Tell us about your lowest rated story

[Bramblethorn]

The friend I wrote it for loved it.

So? It was a success, from my end. I enjoyed writing it and I like that it's not trope-y. But the Dom is never submissive; I tried to write it as entirely her conflict. SHE was the one terrified of cuffing him.

I think just the fact that she does cuff him might bug some readers there.

But that's their problem.

 

[MrPixel]

Lowest? By far my one and only posting in LW, at 2.72. 'Nuf said.

 

[SyleusSnow]

Well, sitting at a miserable 4.31 is this jewel:

"Left Behind" - His trashy neighbor says goodbye

It was my first try at a 750. Too raunchy, I guess.

Next year's 750 more than made up for it. "Shouldn't Be" got a rating of 4.69, which should be impossible for a 750.

Excluding 750s, Halloween romp "Kyle the Weremoose Gets Lucky" is lowest, hovering between 4.49 and 4.5. Someone was kind enough to favorite it recently, so maybe there's still hope it'll be recognized as the comedic masterpiece that it is .

 

[BelleCanzuto]

The premise of this thread is simple. Tell us about your currently lowest rated story on this site.

What score did it get? Do you think that score is justified?
Did you know/suspect that this story was going to score so low?
What is it about the story that resulted in this score?
Would you still write/post this story? Would you change anything about it?

The brave can include a link to the story and ask for feedback (and maybe a couple of consolation upvotes.)

Those whose stories are all rated Hot need not play...

Not counting the 750 word story i put in LW... (I disabled voting on all my 750 word stories)

My lowest score is "Dinner and..." tagline: 'sometimes anticipation is the best gift.
The readers do not appear to agree with that. Current score is 4.22. It's three years old, with only 7700 views. It's in BDSM. It was my 6th story, about two months after I published my first (my publishing pace has really ssssllllooowwweedd).

Anyway. The premise is an unnamed kinky couple go out to dinner with friends on the submissive character's birthday, and the dom character challenges the sub to do various things, and keeps telling her what else he's going to do when they get home. It was supposed to be eroticising the foreplay, the tease, however you'd want to put it. There's very little actual sex, it ends shortly after they get home. It's also heavily into the sado-masochism part of the BDSM, at least as far as what's promised.

I've learned that for the most part the BDSM audience here prefers the dom/sub aspect more than the sado-masochism aspect. And, I think all the audiences prefer description of action, rather than description of fantasy (or reminiscence).

I had NO idea it would score so low. I thought it was awesome and clever and sexy. I had just finished a trilogy that sort of went off the rails, and includes a story i now think of as my worst. "Dinner and..." felt much more sophisticated (not sure that's really true, though), and more interesting.

Would I change anything about it? I dunno. I started to reread it, just now, and got halfway through the first page (a quarter of the total, roughly). I'd probably establish more about the characters' relationships with each other, give them names, at least. And would either cut out some of the fantasizing, or add in more actual sex.

 

[AWhoopsieDaisy]

Alright so I'm new here and only have 4 published works.

My lowest score is also my first work here. It's got a 4.3 which to be honest is higher than I expected for a gay omegaverse story put into the non-con category. Especially since I spent the first two paragraphs or so explaining the omegaverse system using bees as an analogy.

What I find interesting is that while it's the least favorited and lowest rated of my stories, it has the most votes. This story has ten meanwhile all the others struggle to get more than three.

 

[Brutal_One]

I have quite a few sub 4 ratings sadly but the majority well above 4. Once you realise that scoring above 4 means multiple readers giving you a 5 Max rating it’s cool. The one I post is below, the surprising thing is this is one chapter that has the highest sex scene content. At least one reader gave it a like so I will take that.

http://literotica.com/s/rod-adventures-ch-21

score is 3 from 11 and the one Rating.

 

[Omenainen]

I'm going to twist this and talk about my least viewed story instead: Into the Deep

It's a sci-fi piece, and it is both standalone and short (3.2k words). It had the bad fortune to be published on a day when a long list of S&F stories came out, so it was quite low on the new list to begin with, and it was sandwiched between chapter 16 of one story and chapter 19 of another. It is my understanding that the S&F readers here like long, loooooong, world-building series. My take on science fiction is to focus on the fiction and zoom so far out that I don't really need to bother with the science, so I guess I won't ever be very popular in that category, and that's okay. Still, I think that's a cute little story, and I feel bad that it has had so little attention.

All of mine are above 4, but then I haven't published in LW. For a glorious few weeks back in the day I had all my stories be hot at the same time, and that is a fond memory I will cherish, but it's not likely to ever happen again

 

[EarlyMorningLight]

@Omenainen so you’re saying that I should quit while I’m ahead if I’ve got one hot story?

 

[StrangeLife]

Well, my lowest rated story - and the one I've gotten the most "creative" comments on - is What Baby Wants Baby Gets.

A large part of the reason for that is probably that it's posted in Loving Wives and features a story about a woman cuckolding her husband BBC-style and getting away with it by being the smarter and more manipulative one in the relationship. A setting that I find quite realistic btw. I mean, there ain't no law saying that the man is always the smartest half of a marriage. Women can be pretty clever too when they feel like it.

