Every story I post gets 1 star’d

[pink_silk_glove]

In my personal opinion, I think LS has notably higher quality writing than any other category I have read here (maybe 10 of them). I think the scores actually reflect that more than they are inflated. They also have, on average longer stories, which I think correlates to both higher quality and higher ratings.

I agree that it does tend to have a little better prose, but the plotting is so predictable. It's all sweetness and love, and if it's a longer story it's almost guaranteed to be a template harlequin romance except with two women, so the storytelling is lacking.

 

[old_prof]

I agree that it does tend to have a little better prose, but the plotting is so predictable. It's all sweetness and love, and if it's a longer story it's almost guaranteed to be a template harlequin romance except with two women, so the storytelling is lacking.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. There was another thread about a month or two ago complaining that all the LS stories were pain and suffering, which is hardly romance central. OTOH, I like a good feel good story, so I may be biased.

 

[Writer61]

Red H has nothing to do with contests. The scores as they are are already affected by categories. If you want to win the Valentine's contest don't submit to LW, for instance. Changes to the Red H won't affect that.

Yes, but I think it would look a bit odd if the winning story (say from EC with a rating of 4.51) does not have an H, but the second (from LW, rating 4.50) does.

 

[lovecraft68]

In my personal opinion, I think LS has notably higher quality writing than any other category I have read here (maybe 10 of them). I think the scores actually reflect that more than they are inflated. They also have, on average longer stories, which I think correlates to both higher quality and higher ratings.

From my very limited experience, I think T/I has the worst writing. I will say I think the slop I threw up there as an experiement would have gotten nearly a half point lower in any other category I post in. It is by far the worst story I have written. And I don't say that because I didn't like the kink. It;s what you get when you spend a couple of hours on a story total (between 3 and 4). From my experience, you just have to let mommy sit in his lap and you're guaranteed 10K views and a red H. Nothing else matters.

LS- I have three and they're #11/27/53 on the most faved LS stories list. Make of that what you will.

I'm not going to bother giving my 'resume' in I/T but I'll say the "incest is easy and low quality' thing gets tiresome.

But I do get a kick out of having a rep here among detractors that "LC is just an easy I/T author" '

Whatever gets them through the night.

 

[lovecraft68]

Out of the categories I know well, I'd say that the Fantasy&SciFi category is of overall better quality in my opinion. Authors tend to heavily focus on the story there. And for a similar reason, I'd say that Fetish is a lower quality category in general because authors tend to heavily focus on kinks rather than coherent storytelling.

BDSM varies a lot. The Lesbian Sex category has decent writing quality overall, but it kinda favors certain formulaic tropes, so I don't rate the storytelling there highly.

Fetish isn't low quality as much as a lot of the material is niche and I do think its more heavily 'action' category.

What I'm going to say next is something I said to a blowhard in the writing group I belonged to here in RI when I mentioned I write erotica. He of course put it down and said anyone could write it. I used the example of a foot fetish story. Could anyone write one? I'd say in general most people can write just about anything if they try to, but will it be good? If someone writes a foot story and they're not into it, it will suck. If you know the kink the story will be good for those who also have it. Therefore to me, its a quality story.

I'll leave 'writing quality' to the people who are far better writers than me so they can feel good about themselves.

 

[YmaOHyd]

In my personal opinion, I think LS has notably higher quality writing than any other category I have read here (maybe 10 of them). I think the scores actually reflect that more than they are inflated. They also have, on average longer stories, which I think correlates to both higher quality and higher ratings.

I have no idea what category has the best writing, because far more stuff is submitted every day than I could possibly read even if I wanted to. I think LS has the best top-end, though. The five best LS authors are probably better than the five best authors in most other categories. I don't think the best Romance stories are quite as good as the best LS stories, at least from what I've read, and Romance is the category I've read the most.

(Also maybe Novels and Novellas or Essays and Reviews have the highest average quality, but those shouldn't count.)

From my very limited experience, I think T/I has the worst writing. I will say I think the slop I threw up there as an experiement would have gotten nearly a half point lower in any other category I post in. It is by far the worst story I have written. And I don't say that because I didn't like the kink. It;s what you get when you spend a couple of hours on a story total (between 3 and 4). From my experience, you just have to let mommy sit in his lap and you're guaranteed 10K views and a red H. Nothing else matters.

I think T/I maybe has a lower average quality than other categories because there's so much of it. I doubt the top 1% is worse than the top 1% in any other category, though. Likewise Loving Wives: top 1% probably very good, but a lower average quality because it draws a lot of stories that are written as therapy rather than to tell a story.

