What I Wrote and Why: the support thread

[StillStunned]

Not a bad idea. Hmm...

So far it's going pretty smoothly. I've left the start of the WIWAW as it was in the previous version, where I explain about why I decided to write an I/T story and what the reception was. Where I move on to describing Sal, I now have her interrupting me:

This is probably where she began to take real shape. I pictured her as –

“I can speak for myself, you know. I don’t need some middle-aged bloke to do it for me."

Like I said, it suits the character, who's too intelligent for her own good, and used to controlling others. We'll have to see how it goes down with the readers though.

Edit: completed and submitted!

 

[Candy_Kane54]

I think I'm going to get meta and write a WIWAW about my WIWAW essay that I submitted for this challenge ...

 

[StillStunned]

And at the end we should all write a short bit about the entire experience and publish it as one story.

 

[AlexFourways]

Hi, I have been away and without internet access that would allow me to get to Literotica, so I have missed five or six pages of chat.
I don't know how others have done, but mine have had between just over 300 to just over 500 reads and less than ten votes and a comment of two.

 

[alohadave]

You can post it as a thread in the AH. That's how the whole thing started, after all.

I submitted my second one. Hopefully people like it.

 

[StillStunned]

I have two new WIWAWs up today: one on Flesh for Fantasy and the other on Too Cold Not to Fuck.

As I already discussed a few posts ago, for Too Cold Not to Fuck I experimented with letting the character speak for herself.

 

[StillStunned]

Four new WIWAWs up today!

 

[AlexFourways]

For ease of finding current submissions WIWAW 2024. I hope that helps people.
You can sort by Views Rating Favorite Newest!
Have fun (or not ) [Note a lot of the 5's are clearly on less than 10 votes so ratings are not totally reliable]

 

[mrs_mackenzie]

My contribution, WIWAW: Scent of Vanilla is up this morning Had a surprisingly difficult time putting it together, maybe introspection isn't my forte...

 

[StillStunned]

My contribution, WIWAW: Scent of Vanilla is up this morning Had a surprisingly difficult time putting it together, maybe introspection isn't my forte...

Read it and rated it.

 

[StillStunned]

I submitted my second one. Hopefully people like it.

I read it and rated it.

It's always interesting to hear about a story's journey from its first form to its final form. Even more interesting when the first form is actually available to read.

 

[lovecraft68]

Got this comment early this morning.

The last line is gold. Legit one of the best things anyone has said to me even though its meant as an insult.

ToughSailorabout 10 hours ago
As this thing starts out, dad's about as fucked up as a soup sandwich. And it would seem that Nicole's not all that far behind. Why didn't she and her uncle just have the asshole committed, or let him do the Dutch? Oh yeah, then we wouldn't have a story. So this is what it would look like if Harlequin Romance wrote psycho porn . . . .

 

[Djmac1031]

I suppose I still have time to officially get in on this lol. I'm trying to get a story finalized and published then I wanna write a WIWAW about thr series it's a part of.

 

[StillStunned]

Hey everyone, we're more than a week in, and Reviews & Essays isn't being flooded quite so much with our musings as at the start. Because this is so unlike other author challenges, I think it might be time for some reflection.

What have your experiences been so far? What seems to have struck a chord with readers, what seems to have been a miss? If you were to write another WIWAW, or if you're planning to, what would you do differently, what would you do the same? Is there any approach you'd like to try?

My experiences:

I've published three WIWAWS. The first is a general discussion of a literary technique (nameless and faceless narrators), the second is an analysis of one of my stories, and the third provides some background to my most popular series, in the form of a first-person narrative by one of the characters.

The analysis WIWAW has the fewest views (271) and the fewest votes (7), with 2 comments.
The background WIWAW has the most views (815), with 17 votes and a single comment.
The literary technique WIWAW has 491 views, but 25 votes and an astonishing 7 comments.

For comparison: an analysis WIWAW that I published 4 months ago has 939 views, 7 votes and a single comment.

I'm not sure what these numbers mean by themselves, but perhaps combined with other authors' experiences we can figure out what kinds of WIWAWs people want to read.

 

[Erozetta]

276 views, 8 votes, 4 comments.

Fewest views and votes I've ever gotten outside of Poetry.

 

[TheLobster]

I was pondering writing down some thought about my most viewed story but I'm afraid I hit an unsurmountable obstacle.

The story is titled "With a Little Help from Her Son." That's pretty long, right? Well, "WIWAW: With a Little Help from Her Son" is above the length limit for story titles!

