Author Interview: edrider73

I don't have favorite genres, just genres that I hardly ever read. As for authors, there are many who have made a good impression on me, and I'll start a new story by one of them on that basis, even if the title or description doesn't sound promising. Otherwise, the only thing that makes me open a story is a good title or intriguing description. That's why I'll sometimes open a story in a category that normally doesn't draw me, such as Reviews & Essays or Sci-Fi & Fantasy.

I'm talking in generalities, so I'll give you a few examples of stories I've liked:

Fetish is a category I normally skip, but the title of oggbashan's recent series "Femdom Clothing" got me to open it the second time I saw it, and it trapped me in the author's obsession with women's fashion used as straitjackets to heighten bondage sex. The quirky-wholesome title and description of "Impressive 'Star-in-Waiting'" by EgmontGrigor2020 made me discover a unique mixture of Australian-flavored "Mad Men" combined with Horatio Alger - all written in the style of a children's fairy tale. At the other end of the spectrum from these is Trambak's "Indicted," a work of genius that honestly portrays human vulnerability and fragility in language as delicate as the finest Chantilly lace.

How do you think the site could improve?

I like the site as it is. It could be more selective, but then it would be a different kind of site, and I might not qualify. I particularly like that Laurel and Manu have standards that they stick to, and they have quite a few vigilantes who scour the stories for violations. I've been hunted down by them myself. In one story, I wrote about something happening in front of some parents and children, and the parents covered the eyes of their kids so that they couldn't see what was going on. I quickly found out that children were not to be present during any sexual action, even if they can't hear or see it. It was no problem for me to get rid of the children, and after thinking about it, I agree that's a good rule.

I know some writers and readers think it's ridiculous in today's world to act as if teenagers under eighteen don't have sex, but I think the "Eighteen Rule" is good, too. If you can't write a good story within the site guidelines, you can always find someplace with lax rules. For me, the best thing about the site is the way it lets writers connect with editors. I've been fortunate to find some amazing editors who have made a huge difference in the quality of my stories.

The one improvement I would like to see some day when the site owners are rolling in money is the elimination of photos on all pages connected to stories. I have nothing against getting revenue to support the site from videos, cams, sexy chatrooms, etc., but I'm sure there are others besides me who would like to take a look at a story while waiting in a doctor's office or sipping a macchiato. We hesitate because we don't want our neighbors to think we're watching porn in public. So give those who like the "special" features a link to what they're looking for, but lose the photos.

Do you have any advice for aspiring Literotica authors?

I'll leave the general writing guidance to the famous authors and talented teachers who have written thousands of great books and articles on this subject, some on the Literotica site.

I came across what I consider great writing advice on the site after I finished all my stories. It's called "9 Steps to Sexier Stories," written by electric1, and you'll find it in the "How To" category. The title should really be "9 Steps to Better Stories." It turns out that I've been trying to follow the advice of electric1 in all my Literotica stories -- without knowing it.

My advice is strictly for those who want to write stories that they will be proud of and that will be accepted and posted at Literotica. If you do this one thing, you'll have a great chance:

Find a good editor and treasure him or her.

Think of your editor as a partner in one of those kinky relationships found in some Literotica stories. You, the writer, are the submissive, and the editor is the dominant -- to be obeyed and worshipped. If you do that, you will be amazed at the stories you post. They will be better than anything you dreamed of.

It took me a while to learn this. With few exceptions, the editors on Literotica are much better than the writers. I've had wonderful relationships with talented editors of all kinds. There have been students practicing for a career in editing, teachers, mothers with families, physicians, scientists, retirees, corporate communication specialists, a well-known motivational speaker and a Muslim woman from Africa. Most were mainstream, but some came from exotic sexual backgrounds.

What amazed me the most were the editors who hated reading some of my stories and still worked hard to help me improve them. At least two of them were so traumatized that they finally couldn't take anymore. Both of them apologized for dropping me.

I started out suspicious of any attempts to change my deathless prose, but I quickly learned that my editors were far superior to me. Not only did they catch torrents of errors that I couldn't see, but they saw mistakes in plot, characterization, continuity and diction that could have been ruinous.

The best thing they did for me was cut. I often resisted at first, because before I gave them the story, I knew every word was there for a reason. But they were right every time. After I made the changes and read the story over, I would ask myself, "What was I thinking?" The stuff the editor trimmed was always boring and/or repetitive.

Only a couple of them tried to turn my stories into their stories. They weren't real editors, just frustrated authors. The rest gave me much more respect than I deserved and did their best to help me despite myself. One of my German translator/editors did so much to one story that it became a different story. I liked the new story, so it was submitted in German as the editor/author's own story, and I was credited with inspiring it.

Working with my editors has been the best part of the Literotica experience for me. The author/editor relationships got pretty intense, even though we kept our personal lives out of it.

The aspiring writer does need to be careful. I had a few encounters with "editors" who were more interested in chatting and personal relationships than working on stories. And there were a couple of stalkers who believed I was talking to them alone and telling them things I wanted them to do to me, or me to them.