 

[IWroteThis]

Is there? I'm not aware of that. RaaC is a happy ending, isn't it?

Both RAAC and BTB can be considered happy endings, but only for one of the spouses. The only real difference between them is whether it's the cheater or the cheated on that pays the price.

As for your first question, yes, there is. Granted, there's a lot more forced oral than sodomy, but both are often found in the category.

 

[lovecraft68]

But the BtB crowd don't find these stories erotic. I don't read many of these but I've never read one that was erotic. In fact, these stories are often completely devoid of any kind of emotion whatsoever.

1 ~ Hrmm, some curious evidence. Is my wife cheating on me?
2 ~ Hire a PI who collects the cold hard truth, yes she is having an affair.
3 ~ Hrm, interesting (no tears).
4 ~ Takes action (either with a lawyer or with violence).
5 ~ Man conveniently wins (usually with the aid of some serendipitous luck), wife left destitute or shamed or dead, man gets the house the bank acct etc.
6 ~ Man: "hrmm, that worked out well." (shrug)

Where is the eroticism? Who is turned on by these events? Sometimes there isn't even a single sex scene.

And the disturbing part is the lack of emotion. Man is blindsided by infidelity, his life supposedly turned upside down, but he takes it all in stride, "an affair? Hrmm, inetresting. I guess I'll just hire a detective and a lawyer and the love of my life will be in utter ruin. (shrug)." There's no soul searching, no inner turmoil. No hope that the PI proves her innocent. Just cold heartless justice. Regardless of gender, that's fucked up.

If its erotic its in the up and coming genre of incel porn.

Meanwhile, I'll stick to "Bitch got hers" is a valid idea for a story but it isn't erotic or a kink and the Cold male insecurity crowd can think whatever they want about that, and about me.

 

[old_prof]

LS- I have three and they're #11/27/53 on the most faved LS stories list. Make of that what you will.

I'm not going to bother giving my 'resume' in I/T but I'll say the "incest is easy and low quality' thing gets tiresome.

But I do get a kick out of having a rep here among detractors that "LC is just an easy I/T author" '

Whatever gets them through the night.

As I have said previously, all categories have at least some very high quality stories. I'm not doubting your capabilities as a writer, which I think are widely accepted. I would be shocked if any of your stories in any category rivaled the mediocrity of my T/I story. I apologize if you felt I impugned your writing.

My crappy story in T/I Is never going to be on a leader board, nor considered to be an exemplar of quality. My argument was that the level for reasonably acceptable in the category is notably lower than in many categories. I think the mediocre stories get a boost there, more than they do in other categories. This makes percentile comparisons between categories dubious.

Every category has terrible stories, excellent ones, and a bunch in the middle. I have no idea what category has the best excellent stories. I'm not sure that's even a reasonable question to ask. I think the quality of the 50th or 60th percentile stories changes markedly between categories, I don't know if some of the specific kink oriented categories (Fetish or Anal, for example) have the same characteristics.

 

[lovecraft68]

I would be shocked if any of your stories in any category rivaled the mediocrity of my T/I story. I apologize if you felt I impugned your writing.

Don't be too sure of that, I have some 'what was I thinking pieces' here and I have one that's under a 3 which of course is in LW

And you didn't insult me, sometimes I say things in a reply that are meant for other people who read through the posts and know I'm talking about them.

T/I is like any category as in it has its share of mindless strokers (that mom/lap thing....low hanging fruit) and its actual story style work. I think its gets picked at because of the large readership which simply is what it is.

 

[IWroteThis]

But the BtB crowd don't find these stories erotic. I don't read many of these but I've never read one that was erotic. In fact, these stories are often completely devoid of any kind of emotion whatsoever.

1 ~ Hrmm, some curious evidence. Is my wife cheating on me?
2 ~ Hire a PI who collects the cold hard truth, yes she is having an affair.
3 ~ Hrm, interesting (no tears).
4 ~ Takes action (either with a lawyer or with violence).
5 ~ Man conveniently wins (usually with the aid of some serendipitous luck), wife left destitute or shamed or dead, man gets the house the bank acct etc.
6 ~ Man: "hrmm, that worked out well." (shrug)

Where is the eroticism? Who is turned on by these events? Sometimes there isn't even a single sex scene.

And the disturbing part is the lack of emotion. Man is blindsided by infidelity, his life supposedly turned upside down, but he takes it all in stride, "an affair? Hrmm, inetresting. I guess I'll just hire a detective and a lawyer and the love of my life will be in utter ruin. (shrug)." There's no soul searching, no inner turmoil. No hope that the PI proves her innocent. Just cold heartless justice. Regardless of gender, that's fucked up.

