Story authors

Letters And Numbers:
Is there any appetite here for a thread to get into more in-depth constructive criticism of some of the stories here? I was reading the comments of a story today that had a critique and it seemed to me that this might be a more organized format for technical criticism like that.

Could also just take a book club format where we all read one short story a week or longer story a month?

Any interest?

ValtheFA:
Oodles of interest. I think it's something I find frustrating how, even on Ao3, the lack of feedback on a story drives me up the wall. I have no idea what does and doesn't work about a story I'm writing when I have 0 feedback, and rereading one's own story can get really, really difficult, (though reading it back aloud if able helps tremendously).

I think the niche of a genre we have has room for growth and would love to see the lines of these stories taken a bit more seriously. I see some here and there from the more prolific posters on sites like DA, (mcoddles, Borin23, Sir-Wales, Dr. Black-Jack, Giga-Ack, etc), but I find it difficult to dig through the sheer volume of shorts on there to find the stories that are around that have something to give more than a wank to a fetishist.

Letters And Numbers:
Hey, there's interest!

I'm with you, and there are some incredible authors here that are writing serious stuff! And a lot of people who are writing amazing material who might love to get more structured feedback to improve. I think there are two issues.

1) Unless someone has taken a class or been in creative writing circles, a lot of people don't know how to critique a story and it's intimidating. It's a learned skill. I think there could be some focus on guidelines and techniques for creative criticism. I've found a few good essays and guides that could be shared.

2) People have an even harder time talking about kink content. There are tons of lurkers who I'm sure have great opinions, but critiquing someone's erotica story is kind of like putting your own kinks under the spotlight (even though we may all generally have the same kinks). This is a tougher problem to solve, but maybe if the critique focuses on structural storytelling issues it would make it easier to participate.

Does that make sense?

Letters And Numbers:
Hey, there's interest!

I'm with you, and there are some incredible authors here that are writing serious stuff! And a lot of people who are writing amazing material who might love to get more structured feedback to improve. I think there are two issues.

1) Unless someone has taken a class or been in creative writing circles, a lot of people don't know how to critique a story and it's intimidating. It's a learned skill. I think there could be some focus on guidelines and techniques for creative criticism. I've found a few good essays and guides that could be shared.

2) People have an even harder time talking about kink content. There are tons of lurkers who I'm sure have great opinions, but critiquing someone's erotica story is kind of like putting your own kinks under the spotlight (even though we may all generally have the same kinks). This is a tougher problem to solve, but maybe if the critique focuses on structural storytelling issues it would make it easier to participate.

Does that make sense?

ValtheFA:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense putting it into perspective. The pool is already super shallow as is with it being a particular kink, let alone deriving from that pool people genre savvy enough and willing to articulate their ideas online. I think where I was coming from was that people were already writing on forums about their kinks, is the next step so much?

There is a great bunch of writing peeps on Discord and DA called wg squared and it really helped to find a community that does overlap it. I think it might be a nice place to peruse and join if you are looking for other writing friends in this community, we even have monthly writing contests around random topics and such that this post seems to be looking for. This is the link to the DA page, with Discord being the same name and invite stuff in the group. www.deviantart.com/groups/wg-squared/deviations[/quote]

I’ll definitely check that out! I think we could put together a little group here, too, that could do some constructive criticism or help teach people how to give constructive feedback.