So my second bit of advice is stay anonymous - on Literotica or anyplace on the Web when you are dealing with strangers.

How did you find good editors?

By trial and error at first, but then I figured out the system, so if you're a writer and don't want to waste time, here's what you need to do:

Check the Volunteer Editors page every single day for new listings. They are often added in bunches. If you miss a single day, you may miss your editor, because as soon as a promising new editor shows up, she or he is bombarded by authors who are watching for new names.

Either they are snatched up right away by writers who respect and appreciate them or, just as likely, they hear from a lot of flakes, and within a few days, they've decided to forget about volunteer editing.

That's why it's a waste of time for an author to approach an editor who's on Page 7 or 8 of the listings or later. If the editor is any good, he or she has either been taken or is already burned out by bad experiences. Either way, most likely you'll get no response.

So you check every day for new editors, and one morning you hit the jackpot with ten new editors listed. How do you know which ones are qualified? You use your gut feeling.

If something in the Editor Profile sounds off to you, skip that editor. Maybe your first impression is wrong, but most likely it isn't.

If you see one typo or mistake in a profile, it's a warning sign. If everything else in the profile sounds great, I approach one-typo editors, making a joke out of the typo in their profile in my response. If the editor thanks me and is apologetic about the mistake, it always turns out to be a good sign. If the response is defensive, I don't go any further. If there are two or three typos, I won't contact the editor.

I appreciate editors who are scrupulous, meticulous and detail-oriented, and obsessed with grammar, spelling and punctuation. I take them at their word. If they say some of those things aren't their strong suit and they're better at suggesting improvements to the story, I take a pass. That's because I make a lot of mistakes, and I need an editor who delights in finding my mistakes and pointing them out to me. A few editors I've had seemed to get their jollies in an almost sadistic way by finding fault, but I don't care. If they are snide and nasty and help me make the story better, I can take it.

Once I read the profile of an editor who seems to have the qualities important to me, I send my pitch message. This is the sales letter where I try to get the editor to buy. I think of it as courting the editor into a relationship with me, hopefully a longtime one.

To get my way, I'll say anything that I think might work, outside of a blatant lie. I'll shade, twist, connive and distort. The only reason I won't beg is because I'm afraid that might turn off the editor.

Try to make yourself look good in any way you can. If you've already posted and have some high ratings, mention them. If a story of yours got dozens of negative comments but one great one, quote from the positive one. It's like a testimonial in an auto commercial.

In your pitch, you do need to say what you're looking for. I tell the prospective editor that I'm looking for someone to see all the mistakes that I miss and point them out to me so that I can fix them. Often the editor will fix all the things the writer does wrong, but sometimes the editor, rightly, thinks the writer should do it.

In my pitch, I also make it clear that I hope the editor is not afraid to offend, because I hope that she or he will not only see the mistakes in grammar and spelling but also in plots, characterizations and continuity. If the story has some huge holes, I want the editor to bring them to my attention in plain language, even if it bruises my ego.

I think many writers are too timid to do this, but by inviting my editors to rip apart everything I've written, I've benefited tremendously. A couple of times, I've compared my first draft with the final version, and I've shuddered to think how embarrassed I would have been had my editors not saved me.

Once you write your first pitch letter, you can use it over and over -- as a foundation. You adapt it to each editor's profile. For example, if the editor says a pet peeve is writers who use it's for its and you're for your, fix the pitch letter up to mention that you agree with the editor, are embarrassed to admit you make such mistakes and look forward to the editor spotting them. Change parts of your pitch to make it personal to each editor. Once you've written the first pitch, that can be done quickly, so your email can go out minutes after you read a promising profile.

As soon as you see a batch of new profiles posted, go through them and respond immediately to every single one that sounds good. There are two reasons for this. First, if you wait even one day, it may be too late, and the editor is already committed to someone else.

Second, no matter how quickly you respond, you may never hear back. I don't know why, but I'm guessing the reasons are similar to those that have made me lose editors, such as health issues, family problems, car accidents or a million things that can happen to people in real life. It could even be that your response rubbed the editor the wrong way.

In any case, for every six inquiries you send out, consider yourself lucky if one person responds.

Your views and comment numbers are good, but your scores aren't high? How does that make you feel?

Terrific. My two top priorities are to write stories that satisfy me -- and I'm very critical of my writing -- and to have the stories read by as many readers as possible. In any medium, the artists I admire are those who express themselves honestly but aim for a mass audience.

Of course, I would also love for all my readers to love my stories, but that's not as important to me.

If I wanted to, I'm sure I could write a story that gets a high score.

How would you do that?

Not the way the top scoring authors on Literotica do. They have artistic integrity and write stories that they're proud of. Fortunately for their scores, readers love their plots, characters, descriptions and ideas.

What I could do is examine the top scoring stories and find things that many of them have in common. Then I could manufacture a story to please a large number of readers. It would be like pandering to them. If I registered under a different name and submitted the story, I think it would get great scores. Any halfway decent writer could do the same.