Although I agree that these stories are largely more cathartic than erotic, it's just a different kind of release.

Still, be careful about speaking in absolutes. There are several other things that I would classify as non-erotic, but others claim they are. To paraphrase what I said before, eroticism is in the eye of the beholder.

As to the "lack of emotion" you claim, it depends on the story, just like with every other category.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Yes, but I think it would look a bit odd if the winning story (say from EC with a rating of 4.51) does not have an H, but the second (from LW, rating 4.50) does.

First, nahh, who cares?

Second, 4.51 would never come close to winning a contest.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

But I do get a kick out of having a rep here among detractors that "LC is just an easy I/T author" '

I can't vouch for quality nor scores since I never read incest, but we all know that the easiest way for an unknown writer to quickly build a following and gain some popularity is to bang off a quick mom/son.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Both RAAC and BTB can be considered happy endings, but only for one of the spouses. The only real difference between them is whether it's the cheater or the cheated on that pays the price.

As for your first question, yes, there is. Granted, there's a lot more forced oral than sodomy, but both are often found in the category.

No, a reconciliation is good for both parties, at least from a storytelling perspective.

And BtB stories are largely non-erotic. Like I said, I've never seen anything remotely erotic in the few that I've read.

As to the "lack of emotion" you claim, it depends on the story, just like with every other category.

I am the first to admit that most stories here lack emotional content. That's not to say that emotional things never happen, but more that the author lacks the ability (or the desire) to emphasize that emotion onto the page. In BtB stories, I'm not talking about an emotional story that the author emoted poorly. I'm talking about a completely heartless, clinical main hero character, bordering on, if not outright psychotic.

 

[TheAlphabetGirl]

Yes. Trolls delight in pounding stories on release, it gives them something to do with their meaningless lives. Some categories are worse than others.

Which categories @ElectricBlue?

 

[lovecraft68]

No, a reconciliation is good for both parties, at least from a storytelling perspective.

The problem with reconciliation stories isn't the story itself, its the hate filled lunatics that lose their mind if an author chooses to write a story where the husband decides to forgive-or accept-the wife cheated (because it is rarely, if ever the husband because in LW husbands are virtuous saints) then that story's comment section is filled with enraged men screaming that a -again fictional-man put up with fictional cheating. Some of them are outright unhinged.

This is regardless of how the much effort the author puts in to the story to be an actual story.

The BTB crowd cheers because apparently a man winning in a divorce can get them aroused (sorry, there's some issues there) but the Raac stories are torched to no end.

Best example of that crowd is that sickening February Sucks schtick here. Guy writes a story where the husband reconciles with the wife who cheated and readers became so angry that some of them rewrote the guys story with how it should have ended and most of them turn into BTB stories.

Imagine being such an angry little person you need to rewrite a story because you didn't like the ending? How obsessed with anti-make believe woman-justice are you?

Worst is the author of the story vanished for a while and didn't respond to the couple of people decent enough to ask permission to use his story so...a bunch of them just went ahead and did it, so add stealing to being a tiny angry little person.

The author eventually came back and saw what was going on but said whatever and gave blanket permission to just keep rewriting his story to various degrees of BTB level because again, no pretend woman will ever win when there are such manly men over there in LW. Just look at all the stolen content that keeps popping up on YT, its exclusively BTB stories. Lot of angry 'men' out there.

Except in my stories

FWIW if anyone denies the original wave of FS stories were written without permission that information was posted in the feedback forum by blackrandl1958 who was the editor and good friend of the author, she posted it to point out someone here on their horse about plagiarism was one of the people who wrote theirs without permission and she wanted everyone to know the real story.

People can also look up my old thread about how Lit is the only place that harbors/tolerates this type because its free and allows anon.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Which categories @ElectricBlue?

Loving Wives is the most volatile, but mostly self-contained.

I've got stories in nearly half the Lit categories, and most will cop a couple of 1s in the first day after release, which generally disappear when the next Contest sweep goes through. It's become part of the furniture now, I think most of expect it. Which is why it's a good idea to wait several weeks before you decide how well your story was received.

 

[TheAlphabetGirl]

I LOVE all these tips. I also find it interesting learning from people who have bodies of work that span a decade+.

 

[TheExperimentalist]

I think T/I has the worst writing

the "incest is easy and low quality' thing gets tiresome.

