Didn't like my stories? Tell me why?

[Guest]

This is those who read (couldn't finish) , and disliked my stories.

Please kind enough to take time and tell me your reasons.

I want to improve on it.

 

[Guest]

No replies... Hummm...

Does this mean I'm doing OK? The wall of silence is making me crazy.

Honestly..., I've read and gave feedback to over a dozen authors. Two bothered to do like wise for me. I'm wondering if the whole thing is a waste of time...

Maybe I shoudn't bother with this place, er?

 

[superlittlegirl]

aww, c'mon....

hey svet,

You didn't really think anyone would meet the challenge, did you? The fantastic thing about the anonymity of this medium is that it lets cowards swagger without fear of recrimination.
I would advise you to stick around, if for no other reason than I like your work. The flow of feedback is slow and erratic sometimes, and it's Murphy's law that it's the slowest when you're waiting with bated breath for an anticipated reply. Stay with it. You deserve to be here just as much as they do.

--Freya

 

[Guest]

Thanks superlittlegirl.

I'll check up on the place now and again, then.

Guess what? I've got the first two chapters of my next novella back from one of my 'good' editors. I've got to get working!!!

svet

 

[superlittlegirl]

do good work

Hi svet,

I'm glad that you've decided to stay. Good luck on your rewrites!

--Freya

 

[SexyChele]

Svet,
I'm a little confused as to what you are asking. Are you wanting those people who have read your story and not liked it to comment? Or is this just a general statement?

Seldom will you receive any truly constructive negative remarks. When I get them, I try to see the story through the reader's eyes and see if I can pick what they did. Most of the time, though, I get "That sucked". Good, very helpful - and totally ignored by me.

You need to decide why you write. Do you write for the approval of others? If so, you will always be disappointed. If you write because you like to write, you like to release a flow of ideas, you like to tell a story, you will be more satisfied.

Voting is nice. It gives me a barometer as to what people think. Feedback is great! It really lets me know what is on people's minds. But when you receive less than 50 votes for a story that had over 17,000 views (as one of mine did), ya gotta expect that some liked it, some hated it, and others simply went - "eh".

It's a part of writing and putting it out there.

Good luck!

 

[Guest]

Hello SexyChele,

Thanks for telling me. I'm completety new to this and I don't know how things work in here.

Yes. What I want is truely constructive negative remarks as you put it. Now I understand one seldom gets it.

Why do I write? I haven't got a clue, but still I write.

I kind of figured out about the voting thing.

Thanks for taking time to give me your advice.

Silly me,

svet

 

[Ray Dario]

svet,

I guess I'm one of the authors you have given feedback to, that hasn't reciprocated. Shame on me! But I really didn't understand that you were wanting me, in particular, to give you feedback. I hadn't read your story nor had I tried and quit.

If you want feedback on your stories, and are willing to give as well as receive then may I suggest joining us in the "Story Discussion" Forum.

The feedback I have received there was very helpful to me. In the meantime, I'll do my best to read one of your stories and give you as good feedback as I can.

Ray

 

[Guest]

Sorry Ray

Hello Ray,

I was just about to send you an apology in an e-mail. I guess, I've been missing the point completely.

Forgive me.

svet

 

[Ray Dario]

Okay svet,

First off, you seem to have annoymous feedback and your email address turned off. Makes it real hard for someone to give you feedback. Second, if you're looking for feedback here on this thread you should include a link to your stories. I'm going to include it in this post. Just tell me if you want it removed and I'll take it off, pronto.

His stories:

http://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=95091

Now to the feedback. "One Year with Katie Ch. 1"

Remember that all of my comments are just my opinion, and worth just a little less than what you paid for them.

The story's plot was pretty good, and you built up the main character fairly well. I'm a HUGE advocate of description, but sometimes your description was of things not important to the story. You can loose those parts and make the story a faster read.

You wrote, mostly, in present tense. I personally don't like present tense. You also made the mistake of slipping into past tense occasionally. Conflicts in tense make the story hard to follow and can jerk the reader from the story. This to me was the singlularly most important problem with it.

The next most important problem was with dialog. Each speaker should get a new paragraph when speaking. You often didn't do this and at times I found it hard to follow who was saying what.

Third and last, paragraph construction. Paragraphs should have a single common theme that each sentence contributes to. This is true whether the paragraph is one sentence long or 500. It looked to me like you were trying to make sure none of your paragraphs got too long, so once they were a certain length, whether the paragraph was over or not, you started a new one. This caused two problems for me. First it made the story monotonous, because each paragraph was of a similar length, second it made it hard to read because some paragraphs had more than one main theme point and others continued the theme from the one before.

