I can't get away from it...

[madelinemasoch]

I've been working on a long LW piece. As I write, I cannot get the nagging thought out of my mind that "they will not understand this one, either." I know my storytelling style, I can read my own work and have it make sense in more ways than one, I can connect the threads and it's a coherent narrative to me... but when I publish here it feels like those same things I'm literally writing out are rendered invisible. Either no one cares to pay attention or they just can't fathom it. I have a problem.

Does anyone here experience anything similar? Does anyone have any relevant advice?

 

[madelinemasoch]

Who cares if they don't get it? Write it and post it anyway. Do it for yourself. Everyone else be damned.

I understand this sentiment. I embark with it myself on occasion.

However, it just doesn't feel good when someone lambasts your work, or even when someone just does not care enough to read it closely enough to grasp a hold of what's actually going on with the characters. What I'm currently working on is far from a stroker, let's put it that way. I can already see the comments now... and they make me very sad. I'm putting far too much of myself into it for any sane person's health–paradoxically it makes me feel good to just write as an action.

It's a terrible thing to think that when I open this carefully prepared box, no one will care what's inside.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

I understand this sentiment. I embark with it myself on occasion.

However, it just doesn't feel good when someone lambasts your work, or even when someone just does not care enough to read it closely enough to grasp a hold of what's actually going on with the characters. What I'm currently working on is far from a stroker, let's put it that way. I can already see the comments now... and they make me very sad. I'm putting far too much of myself into it for any sane person's health–paradoxically it makes me feel good to just write as an action.

It's a terrible thing to think that when I open this carefully prepared box, no one will care what's inside.

You never know, they might actually like it.

 

[madelinemasoch]

You never know, they might actually like it.

I doubt they're going to be able empathize with an unrepentant cuckoldress and her feminized servant enough to even think I wrote it well.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

I doubt they're going to be able empathize with an unrepentant cuckoldress and her feminized servant enough to even think I wrote it well.

Then fuck 'em. Write it for you. And if they don't like it, tough!

 

[madelinemasoch]

I have a *lot* of myself in my stories. I just released a 63k word story based almost entirely on trauma that is just a twist away from my own experiences.

People didn't love it. Hardly anyone finished it (Can't blame them, the typos made me cringe and I need to fix that.). I *love* that story because I wrote it to get things out of my head and it helped.


Hell, I even put together a LW story for the first time (partially based on reality) expecting to be called every name under the sun but was only met with mostly nice comments and an abysmal score. Some got it. Some didn't. That's life.

You write it, you publish it, you take the response that comes and move on.

I commend you for putting something like that, not only to paper, but onto the internet.

For me, it's less that I need to get this out of my head and more that I need to manifest it into the world.

How low was the abysmal score in question?

 

[madelinemasoch]

2.77, to be fair I published it expecting 1 across the board. It's basically rated as average. I can live with that.

The nice comments threw me, though. Unexpected. You might find the same. Won't know unless you try.

Nice, to be honest, that's not abysmal.

My first LW venture published about a week ago(!) and only got 5k reads with a rating of 1.74. Several comments saying nothing more than that I'm a bad writer. I'm not a bad writer.

 

[Britva415]

I've been working on a long LW piece. As I write, I cannot get the nagging thought out of my mind that "they will not understand this one, either." I know my storytelling style, I can read my own work and have it make sense in more ways than one, I can connect the threads and it's a coherent narrative to me... but when I publish here it feels like those same things I'm literally writing out are rendered invisible. Either no one cares to pay attention or they just can't fathom it. I have a problem.

Does anyone here experience anything similar? Does anyone have any relevant advice?

People hear what they want to hear. You can't rewrite some reader's internal monologue which the scene before them triggers.

Unless you want to try to get them into HRC's compulsory deprogramming.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Firstly, if William Shakespeare himself wrote a story with an unrepentant cuckoldress and her feminized servant and posted it on LW, he'd be lucky to crack 3.00. Scores in LW are less about the quality of the piece and more about how much it conforms to the most vocal element's worldview.

Secondly, the prevailing wind on this thread isn't wrong exactly - there certainly are pieces that not everyone is going to get and which you should go ahead and write anyway.

But let's explore the issue in more detail.

Who are the people who are going to get this story? Where do they hang out (not maybe on LW)? What, at the heart, is there for them to get? What might be preventing them from getting it?

It's entirely possible, as an author, to have something to say, but be struggling to get the heart of a piece across.

To extend your box metaphor, perhaps past breaking, what does the box look like to people before they open it. If we imagine it as a gift wrapped present under the tree - what are it's dimension? How heavy does it feel like when I shake it? Most importantly, if it could be mistaken for a PlayStataion 5 and I unwrap it and its a bust of Aristotle, how am I going to feel?

