The Official Authors' Hangout Winter Holidays 2025 Support Thread

[SamanthaBehgs]

Hope you do! I'll be reading them.

That's allowed, right? Once the contest is done?

 

[iwatchus]

That's allowed, right? Once the contest is done?

Absolutely!

 

[bmeyem8]

A newbie here...first time contest enterer. How do readers "vote" for a contest story? How does a writer see their votes? What is the deal about "get 25 votes and somethong happens"? Please excuse my naivety. Thank you in advance, especially @iwatchus .

 

[SamanthaBehgs]

A newbie here...first time contest enterer. How do readers "vote" for a contest story? How does a writer see their votes? What is the deal about "get 25 votes and somethong happens"? Please excuse my naivety. Thank you in advance, especially @iwatchus .

A "vote" is someone rating the entry (how many stars you get) and the number of ratings you get is where the 25 comes from. Not sure how new you are - are you familiar with looking under "my works" to see your average number of stars and how many people contributed to that average? If not, I'll screenshot (I'm just super excited to finally be able to help someone. Welcome to the contest!)

 

[bmeyem8]

A "vote" is someone rating the entry (how many stars you get) and the number of ratings you get is where the 25 comes from. Not sure how new you are - are you familiar with looking under "my works" to see your average number of stars and how many people contributed to that average? If not, I'll screenshot (I'm just super excited to finally be able to help someone. Welcome to the contest!)

My stars for the entry are 3.37/240. So foes the 240 mean I met yhe 50 vote thing?. Thank you very much for your help.
BTW: I am a Sam I am too.

 

[bmeyem8]

My stars for the entry are 3.37/240. So foes the 240 mean I met yhe 50 vote thing?. Thank you very much for your help.
BTW: I am a Sam I am too.

My cellphone typing is the worst.

 

[Voyeurkenneth]

My stars for the entry are 3.37/240. So foes the 240 mean I met yhe 50 vote thing?. Thank you very much for your help.
BTW: I am a Sam I am too.

Yes, you're good. The 240 means the number of votes. You've surpassed the minimum number.

 

[SamanthaBehgs]

BTW: I am a Sam I am too.

Do you like green eggs and ham?

And like you (and @Voyeurkenneth) mentioned, yes, that means you've had 240 people vote. And just so you know, for the holiday contests (like this one) you are only required to have 25 votes to qualify rather than the 50 that used to exist for the monthly contests (which, as far as I can tell, are no longer running).

 

[ChloeTzang]

My stars for the entry are 3.37/240. So foes the 240 mean I met yhe 50 vote thing?. Thank you very much for your help.
BTW: I am a Sam I am too.

Using this as an example

The 4.79 is the rating
The 2.9k is the number of votes
The heart with the 131 is the number of users who have favorited the story
The 128.5k is the number of views overall
The 139 is the number of comments

As an average, you can expect approx one vote for every 100 views and one comment for every 1000 views - there are wild variations on that of course - it IS an average, but that's an average that's been established over the years

In a competition, you need a minimum of 25 votes to be eligible to be in the running for a place.
It has been known for the odd story with barely more than 25 votes to win LOL Not very often, but it happens

 

[DEFCOM5]

Write an Incest story. Make it the most cliché thing you can imagine, but give it a title that draws in the readers.

This will immediately satisfy your craving for views. Once you've got that out of your system, you can experiment with whatever weird stuff the Plot Bunny dumps on you.

I plead guilty as charged except my category was R/NC and not T/I.

Once I got some views and H, I decided to write stuff I could actually feel proud of the story.

 

[RoyalAuthor]

Really enjoyed "The Velvet Ribbon" by @RoyalAuthor and "Milk from Cookies" by @SamanthaBehgs, both of which got similar comments from me about their originality. Fantastic concepts for stories and both were really well-written. Looking forward to checking out more stories. Good crop of them this year.

Thank you! I'm glad people are enjoying it.