So here's the thing, I kind of agree with both of you. In my (admittedly believability-oriented) opinion, incest is one of the hardest to write WELL, owing to the taboo and the much higher barriers to crossing those lines requiring a much more powerful impetus for it to happen. I've said before how my approach to a good incest story very much aligns with @lovecraft68's essay on how to Write Incest like a Mother Fucker, and how I was kinda star-struck the first time you replied to a post of mine. Part of why I tend to release so slowly is because half of what I write is incest, and I often get stuck on that critical moment where the characters need to cross from thought and desire to openness and action. I often know what beats I want The Conversation™ to hit, but struggle with the specific dialogue that will accomplish both making it believable and not veering wildly off course... But I digress. My point is that I agree with @lovecraft68 that there's a lot more to writing it well than 'They're related. They fuck.'

On the other hand, I agree with @old_prof too. It seems that many T/I readers don't necessarily value believability in the characters' journey to cross those lines to the extent that I (and presumably lovecraft) do, so the category does also tend to have a lot of not-very-plot-or-emotion-driven stuff that's still highly rated. There's definitely a lot of shallow, cookie-cutter, "help me, bro, I'm horny/me too, what should we do?/I guess if we agree not to go all the way, I'll suck you off, then you can lick me, and it'll feel so good that I tell you I need you, we abandon that agreement, and fuck each other's brains out, after which we'll go for a second round where I turn into an experienced anal slut out of the blue." or "oops, the hotel only has one bed... guess we have no choice!" or "oh sorry I walked in without knocking, I just wanted to borrow the MacGuffin, but I've never seen a [boy/girl] masturbating before, so let me help!" without any real depth to them.

And I should clarify, lest I get on lovecraft's bad side by sounding like I'm joining the 'all highly voted writing sucks but mine' crowd, that (1) this frustration of mine dates back a decade, long before I started writing, as a result of having trouble finding stuff to READ that appealed to me, (2) though I enjoy my own writing and write the stories I myself would want to read, I know that I'm not the best, and almost certainly never will be, and (3) despite my complaints about the formulaic tropiness, I actually HAVE seen, on rare occasions, well-written versions of 'bro, I'm horny', 'hotel mixup', 'caught masturbating', and even 'stuck in the back seat', though, in general, the ones that do it well have a lot more going on than JUST those.

So, now that I've inevitably pissed off EVERYONE, I'll probably get a ton more 1-bombs myself. Maybe I shouldn't actually hit that "post" button... but we all know I will anyway, so... bring them on, I guess?

 

[lovecraft68]

I can't vouch for quality nor scores since I never read incest, but we all know that the easiest way for an unknown writer to quickly build a following and gain some popularity is to bang off a quick mom/son.

I'm an anomaly there. My first foray into taboo was a long series sibling series that at the time was barely getting 50 votes a chapter and some only getting 3-4 comments because the subject material was too dark and depressing for the crowd. Scores were good because it was a small core readership. I know nothing about the category coming in but did see the "sis has boobs" stories getting way more views/votes/comments. Not going to say it wasn't disheartening to be writing something that had actual depth to it and getting squat for reception, but it was an early test for me to see if I was writing what I wanted or chasing numbers.

After that I did some fun ones and still do, but toss a train wreck in once and a while. I wrote a stroker once to see if I could and it fell way below the numbers I usually had and had comments saying they liked my longer slow burn style better.

The thing about this site is you put out what you want and the readers who like it will find you.

But to counter your remark if T/I will get the votes and views, score though isn't always a given strokers don't tend to score that highly just get a lot of attention. If I wanted an easy 4.85 I'd write a sappy hallmark level trope with an HEA and go into Romance.

 

[lovecraft68]

So here's the thing, I kind of agree with both of you. In my (admittedly believability-oriented) opinion, incest is one of the hardest to write WELL, owing to the taboo and the much higher barriers to crossing those lines requiring a much more powerful impetus for it to happen. I've said before how my approach to a good incest story very much aligns with @lovecraft68's essay on how to Write Incest like a Mother Fucker, and how I was kinda star-struck the first time you replied to a post of mine. Part of why I tend to release so slowly is because half of what I write is incest, and I often get stuck on that critical moment where the characters need to cross from thought and desire to openness and action. I often know what beats I want The Conversation™ to hit, but struggle with the specific dialogue that will accomplish both making it believable and not veering wildly off course... But I digress. My point is that I agree with @lovecraft68 that there's a lot more to writing it well than 'They're related. They fuck.'

