Two stories of young love

[gunhilltrain]

On one time line, things seem promising:

https://www.literotica.com/s/donna-in-the-senior-year-ch-01

On another - something different:

https://www.literotica.com/s/no-time-to-get-cute

A song to go along with them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEQENfRoBgw

 

[NotWise]

On one time line, things seem promising:

https://www.literotica.com/s/donna-in-the-senior-year-ch-01

On another - something different:

https://www.literotica.com/s/no-time-to-get-cute

A song to go along with them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEQENfRoBgw

I started into the first story with the intent to read every detail, but then found myself skimming. I started the second story with the same intent, found the same pattern, and skimmed pretty quickly to the end.

Both stories begin with a long narrative segment and develop slowly. Sometimes, even once the dialogue begins there are fairly long, introspective narratives.

I think you write very well, but for me the pace of the stories -- and I don't mean how quickly you get to sex -- is slow. There's simply not very much happening. The dialogue feels natural, so I wondered if you could use more dialogue to engage the reader (me) more.

 

[ElectricBlue]

As always, Gunhill, you conjure mood and place, and unpredictable nostalgia. I too was at uni in the last half of the seventies, and know well the angst and ecstacy of being young and fearless then.

I made contact recently with my first long-term lover, and was a little more successful than you:

Having said that was the last thing: I lied. You renewed the contact here at a time you really needed to. I don't mind. I'm glad I was here and I don't regret this exchange and hope you don't. I know what it's like to bury parents. I know how devastated and emotional I felt afterwards. As you said "I probably shouldn't have written. But I did, so there's that."

What this means is YOU don't get to break that pencil. That's for me to do. And not yet. So. May you write sometimes? You may.

Take care, and remember some of us do love still, a little

Which is kinda heart-warming, to know I wasn't completely forgotten after decades. She's still got the beautiful long pre-Raphaelite hair, too, and sent me a photo of me, then, that I'd not seen before.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I started into the first story with the intent to read every detail, but then found myself skimming. I started the second story with the same intent, found the same pattern, and skimmed pretty quickly to the end.

Both stories begin with a long narrative segment and develop slowly. Sometimes, even once the dialogue begins there are fairly long, introspective narratives.

I think you write very well, but for me the pace of the stories -- and I don't mean how quickly you get to sex -- is slow. There's simply not very much happening. The dialogue feels natural, so I wondered if you could use more dialogue to engage the reader (me) more.

I've probably read a lot more novels than short stories in my life, so I think I'm trying to get used to the short story format. Some of these 1970s stories were originally intended to be part of a novel (maybe they will someday, I'm not sure I can do it) and I tried to break them into linked but stand-alone segments.

Some novels are quite "snappy" but some really take their time - sometimes too much so by some opinions. Short stories have to get in and out with a different kind of "condensed" format.

 

[gunhilltrain]

As always, Gunhill, you conjure mood and place, and unpredictable nostalgia. I too was at uni in the last half of the seventies, and know well the angst and ecstacy of being young and fearless then.

I made contact recently with my first long-term lover, and was a little more successful than you:


Which is kinda heart-warming, to know I wasn't completely forgotten after decades. She's still got the beautiful long pre-Raphaelite hair, too, and sent me a photo of me, then, that I'd not seen before.

Thank you.

My actual experience is a bit different because the first one for me wound up as a relationship/marriage that covered the ages of nineteen to forty-two. (And twenty-two more years have passed.) She didn't completely stonewall/ghost me until recently. (We were raising kids who are now adults.)

The lines "I remember you. Why did you contact me?" came from an even earlier girl. She was one I dealt with in high school, trying to get a date and finally getting rejected. I found her online (in 2005) and expected some chitchat about the old days and that was her reply.

I realized that we hadn't clicked at all back then either so I didn't continue the conversation.

 

[NotWise]

I've probably read a lot more novels than short stories in my life, so I think I'm trying to get used to the short story format. Some of these 1970s stories were originally intended to be part of a novel (maybe they will someday, I'm not sure I can do it) and I tried to break them into linked but stand-alone segments.

Some novels are quite "snappy" but some really take their time - sometimes too much so by some opinions. Short stories have to get in and out with a different kind of "condensed" format.

Don't take my comment on slow development for more than it's worth. I got pretty much the same comment from a beta reader for "Love is Enough." What I got out of it was that the beta reader was probably not in my target audience. He might have given me insight into the low scores I get in early voting, but that was all.

It might help the pace if you can defer some of the early development, or to do the development while something else is going on, but if that's the pace you want then use it and write for the audience that enjoys it.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Don't take my comment on slow development for more than it's worth. I got pretty much the same comment from a beta reader for "Love is Enough." What I got out of it was that the beta reader was probably not in my target audience. He might have given me insight into the low scores I get in early voting, but that was all.

It might help the pace if you can defer some of the early development, or to do the development while something else is going on, but if that's the pace you want then use it and write for the audience that enjoys it.

This may be a bit of a digression, but I wonder if we have target audiences here per se. We've got a huge number of people who can come here and read without having to pay for their entertainment. I'm not complaining - it allows us to have a readership for prose and poetry that would be very difficult to get through the bottlenecks of conventional publishing.

Some people set up their own blogs, but it's hard (I imagine) to build up the readership for one of those. Literotica is in effect doing the marketing for us.

 

[NotWise]

This may be a bit of a digression, but I wonder if we have target audiences here per se.

I have a target audience. I don't have very much control on who reads the stories, but I do have a concept in mind of the reader I'm writing for.

My stories usually need readers who are interested in the tale, and see the sex as spice for the story, not as the story itself. Those are the readers I write for.

