What's your opinion on slow burn stories?

[Voluptuo]

I'm fourteen thousand words into my story and am only just starting to write physical intimacy between the characters. So far, I've written about a guy's massive school crush. I expect to write at least six thousand more words before finishing it off with a sex scene. The story naturally picks up the pace from here with lots of intimacy while not feeling forced or rushed.

There isn't much of a plot. It almost exclusively revolves around the two characters and how their relationship evolves. I'm trying to thoroughly describe all of their thoughts, feelings, and actions while keeping it relevant to where the story is headed.

What do you guys feel about slow-burns like this? How do you find the balance between build-up and an engaging story?

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

If I see a story is over two pages, I don't even begin to read it.

 

[SimonDoom]

I'd say, write your story as you want to write it. Opinions are all over the map on this subject, but if you look at the data you'll see that plenty of long, slow-burn stories do well here at Literotica.

 

[NaughteeDragon]

I love a good slow burn if there is emotional weight to the story and the tension ratchets up over time.

 

[iwatchus]

What do you guys feel about slow-burns like this? How do you find the balance between build-up and an engaging story?

My thoughts are I wish I was better at writing them.

I would have guessed that the build-up is how you get an engaging story.

I am 15K into a story where they went from teasing each other (verbally) to him mooning over her and now she is swearing to herself that she won't sleep with him. She's wrong. Nothing physical has happened at all yet.

 

[EmilyMiller]

What's your opinion on slow burn stories?​

Well written slow burn can be agonizingly good. Poorly written slow burn is a terrible way to waste your reading time. As ever, it’s the skill of the author, not the genre of story that dictates excellence.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I prefer slow burn stories. If skillfully done, the build-up of emotion and desire can be really fulfilling once the physical actually happens. But slow burns require an interesting plot and characters or they can quickly become boring and tedious to read.

Make sure you keep things interesting plot-wise. Mix it up with dialogue and exposition, and keep things dynamic and not too predictable if you want to keep the reader interested.

 

[Bamagan]

I find that 'slow burn' is a rather slippery concept to define. I initially understood it to mean a story would start (or quickly arrive at) a point where the principal characters were engaged in fairly serious flirtation, courtship, a mating dance, or whatever. In other words, I expected there to already be some fire here and there before reaching a blaze or a boil or your metaphor of choice. Ideally (for me), the story would keep simmering at more or less that heat for a while, rather than ending at the point of optimum combustion.

Extending the analogy, I discovered that it was fairly common for the authors here to want to include the parts where they're arranging the kindling or charcoal and then maybe wasting a few matches before a tiny flame finally catches, shielding it from a sudden breeze that threatens to extinguish it, and carefully feeding it until it's established. That can be gripping if done well, and if the reader has the time and inclination to invest. If the author starts describing the fireplace and what kind of axe they used to split the logs for the fire, though, I tend to doubt the burn will be worth the wait.

But I don't want to rake anyone over the coals for telling their story how they like.

 

[Actingup]

Choose your category wisely. You'll see plenty of slow burn in Romance, and less in Group Sex. But as others have said, tell it for the story, and let the sex happen where it belongs in the story.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

I love them. Mary Janes is 21K words, 6 pages, and the sex scene doesn't show up until the bottom of page 5. It's got a red H. I'd say the readers like them, too.
It's also in Transgender, and the girls in there love romantic happy endings.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I'm fourteen thousand words into my story and am only just starting to write physical intimacy between the characters. So far, I've written about a guy's massive school crush. I expect to write at least six thousand more words before finishing it off with a sex scene. The story naturally picks up the pace from here with lots of intimacy while not feeling forced or rushed.

There isn't much of a plot. It almost exclusively revolves around the two characters and how their relationship evolves. I'm trying to thoroughly describe all of their thoughts, feelings, and actions while keeping it relevant to where the story is headed.

What do you guys feel about slow-burns like this? How do you find the balance between build-up and an engaging story?

Slow burn is good, but I'd be paying more attention to the 14k words going on about school aged crush. Make sure you don't cross the eighteen year age policy line with that content!

 

[KittyOfSteele]

Personally speaking, I don't like them. I don't blame my ADHD on this one though. Is not that I hate them because they are a slow-burn, but rather they lack a hook that keeps me reading. If that hook is nowhere in the first paragraphs, you lose my attention. What that hook is it depends on the story, but in my case I need to see either a problem already happening at the beginning, or a problem about to begin. And if you, for some reason, drop that hook, I'll drop that story immediately.

What I blame my ADHD on is that I dislike reading stories that are longer than a page. Reading from a screen annoys my eyes, and dark mode solves that problem. My attention, however, drifts really easy when I don't have something more tactile than a thumb swiping up, or a wheel scrolling down.

 

[iwatchus]

Personally speaking, I don't like them. I don't blame my ADHD on this one though. Is not that I hate them because they are a slow-burn, but rather they lack a hook that keeps me reading. If that hook is nowhere in the first paragraphs, you lose my attention. What that hook is it depends on the story, but in my case I need to see either a problem already happening at the beginning, or a problem about to begin. And if you, for some reason, drop that hook, I'll drop that story immediately.

What I blame my ADHD on is that I dislike reading stories that are longer than a page. Reading from a screen annoys my eyes, and dark mode solves that problem. My attention, however, drifts really easy when I don't have something more tactile than a thumb swiping up, or a wheel scrolling down.