On the other hand, I agree with @old_prof too. It seems that many T/I readers don't necessarily value believability in the characters' journey to cross those lines to the extent that I (and presumably lovecraft) do, so the category does also tend to have a lot of not-very-plot-or-emotion-driven stuff that's still highly rated. There's definitely a lot of shallow, cookie-cutter, "help me, bro, I'm horny/me too, what should we do?/I guess if we agree not to go all the way, I'll suck you off, then you can lick me, and it'll feel so good that I tell you I need you, we abandon that agreement, and fuck each other's brains out, after which we'll go for a second round where I turn into an experienced anal slut out of the blue." or "oops, the hotel only has one bed... guess we have no choice!" or "oh sorry I walked in without knocking, I just wanted to borrow the MacGuffin, but I've never seen a [boy/girl] masturbating before, so let me help!" without any real depth to them.

And I should clarify, lest I get on lovecraft's bad side by sounding like I'm joining the 'all highly voted writing sucks but mine' crowd, that (1) this frustration of mine dates back a decade, long before I started writing, as a result of having trouble finding stuff to READ that appealed to me, (2) though I enjoy my own writing and write the stories I myself would want to read, I know that I'm not the best, and almost certainly never will be, and (3) despite my complaints about the formulaic tropiness, I actually HAVE seen, on rare occasions, well-written versions of 'bro, I'm horny', 'hotel mixup', 'caught masturbating', and even 'stuck in the back seat', though, in general, the ones that do it well have a lot more going on than JUST those.

So, now that I've inevitably pissed off EVERYONE, I'll probably get a ton more 1-bombs myself. Maybe I shouldn't actually hit that "post" button... but we all know I will anyway, so... bring them on, I guess?

I think your post covers both sides of the coin well.

If you're writing just easy mom's hot why not, you'll get a good amount of attention, but as I just said to PSG I to notice the strokers scores tend to hover around the 4.5 and often a bit lower (of course there's always exceptions)

The more in depth slow burns with conflict/emotion and a reason for this other than whoo-hooo incest! Tend to score higher.

Audience for both but in my experience there's a lot of people in T/I who want some substance with their kink and that I think is why I get tired of the category being put down. The readers there aren't different than any other category, there's just more of them.

Also a lot of the shots taken at that category are in jealousy. They don't like the genre but see how it dominates in numbers so they get petty about it.

I like how you brought up the 'conversation' that critical moment where you straddle the fence between this would never really happen but I'm going to convince the reader it could. Its not always easy to get that right tone.

I think I may have said it in that essay-I wrote it a long time ago-but no matter how hard you push for some realism you do have to step into porn absurdity at some point.

Which is why I find the category challenging if you want to write more than a mom on a son's lap.

 

[Bramblethorn]

So in your opinion what are some of the higher/lower quality categories?

I don't think my opinion on that is worth sharing. I haven't been reading widely enough here in the last few years to pass judgement, and I'm no better than anybody else here at separating "this is Quality Writing" from "this is what I enjoy". If I'm going to start an argument I want to be sure of my ground.

All I wanted to say back there was that we shouldn't assume that a fair scoring system is one where every category gets the same scores.

 

[lovecraft68]

I don't think my opinion on that is worth sharing. I haven't been reading widely enough here in the last few years to pass judgement, and I'm no better than anybody else here at separating "this is Quality Writing" from "this is what I enjoy". If I'm going to start an argument I want to be sure of my ground.

All I wanted to say back there was that we shouldn't assume that a fair scoring system is one where every category gets the same scores.

I'm of the opinion that quality is of the opinion of the reader.

The word is like a unicorn here; people say they've seen one but can't prove it other than their first hand account.

I agree that you can't make people vote the same way across the board, they have preferences, bias, squicks etc. It's like getting the uppity movie critics to take the horror genre seriously but will fawn over some artsy fartsy thing 10 people saw.

Lit isn't meant as some literary critique site and that's what some people seem to want, and I'll say again, it would be hilarious if somehow Lit did that and all their scores went down because they're just not as good as they think they are and their friends here tell them they are.

I'll hold to for it's meant to be this system is not flawed. Some readers abuse it, most don't. Some authors cry about it, most don't.

 

[TheExperimentalist]

I think I may have said it in that essay-I wrote it a long time ago-but no matter how hard you push for some realism you do have to step into porn absurdity at some point.

I seem to recall your essay DID say that, and that it's actually the one part that I maybe, kinda, disagree with, depending on what exactly you mean by it, but I'll spin off a new thread a bit later on today and tag you there, since elaborating on that here would remove the last shred of on-topicness this 'modus operandi of the T/I category' tangent has retained...

 

[pink_silk_glove]

But to counter your remark if T/I will get the votes and views, score though isn't always a given strokers don't tend to score that highly just get a lot of attention. If I wanted an easy 4.85 I'd write a sappy hallmark level trope with an HEA and go into Romance.

So we agree 100%. Write a template harlequin for a score, but write an incest stroke for a wide audience. Or something thereabouts.