What not to do: Examples

[Duleigh]

Too many characters with too much exposition has bit me. I wrote a one-off story in an existing universe and dumped all the existing characters on the reader in page one. It's hard to keep the list of characters for a wedding scene manageable, but it needed a better effort.

 

[SimonDoom]

I definitely do NOT subscribe to the "be careful and tread lightly" school of writing. My attitude is you should let it rip and see what happens. You may make "mistakes," but learning from mistakes is how you get better at just about everything.

These are the two mistakes I have most often identified in my stories, and that I'm trying to improve as I continue:

1. Proofreading errors, especially with word choice. Unconsciously writing "waste" when I mean "waist," and not catching it. Ouch.

2. Character motive and continuity errors. It's subtle but important. Sometimes readers have told me, in effect, that I've failed adequately to account for why a character would do this or that, and I think they're right. It's important to set up one's characters in a convincing way early in the story, so everything that happens afterward at least maintains a veneer of plausibility.

 

[gunhilltrain]

You obviously missed the point of my post. Kinda like readers in LW missing the point in most of the stories there.

It's all about the feedback through comments of readers in some categories clearly indicating that they are more challenged at comprehending nuances in plot and characters than readers in other categories. Certainly, the score can reflect this, but that is only one component of their dysfunctional contributions.

This is much like you appear to do with you comments on this forum, you approach them with an agenda that will influence by your opinion even if it is totally incorrect and irrelevant to the original context.

Bobby, you've been here for eight years, twice as long as I have, and surely you've long-ago noticed the "dysfunctional contributions" of many LW readers, or at least the ones who bother to comment. It's been going on for a long time, and it's a topic in the forum several times per year. Yes, many of them have an agenda that influences their opinions but there is nothing to be done about it.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Bobby, you've been here for eight years, twice as long as I have, and surely you've long-ago noticed the "dysfunctional contributions" of many LW readers, or at least the ones who bother to comment. It's been going on for a long time, and it's a topic in the forum several times per year. Yes, many of them have an agenda that influences their opinions but there is nothing to be done about it.

Oh, I know. I was comparing them and their agendas to Tilan the troll.

 

[Winter_Fare]

A big take away from this thread is that one person's trash is another person's treasure. I write what I want to read and it attracts love and hate in equal measure. If I'm in the mood, fives and ones can give equal pleasure.

 

[NoTalentHack]

Bobby, you've been here for eight years, twice as long as I have, and surely you've long-ago noticed the "dysfunctional contributions" of many LW readers, or at least the ones who bother to comment. It's been going on for a long time, and it's a topic in the forum several times per year. Yes, many of them have an agenda that influences their opinions but there is nothing to be done about it.

The best thing to do is make them angry that you've made them like something they "should" hate.

 

[NoTalentHack]

A big take away from this thread is that one person's trash is another person's treasure. I write what I want to read and it attracts love and hate in equal measure. If I'm in the mood, fives and ones can give equal pleasure.

Agreed. Especially in LW, "rating" is one of the worst indicators of story quality. It can either indicate a story that pushes all of the particular buttons that the BTB crowd crave OR an extremely well-written story that flies in the face of their preferences.

As nice as it is to get an H in there, I much prefer getting a ton of comments and favorites; they both indicate engagement with the audience in a way that stores in a lot of other categories don't get. Even the -1 Wimp Cuck guys can have their say there, and the comments allow for nuanced answers like "I love your writing and hate the content, so you only get a 3."

 

[AwkwardlySet]

3. If I can choose between a score of 8.9 with 3K views in one category, and a score of 3.9 with 30K views in another – It's an easy choice.

Some write to be read, and others to be rated.

I am not sure that is the right choice. In my opinion, you should always put a story where it will be most appreciated. Ratings be damned, but I want to know that I am publishing a story for people who like the theme and who can appreciate it and enjoy it. Not to mention that getting your rating bombed could prevent some fine readers from even trying to read your story, as many readers discard low rated stories to save time.
Quality over quantity for me, always. People often criticize the obsession with ratings and getting a red H, but it is not just about author's vanity. Getting high rating and a red H guarantees more people will read your story, it is a proven fact.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Hmm... my latest flash story has a score of 3.85 with 35K views. Yours has 8.93 with 4K (For 4K viewers I won't even write a postcard)
You have 6 comments. I have 115 (I deleted 20).