Not a great idea to tell that to the LW crowd though, unless you wanna know how it feels to be a hamburger in a dog pound...

 

[BobbyBrandt]

One Friday in February, in the LW category, of course, at 4.16 is my lowest score.

I suspected when I submitted it that it would be lower scoring than any of my other stories due to the category, and the plot being over the heads of the typical readers in that genre. I was right.

Most comments on the story proved that the readers who voted didn't comprehend the true relationship of the two main characters. I was too deceptive for them, but that's okay, I enjoyed writing it.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Apart from my 750 word attempts (one scored as high as 4.5 briefly, thanks to authors here kindly popping over and making nice comments after it triggered the incels), it's "Sit on my face, tell me you love me".

Apart from the Python quote being screwed up by the word limit, it's actually a nice little scene, and has more Favourites than most of my stories, but it's scored low for 3 reasons:
BDSM content in Lesbian Sex, without being really really clearly warned for up front,
it's two women already in a relationship, so there's not all that first-time or 'will they get together?' tension,
and to be honest it's more of a scene than a story - they meet, fuck, part again.

Another low-scorer is Mummy Porn - it's about doing SM again having given birth, again has quite a lot of Favourites, but as one commenter said, "Good story. Not what I was expecting, and from the scores not what a lot of other people were expecting, either."

Since then I've put more effort into putting a blurb upfront warning off the people who won't like the story, often including the Category and Tags, which often works, but sometimes I don't. So I wasn't too surprised when my most recent stories didn't score so well - they were geeky characters of mine but the stories were more about fucked-up student sex than the geeking about it (which was also there), and the second one included some kinky stuff.

Nine positive comments, five faves, not-great scores. C'est la vie.

An example of a warning which seemed to work on Educating Laura Ch.5: "Note: this chapter contains a fair bit of gentle, fully consensual, BDSM and also plenty of same-sex contact. If you only like vanilla heterosexuality please go read my stories 'Into the Woods' and 'Homesick Halloween', and ignore all of my others, and we'll all be happier."

 

[Omenainen]

@Omenainen so you’re saying that I should quit while I’m ahead if I’ve got one hot story?

Quite the opposite, actually. I had… let me check… 11 stories at the time I published one that I knew wasn’t hot, suspected would not be rated hot, and was right about that. It was liberating, because I think stories should stand on their own and if I’m starting to put weight on external things like “all my other stories are hot, now what should I write that would also be hot” it is a path that leads nowhere interesting.

So what I’m saying is fuck the readers, write what you want to write, and writing something that is deliberately something other than “hot” is a liberating experience.

 

[EarlyMorningLight]

Quite the opposite, actually. I had… let me check… 11 stories at the time I published one that I knew wasn’t hot, suspected would not be rated hot, and was right about that. It was liberating, because I think stories should stand on their own and if I’m starting to put weight on external things like “all my other stories are hot, now what should I write that would also be hot” it is a path that leads nowhere interesting.

So what I’m saying is fuck the readers, write what you want to write, and writing something that is deliberately something other than “hot” is a liberating experience.

I was kidding. I’m actually shocked by the score on my first story. I’m going to have to get more fucked up next time. I’ve gotten some great feedback from writers who I respect, and that’s all I really care about. Really, I started writing again because I wanted to delve into perspectives that I felt were under-represented, so I’m not expecting popularity.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Well, sitting at a miserable 4.31 is this jewel:

"Left Behind" - His trashy neighbor says goodbye

It was my first try at a 750. Too raunchy, I guess.

Next year's 750 more than made up for it. "Shouldn't Be" got a rating of 4.69, which should be impossible for a 750.

Excluding 750s, Halloween romp "Kyle the Weremoose Gets Lucky" is lowest, hovering between 4.49 and 4.5. Someone was kind enough to favorite it recently, so maybe there's still hope it'll be recognized as the comedic masterpiece that it is .

I'm truly amazed at the number of people here who list something above a four as "miserable" or otherwise disappointing. People, most of you are doing great but you can't feel satisfaction about what I'd call success. There are at least a half-dozen here already who have said that about their scores.

 

[EarlyMorningLight]

Apart from my 750 word attempts (one scored as high as 4.5 briefly, thanks to authors here kindly popping over and making nice comments after it triggered the incels), it's "Sit on my face, tell me you love me".

Apart from the Python quote being screwed up by the word limit, it's actually a nice little scene, and has more Favourites than most of my stories, but it's scored low for 3 reasons:
BDSM content in Lesbian Sex, without being really really clearly warned for up front,
it's two women already in a relationship, so there's not all that first-time or 'will they get together?' tension,
and to be honest it's more of a scene than a story - they meet, fuck, part again.

Another low-scorer is Mummy Porn - it's about doing SM again having given birth, again has quite a lot of Favourites, but as one commenter said, "Good story. Not what I was expecting, and from the scores not what a lot of other people were expecting, either."

Since then I've put more effort into putting a blurb upfront warning off the people who won't like the story, often including the Category and Tags, which often works, but sometimes I don't. So I wasn't too surprised when my most recent stories didn't score so well - they were geeky characters of mine but the stories were more about fucked-up student sex than the geeking about it (which was also there), and the second one included some kinky stuff.

