Writing to piss of the readership

[thebullet]

It takes some balls to write a story that you know will piss off a lot of people. (Unless you are some kind of psycho dork). I'm not talking about the slut wife/wimp husband stories or any stories written specifically for a small circle of perverts. Those stories are being written to please a certain audience, regardless of how they are received by the general porn public.

Rather, I'm referring to stories that are written in such a way that many readers will be turned off to it, even though the writing actually advances the story quite satisfactorily.

There is a series currently being posted by H2OWader called Charlene which to me is written in an interesting way. Each chapter is told by a different character. Most of the chapters essentially tell the character's story. The chapters intersect at certain points and that is how the main storyline is advanced. Kind of an interesting way to write.

The last chapter posted in this series stated that this was the author's last posting, even though the main storyline had not been resolved. The author suggested that readers write their own ending to the story. Oh, the hell that was raised on the public comments board.

Unfortunately (in my opinion), H2OWader has backed down and now says he will write a conclusion to the story. Still, I liked the concept. It sure raised a hullabaloo.

It's interesting when you post a story that you know some people are going to be too impatient to read far enough into to learn that the story isn't what they think it is. My last two short stories that I have posted took strong turns midway through the story. Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda, a story I posted in February, started off as a poorly written romance that was so sickly sweet that it could have curdled milk. The reader was in danger of literary diabetes.

I was pretty sure that a significant percentage or readers would blow the story off with '1' bombs without getting into the real meat of the story. I just figured, what the hell. It was in the "Loving Wives" section anyway. Most of the LW readers read the first and last paragraphs before they decide to actually read the damn stories.

The 'joke' in Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda was that all the sweetness and light was going on inside the mind of a sexist pig who was looking for a jerkoff fantasy. Those that plowed through it long enough to understand that thought it was pretty good. Still it is the lowest scoring story I've written to date (by a long shot).

I went in with my eyes wide open, knowing that I would get blasted by the impatient percentage of the readership. H2OWader must have known that he was going to be hammered for his decision.

Question: are we brave or just nuts?

I did something similar in my last story, What is and What Should Never Be (yes I'm a Zepplin fan). I started the story making the female protagonist pretty hard to take. Since she was the narrator, I wondered how many peopele I would scare away. The story generated 34 public comments so far. One of them said (paraphrasing) "This is the worst fucking shit I've ever seen on Literotica. I stopped reading it." Now the other 33 comments were all positive, but I feel proud that I made the very top of this guy's shit list. It feels good to be the best at something.

 

[LadyJeanne]

Sounds like your having fun, sweets. I see you cackling your way through a bottle of tequila as your twisted imagination creates new ways to fuck. Keep up the good work.

 

[elsol]

Question: are we brave or just nuts?

We have voices in our heads... would you rather piss off the voices outside or inside?

I've taken some major heat in my serial "A Master's Ring" from readers at times... it does not even close to having a character screaming in your head because you took a wrong turn.

Not EVEN close!

Sincerely,
ElSol

 

[SeaCat]

Ummm, I would have to say I'm just bravely nuts.

Cat

 

[lucky-E-leven]

You're a nice combination of brave and nuts.

The important thing is that you're writing for yourself, to your own specifications and standards of story movement and character development. Good writing does not always equal popular writing. It sounds like interesting stuff to me, and I like that there are some original ideas being force-fed to pidgeon-holed readers in certain genres. Falling into a groove of predictible characters and story lines, for me, is a sure way to wind up not enjoying my reading any longer.

~lucky

 

[thebullet]

Lady Jeanne writes:
I see you cackling your way through a bottle of tequila as your twisted imagination creates new ways to fuck

You are close. Usually it's a bottle of my home-made Merlot. And if I'm real lucky I've scored some primo cannibus (I'm very rarely real lucky).

I'll make this admission: When I chose the name for my magnum opus, I most certainly was not straight. It was 3 o'clock in the morning. I had a half bottle of something under my belt. As I gazed through the pot-smoke haze at my computer's monitor, it came to me. The perfect title: "Death by Fucking".

Christ, I don't think I'll ever live that one down.

 

[BlackShanglan]

It's a tough one. I don't much care for annoying people as a goal, either in writing or in conversation; it's easy and doesn't achieve much. But sometimes, as Bullet points out, one wants to create fun contrasts by setting up expectations and then undermining them. That's difficult ground. I enjoy it myself, but am aware of the problems; both of the ones that start out looking like "typical" romances at some point had an editor say "well, I read the first two pages and the grammar is OK, but I didn't want to read a formula romance." I've been tinkering with that in the last SDC submission and got some good advice on how to drop some hints without totally tipping my hand. It's a tightrope though; too much and it's hamfisted, too little and you lose the audience you want.

I had more luck with "Will." So far only one reader has reported being really turned off by the sudden revelation about the lead, and that's not bad for the number of reads and votes. That one, too, I would say had the best reason of any to throw a twist. In the romance ones, it was to some extent just playfulness; I liked setting up a "romance" feel and then adding "but what if one of the players is just not romance novel material?" In "Will," on the other hand, there was an absolute need; the audience had to get to know the speaker and begin to engage with her as a person before learning more about her. Those, to me, are the tricky ones - ones where part of the story hinges on the later twist. One simply prays that readers will hang on, and does one's best to make the voice and early action interesting enough to keep them there.

 

[thebullet]

BS:
You stated it well. I don't annoy people as a goal when I write something like those stories I was talking about. On the other hand, sometime you have to do what you have to do for the sake of the story. If some readers can't hang with you through those parts, then you just have to take the hit.

Generally when I'm writing a story like that, my overall intent is to be funny in my sick, perverted way. If enough people know that there's a punchline coming somewhere down the pike (and in my stories, there usually is), they'll hang on. Those people who don't see the humor in what I'm doing are better of bailing out anyway, I guess. Can't blame them. You have to be a little twisted to like my stuff, I suspect.

 

[BlackShanglan]

You imply a good point there, Bullet - having a readership who know you really helps. If I pick up a paperback and see treacly romantic pap, but then check the spine and realize that it's Salman Rushdie, I'll trust the man to make it go somewhere. It's a big bonus when the reader has some trust in you.

 

[thebullet]

BlackShanglan:

You inferred my implied point perfectly. WTF am I saying? Yes, when one acquires a pre-packaged readership who kind of knows what to expect from you, those readers are more willing to force their way through the dreck, hoping I guess that I wrote the dreck for a specific purpose that will become plain somewhere further down into the story.

BTW during the dreck part of Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda, I wrote the following sentence:

My love is a fire that brightly burns and will last for an eon.

I figured since I was writing romantic dreck I should refer to the current queen of the Romance section, brightlyburn. Of course at storiesonline.net, she uses the moniker 'eon'.

Not one person picked up on that one, by the way. They just thought it was more dreck.