 

[Bamagan]

Most importantly, if it could be mistaken for a PlayStataion 5 and I unwrap it and its a bust of Aristotle, how am I going to feel?

Baffled, befuddled, bemused, and bewildered would all seem apropos for that specific scenario.

 

[madelinemasoch]

People hear what they want to hear. You can't rewrite some reader's internal monologue which the scene before them triggers.

Unless you want to try to get them into HRC's compulsory deprogramming.

I don't know about you, but that's not on my agenda.

 

[EroticCupcake]

We have an obligation to love / respect our readers. I haven't read your piece, but I personally worry about character, tension, conflict, and how they interact with sex as my baseline.

I know I'm not a good enough writer to articulate something like a meditation on the nature of time and memory. It would be counter productive for me to try, then question why my readers don't get it.

I haven't read your work and I'm new at this. For the moment I assume everything that didn't connect is 100% my fault, not because it's true, but because it is productive. The long haulers here probably have a more nuanced understanding than I do.

 

[Bamagan]

I doubt they're going to be able empathize with an unrepentant cuckoldress and her feminized servant enough to even think I wrote it well.

Is reader empathy really what you're aiming for? People mostly empathize with characters they share similarities with, or in general, characters that themselves seem empathetic, since they at least share that much with an empathetic reader. Describing a character as unrepentant suggests that they have done something that arguably should cause them to feel guilt or shame but that they do not. That implies the character may lack empathy, which increases the difficulty of getting empathetic readers to identify with them. Possibly that is completely tangential to your angst, but it's what struck me when reading the thread so I figured I'd offer the observation.

 

[madelinemasoch]

Firstly, if William Shakespeare himself wrote a story with an unrepentant cuckoldress and her feminized servant and posted it on LW, he'd be lucky to crack 3.00. Scores in LW are less about the quality of the piece and more about how much it conforms to the most vocal element's worldview.

Secondly, the prevailing wind on this thread isn't wrong exactly - there certainly are pieces that not everyone is going to get and which you should go ahead and write anyway.

But let's explore the issue in more detail.

Who are the people who are going to get this story? Where do they hang out (not maybe on LW)? What, at the heart, is there for them to get? What might be preventing them from getting it?

It's entirely possible, as an author, to have something to say, but be struggling to get the heart of a piece across.

To extend your box metaphor, perhaps past breaking, what does the box look like to people before they open it. If we imagine it as a gift wrapped present under the tree - what are it's dimension? How heavy does it feel like when I shake it? Most importantly, if it could be mistaken for a PlayStataion 5 and I unwrap it and its a bust of Aristotle, how am I going to feel?

I understand LW is a dangerous place for this, but it's also the perfect category for my story. This is because of the point of the story, the fact that it's a character piece and it's serious. I feel like I can't put it in Fetish because the core of the story as you're talking about isn't the sexuality at all. It's more emotional than sexual.

Here's the ugly truth: I don't know who in this world would get it. At the heart of it is sadness, particularly in its second part. One could also place misguided guilt and sorrow, but most of it is just raw sadness. I just... don't want to give it away.

My goal is for readers to understand and empathize and maybe even change their minds.

I'm not sure how to answer your last paragraph. Can you explain the metaphor?

 

[gunhilltrain]

I don't know about you, but that's not on my agenda.

Well, just don't put it in LW. Erotic Couplings is a good catch-all category. The feminized servant doesn't seem to be sufficient for Transgender and Crossdressers. It doesn't seem like Romance or Non-Erotic either.

Give yourself a break and avoid LW for this one. Of course they won't understand.

 

[madelinemasoch]

Is reader empathy really what you're aiming for? People mostly empathize with characters they share similarities with, or in general, characters that themselves seem empathetic, since they at least share that much with an empathetic reader. Describing a character as unrepentant suggests that they have done something that arguably should cause them to feel guilt or shame but that they do not. That implies the character may lack empathy, which increases the difficulty of getting empathetic readers to identify with them. Possibly that is completely tangential to your angst, but it's what struck me when reading the thread so I figured I'd offer the observation.

It's exactly what I'm aiming for, but for a person who likely isn't like themselves.

What I'm doing is precisely the inverse of what you describe: she feels guilt for what she does even though what she does isn't what caused her sadness. She's wrong to feel guilty; that's the central point that I'm afraid they won't understand.

I will likely delete this message in the future so as to leave no trace of it for readers to spoil for themselves.

