All Comments on 'I Wrote a Story - Now What?'

I have often wondered about the process of submitting a story and its aftermath. Thanks for the info.

I'm a new writer too, I received 15 comments, 4 of which were downright rude, that I deleted. Otherwise, it's been a rewarding experience for me too.

Thank you for giving us one Writer's experience submitting stories, the scoring aftermath, and your own personal views on this delightful process. Congrats on a fine essay.

Good, but one thing you didn't mention was listing a story with a hyperlink on the Story Review thread on the Bulletin Board. As well as getting a new writer more publicity, there are a group of like-mided souls to give encouragement, support and detailed feedback.

Try entering a contest and see how avidly you follow the ratings.

It was quite interesting to see what it was like for a writer to submit his works.<p>I can see where the ego can take a hit if you get too full of yourself.<p> Thank you for the insight.<p>PT

My experience with submitting stories was much the same. My preoccupation with the stats was very much like yours. It's interesting to see how things progress after the story is "published". As for the categories there are obviously some that are more popular than others. Since you have written in a coulple of categories I was suprised to see the Mature category lead the way in views by such a large margin. As for the comments regardless of your writing ability some categories are more objective comment friendly than others. I believe if you write a story in the Interracial or Loving Wives category you may find many of your critics a bit less reasonalble.

Thanks for opening up the semi hidden side of Literotica. I was pleased to see that you have added a question mark at the end of the title to your essay. The way I see it, it indicates, an open ended approach, which is what I look for in the ‘aftermath’ of a submission of a story or a poem. It should IMO be at least in part an answer (mine) to your question. From experience I have learned (in retrospect, it should not have been a surprise), that there is a wide range of approaches which authors hold regarding the kind of relations and the level of openness they wish to maintain with the readers. I am not sure how much of it you have experienced on your own, but I have seen any thing from the total closed approach to feedback, through policies which de-facto do not tolerate critical views (by erasing those messages or responding to them disrespectfully (a small minority), to total openness which includes the author occasional feedback and input to discussions between readers. You may be able to already tell what end of the spectrum I advocate. Yes, I wish to realize the full potential of the word “Public”, to include everyone; certainly not just fan readers. I can’t “tell you” what you should tolerate down at the bottom of the bunch. I mean how abusive should one’s message be before you take it out. Some take out messages which attack other authors /and or stories; some draw the line with certain qualities of language and some don’t touch the comments, observing that it is better to leave alone the more demented ones as they are mostly ignored anyway and do not create any upheaval as their erasing might raise.

In theory I have a difference of opinion with the Webmaster of Literotica. I think that none of the stories would have survived without readers and no readers would have any thing to do on the site without the stories. I see it as fully symbiotic relations. IMO, the public feedback boards should have been: ok, hold your breath, it’s just my opinion, truly public, accessible to every one to respond, discuss have dialogs on the story, and related issues. I am not putting this view as a central point or in an effort to convince anyone that my view is the only true one while all others are wrong. Just my take on how I would have liked to see things proceed in an ideal Literotica. <P>

If you care to respond to one issue the single most interesting question for me is where do you stand on being interactive –i.e., responding over the public feedback boards to readers’ questions to you, or even taking the initiative in adding your take on issues that might develop in discussions between readers (again, you can imagine where I wish to see authors on the issue).

P.s. There is a dreary example to a very different culture of public feedback which I still find puzzling. I am referring to what I call the ‘silence culture’ (or the near silence) in the Poetry section in Literotica. Take some sections in the story sections, and take the Poetry section and you see day and night. As it happens, I like poetry as much as I like stories, but the silence culture there drives me nuts. The interesting thing is that sociologically speaking this is a classic example of a ‘local culture’, as in other places you will find a lot of open discussions on poetry right next to the poems, go figure…

Your experience has pretty closely mirrored my own. One thing that I noticed, when checking out the most-read stories on this site, is that the vast majority of them are Incest/Taboo stories. Some of the I/T stories have had *millions* of readers.

help to new writers. Where were you when I started here?