Not that I think I have been successful at doing this, but I think a slow burn should start with a hook somehow and never drop that, just turning the heap up bit by bit. Unforeseen roadblocks may pop up, may seem impenetrable, but each of those should raise the anxiety.

 

[crookedletter]

There isn’t any right or wrong length to a story. You might lose some readers by going longer than they prefer; you might lose others if they think you’re rushing things.

I wouldn’t try to shorten or lengthen based on what I think a reader might want. Spend more time developing or trim the fat based on what an individual story needs.

 

[Britva415]

I can’t remember where I wrote this recently (another forum thread, some time in probably September) but my opinion about “slow burn” is, it better at least be burning. If it is, you can go a long, long time.

It isn’t slow-burn if there isn’t any emotional heat to it. If it’s just a lot of filler. Pages and pages of “time spent together” which just feels like it’s not going anywhere.

A slow burn should have some kind of a development at least every page or so. (Talking about Lit pages, not the ~300 words typical of a printed paperback page.) Or at least some kind of deliberate and detectable pace to the developments. And in absence of a plotful event, well, the tension, conflict and hunger should still be palpably simmering.

If it isn’t burning at all, then it isn’t slow-burning. And this is what makes people want to bail out.

 

[Off_base]

I'll read anything that's interesting and doesn't offend or repulse me, but slow burns are my favorites. Sort of like a 90 minute movie verses a mini series. I just feel like I get more out of it. There are some great movies though, too, that don't really require any additional story, so both have their own appeal.

 

[DEFCOM5]

My only slow burn story (20K+ words, 2 sex scenes) has 8.9K views and a red H.
It is not very well written but I think that the story is solid.
I have shorter stroker with much less views and very far from the Red H.
I think the story and how you write it is more important than thinking about the length

 

[Bramblethorn]

I love a good slow-burn story. The challenge on Literotica is that story quality is variable, and a reader may not be willing to commit to reading 10k words (or however many) unless they're confident that you're going somewhere interesting.

I've read one book that was a real slog for the first ~200 pages, because I'd read the author's previous book and I trusted her to make it worth my while (which she did! and it was worth the wait!) But I probably wouldn't take that gamble with an unknown Lit author. So it may be a good idea to give the reader some sort of signal near the start to show them what they can expect if they stick with it.

 

[TheLobster]

There isn't much of a plot. It almost exclusively revolves around the two characters and how their relationship evolves.

Fourteen thousand words with little to no plot but lots of hemming and hawing sounds like Sorrows of the Young Werther to me and therefore a complete waste of time.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I currently have 13 stories on Lit that either have only implied sexual activity, or no sex scenes at all. The average number of words is around 87,000 and the average score is 4.77, with none lower than 4.54.

"Literature + Erotica" = Literotica. There is a place for everything within the rules of the site.

Carry on.

 

[cw5523729]

I'm going to second what @TheLobster said - while 14k words of a slow-burn story wouldn't automatically kill it for me (well, it might, I have a short attention span) there needs to be SOMETHING that hooks the reader in and gets them invested in the story early on.

For you to stay yourself that "there isn't much of a plot", then you are telling us there is no such hook so I'm struggling to imagine why any reader would get more than a 1,000 words in before giving up and giving you the dreaded 1-star.

 

[crookedletter]

Just to toss in some personal experience: I have a 23.7k story here, and it has several comments that contain feedback/criticism (much of it more than fair).

One person said "Took a long time to get there, but when it did, hotter than hell." And more than one suggested I actually rushed the ending. Not one said flat out that it's too long. It has what I'd call a solid rating overall.

 

[Voluptuo]

I'm going to second what @TheLobster said - while 14k words of a slow-burn story wouldn't automatically kill it for me (well, it might, I have a short attention span) there needs to be SOMETHING that hooks the reader in and gets them invested in the story early on.

For you to stay yourself that "there isn't much of a plot", then you are telling us there is no such hook so I'm struggling to imagine why any reader would get more than a 1,000 words in before giving up and giving you the dreaded 1-star.

Yep! When I started writing it, I didn’t really plan on publishing it here. I just wanted to do my own thing with it. I’ve re-read and made a lot of changes, and I personally like how it reads now. Still, I’m a bit paranoid about how regular readers might feel about the length and flow of the story. After reading what you all have to say, I’m going to put in a lot more effort and refine it further before thinking about publishing. Thanks!

 

[cw5523729]

Yep! When I started writing it, I didn’t really plan on publishing it here. I just wanted to do my own thing with it. I’ve re-read and made a lot of changes, and I personally like how it reads now. Still, I’m a bit paranoid about how regular readers might feel about the length and flow of the story. After reading what you all have to say, I’m going to put in a lot more effort and refine it further before thinking about publishing. Thanks!

It's tough to give specific advice without knowing the story but I'd try to add some sort of "excitement" at the beginning to at least get the reader interested. I don't necessarily mean a sex scene, though that's an option. But any sort of drama or what have you will work to get the reader going. Keep in mind that you might know in your head what's to come since you wrote it and as such you are already invested in your main character(s) but the reader won't initially so you need to give them something to work with so they know the story is worth the effort.

It may also be worth it to find a beta reader to give it a read through first and give their feedback before releasing it publicly.

 

[big_cane_sugar]

I tend to skim them until I get to the good parts but I enjoy writing them and some people enjoy reading them.