Nine positive comments, five faves, not-great scores. C'est la vie.

An example of a warning which seemed to work on Educating Laura Ch.5: "Note: this chapter contains a fair bit of gentle, fully consensual, BDSM and also plenty of same-sex contact. If you only like vanilla heterosexuality please go read my stories 'Into the Woods' and 'Homesick Halloween', and ignore all of my others, and we'll all be happier.

Coming across your work was an eye opener for me when it came to trusting scores as an indicator of quality on Lit. I realised that a lot of what I was actively trying to find was buried in amongst mediocrity because so many people have intense negative reactions to anything that’s even mildly unconventional.

 

[RetroFan]

My comedy story series 'Body Swap With Sister's Boyfriend' as I've noted before is Literotica's answer to the 2001 movie 'Freddy Got Fingered'. The plot is that a gamer nerd swaps bodies with his twin sister's dumb jock boyfriend, and the two boys have to try and live as each other, both getting into no end of trouble, not least because the sister wants to be intimate with her 'boyfriend'. It was never written to be a piece of classic literature, and was full of immature humour, but the vitriol from the IT crowd was amazing.

 

[Omenainen]

I was kidding.

Riiiight! This strange foreign phenomena called humor! Yes, I have heard about this.

 

[oggbashan]

I have several; low rated stories and the lowest fluctuate, but Donna is always among them. Currently 3.61

Unlike most of my HEA stories, it is dark.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

One of my very first stories was A Maid for Timon, a Sci-Fi/Fantasy entry for the Summer Lovin' contest, your basic boy-meets-girl-boy-loves-girl-boy-loses-girl yarn. I thought it written enough, given my inexperience with fiction, and I got a number of favourites and such but it got hammered score-wise (4.32 at last count) and really slammed in the comments because the ending wasn't happy. OK, got it. Lit tales need happy endings, apparently.

 

[EarlyMorningLight]

Riiiight! This strange foreign phenomena called humor! Yes, I have heard about this.

To be fair. I’m not nearly as funny as I think I am.

 

[Candy_Kane54]

My lowest story The Fishing Hole comes in at 4.50/111 votes/14 Favorites. It's different from my other stories as it is only one Lit page long. I wrote it as a fantasy for another author on Lit. I got no negative comments so the score must reflect disappointment with the ending (Spoiler Alert: it has an unexpected twist).

For a little context, I write nearly exclusively in the Lesbian Sex category, so 4.50 is a really bad score for that category (check out the Top 250 Lesbian stories and the top 50 are rated 4.9 and higher, #250 is 4.85).

 

[soflabbwlvr]

My lowest scores are the two chapters of Fallon's Final Fling, coming in at 4.03 and 3.83, respectively. I was genuinely surprised the story did so poorly. I had a lot of fun writing it, and I thought there would be an audience for it. The story involved a bride-to-be who was being trolled by her maid of honor and the rest of the bridesmaids. It was inspired by the movie "Bridesmaids", although it did not track it in any way. I was trying to create a raunchy "girls night out" vibe. The comments from readers revealed some of the problems--there were no likeable characters, the motivation of the maid of honor was not revealed until the very end, and readers hated the twists in chapter two. I still think it deserves to be rated a little higher, but I understand the criticisms.
As an aside, I have somehow escaped the Loving Wives curse. I only have three stories there, but the scores range from 4.2-4.4. I think that environment has become more hostile since I posted my stories, and I doubt they would do as well today.

 

[Blind_Justice]

The Faceless Executioner (4.28@76 votes): I wanted to create a centuries-spanning tale, taking advantage of an elf's long lifespan. Gabreth Es'raul, the main character, was supposed to act as a counterpoint to another of my creations in a fantasy-cop procedural, but I didn't get around to writing that yet. The goal was to create an anti-hero, highly capable but quite unlikable, so that I could have the other character rub off on him.

The main criticism I received was that the story felt very disjointed in places, a claim I can absolutely understand. There were decades-long gaps which didn't need filling (or so I thought). Also, the heavy gay-male overtones might have torpedoed the score, although none of the few commentors mentioned that as a point of criticism. Maybe I did succeed in making Gabreth utterly unlikable. Still, I'd change very little if I'd ever revisit it, probably add even more story beats instead of cutting stuff away.

 

[AlinaX]

I have eleven stories in the 3.xx range, of which four are 750-word stories, two are Loving Wives, but the other five... I'm not sure they deserved their relatively low scores, especially Purgatory and Getting What's Coming.

 

[yowser]

A good ten percent of my tales don’t even rise to 4 stars, and I try to spin that in my head as testament to writerly risk-taking and an aberrant desire to write across multiple genres. Ha. Evidence suggests that these ones just don’t appeal.

Like others have remarked, the LW and 750 word offerings tend to drop with dramatic depth and speed, but the worst score came from an early effort, Rob's Ruinous Erection, before I understood category characteristics and reader expectations very well, and I put a silly, two part, homoerotic piece in Non-consent, evidently rubbing everyone (except the protagonist) the wrong way.