Mine is 3.6K words and yours is 22K – which means you put a lot more effort into your story.

Your argument that your audience is of higher quality just because they are cheering with votes is an insult to intelligence and acute self-denial.

I prefer a critical and involved audience to a sleepy, biased, and overly indulgent audience. Just because an audience isn't nice to you doesn't make them any less intelligent or quality.

On LW's top-rated last 30 days list, I'm ranked #83, but only ten of the eighty-two ranked above me have gotten over 30K views.
Many of those who got H didn't even make it to 20K views, so something in your argument is wrong.

The casual readers (who are of no interest to anyone) may care about the rating. The long-time avid readers learned to read the first few paragraphs and make up their own minds.

I don't understand what you wanted to achieve with this comparison? Also my story is 4.93, not 8.93, you seem to be writing 8 for some reason.
Where else would I put a story that is heavy fantasy, theme wise? It has magic, elves, demons and so on? I didn't put it there to get a better rating, I put it where it belongs theme wise. If I had put it in LW, more people would read it, but very few would appreciate it, as it has nothing to do with LW theme, nothing to do with that type of kink. What sense does it make to have 30k people read my story (Actually, I believe not more than 1 percent would last until the end), but only like a hundred of them would appreciate it at the most? I mean, if those readers wanted to read fantasy, they would bloody choose that category for reading, not LW?
Also I never said fantasy readers were more intelligent or a better quality audience? I only said they choose that category to read, because they expect fantasy themes there, not because they are members of some Mensa society inside Literotica. I would love it if there were more people who read the categories that I write in, but I can't really help that, can I?
I mean I could choose to write LW story types instead, but then I wouldn't be writing the kind of content that I want to write, the kind of content that gives me satisfaction. Maybe that is where we are different. I write what I want to write, regardless if I will get 4k or 40k readers. I won't say I don't care how many read my story, because I do, but that fact alone isn't nearly enough for me to write the type of stories that I do not enjoy.

 

[lovecraft68]

You claimed that the rating is critical to the number of views and in a quick search I proved that this is not true.

I believe you write what you want and to whom you want, and I admire you for that, but this thread started with a description of writers' errors.

The first example he gave was a story written for the LW and his initial conclusion was that it was a terrible mistake because he got a low score. What is the connection?! If he had put the story somewhere else and received a better score, would it have affected the quality of the story? No. It would only affect his ridiculous and fragile ego. Like the other guy who wanted to change his story just because for the first time, he got a 4.39 instead of a 4.5 – it drives me crazy!

I agree with you because a lot of times I feel the same way. You write your story, you pick your category and from there what happens happens.

But when I make the effort to see both sides I look at the platform we're on, and here the only payment/reward for many comes in numbers so when they suck, people are disappointed.

I think on the surface most people know because the way scoring works and the varied readerships and factions etc score does not equate quality, but the prevailing feeling still defaults to being upset over numbers.

Then again....what here is an indicator of quality besides opinion of readers and the writer themselves?

Nothing really.

 

[intim8]

"another mistake was being too abstract for the intellectual level of the readers"

I feel your pain, except... I've learned that it is a bad idea, 110% of the time, to dismiss disagreements in taste as intellectual weakness. No offense, but the way you phrased that comes off really condescending to readers.

This is a specific kind of site with specific expectations. I've found that writing that is as much about "lit" as "erotica" can find an audience here, but I don't get pretentious about it. It still has to have at least the latter, here.

A writer needs to write to an audience if he cares about how the audience reacts. If you are writing for yourself, great. It's fun and can be rewarding. But then don't expect an audience to appreciate it. Writing to an audience does not mean pandering, it can mean just telling your story with the audience expectations in mind. Or choosing stories that fit the venue and finding other venues for stories that don't fit.