Thus my effort has been foiled before it even truly began. Shame

 

[StillStunned]

276 views, 8 votes, 4 comments.

Fewest views and votes I've ever gotten outside of Poetry.

Your WIWAW is what we might call a writer's journey, am I right?

 

[StillStunned]

I was pondering writing down some thought about my most viewed story but I'm afraid I hit an unsurmountable obstacle.

The story is titled "With a Little Help from Her Son." That's pretty long, right? Well, "WIWAW: With a Little Help from Her Son" is above the length limit for story titles!

Thus my effort has been foiled before it even truly began. Shame

It will fit if you drop the "with" from the title. There, now you have no excuse not to write it.

 

[AlexFourways]

I was pondering writing down some thought about my most viewed story but I'm afraid I hit an unsurmountable obstacle.

The story is titled "With a Little Help from Her Son." That's pretty long, right? Well, "WIWAW: With a Little Help from Her Son" is above the length limit for story titles!

Thus my effort has been foiled before it even truly began. Shame

I do find the 35 characters for titles and 60 for summaries a constraint (I use a number bar in courier [mono-spaced font] that I can plan both against rather than find a problem at posting). You could have gone for [WIWAW: With a Little Help from ...] and a summary of [... her son. My reasons for writing this story and thoughts!]

 

[Erozetta]

Your WIWAW is what we might call a writer's journey, am I right?

Yeah, you could call it that.

 

[alohadave]

I was pondering writing down some thought about my most viewed story but I'm afraid I hit an unsurmountable obstacle.

The story is titled "With a Little Help from Her Son." That's pretty long, right? Well, "WIWAW: With a Little Help from Her Son" is above the length limit for story titles!

Thus my effort has been foiled before it even truly began. Shame

If it's only a few character over, you can put a note in the admin field asking for an exception. I did this for one of mine that was three letters over.

I also gave an alternate title that fit if she decided not to do it.

 

[TheLobster]

If it's only a few character over, you can put a note in the admin field asking for an exception. I did this for one of mine that was three letters over.

I also gave an alternate title that fit if she decided not to do it.

Oh, that's good to know. Now I'm gonna need to write it just to test this theory

 

[AlexFourways]

Your WIWAW is what we might call a writer's journey, am I right?

Of the three I submitted, my highest number of views/comments is (currently WIWAW 2024) 678/2, and generally this seems to be an author to author event. My other two The Delight is in the Detail? 526/2 and Writing The Quiet Man 406/1, so not too bad IMHO. What was dissapointing was The Delight... was supposed to generate comments on whether cup size and scripted orgasms were good or bad and only two comments is not a debate, but I did learn a bit!

FreyaGersemi and EmilyMiller have had the most comments, 20 & 13 and are both journey types, numbers partly boosted by the authors responding (fair enough). What I Wrote and Why I Know Nothing / Why I Write And What

Apart from The Story of That Damned Red Dress at 4,7k views, the next is WIWAW - Dear Straight Men 1,5k then two on story writing WIWAW – Chekov's Babes and Talking During Sex - both in the 1,4 to 1,3k range.
The lowest is 188, so in contrast 277/4 for What I Wrote and Why: Silence Overcoming trauma through writing. by Erozetta ain't so bad ⚖.

 

[FreyaGersemi]

What was dissapointing was The Delight... was supposed to generate comments on whether cup size and scripted orgasms were good or bad and only two comments is not a debate, but I did learn a bit!

I read your questions in this essay as rhetorical. Sorry!!

 

[StillStunned]

FreyaGersemi and EmilyMiller have had the most comments, 20 & 13 and are both journey types, numbers partly boosted by the authors responding (fair enough). What I Wrote and Why I Know Nothing / Why I Write And What

Apart from The Story of That Damned Red Dress at 4,7k views, the next is WIWAW - Dear Straight Men 1,5k then two on story writing WIWAW – Chekov's Babes and Talking During Sex - both in the 1,4 to 1,3k range.
The lowest is 188, so in contrast 277/4 for What I Wrote and Why: Silence Overcoming trauma through writing. by Erozetta ain't so bad ⚖

A couple of caveats here:

Both Freya and Em have replied to most, if not all, of the comments on their stories, effectively doubling the comment count.
And data on other people's stories tends to be wildly out of date. WIWAW: Too Cold Not to Fuck, for example, has 827 views in my dashboard, but only 536 on the story page.