I'm always extra-flattered to receive good reviews from other writers, even if I already knew it was well-received by the readers here.

 

[iwatchus]

I'm having submitter's regret now. I just realized your advice was probably the 90% of what you say I'm supposed to ignore. Maybe it will get stuck in pending and I'm off the hook.

Too late. I've been approved to appear on Sunday. (No idea why not tomorrow, but who am I to question the ways of the Laurel?)

 

[WittyUserName]

I have an idea for a one-off, but I'm not sure I'll be able to finish in time. Ugh. I started another story recently and it's taking longer than I thought it would.

 

[ChloeTzang]

......rather than the 50 that used to exist for the monthly contests (which, as far as I can tell, are no longer running).

Yep, the monthly contests have not taken place for a few years now.

What used to happen was that on the 15th of every month, literotica tallied up the votes from stories submitted during the previous month. The story in each category with the best voting score compared to all other stories submitted that month was automatically eligible for that year's Literotica Author Annual Awards voting. At the end of the year, there were 12 nominee stories in each category. The 5 stories in each category with the best voting scores at the end of the year went on to the final voting. One was elected in each category by voting i– as the top story for that year. If there were less than 5 nominees in a category, the top scoring submissions in that category during the calendar year become eligible.

The last Annual Awards (https://forum.literotica.com/thread...ual-literotica-readers-choice-awards.1594775/ ) were held in 2022.

It was alway interesting to see what emerged but alas, the monthly awards and annual awards have dropped off.

 

[DEFCOM5]

Final update on my progress.
I finished the story. It is a couple of hundred words short of 19K. Way longer than I expected.
I need to read proof and edit it before I master the courage to show it to my beta reader.
Once I incorporate all the feedback, I will publish it.

 

[Lord_Libido]

Ohhhhhhh we are doing well. More stories............

View attachment 2577562

You highlighted mine. I'm honored.

 

[MelissaBaby]

It was alway interesting to see what emerged but alas, the monthly awards and annual awards have dropped off.

In my fantasy life, they never stopped the monthlies or the Reader's Choice, and I've got, like two dozen W's.

 

[talemestories]

So I'm blaming this one on him. I swore I would never write a T/I story, but I wrote the cheesiest Christmas mommy in my lap story ever. Santa's Lap is now submitted for the contest.

I'm sure it will gruyère on you.

 

[RoyalAuthor]

I'm sure it will gruyère on you.

You should be simultaneously proud and ashamed of yourself.

 

[talemestories]

You should be simultaneously proud and ashamed of yourself.

Sometimes you just gouda laugh.

I'll see myself out now ...

 

[Lord_Libido]

My story contains violence and I forgot to put it in the tags. I apologize profusely.

 

[MegaTank]

Hey everyone, I'm in the middle of writing my first NCR story "Does She Know It's Christmas"

While things are coming along at a decent enough pace, this story's shaping up to be a whopper compared to me others; already longer than anything else I've published and the sex is a ways off. I'm hoping not to have to chug too much of the anti-procrastination juice (currently at 8K words).

 

[SamanthaBehgs]

Hey everyone, I'm in the middle of writing my first NCR story "Does She Know It's Christmas"

While things are coming along at a decent enough pace, this story's shaping up to be a whopper compared to me others; already longer than anything else I've published and the sex is a ways off. I'm hoping not to have to chug too much of the anti-procrastination juice (currently at 8K words).

You got this!

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Nearly there.

It's more serious than a typical Lit story. I predict a bunch of people will hate it, but at least a Christmas story should get some readers...

 

[talemestories]

Hey everyone, I'm in the middle of writing my first NCR story "Does She Know It's Christmas"

While things are coming along at a decent enough pace, this story's shaping up to be a whopper compared to me others; already longer than anything else I've published and the sex is a ways off. I'm hoping not to have to chug too much of the anti-procrastination juice (currently at 8K words).

Now that you are half complete, it's just another few days to go. Go go, MegaTank!