First of all, congratulations for the courage to create & develop stories on this amazing site. We really appreciate your stark comments regarding the process and subsequent reader reviews & such. We assumed [and yes, we know what that entails] that the "loving wives" category would generate the most "reader hits" & feedback. You observations indicated that this assumption is false - interesting of course. We do enjoy many of the writers on the site and will send positive or constructive feedback as the situation requires. However, we do find find fault and quickly point when a "particular" frequent commentator "Alvaron53" gets on his high horse and unfairly takes apart someones stories due to his ego. Lately, Alvaron53 has become more logical and we have relented from calling attention to his previous bullshit remarks.

Getting back to this author's work - once again "thank you" for your creations and efforts.

Thank you for explaining the process. As a reader I appreciate most of the stories that appear on Literotica. My favorite category is Loving Wife, not only because of the emotional content in the stories, but because of the emotional response by the readers (sometimes the comments are as good as the story). I'm fascinated by the "professional" commentators who daily post their critiques, yet have never (or seldom) written their own story... My only gripe is that many times a story is posted in the wrong category. The reader will feel conned into reading something they would never touch and the comments will reflect this. Authors please carefully place your story in the right category.

I found this essay to be quite relevant to my own experience thus far. I recently submitted my first story to Literotica and, according to my member page, it will be posting tomorrow. Like the author of this work, I had never written erotic fiction before and very little fiction, period. I find myself almost obsessed with anticipation. Will very many people read it? If they do, will they like it? Will they vote for it? Will I receive feedback? The funny thing is, I've observed that even the most-viewed stories on the site get relatively few votes and even fewer posted comments. This author's experience, along with discussions I've read on the forum, confirm that the feedback a writer gets is almost minuscule. So why do I keep hoping that I'll be the exception? LOL. Hopefully, the obsession recedes a bit after one gets several stories under one's belt and the reality sinks in that an author will never know how the vast majority of his/her readers actually feels about the work. Finally, I appreciated the comment about the suspicion that many of the commenters are probably writers themselves. I know that I only voted on a very few stories and commented on even fewer when I was only a reader. After I became a writer myself I vote and comment far more frequently. Funny how that works, eh? ;)

I gave a bad rate for your essay maybe that was unfair but I don't think you really says anything in it. I don't get why you wrote it.

I feel like making one more comment.

“For that matter I'm new to writing . . . period.

[…]

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”

That’s depressing to read since I have been writing daily for fifteen years, and I couldn’t sit down and write 2000 words, I’ll be luck if I write 200 words in one sitting (and no I’m not stupid, I have an IQ to be proud of). Strange how different we humans are.

That was a very informative and familiar story, at least for me. I could written about 90 % of that as my path also, like submitting Text from Word, checking the Reads, scores, & comments, the hesitation before pressing the "Submit" button! I also check my stories over several different ways and times, and pride myself on making readable stories, at least. Only once did I let down and release a poorly edited story and I rightly deserve some criticism; but some people can be very nasty on the internet so it is good to have that option to remove the inappropriate ones. And, your story reminds me of what an honor it is to have a great site like Literotica to post our stories and to the thousands of people, like me, who are out there reading them. It also reminds me of MY responsibility to release GOOD stories! Thank you, MF

All of these are Very Good In Sites However I was Hoping to Find Out What The Hell Does Mean when Lit Demands you to go seek out a 'Volunteer Editor' even thu you thing your Story Doesn't Violet any Rules In addition you have done all of the Grammar Errors and what have you, Before hand before Submitting it. And even if you you Actually do go Asking for a 'Volunteer Editor' One It's Not Guarantee that they can or would help you, and even the it would seem that you would need to Jump Through a Bunch of |Hoops just to make your Requests. At least according to My Own Personal Experience.