sentence. Like this:

"Pretty nice, eh, Ken?" she says, smiling at me. or

"Pretty nice, he, Ken?" She smiled at me.

I noticed this is a convention that you follow a lot, so I'd recommend looking pretty carefully over your dialogue going forward to clean that up.

Keep at it, and have fun!

 

[suestevenson143]

I think you did very well