Looking for native English editor

[Agent0069]

Hey all, Agent69 here.

I'm a relatively new author whose characters, so far, survived falling from the plane with a help of inflated dildo, reintroduced their black manager to slavery right in the office, had their first romantic blowjob from their best friend... on a space ship, led a naked invasion against a female-only city, and got jerked off with sisters feet - among other stories.

In other words, I do not treat my works too seriously and aim at becoming a decent author in general, rather than a great niche porn writer.

Among all the complaints I've been getting, the most common is that I need an editor. English is not my native language, it's been a while since I learned it, and now I keep making mistakes that I myself can't sense, but that are, apparently, obvious to anyone who's native. (One reader even made a pretty accurate guess on my geography based on my mistakes alone, which is pretty scary if you think about it.)

Anyway, this is where you come in. I need someone who is native to English (ideally from UK/USA, and has a humanitarian education) and is willing to spend their valuable time reading my scripts part by part.

I am not looking for any sexting, role-playing, or discussions about my life outside of Literotica.

As a payment, I can only offer my undying gratitude, mention of your name at the beginning of a story, and (potentially) making you, or a person of your picking (not a celebrity) a background character in some of my next stories. Or if you need to vent to somebody - I can be that guy, with a 100% guarantee that your secrets stay with me. I don't know what else I can offer here, it's not like I'm getting paid for any of it either?

Right now I'm working on a "Romance" story featuring two friends, lots of candles, and tags such as #best friends, #romance, #big breasts, #big dick, #premature, #facesitting, #multiple orgasms, #first time, #impregnation - in that order. It was supposed to be submitted for a Valentine's Day contest, and explore how differently we perceive ourselves - compared to what the others might think of us.

The story is fully written, but only half-way edited, which is fine since I've missed the submission deadline anyway. So, if you are interested - hit me up, and I'll start sending you the completed parts. I also have never done something like that before, so it's not excluded that I'll get weirded out by the whole ordeal.

 

[Agent0069]

Since no one offered, I abandoned that idea, and wrote another, much shorter, story for April Fools event.

I posted it as-is, and was immediately rewarded with a "great premise, but your awful writing... please proofread your stories" comment.

Problem is, I always proofread my texts about 10 times before posting. I also ran it through grammarly spellchecker (free version). I did my best in fixing errors, but readers still noticed. So, clearly, I need someone to give me a feedback since I'm out of my depth.

Annoyed, I went to DeepSeek (free Chinese alternative to ChatGPT), fed it a chunk of my text, and asked for improvements. To my surprise, it went over my text sentence by sentence, giving it's feedback and improvement ideas, then summarized how it should look like as a whole.

My published story is "Roommates With Benefits", and I've copied first nine lines. I won't paste my version here (you can read - and rate it - by following the link!), but this is what a Chinese robot wanted me to write instead:

The lock clicked, and the door to Ben’s apartment swung open, letting in a burst of loud voices.

‘And then—get this—he shouts, "It’s not my glove you’re touching, but keep going!"’ Ben walked in, casually tossing his keys onto the small cabinet by the door without even glancing.

‘Pfft! And I thought our parties were wild!’ Jess said, bursting into laughter as she followed him inside.

The switch flicked, and the apartment lit up, forcing them both to squint and groan.


No more than three paragraphs allowed on the forum. Remainder removed by mod.

So, what do you think? If it were up to me, I wouldn't accept all the changes blindly. I'm also worried that too much interaction with chatbot will turn my writing into a soulless chatbot-tier, but I'm also getting tired of all the condescending comments about how obvious it is that English is not my first language.

 

[AlinaX]

Can’t see anything wrong with that excerpt.

 

[AlinaX]

And okay, occasional glitches, nothing that deserves harassment.

 

[WCSGarland]

Since no one offered, I abandoned that idea, and wrote another, much shorter, story for April Fools event.

I posted it as-is, and was immediately rewarded with a "great premise, but your awful writing... please proofread your stories" comment.

Problem is, I always proofread my texts about 10 times before posting. I also ran it through grammarly spellchecker (free version). I did my best in fixing errors, but readers still noticed. So, clearly, I need someone to give me a feedback since I'm out of my depth.

Annoyed, I went to DeepSeek (free Chinese alternative to ChatGPT), fed it a chunk of my text, and asked for improvements. To my surprise, it went over my text sentence by sentence, giving it's feedback and improvement ideas, then summarized how it should look like as a whole.

My published story is "Roommates With Benefits", and I've copied first nine lines. I won't paste my version here (you can read - and rate it - by following the link!), but this is what a Chinese robot wanted me to write instead:



So, what do you think? If it were up to me, I wouldn't accept all the changes blindly. I'm also worried that too much interaction with chatbot will turn my writing into a soulless chatbot-tier, but I'm also getting tired of all the condescending comments about how obvious it is that English is not my first language.

Single quote marks for denoting conversation should be double quotes for one. Just making sure your conversations look normal would probably avoid a lot of derogatory commenting.

 

[AlinaX]

I'm surprised that was allowed, although I have sneaked one or two stories past Laurel using this convention.

 

[Agent0069]

I'm surprised that was allowed, although I have sneaked one or two stories past Laurel using this convention.

Up until now I’ve only written stories genuinely, by hand, without use of any tools, except for free spellcheckers.

People read my stories, comment “fix your writing”, but don’t provide any feedback other than that. I don’t have natural sense for English, so even if I read my own stories out loud, I can’t tell if anything is wrong.

In my first message here I tried to find editor, but got zero replies. This is why I’m now considering to use a chat bot - not as a “write a story for me”, but as “here’s my story, tell me what is wrong” kind of tool, to see if those edits make sense.

Honestly, I’m not even looking for anything anymore, I just got frustrated after seeing yet another comment and wanted to vent.

 

[StillStunned]

Your score is 4.58 from 50 votes. That's pretty decent - too decent to get worked up about one comment. If you're really worried about typos, here's a trick that professional editors use and many writers here on Lit have adopted too: use Read Aloud, or another text-to-speech function, and go through your text word for word.

Whatever you do, don't rely on any chatbot to improve your text. It won't. It will make it generic and mediocre choosing words and structures that it expects to see. Use your own words instead.

 

[Agent0069]

Well, yes, you're right. In my profession I'm always against the use of bots, and it was a minute of weakness that almost drove me to abandoning my principle in porn writing. Thank you, I do feel better now!

 

[AlinaX]

Up until now I’ve only written stories genuinely, by hand, without use of any tools, except for free spellcheckers.

People read my stories, comment “fix your writing”, but don’t provide any feedback other than that. I don’t have natural sense for English, so even if I read my own stories out loud, I can’t tell if anything is wrong.

In my first message here I tried to find editor, but got zero replies. This is why I’m now considering to use a chat bot - not as a “write a story for me”, but as “here’s my story, tell me what is wrong” kind of tool, to see if those edits make sense.

Honestly, I’m not even looking for anything anymore, I just got frustrated after seeing yet another comment and wanted to vent.

When you're next ready to publish, start a thread here asking for someone to read through and catch any obvious errors.

Keep the request brief, state any kinks, give the word count.

It's hard to find an editor at all, and if you can make it easy for prospective editors to go, "Yeah, that's something I could do tonight," then you're more likely to get a result.

 

[TheLobster]

I'm surprised that was allowed, although I have sneaked one or two stories past Laurel using this convention.

You can use British punctuation for dialogue just fine. Problem is that OP is otherwise writing American (“leather pants”), so he has switch the quotes around to match the dialect (outer quotes double, inner single).