New writer questions

[tikulmi]

I have 2 stories and am working on a 3rd. I used to write a lot but not much in the last 15 years.
Any helpful advice would be great?

What's a good word count? My first was 3,100 and my 2nd 1,200 and I like the first more (which seems natural).

Is it bad form to significantly alter a story (I want to add 800 words or more to my 2nd story)?

How do I get italics at the top of the page? Do people find it beneficial to give some context or does it mess with the fantasy?

I am working on a story that was told to me by a friend. I am changing it significantly, and don't want it to appear as mine alone. Do I just note that?

Any other help (from people who have written a story) would be great.
http://www.literotica.com/s/spring-break-detour
http://www.literotica.com/s/cleaning-the-maid

thanks

 

[MSTarot]

Welcome to the fun house. I'll see if I can answer a few of your questions.

The minimum/ maximum Word count was just discussed on this thread

http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=1032394

it should answer most of your questions on length.


It's your story. You can alter it in anyway you want and if someone complains there is just as likely to be someone that now loves it the way you changed it.

Don't let comments be your judge of your writing, write the story you want to tell. It will find an audience.

Italics are done several ways it depends on how you post. Other's can answer this better.


Just a thank you note to the person would be sufficient I would think.


Again welcome and remember have fun. Don't stress out over votes, scores or bad comments. There are trolls on site that like to play games with all of those.

MST

 

[tikulmi]

Thank you

Thanks, that was very helpful. I am not going to 12,000 words yet, but I feel better upping my 2nd story to 3K.

 

[Hypoxia]

Figure about 3500-3700 words per LIT page. Depending on the story, it may rate anywhere from one to fifty pages. Minimum non-poetry submission is 750 words. Maximum is well over a million words. Don't try this at home, kids!

LIT recognizes just five type effects AFAIK: Italics, bold, underline, center, and blockquote (indent). You can embed those effects in a .DOC or .RTF file, then upload the file. I prefer to use HTML markup tags and paste the text into the submission window. That way, I can preview the piece, and edit it on the spot if necessary.

HTML: <i>Italic</i> - <b>Bold</b> - <u>Underline</u> - <c>Center</c> - <blockquote>Indent</blockquote>

Be sure to close the markup tags. <b> opens the bold tag and </b> closes it. Open and close tags in nested order: <b><i>this</i></b> not <b><i>that</b></i>.

If you begin the text with an Author's Note, Laurel will (probably) automatically render it as italics.

MORE: Define for yourself just what you want here, and don't let fucktard comments and low vote scores discourage you. Write what you want and an audience will form. Maybe a small, crazed audience, but that's better than nothing, right?

 

[FAWCker]

Though you didn't specifically ask about this in your opening post, your stories suffer from a lack of, or improper use of, punctuation. There are quite a few lines, especially once the "action" gets going, that read to me as if they were dictated by a robot. I'm guessing that as you got caught up in describing the scenes, they rattled off your fingertips. You might want to go back and re-read your stories with an eye for punctuation, grammar, and repeated word choices.

Regarding numbers: unless it's a long number, spell it out. "3 women in their 40s" comes across as very amateurish. It would read better as "three women in their forties."

 

[HoneyFortune]

Agreed with the post above. Some of the descriptions read methodical. Consider editing the descriptions down, tighten up the dialogue and scour the story for repetition. Excise those repetitive words, phrases and descriptions. The continual use of the word butthole felt irritating and routine, figure out a way to convey the suggestion of body parts using action and movement. What you have now is a good start, but excise those pedantic descriptions to move your reader along.

 

[fit2betied]

Free lance feedback

I spent a couple years doing Free Lance writing. It was enjoyable and though I had to step away, I feel I can share some insight.
Unless your client has hired you and given instructions about how many words(word count) I wouldn't worry about it. There are acceptable minimums, if your writing short stories you might have 3-5 thousand word minimum/maximum. If your writing for yourself the most important thing is to get your story out and on paper or on a disk. Then you find an editor that you can work with that will help you focus on the meat of your story to get it to the point where it has the content needed to read easy and not bore the reader to sleep or lose them all together.
If you find that it takes you X-amount of words to complete a story then you have a baseline to work with. Your next focus will be how to do the same with less words yet keep the story strong. Sometimes we as writers get carried away trying to describe everything, it's our job.
But it has to be done in a way that the readers don't realize it.
Best of luck

 

[VenusButterflies]

IMO, a good word count is however many words it takes for you to feel satisfied with your story. I never count words.

Of course, if you're prone to digression and going off the rails, then perhaps you should limit yourself. But really, if your story is interesting, if it flows and is well-written and keeps the reader engaged, word count doesn't really matter. (Unless you're submitting a novel/novella. Then I imagine word count is important to keep track of.)

 

[Hypoxia]

just enough words

I spent a couple years doing Free Lance writing. It was enjoyable and though I had to step away, I feel I can share some insight.
Unless your client has hired you and given instructions about how many words(word count) I wouldn't worry about it. There are acceptable minimums, if your writing short stories you might have 3-5 thousand word minimum/maximum. If your writing for yourself the most important thing is to get your story out and on paper or on a disk. Then you find an editor that you can work with that will help you focus on the meat of your story to get it to the point where it has the content needed to read easy and not bore the reader to sleep or lose them all together.
If you find that it takes you X-amount of words to complete a story then you have a baseline to work with. Your next focus will be how to do the same with less words yet keep the story strong. Sometimes we as writers get carried away trying to describe everything, it's our job.
But it has to be done in a way that the readers don't realize it.
Best of luck

Right on!

IMO, a good word count is however many words it takes for you to feel satisfied with your story. I never count words.

I only count words now to help determine when/where to end a chapter or episode. I stared with 7000-7500 (2 LIT page) chapters and now aim for around 9500-9900 (3 pages). Standalone stories may be anywhere from 3000 (1 short page) to 30,000 (~8 pages)

Those chapter lengths can affect my writing. Thus, I wrote two episodes for a series (BOOK OF RUTH) and thought I'd conclude with a third. But when I reached 9500 words on that episode, I realized the characters still had much to play out. So I gave it a cliffhanger ending and am now churning away at the fourth episode. Episodes 3 and 4 are really a two-parter -- I just didn't want to drag-out the finale in a six-page chapter.

The emperor told Mozart, "Too many notes." The editor tells authors, "Too many words." How many are just enough? Whatever works.