I'm not writing for one-handed readers who want the sex to start in the second paragraph and go on to the last paragraph. They aren't my audience. I can't stop them from picking the story off the New list and voting it down because it killed their buzz. I can't stop them from making irrelevant comments.

I don't produce a lot of stories, and there aren't a lot of readers who know who I am. Gradually, though, I'm building name recognition and that helps the readers chose my stories or skip my stories based on what they know of my style.

I could help that process by sticking to one category, but I don't.

 

[ElectricBlue]

This may be a bit of a digression, but I wonder if we have target audiences here per se. We've got a huge number of people who can come here and read without having to pay for their entertainment. I'm not complaining - it allows us to have a readership for prose and poetry that would be very difficult to get through the bottlenecks of conventional publishing.

Some people set up their own blogs, but it's hard (I imagine) to build up the readership for one of those. Literotica is in effect doing the marketing for us.

Difficult as it is to judge from the few comments ever received, I have a gut feeling you do get a "type" of audience, not that you could ever quantify it. I've got a vague similarity between comments to my various stories - or at least I think I do - which sorta kinda gives me a tiny tiny idea who my audience might be. It could also be wishful thinking, in the absence of anything better than one comment per thousand views - which is hardly representative.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I have a target audience. I don't have very much control on who reads the stories, but I do have a concept in mind of the reader I'm writing for.

My stories usually need readers who are interested in the tale, and see the sex as spice for the story, not as the story itself. Those are the readers I write for.

I'm not writing for one-handed readers who want the sex to start in the second paragraph and go on to the last paragraph. They aren't my audience. I can't stop them from picking the story off the New list and voting it down because it killed their buzz. I can't stop them from making irrelevant comments.

I don't produce a lot of stories, and there aren't a lot of readers who know who I am. Gradually, though, I'm building name recognition and that helps the readers chose my stories or skip my stories based on what they know of my style.

I could help that process by sticking to one category, but I don't.

Another digression: There may be people - not the readers here - who would consider much of what is on this site pornographic regardless of what the writers intended. I haven't looked for it, but I wonder if someone has written a negative review of the whole site. Or maybe not: most of the political and cultural attacks against porn have been against visual materials. Reading stories almost seems quaint.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Another digression: There may be people - not the readers here - who would consider much of what is on this site pornographic regardless of what the writers intended. I haven't looked for it, but I wonder if someone has written a negative review of the whole site. Or maybe not: most of the political and cultural attacks against porn have been against visual materials. Reading stories almost seems quaint.

Quaint, and also enshrined in free speech, so very much harder for the moral minority (majority?) to attack.

Talking about visual smut, Tumblr are now three months into their adult content "ban," and I think they've given up. There have been changes made in the last week or so to allow smut-meisters to now see blogs previously rendered invisible because of "female presenting nipples", just by pressing a few "consent" buttons. Their volume stats are like a stock-market crash, and I think they're clawing at the cliff face to hang in there. Silly bastards, trying to regulate the nude and naked.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Quaint, and also enshrined in free speech, so very much harder for the moral minority (majority?) to attack.

Talking about visual smut, Tumblr are now three months into their adult content "ban," and I think they've given up. There have been changes made in the last week or so to allow smut-meisters to now see blogs previously rendered invisible because of "female presenting nipples", just by pressing a few "consent" buttons. Their volume stats are like a stock-market crash, and I think they're clawing at the cliff face to hang in there. Silly bastards, trying to regulate the nude and naked.

I don't know what Tumblr is trying to accomplish. It's irrelevant - much of porn has become "too cheap to meter." There must still be some kind of business model (advertising?) but I don't know how long that's going to last.

I admit that unlimited Internet access to visual porn is - I'm not sure what to think of it. When I was young I mostly had to rely on my own self-generated thoughts and fantasies. Was that perhaps better?

 

[NotWise]

I don't know what Tumblr is trying to accomplish. It's irrelevant - much of porn has become "too cheap to meter." There must still be some kind of business model (advertising?) but I don't know how long that's going to last.

I admit that unlimited Internet access to visual porn is - I'm not sure what to think of it. When I was young I mostly had to rely on my own self-generated thoughts and fantasies. Was that perhaps better?

I suspect that the premium sites like MetArt are still squeaking by selling the product, plus advertising. They offer their subscribers high-quality media when they want it. The same content will come out on repost sites a little later, but often in less-than-original quality and sometimes completely abused.

The sites that actually sell new content seem to make money on volume, rather than on percentage -- like your grocer. The porn industry is huge, but despite the high volume of transactions, most of the money is within the market, not new money coming from viewers or subscribers.

I looked at the industry a couple years ago and found that most of the money was made by the people who served the content -- the computer folk who charged fees for traffic. Very little was made by the people who produced the content.

It makes me think of the entertainment industry in France in the late 1800's. Paris was the entertainment capital of the world, but many of the performers made their living with prostitution because their art didn't pay. It ended, eventually, through the introduction of new business models.

Invent the new business model. Save the world. Make a billion.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Yes, I'm sure that the porn industry will figure out some business model for itself. What is notable - and I guess I'm getting more conservative in my older days - is how easy it is to access porn on the Internet now without paywalls or registration or any barrier. Porn really was a difficult to get commodity when I was younger.

I remember in high school when kids would discuss the "hot" scenes in The Godfather novel (there were about three) or pass around copies of Terry Southern's Candy. (Somebody actually sold me a copy for the exorbitant sum of five bucks I think.) Now they're checking out Aloha Tube, XHamster, etc., etc.

I guess I could be accused of adding to the problem by writing for this site, but I suspect Literotica is not the go to place for adolescents.