I have a similar case, one of the chapters in my "Aces" series, that did poorly compared to the others. What I'm learning from it, and other experience here, is that I need to figure out how to tell the stories I want to tell, but to tell them in the language *this* audience wants. Best of both worlds if I get it right.

I've worked on restructuring later chapters (more coming, if you're interested) so that they do both, and that each chapter has a payoff that satisfies the expectations the rest of the story builds up. Which, here, means a hot and/or meaningful and satisfying sex scene. In the story in question, I shoehorned a payoff scene in at the end, and it obviously didn't work. It was weak, but also. that payoff didn't really fit the character who was the focus of that chapter. That's not the audience's fault.

I think the audience here is more sophisticated than you seem to think. I like to try to work with them, not educate them. If I can write a story that people want to read with only one hand on the keyboard and still get a meaningful story in, it's a win/win.

 

[lovecraft68]

Case to be made the best example of what not to do is to give a flying fuck what anyone thinks of your story other than you.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Higher rating should give you more views INSIDE a certain category, for the reasons I already mentioned, although yeah, they are not as critical as story name, story tags and story description, I suppose. Readers do seem to choose by those a lot more, so higher rated stories don't necessarily get more views than some lower rated ones, although rating is a factor for sure, as a part of readership does differentiate based on that. How many? I have no idea really. Maybe even that differs by category, as stories in some categories inherently get lower ratings. I am just guessing here obviously.

I see your point when it comes to the fact that high rating shouldn't be the goal of anyone's writing. Yet, it is also true that some readers in LW category really go out of their way in expressing the most primitive reactions to certain stories, both in comments and in their desire to grind down the story rating by giving 1*. I haven't seen those kind of nasty comments anywhere else, although I won't pretend I know much about it, as I tend to read and browse only a small number of categories. I delved into reading some LW stuff out of pure curiosity to see if what many authors here say about hateful comments is true or not, and yeah, LW does seem to be somewhat special when it comes to extremely hateful reactions.
We are all human and touchy about our writing, so getting that much negativity can trigger some reactions I guess.
I also understand that authors can get frustrated when their stories get lower rated, even if they are maybe better stories overall, compared to some stories written in some less hostile categories that get better ratings. It irks, I suppose.
I have also seen some really badly written stories that cross over the 4.5 mark, simply because the type of kink appeals to a certain group of readers. We should all really stop regarding the rating as a measure of story quality, and I know many authors understand that, but somehow, it still irks them (us).

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Case to be made the best example of what not to do is to give a flying fuck what anyone thinks of your story other than you.

I would just add on top of that, people whose opinion you value. Maybe even the opinion of people who are objectively good authors, but only if your goal is to improve in some way. If you are writing only for the fun of it, then yeah, I guess nothing matters except your own opinion and satisfaction

 

[Comshaw]

I agree with you because a lot of times I feel the same way. You write your story, you pick your category and from there what happens happens.

But when I make the effort to see both sides I look at the platform we're on, and here the only payment/reward for many comes in numbers so when they suck, people are disappointed.

I think on the surface most people know because the way scoring works and the varied readerships and factions etc score does not equate quality, but the prevailing feeling still defaults to being upset over numbers.

Then again....what here is an indicator of quality besides opinion of readers and the writer themselves?

Nothing really.

Yep, once posted it is out of our control what happens, as in how the readers will respond. I write the story, then pick the category that best fits it. Occasionally I find myself considering a category that doesn't quite fit, like posting in any other category rather than LW, because you know the numbers and the unhinged visceral reaction of some readers there. But the older I get, the more I post, the less their reactions bother me. Hell I keep that up I might even be totally immune to any criticism by the time I'm 100!

As far as an indicator of quality of the story, any one of the metrics by themselves mean little. A combination though means a lot more. If you have a story that is running in the red H area, has a bunch of positive comments and a lot of reads for the category, I'd say the readership has judged the story a quality work, or at a minimum great entertainment. But isn't that what we are here for, entertaining our readers? Whether we write for the numbers or the strokes from the readers or the accolades of winning or just for ourselves I believe deep down we all want our readers to be entertained by what we write, well at least I do.