Overall your story had some very good points. It was obviously well thought out and your plot moved quickly enough, but it could have used a little more technical work. Keep writing, keep working at learning, and hang around the "Author's Hangout" and I'm sure your stories will just continue to get better and better.

I hope this is what you were looking for, and I hope I didn't come across as too harsh. If I did, I appologize.

Ray

 

[Guest]

GREAT!!!

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

Yes Ray, you ARE brilliant!

This is what I was looking for.

Bless you,

svet

 

[Guest]

My apologies

This is for those who have recieved stupid feedbacks from me.
I'd start a new thread if I had the guts.

I APOLOGIZE SINCERELY.

svet

 

[superlittlegirl]

I'll apologize too--

I'll apologize too, because I thought that what svet meant was that people had sent "this sucks" feedback and then refused to follow it up with any kind of useful explanation.

 

[Guest]

It's all my fault...

I ignored 'you suck' feedback, which was the right thing to do.

What I did next was stupid. I started giving feedbacks, offering my worthless opinions and advices to those who obviously don't need them.

I must have pissed off whole lot of people. It wasn't my intention.

It's simply my idiocy, nothing to do with superlittlegirl who just wanted to encourage me.

Sorry again

svet

 

[Ray Dario]

Re: It's all my fault...

I ignored 'you suck' feedback, which was the right thing to do.

What I did next was stupid. I started giving feedbacks, offering my worthless opinions and advices to those who obviously don't need them.

I must have pissed off whole lot of people. It wasn't my intention.

It's simply my idiocy, nothing to do with superlittlegirl who just wanted to encourage me.

Sorry again

svet

svet, You didn't do anything stupid. Your opinions and advice are not worthless. I really enjoyed your question on my thread, and thought your point was valid and well taken.

Please, we don't have enough people around here who give feedback, I certainly don't want anyone and certainly not you, to stop giving feedback.

Also I really doubt you pissed anyone off. You started an interesting conversation and probably helped other people who were more timid than yourself to learn some things.

So don't be hard on yourself, and welcome to Lit!

Ray

 

[Guest]

Let me clarify

Before I started giving my worthless opinions, suggestions, comments, advices, etc. to those who don't need them, I had posted threads asking for feedback for my stories.

People were checking out my threads, and I thought at least some of them must have attempted to read the stories.

I wasn't getting any feedback, so I reckoned that people must have lost interest in reading them, perhaps my writing was bad, perhaps the stories weren't good enough for them to bother giving me their feedbacks.

That's why I started giving my useless opinions to the authors who were asking for feedback. I, kind of, misundersood giving feedback was getting comments back.

Shit...

I'm really embarrassed to be here.

svet

 

[SexyChele]

Svet,
Don't worry about it. I, for one, don't have the foggiest idea of what you did and frankly, it doesn't matter.

When I came to Lit I was stepping on everybody's toes. Still do, sometimes. It's okay. People here forgive and forget.

Move on and forget the past. You're new, you have a right.

 

[KillerMuffin]

Svet, baby, it's okay.

Let's outline a few things here:

1) Your opinions are NOT worhtless, stupid, a waste of time or otherwise. Your opinions are highly valuable, not because of your writing skills but because of your reading skills. You were a reader before you were a writer. You've reader gazillions of words in your life and you are uniquely qualified to give your opinion on how those words were strung together.

and 2) I have given well over 50 pieces of well thought-out and time consuming feedback to people who have asked for it here. Not one of them that I gave feedback to bothered to do the same for me. Not even an atta muffin or a you suck. If I want feedback, I have to ask for it. Of the well over 50 authors I've given feedback to, only one or two bothered to do likewise when I asked for it. Most of my feedback came from people who didn't want my opinion on their stuff.

These are the facts of any porn authors life:

You don't get much feedback. It just doesn't happen except during special occurances and most to do with some wonderful people on this board.

Readers are here to read something and get off to it. They could, for the most part, give a rats ass about whoever wrote it. They just don't care. If it doesn't work for them, they backclick. If it does work for them, they clean up the orgasm goo and go someplace else to check email or shop or something. To a reader, beyond looking for more stuff if they really liked it, you are pretty much non-existent. Why? They have no idea what feedback means to an author.

Quit kicking yourself, you have every right to be here, every right to post any thread you want to, and every right to ask for and give feedback as anyone else here, up to and including me.

One other thing: Giving feedback improves your writing. That's a fact. Rather than do your own, cruise the forum and give feedback. Just answer two simple questions "What do I like about this story and why?" and "What do I dislike about this story and why?"

It's better to give than to receive.

 

[Guest]

Ray, SexyChele and KillerMuffin

Thank you very much for the comments.
I'll learn.
I'll stick around.