Have you written your best story yet? - aka how is your writing improving?

[big_cane_sugar]

Just curious how other authors feel about this. I hope this thread will be one where we learn from each other.

Some ways I hope I'm improving:

- I didn't understood literotica readers when I began writing here, but as my understanding is improving, that is making my stories better.

- I don't think I understood my own reasons for writing here, but those are also becoming clearer to me, which might be improving my stories.

- I'm beginning to be better able to write about sexual acts and desires that I don't share or wouldn't want to do IRL. More sympathy for other people's desires.

- Adding humor to my stories.

- Making the characters more sympathetic (although I don't often write about super-moral people)

Some ways I really need to improve but I don't sense much progress:

- Evocatively, creatively describing the physical aspects of sexuality.

- Cutting the fat out of my stories.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Just curious how other authors feel about this. I hope this thread will be one where we learn from each other.

Some ways I hope I'm improving:

- I didn't understood literotica readers when I began writing here, but as my understanding is improving, that is making my stories better.

- I don't think I understood my own reasons for writing here, but those are also becoming clearer to me, which might be improving my stories.

- I'm beginning to be better able to write about sexual acts and desires that I don't share or wouldn't want to do IRL. More sympathy for other people's desires.

- Adding humor to my stories.

- Making the characters more sympathetic (although I don't often write about super-moral people)

Some ways I really need to improve but I don't sense much progress:

- Evocatively, creatively describing the physical aspects of sexuality.

- Cutting the fat out of my stories.

I’ve certainly written my best story to date. I hope my novel establishes a new high. Then on to the next story.

 

[StillStunned]

I’ve certainly written my best story to date.

I was about to say the same thing.

 

[OddLove]

- I didn't understood literotica readers when I began writing here, but as my understanding is improving, that is making my stories better.

I'm not sure I 'understand' literotica readers, and I'm not sure what you mean by that at all. I'd be interested in knowing what you mean if you don't mind expanding on that.

----------

As for the question presented. I think I'm improving at finding my 'creative zone' or developing my writing process. Things that I started doing more recently.

1. No rushing, no deadlines. If I'm not feeling creative, I don't force it.

2. Organization. Making notes of characters/storylines, and future plans.

3. Before I save and close a story-in-progress, I plan the next part and write a short summary of it so I can brainstorm between writing sessions when my brain isn't occupied or distracted.

There's probably more. But that's some of the things I'm activity thinking about and working on.

 

[dirk2024]

I hope I'm improving. I have received some good advice in this forum.

I have a spreadsheet, with separate worksheets for each story, where I track a stories characters, names, ages, occupations, characterists, personalities. I do this in hopes I don't get too redundant with my characters, but I do notice some similiarities.

Scene setting. I am working to be more descriptive of my scenes to aid the reader in seeing what i am trying to write. There are some authors here who are very good at that.

Most of my first WIP's have been third person, omniscient, which I'm told is difficult to maintain. So I am experimenting with first person.

I still struggle with tense, slipping from present to past. It's what I need to figure out.

 

[iwatchus]

I think my average writing is improving, although the readers apparently disagree on that for my most recent story. But I am dubious I will ever surpass my one good story I have written. The stars aligned for that one.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

My first drafts are actually improving. That much I noticed last Saturday when I went through my NaNo from 2020 after deciding to stop fucking about and giving it a shot to improving it now that I lived more, and right away I noticed how my writing was so much different than five years ago. Plus, when I finished the novel I wrote 10 minutes daily (an effort that took me over 200 days) I noticed not just how much the plot changed since its inception, but how it evolved as I started to add things to it, and how I noticed this novel has one critical flaw that makes it boring: it's just a collection of strokers that get boring really fast since there are no stakes and no breaks for them.