 

[madelinemasoch]

Well, just don't put it in LW. Erotic Couplings is a good catch-all category. The feminized servant doesn't seem to be sufficient for Transgender and Crossdressers. It doesn't seem like Romance or Non-Erotic either.

Give yourself a break and avoid LW for this one. Of course they won't understand.

It's the perfect category, but with all the wrong frequent readers in it.

 

[madelinemasoch]

Your goal is never going to happen. It's the internet, even if you change minds, they will never admit it.

My mind has been changed on the internet before.

 

[gunhilltrain]

It's the perfect category, but with all the wrong frequent readers in it.

Cuckolding, cheating, whatever you're writing about, are all part of Erotic Couplings. Or perhaps some other category. LW is only the "perfect category" in some other reality that doesn't exist here.

 

[madelinemasoch]

Cuckolding, cheating, whatever you're writing about, are all part of Erotic Couplings. Or perhaps some other category. LW is only the "perfect category" in some other reality that doesn't exist here.

1. I don't want to post in EC because it gets low views and it's a character piece, not a couple piece. It feels wrong.
2. If we want the misogynist BTB brigade everyone loves complaining about to leave LW, we have to start writing different stories. Whackdoodle didn't even comment on my Dark Love piece. That's a W in my book.
3. LW is loving wives–the story is literally about a wife. One with extramarital activities, no less. (whisper) that's what the category description says...
4. All the sad pieces I've read here have been in LW, not Erotic Couplings.

 

[EroticCupcake]

I find myself repeating a version of this problem. I wrote two long pieces where the final chapters became outright rejections of the categories the were in.

The strategy I've accidentally adopted which may apply would be to break it in to smaller chapters. By the time you get in the redemption arc, the right people will be opting in to your story.

It worked for me once. Hopefully it works again.

 

[madelinemasoch]

I find myself repeating a version of this problem. I wrote two long pieces where the final chapters became outright rejections of the categories the were in.

The strategy I've accidentally adopted which may apply would be to break it in to smaller chapters. By the time you get in the redemption arc, the right people will be opting in to your story.

It worked for me once. Hopefully it works again.

This one is going to be a three parter, no more and no less.

 

[madelinemasoch]

Let me rephrase: I've never seen a guy on the internet admit to a woman on the internet that he was wrong and she was right. If that's your goal, odds are not in your favor going in and you should approach with that knowledge and accept that your goal, no matter how well laid out, is unlikely to happen. If it happens even once from someone reading your story, you will have achieved your goal and that's something to be proud of regardless of any other reception.

Here's hoping.

 

[ElectricBlue]

It's the perfect category, but with all the wrong frequent readers in it.

You're fighting City Hall. Why don't you save yourself a bunch of grief and publish in Erotic Couplings? You might get a more sympathetic reception.

You know that LW is no longer the category it was intended to be, way back when, so why go there? They're clearly not the readers you're seeking, so why bother?

 

[TheRedChamber]

I'm not sure how to answer your last paragraph. Can you explain the metaphor?

One of the tools I like to use or talk about with writing is the concept of Promises, Progress and Payoff (There's a lengthy 40m video about it here, but it's fairly simple in concept)

If you are thinking that people aren't 'getting it' then are you properly priming them that there is something to get? You mention that the second half is going to be all about sadness - if so what is the first half going to be about? I'm getting the impression (perhaps wrongly, that's the danger of discussing a story you haven't read and which might not even have been written yet)...but I'm getting the impression that maybe you're going to turn on a dime and say, 'no, this story that was all about sexy cuckolding is really a Greek Tragedy.' and, even if people get it, maybe they're going to turn around and say 'Well, I didn't really want there to be something to get, I was enjoying all the fun cuckolding stuff at the begin and then it went all heavy and boring')

Come to think of it, there's a really good example, which I can't remember is in the video above or not, but its the story of a fantasy author who wrote a book which started off as a highly conventional Tolkienesque heroes journey, but, by the end of its 1000-whatever pages, he'd completely subverted the genre with the ending. The problem was, those people who were bored with standard fantasy didn't read that far and those who still liked standard fantasy did read the end, but preferred the happy ending.

To put it in Lit terms, if you drop in a water-sports scene in the middle of a 20k romantic story, you're going to freak out most of your readers and the water-sports enthusiasts aren't going to have read that far into a vanilla story anyway. On the other hand, if you start the story with your FMC bursting for the loo, even if nothing more erotic happens, you will have laid the groundwork for later.

There was a discussion about the film American Beauty on another forum recently (is it pretentious garbage or pretentious gold?) - whatever, the guy filming the garbage bag floating on the wind at the beginning tells you its going to be pretentious and keys you into trying to 'get it', more than if you thought it was just a fun film about midtown-midlife America.