I Wrote a Story - Now What?

I am a new writer to Literotica.com having had four stories posted in the last five weeks. Not only am I a new writer to Literotica.com but I am new to writing fiction as well. For that matter I'm new to writing . . . period. This essay is to recounting of a few self observations, experiences and surprises on this short journey so far. This may serve as a preview to anyone considering writing and contributing stories.

I've been reading stories on this site for a couple of years. I typically log on a couple of times a month. I'm not sure why, but a couple of months ago I felt inspired to write an erotic story. I wrote the whole 2000 word story in one sitting and only then did I start to look into what it would take to get it posted on the site.

Anonymity -- The first thing I realized was that I wanted to remain anonymous but that I needed a name. I hadn't ever thought about creating an anonymous name before. I researched names by perusing the names of other authors on the site. The first thing I decided was that I couldn't think of anything creative right off and I didn't want to use a sexually explicit phrase. I simply chose "Lit" from Literotica, "guy" to identify myself as male, and "100" which means nothing at all. It's just a number. "Litguy100" was bland and to my liking. What is interesting about maintaining anonymity is that you begin to think about all the insignificant facts that when added up really do identify yourself. I nearly panicked after submitting my second story when, on reflection, I thought that several descriptive elements of the story would identify me to at least a few people. Never mind that the odds of those people reading my story were nil. It still worried me. Fortunately, my story was initially rejected for further editing and I was able to rewrite the parts that bothered me but I found it an interesting realization of the subtly of writing. With a new name I then had to set up an email account with my internet service provider. Then I registered with Literotica.com.

Submission (of the story that is . . . ) - I am happy to say that the mechanics of the submission process if fairly easy. The Frequently Asked Questions page does in fact tell you everything you need to know to post a story. You want to read "Submissions" and "Stories". You might want to read some of the writer's resources. If you don't do it now you will probably do it later. Then I encountered something else I had to stop and think about. I needed to consider the name of my story and the short description. You don't want to take this lightly. After all, I was doing this with the expectation that others would read my story. As a reader I knew that I didn't read everything and that what I did read was chosen through the filter of the title, description, and story category. I also had to think about keywords to help prospective readers who might use the search functions. I had never used the search function so this was a new issue for me. The Writer's Resources has some suggestion on this but I mostly figured this out on my own not knowing if I made the right keyword choices. Finally you have to choose a story category. The story itself will suggest a category but even with only four stories I realized that some of my stories fell into multiple categories. For example, the story I'm working on now could easily go in either "Group Sex" or "Mature".

Once you've made all of these decisions you can fill in the form. I have been writing my stories in Microsoft Word and cutting and pasting the text directly into the entry box of the submission form. I preview the submission and every time I've done this I have found something requiring correction. Each story had been edited and re-read many times over the course of a week but I still always find something to fix. Being this close to the submit button sharpens your senses. Oh . . . one last thing. I elected not to accept public comments (at first). I wasn't ready for potential negative comments.

Reader Response -- Once I've submitted the story, I then became obsessed with the story statistics. Of course the first stat is that your story is pending. My experience, in early 2007, is that it took 5-8 days for my stories to be accepted. The second story was rejected with a link to an article on punctuating dialogue. The first thing I thought was that I was impressed that I was getting editorial advice and that made me realize that someone was enforcing some standards. I wasn't the least bit offended by the editorial suggestion. I read the resource article, made the corrections and my story was much better because of it. After submitting the corrected story it was accepted within a few hours.

Now the stats started to accumulate. The first thing that stunned me was the "huge" number of people who had viewed my first story in the first 24 hours. A whopping 3000 views! (peanuts! . . . I was later to find out). Of course, with a little thought, I realize that just because someone selected on my story it didn't mean they read it to the end or even liked it but at least it was an indication that the title and descriptor was enticing people to click on it. The other thing though, was that I realized that Literotica.com has a huge daily readership. I knew how selective I was as a reader so 3000 people is a probably small subset of the actual number of readers.

There is one indication of some people are reading to the end of the story. That is the people voting on the story. To be honest . . . as a reader I never voted on a story. Therefore it isn't surprising that the number of people voting is very small. Typically 0.2-0.5% of all the viewers. As a writer I suspect the voters are other writers. I calculate that I'm getting all 4's and 5's so I suspect the people voting are also inclined to give high scores. People who don't like your story are probably less likely to vote.

Another phenomenon I see is that the number of viewers will start with one big number, climb for a week or two, and then plateau with very slow growth after that. This is consistent with people, like I did, pouncing on the new stories. What is interesting is that you can see that each story category has different size reader communities. My one Erotic Couplings story grew to about 6,000 views, my two Exhibitionist & Voyeur stories grew to 11,000 and 14,000 views, and my Mature story topped them all at 41,000 views all in about the same amount of time. There are clearly a very large number of people reading the Mature stories relative to the other two categories. I know that there are other factors involved with the count of views but I think this is a fair conclusion to make. And to return to a point made previously, there must be tens of thousands of people logging onto this site every day. This is a great opportunity for a writer but also humbling, exciting, and frightening too.

Reader feedback -- I received a few emails from readers; all with short positive comments. A couple left email addresses and I replied to thank them for their interest. By the time I submitted my fourth story I was OK with allowing reader comments. I got four very positive reader comments on my last story. The site does give you the power to remove comments if you want to though I've never tried this (didn't have to).

I hope these few observations give an encouraging preview to prospective writers. I've found this to be a positive experience so far. It has given me a renewed interest in the craft of writing and I've purchased a book on writing dialogue. I'm under no illusion that these snippets of prose make me a "writer" but this is turning out to be a creative outlet with an appreciative audience. Good luck and have fun!