However, I think the biggest improvement is the one I've gotten after I decided to write schoolgirl erotica for a year. 250 days so far, and there are somethings that I noticed they changed 1% daily:

• I found my voice, my own style, and got married to a genre that I really like: neon noir.
• I enjoy writing big age gaps and forbidden relationships, and anyone who hates that can crucify me if they want to, but that doesn't remove the fact that a schoolgirl never goes unfucked in a story. They are all 18 years old. Crucify me, I dare you.
• The influence from pulp fiction is showing as I managed to create an array of colorful characters that might establish themselves as heroes on their own.
• My stories are becoming shorter, yet are packing a bigger punch. I think I wrote it somewhere else. Purple prose can bore me with ease, even more so if there's a lot of it. I don't like to write pretty; I'm crude and obscene. I want action. I want characters that undergo incredible changes. I want graphic sex. I want violent scenes where the hero must save the day. Gossip, gunshots, and g-spots. Justice being served with pussy and bullets. Neon and blood, which sounds like a sick synthwave album.
• My stories are also carrying a huge deal of libertine philosophy, anarchism, and counterculture, which are themes that I'm naturally drawn towards.
• I've experimented with other formats, such as letters and even theatre scripts. These gave me a better grasp on the language to use less to say more.

I should point out that, the further away I got from Day 1, the schoolgirl theme has also drifted away. There are many stories in which it remains in the background, giving more strength to the story, so it's more of a way to skip ideas. Easier to write with a page that says "write about a schoolgirl" rather than a blank page.

Is there further room for improvement? Always, and I really like to experiment and do challenges.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I think, or at least hope, that my writing improves because I will never accept that I can't be better.

 

[NotWise]

I hope to someday understand what "best story" means.

 

[MrPixel]

The question having been asked, I have to wonder if the crossover story going live tonight that went live this morning might be my "best", if you want to call it that.

• It has a certain warmth and empathy. I try for this most of the time, but this one seems better than before;
• The characters, while drawn from the stories of the two series that are crossed and within their own contexts, are mature and better developed;
• It makes sense as a standalone without necessarily being a puzzle piece within either series;
• Erotic scenes that are mostly setups rather than gynecological detail, but nonetheless form the mental visual;
• It's about twice as long than my usual tome, so inherently more developed;
• I finally take the quotation mark guidance from The Chicago Manual of Style (18) seriously, and not haphazardly.

That's the ticket.

Said before, I don't write to suit a readership, I write what I visualize. If it is enjoyed by others, that is so much the better.

 

[MK_Whimsy]

I think some of my formatting has improved. I have been more mindful of catching compound sentences that stretch on too long and breaking up paragraphs that are getting too large. It's possible that the way I describe things has gotten better, though I think some of my earlier stories were plenty descriptive too.

What I could improve: Probably develop a better system for proofreading. I typically just reread the story and spot check everything, and that may not be enough to catch certain mistakes.

 

[Statius]

Different stories are good for different reasons. For a few it's the character(s), some it's the idea or concept involved, for another it's the humor, and yet another the gravity of it, and another it's the possibilities that opened up that is in the novelization process.

Having said that, no I have not written my best work yet.

What needs to improve? Trimming the fat, tension building (getting better), my heroin like addiction to commas. Why? I use it because when I'm writing I hear it in my head and I hear a pause, or I want the pause for effect. The problem is I read it back 3 months after I publish and man do I cringe.

 

[Rob_Royale]

I think that my latest stories are my best and I do think my writing is improving.
I'm diving deeper into visual storytelling and I have Neil Gaiman's Stardust to thank for it. He does an excellent job of setting the scene without wasting a page doing so, like Stephen King or Anne Rice.
I have also pulled back on the amount of sex in my stories, going for quality over quantity. Emphasizing the journey between people going from strangers to lovers. Even if it means that the story ends in the post-coital glow of their very first coupling. I did that in my latest, Wilbur and the Elf and I'm very happy with the story and the readers seem to be also.
I'm coming up on my 3rd anniversary being a published author and it's been an amazing journey.

 

[Erozetta]

I think it's pretty obvious when I try and when I half-ass it.

And I won't say my most recent piece is my best because it isn't. It's also not my worst. It was just a personal indulgence that I wanted to exist outside of my brain so the people it was intended for might actually stumble across it someday without me having to give it to them and have them trying to read into it to figure out "What I really meant" or something. (What I said is exactly what I meant.)

For me it's not a continual improvement from one story to the next because it fully depends on my intent when writing a story. Sometimes I just want to have fun without putting so much effort into it that I stop enjoying the story. Other times I need it to be exactly right and will edit it religiously in pursuit of my goal even if I loathe the story by the time I'm done. Most of the time, I'm somewhere in between.

