pink_silk_glove
Literate Smutress
- Joined
- Feb 6, 2018
- Posts
- 3,951
Doubt about your own work
- Thread starter Stimtheone
- Start date
Rob_Royale
with cheese
- Joined
- Aug 8, 2022
- Posts
- 6,989
Only my rape fantasy story. It was, I thought, dancing on the line of acceptability. However the story has gotten good feedback from men and women.
SimonDoom
Kink Lord
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2015
- Posts
- 19,891
I don't overthink it. Sure, I often have expectations about a story meeting certain goals in terms of score or views or whatever, and sometimes my stories fall short of those goals, but I feel like my enjoyment of the process and the satisfaction I get from churning out another story that meets my own personal criteria outweigh whatever response I get from others. I write for fun, not out of a sense that any of these stories are profoundly important. I have the ability to enjoy positive feedback without getting down about negative feedback. If some people don't like my story, I don't care.
Kumquatqueen
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2017
- Posts
- 4,580
Sometimes I think a story won't be appreciated, but then a bunch of people do. Eg Gas Station Guy - there's no actual sex in it if people are thinking of penetrative sex, the characters who get together are a gay virgin and a cynical lesbian (hardly what your typical readers wanting gay virgins or lesbians are looking for), they're in London speaking British English (all my stories get comments objecting to that) and he's a Bangladeshi Londoner who talks about his family a fair bit. And Laurel put it in Fetish despite the lack of any obvious fetish!
Or Wheelchair Bound? - OK, kinky women getting it on is probably an easier sell, but chronic illness isn't. But I wanted to tell a story where aids or a positive attitude can't just magic away problems from disability, and a bunch of people liked that (one reader said she got turned on when the Access to Work adviser vowed to give the manager an unpleasant time for not implementing reasonable adjustments, well before getting to the sex!)
They've become my top two viewed stories (excluding the incest one), though the ratings aren't amazing (both have detractors, I'm guessing the former from people who click the interracial or Asian man tag and are disappointed, the latter from those who click stories that placed in contests and downvote what they don't like, but both get swept regularly).
Some stories I worry about how they'll be received, like where the FMC is a trans woman. (I Say Ass...Different). I edited that one for months, finally found a beta reader who was at least under the wider trans umbrella and we chewed over lots of it to the point I think it works. Previous stories in the series had all been under Anal, but I figured a lot of those readers wouldn't like a story with a trans FMC (the MMC previously hooked up with a woman who'd forgotten she was wearing a strap-on, happy anal ensues. This story he gets drunk, gets together with woman in nightclub, tells her he'd love to have her ass, she's much in favour, and then he has to figure if he can get his head round a woman with a penis - he's from a fairly conservative background and never knowingly met any trans person before. Cutting a long story short, he concludes: 'I'm a straight man, only attracted to women. I'm attracted to her, so she is definitely a woman just like she says.' They both have mixed emotions about her genitals, in between enjoying quite a lot about each others bodies.)
Perhaps I should have left it in Anal to get more views? It rated OK, and no-one told me they hated it, but not much response. At some point I'll write the romantic sequel - well, kinda romance mixed with dark humour about sex reassignment surgery and panic over recovery...
The main objection people have to my stories is they claim they can't understand my dialogue or can't be bothered to look words up. Given these are matched by the people saying they love my dialogue, it's generally just a complaint about being British.
I loved linguistics even beforehand, but I have to admit it does motivate my arsy side to produce more stories where using dialect and slang to obfuscate is part of the point!
Cue my Valentine's story where one couple (narrator is 49 from NI, spouse 38 from Birmingham) get to know two younger chaps (late 20s) from south London, who naturally speak what the BBC refers to as Multicultural London English and older people who struggle to understand call 'roadman', 'chav speak' and 'incomprehensible slang of the youth of today' (and some racist terms too) though they and the narrator mostly tone down their dialects to communicate just like all Londoners do. Skip to page 6 for the mutual respect the younger guys and the eldest have for each other's language (and no sex!).
As a story, I now think it works pretty well, though I ended up excisinga few 100 words, moving them and 2 characters to a different part of the story, and adding 1000 more for clarity, during which process I had my doubts. A couple fans have appreciated it.
Or Wheelchair Bound? - OK, kinky women getting it on is probably an easier sell, but chronic illness isn't. But I wanted to tell a story where aids or a positive attitude can't just magic away problems from disability, and a bunch of people liked that (one reader said she got turned on when the Access to Work adviser vowed to give the manager an unpleasant time for not implementing reasonable adjustments, well before getting to the sex!)
They've become my top two viewed stories (excluding the incest one), though the ratings aren't amazing (both have detractors, I'm guessing the former from people who click the interracial or Asian man tag and are disappointed, the latter from those who click stories that placed in contests and downvote what they don't like, but both get swept regularly).
Some stories I worry about how they'll be received, like where the FMC is a trans woman. (I Say Ass...Different). I edited that one for months, finally found a beta reader who was at least under the wider trans umbrella and we chewed over lots of it to the point I think it works. Previous stories in the series had all been under Anal, but I figured a lot of those readers wouldn't like a story with a trans FMC (the MMC previously hooked up with a woman who'd forgotten she was wearing a strap-on, happy anal ensues. This story he gets drunk, gets together with woman in nightclub, tells her he'd love to have her ass, she's much in favour, and then he has to figure if he can get his head round a woman with a penis - he's from a fairly conservative background and never knowingly met any trans person before. Cutting a long story short, he concludes: 'I'm a straight man, only attracted to women. I'm attracted to her, so she is definitely a woman just like she says.' They both have mixed emotions about her genitals, in between enjoying quite a lot about each others bodies.)
Perhaps I should have left it in Anal to get more views? It rated OK, and no-one told me they hated it, but not much response. At some point I'll write the romantic sequel - well, kinda romance mixed with dark humour about sex reassignment surgery and panic over recovery...
The main objection people have to my stories is they claim they can't understand my dialogue or can't be bothered to look words up. Given these are matched by the people saying they love my dialogue, it's generally just a complaint about being British.
I loved linguistics even beforehand, but I have to admit it does motivate my arsy side to produce more stories where using dialect and slang to obfuscate is part of the point!
Cue my Valentine's story where one couple (narrator is 49 from NI, spouse 38 from Birmingham) get to know two younger chaps (late 20s) from south London, who naturally speak what the BBC refers to as Multicultural London English and older people who struggle to understand call 'roadman', 'chav speak' and 'incomprehensible slang of the youth of today' (and some racist terms too) though they and the narrator mostly tone down their dialects to communicate just like all Londoners do. Skip to page 6 for the mutual respect the younger guys and the eldest have for each other's language (and no sex!).
As a story, I now think it works pretty well, though I ended up excisinga few 100 words, moving them and 2 characters to a different part of the story, and adding 1000 more for clarity, during which process I had my doubts. A couple fans have appreciated it.
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