Comshaw

 

[intim8]

I've only ever attempted one "twist" ending, with mixed results.

I read that story (Karen) a while back. Not my usual cup of tea, but I liked it. The comments from Anon were hilarious. Left a comment to that effect.

One thing I've noticed, here and everywhere, is that people are way more likely to comment if they have something negative to say, especially if they can be anonymous. I look for constructive criticism in negative comments, but if they're all about how the story didn't fit their specific fantasies ("they should have done anal!", "needs more girl on girl") or their values, I just ignore them.

 

[lovecraft68]

One thing I've noticed, here and everywhere, is that people are way more likely to comment if they have something negative to say, especially if they can be anonymous.

Isn't the internet grand? And people wonder how we became such a hate filled society.

 

[Euphony]

I look for constructive criticism in negative comments, but if they're all about how the story didn't fit their specific fantasies ("they should have done anal!", "needs more girl on girl") or their values, I just ignore them.

"I DEMAND you change my oil and rotate my tires THIS INSTANT."

"Sir, this is a Wendy's."

 

[KeithD]

The reader set here is too large and rambling that I don't see--or bother to look for--set patterns in comments, voting, or ratings. I don't really feel needy for any assurances of that here either.

 

[KeithD]

Quality over quantity for me, always.

Sorry, but there is no ipso facto relationship between quality and quantity. Writing talent has nothing to do with quantity of writing other than that writing a lot can contribute to developing the expertise of writing. And, if you don't have writing talent, no high volume of output is going to change that much. Asserting a meaningful relationship between quality and quantity is bogus at the foundation.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Sorry, but there is no ipso facto relationship between quality and quantity. Writing talent has nothing to do with quantity of writing other than that writing a lot can contribute to developing the expertise of writing. And, if you don't have writing talent, no high volume of output is going to change that much. Asserting a meaningful relationship between quality and quantity is bogus at the foundation.

You kinda took that out of context. It was meant as quality over quantity in readership, as in, I'd rather have fewer readers who will appreciate the kind of stories and themes that I like writing, than a lot of readers who do not like that type of stories.

 

[KeithD]

You kinda took that out of context. It was meant as quality over quantity in readership, as in, I'd rather have fewer readers who will appreciate the kind of stories and themes that I like writing, than a lot of readers who do not like that type of stories.

Umm, OK. The way I took it, though, is often used as an irrelevant cuddle to attack writers who are producing more than the attacker is.

I don't think, though, that I or anyone else has a handle on the quality/quantity of readers for any given moment or type of story here on Literotica.

 

[Voboy]

One of my favorite early stories, for which I had high hopes, had a very disappointing opening weekend (as it were). I came here and wondered about that, only to have a fellow writer diagnose the problem at once:

Its title is "Schadenfreude."

So, tops on my list of what not to do would be titling your piece with a German word when it's an English story, particularly a German word that looks discouraging.

 

[Euphony]

One of my favorite early stories, for which I had high hopes, had a very disappointing opening weekend (as it were). I came here and wondered about that, only to have a fellow writer diagnose the problem at once:

Its title is "Schadenfreude."

So, tops on my list of what not to do would be titling your piece with a German word when it's an English story, particularly a German word that looks discouraging.

Mom's Lap Schadenfreude in incest and you have an all timer on your hands.

 

[RetroFan]

A twist in a story is great - if it is done well. A story with a bad twist is worse than a story that is just plain bad. If planning a twist in a story, always ask yourself beforehand, 'Does the twist betray my readers?'

For example if I wrote a story about a fictional British pop group in the late 1990s/early 2000s containing both male and female members (similar to S Club 7 or Steps) who have an orgy in their hotel room during a tour, it might do well in Group Sex, Fetish or maybe Erotic Couplings. But if at the end I reveal that in fact a 40-year-old unemployed Canadian slacker from the present day who lives in his parents' basement has acted out the entire sex scene in his mind using dolls of the group that were popular in their heyday over 20 years ago, no matter how well written the story was up to this point, no matter how hot the sex was, the reaction to the story will be negative because this ending - a variation of 'it was all a dream' - has betrayed my readers.