I think my most consistent area of improvement as a writer is learning to accept praise as comfortably as I accept criticism.

Everything else will be worked on throughout my life. So, I imagine I'll never know if I've written my best story because it won't be knowable until I stop writing. And that won't happen until I'm dead.

 

[big_cane_sugar]

I'm not sure I 'understand' literotica readers, and I'm not sure what you mean by that at all. I'd be interested in knowing what you mean if you don't mind expanding on that.

The easiest example is that I didn't know what the "Loving Wives" readers were like... until I found out!

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Just curious how other authors feel about this. I hope this thread will be one where we learn from each other.

Some ways I hope I'm improving:

- I didn't understood literotica readers when I began writing here, but as my understanding is improving, that is making my stories better.

- I don't think I understood my own reasons for writing here, but those are also becoming clearer to me, which might be improving my stories.

- I'm beginning to be better able to write about sexual acts and desires that I don't share or wouldn't want to do IRL. More sympathy for other people's desires.

- Adding humor to my stories.

- Making the characters more sympathetic (although I don't often write about super-moral people)

Some ways I really need to improve but I don't sense much progress:

- Evocatively, creatively describing the physical aspects of sexuality.

- Cutting the fat out of my stories.

I certainly hope not. Some of my stuff is pretty well received, but I hope I get a little better with each story I write. My magnum opus is yet unwritten.

 

[SimonDoom]

I think I'm working on my best story right now. I hope -- hope -- to submit it for the summer contest before the deadline. But if I don't make it I'm still going to try to get it done soon. It's more complicated and interesting than most of my stories, and it will be my first Fetish story. It's more interesting to work on than most because it involves a man and woman working on a book about Lady Chatterley's Lover and the relationship between them has some loose parallels with the story, in addition to having strong dominance-submission and weird fetish themes. It's not far enough along for me to say it definitely WILL be my best story, but I'm crossing my fingers. I've read a lot of D.H. Lawrence over the years but I'm digging into critical commentary now as background research for my story. I'm going to throw in some Nietzsche, too (I never spell his name right--I always have to look it up). First, though, I have to finish the second chapter of a mom-son series I started late last year. That one's in the home stretch.

 

[HordHolm]

The story I'm most pleased with* was published here some time ago. I like it largely because of the plotting and the writing of a kink I don't share. Partly, it was down to the fortune of being able to twist someone else's basic premise. Even so, it has weaknesses I can see on the occasions when I glance at it.

Other than that, I believe that generally I'm improving. I am trying to make my plotting tighter, the internal world more plausible, the characters' actions true to their environment and, oh yes, I'm trying to make my stories more enjoyable for anyone caring to read them.

* I won't say 'best' - that's for others to judge.

 

[big_cane_sugar]

I think I'm working on my best story right now. I hope -- hope -- to submit it for the summer contest before the deadline. But if I don't make it I'm still going to try to get it done soon. It's more complicated and interesting than most of my stories, and it will be my first Fetish story. It's more interesting to work on than most because it involves a man and woman working on a book about Lady Chatterley's Lover and the relationship between them has some loose parallels with the story, in addition to having strong dominance-submission and weird fetish themes. It's not far enough along for me to say it definitely WILL be my best story, but I'm crossing my fingers. I've read a lot of D.H. Lawrence over the years but I'm digging into critical commentary now as background research for my story. I'm going to throw in some Nietzsche, too (I never spell his name right--I always have to look it up). First, though, I have to finish the second chapter of a mom-son series I started late last year. That one's in the home stretch.

That sounds like my kind of thing! I'm looking forward to reading it. If you want a beta reader, let me know. If not, just let me know when it's published!

 

[Statius]

I discovered a new problem I have. Having spoken with a very talented writer here, who is probably annoyed with me by now, I have come to realize that my ADHD/OCD prevents me from being both creative and technically sound. Most of my previous work has really good ideas, one great I think, but poorly executed. I bounce between extremes. Communicating with said author has challenged me to be technically good, which is happening in my latest drafts. The problem is there is no real creativity, I cannot see the potential in a story or a character. My current drafts go from point A to point B and that's it. So a new problem to solve.