The official Authors' Hangout Winter Holiday 2022 contest Support Thread

[HuckPilgrim]

I edited and edited the story....and its only on my first read of the published story that I find all my typos.

It is the way of the world.

I've found that making my story a PDF and having the computer read it aloud to me helps me spot a lot of problems. Good luck with your story!

 

[DarkRaven13]

I have a big FAIL on this contest. I am now thinking I will do what Duleigh did ... and finish what I do have partially written....and save it for next year's contest

 

[Duleigh]

I have a big FAIL on this contest. I am now thinking I will do what Duleigh did ... and finish what I do have partially written....and save it for next year's contest

Be careful, if you tweak the story long enough you'll fall in love with the characters and build a world around them

 

[dmallord]

Is anyone noticing low reactions/views of their Holiday stories? Usually for contests I see numbers jump quickly and get ratings, favorites and comments.

This time, meh. Unless maybe the story isn’t that good, but views should still be higher. Just curious if anyone else is seeing the same.

This was my first contest entry, so I have no idea about the low views in general. However, my views have increased significantly compared to my regular submissions. It seems to have sparked interest in other stories more than any I've seen before. In one day, I saw over three hundred votes across my stories - that's really high for me. I usually see eight to fifteen a day.

I have a major gaff in the contest story submission. Comments really focus on the HTML error noted - but a few have found it interesting and said it was humorous and an interesting twist on being snowbound.

 

[RejectReality]

By Gump, I believe I actually have something this time. I finished the setup, ( which I really enjoy ) got through the transition without a hitch, and the sex scene just fired up. The closing is clear in my head. So all I need to do is write the bump n' grind. It will probably be a day late ( Thanksgiving Themed ) and only have a cursory edit, but I feel like that's close enough to be relevant.

Been a minute. It will be nice to actually finish something in time ( or at all ) for a contest.

 

[Voboy]

My score's been declining slowly but steadily. Interesting! It's an unusual story for me, in an unusual category, and I was assuming it wouldn't do all that well.

 

[RejectReality]

W00t! Just finished mine. About 24 hours later than I wanted, but oh well.

I'm going to let it sit for at least a few hours, run it through spell-check and text-to-speech, and then submit. It's Thanksgiving themed, so I don't want to get too far past the holiday before it comes out.

 

[HeyAll]

Is it just me, or have the Hubs glitched and they don't load properly?

I don't see anyone else making issue of it.

 

[RejectReality]

Is it just me, or have the Hubs glitched and they don't load properly?

I don't see anyone else making issue of it.

I couldn't get my control panel to load a minute or two ago.

Late night Lit must have some intensive tasks that run, because I regularly encounter incidents where the site slows to a crawl for anywhere from a couple of minutes to a half hour or more about this time of night. Probably the time their data says they have the least traffic.

Try it now. My control panel and the couple of hub pages I clicked through to from there all worked.

 

[RejectReality]

Looks like mine will probably end up posting on Monday. I thought there was some chance for today, but it was pretty late when I got it in last night. Last I knew, contest stories weren't posting on Sundays. ( Maybe Saturday and Sunday... ) Not that I mind. I dread seeing something come out on Sunday, because it has never failed to suck.

Hopefully, a Thanksgiving story after the fact will still attract some attention.

 

[TxRad]

Mine is the same way, RR. Probably Monday.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

There's 5 days left - if I submit a story by 00.01 on 1st Dec my time, giving 31 hours for it to be posted and a few people to read it, that works, right?

(returns to tale of a wintry blizzard in Scotland)

 

[RejectReality]

There's 5 days left - if I submit a story by 00.01 on 1st Dec my time, giving 31 hours for it to be posted and a few people to read it, that works, right?

(returns to tale of a wintry blizzard in Scotland)

There's nearly a week after the submission period ends, so there's plenty of time to acquire votes. As long as you make it in, you're good.

 

[RejectReality]

Dated for tomorrow, and Laurel was kind enough to finish the word "Thanksgiving" for me because I ran out of characters after the "g" I was hoping that people would just assume the cut off word was the software abbreviating it, but this is ideal.

Already have another ( non contest ) story in the pipeline ready to go, but I'm going to give it another day so the contest story will have more breathing room.

 

[RejectReality]

Mine is live

https://literotica.com/s/stuffed-and-basted

 

[TxRad]

Mine is also.

 

[GrantBricksly]

I've got two stories up.

The first I actually wrote about a year ago, and just now posted. "Santa's Little Helper" Is based on a scene I did with my wife/little on Christmas eve last year!

The Second, I am actually quite proud of. I'm worried I chose the wrong category, as it is getting low views (and very few, but high votes), but I hope you will all enjoy it none the less. "Under the Mistletoe" Has the Norse Goddess of love Frigg using her powers to inhabit a mistletoe, to influence a Husband and Wife for a very erotic night of passion.

 

[RejectReality]

Mine is tracking as expected on score, a little higher than my average. Just a smidgen more character development than usual, and it appears to be reflected in the score. Everything else is tracking fairly well. The comments will tell more about how it hit when the next batch comes through.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Right, I've got a draft. 8k words of sibling incestuous romance. Or something.

Aiming to submit it tomorrow. I'd better look up some tags to use. I have no idea how the I/T audience will respond - never tried that before.

 

[TheDeepThinker]

Mine is live: https://literotica.com/s/xmas-helping

I can't help feeling a little nervous about my first contest. I hope everyone likes it.

 

[RejectReality]

Mine was a little slow getting to my vote total bar for the category, but it should be there before the night's over. Tickled with the score and the comments. Should be well outside the contender range, but it's performing at a level that meets my expectations for the additional character work that went into it, compared to my usual Milf fare.

Drawing new eyes to existing work and generating new followers, so mission accomplished right there.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I submitted a story about two hours ago, and it's been approved already! I did include 'Hi Laurel', with a query saying "if you think this sentence crosses the underage line, just delete it".

I/T, so should get sufficient votes by the deadline if nothing else. People tend to love or hate my stories, so I try to include a header that will put people off without pissing them off...

 

[TheDeepThinker]

Mine was a little slow getting to my vote total bar for the category, but it should be there before the night's over. Tickled with the score and the comments. Should be well outside the contender range, but it's performing at a level that meets my expectations for the additional character work that went into it, compared to my usual Milf fare.

How did you do that? Mine is underperforming and is currently my lowest-ranked story (one of only two stories that aren't above 4.5). More importantly, it only brought in a handful of new followers.

 

[RejectReality]

How did you do that? Mine is underperforming and is currently my lowest-ranked story (one of only two stories that aren't above 4.5). More importantly, it only brought in a handful of new followers.

Lots of followers, and the story is squarely in my wheelhouse in this pen name. It's just a bit more developed than usual, which is what I believe ticked the score up a little over my average of around 4.65.

When you have lots of followers, they get in early. Because they tend to vote 5, you get the red H earlier, which attracts more eyes, and the follower votes reduce the impact of the 4s and bombs.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Well, people weren't wrong about the huge numbers of IT readers! 5 hours after going live, my story is in the top 40% of views of all my 49 stories - over 9k!

72 votes, 16 Favs and 24 Bookmarks, 3 new followers (I've finally broken 200!), and it hasn't even got a red H!

In the second it went live - I clicked Pending as it was still listed at 7am, then it wasn't there because it went to Published already - it got 400 views and multiple Favs, which I suspect is people not just using Favs as bookmarks but probably having it automated for certain tags.