You seem sure of yourself. Have you ever done this?

No. Even fake stories take time and effort, and both are precious, so why waste them?

Why do you think some of your stories get a lot of looks even though many readers react negatively once they've read them?

Selling. If you're a writer who is looking for a large audience, once your story is finished, why wouldn't you take advantage of any way possible to get that story out there?

What do you mean?

Literotica offers two ways to sell your stories: tags and description lines. I think most writers don't have a clue about how to use them. I know I didn't when I first started writing here. I wouldn't use tags at all because I wanted readers to have no preconceptions when reading my stories. And I would write cute descriptions that amused me because they had puns or double meanings.

I started using tags when I saw that the site editors had assigned tags I didn't like to my stories. As I can't say often enough, one of the best things about Literotica is that it all allows you to go back and fix your mistakes -- and that includes tags and descriptions.

First, I tried to just use tags that best described the story. But a couple of years ago, I came across the list of most popular tags. It's easy for anyone to find on the site. I looked it over and was amused. Then I looked at it again and decided to use it as a tool.

There's no way to find out what tags appeal most to readers without doing a survey. So the list is just the tags that are most popular among authors. But it's the best we have, so why not use it?

I took from the list all the tags that could in any way apply to one of my stories and ranked them in popularity. Then over many months, I went back to each story and changed the tags to those highest in popularity. I would never use tags that don't have anything to do with a story, but, for example, if my story has any anal in it, it's going to get an anal tag, because that's at the top of the tag list, with way more tags than No. 2, oral, and almost double the tags of No. 3, lesbian.

If you want, you can go a step further - like me. When not enough of the most popular tags apply to your stories, make a list of others that do fit, and then research which of them are the most popular. It's easy to do, and you'll find out some interesting things, e.g. the tag "reluctant" is far more popular than "reluctance."

There's no way I can prove that my tag strategy draws more readers to my stories, but watching my numbers, it seems that they started going up faster once I put better tags on.

Even before I did that, I started looking at my description lines a different way. I'm amazed at how many stories just toss these lines away. Some writers even repeat the title or summarize the plot because they're too lazy to bother.

Look at some of the spam you get in your inbox every day. It's full of click bait headlines. Their sole purpose is to get you to open the link so the website can get bigger numbers to show its advertisers.

I decided my story lines serve the same purpose. With a few exceptions, they are designed to tease readers into opening the story and reading it. From there, I hope the story will sweep them up, and maybe they'll decide it's one of the best stories they've ever read and write a great comment. But if the description is boring, there's no chance of that happening.

So my advice to authors in search of more readers is once you've agonized over your story and you and your editor feel it's ready to join the Literotica classics, put some thought into picking your tags and writing your description. If you want to be a writer who is read, let your light shine brightly -- despite the shadow.

Shadow?

Life isn't fair. No matter how good your story is, there is a shadow that most writers can't overcome: the Literotica story category.

The lucky writers are the ones whose muse guides them to write about incest or loving wives. I found out from personal experience that if your category is romance, you are out of luck. Most readers will never look at your story. As for erotic couplings, that's the category for stories that nobody can figure out what to do with.

I didn't do a lot of research on this because I don't try to control my story ideas or channel them into the more popular categories.

At first I was disappointed that a couple of the stories that I consider among my best have had few readers because of the category they're in. But I've changed my attitude. Now I consider these stories buried treasures, and only those readers who are willing to take chances are ever going to have the pleasure of reading them. It will be their reward for being open-minded.

You gave advice about finding good editors. What do you do after they agree to work on your stories?

I bend over backwards to make it as easy for them to do their work as possible. If they prefer a certain format - plain text, MS Word, Google Docs, PDF, etc. - I'll do my best to convert my story to that format and, after they've worked on it, convert it back to my format.

It's also important to listen respectfully to everything they say. Usually if I don't understand something, it's because they credit me with knowing more about language and writing than I do. If I ask them to explain, they never have a problem.

When I disagree with something they do or suggest, I also do it respectfully. As I mentioned before, when there is a disagreement on something and I decide to ignore their input, I almost always change my mind after I've had a chance to think about it, and I end up going with their suggestions. They are not you, so they see things that you can't because you are too close to the story.

The most important thing to me, and not always the editors, is to give them the credit they deserve. They are working for you for nothing, and the only way you can possibly repay them is by telling the world how wonderful they are.

I can't believe it when some editors have told me how they've slaved over another author's story, and then the writer doesn't even mention them, as if she or he had no help. How despicable!

In addition to my thanks, I'll also try to alert readers to the editors' own stories when they are also authors on the site. The site editors are great about links, so I turn the editor's name into a link to the editor's story page.

A few times, I've had editors for only one or two stories because they are too easily pleased. They correct a few errors, but I know there's a lot more wrong with the story. I've been lucky to find editors who will take a second or even third look at my stories. Sometimes the later editors came in because I went back to the story and saw it needed more work.