Fantasy Feeder

Story feedback forum

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.

1 year

Letters And Numbers

Story feedback forum

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.

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?

1 year

Letters And Numbers

Writer’s block

So my general advice is going to come back to “Just Write”, but maybe you could do a few brainstorming exercises to see if a spark catches.

Do you have an ending in mind? Work backwards from there to see if you can develop the plot points you need to hit.

Look at the story from the perspective of a character that’s not the protagonist. Maybe there’s something you’re missing by looking too closely at one character.

Write 20 ideas for plot points, then eliminate until you have the best or most successful sounding. Do any of them relate to each other? Outline them into your story.

But really, Just Write! The more you write, the more you open up your brain to being creative. You might need to trash 3 chapters it takes you to get to the one good one, but that one chapter could be the inspiration for the conclusion of your story, or could completely change everything you had written before.

I recently finished the last chapter of a 96,000 word book, and the prize for that is that I get to start over from the beginning to write the real story that only developed in the last hundred pages or so. It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t just sat down and written and looked for things to reveal themselves.

(And if I didn’t have amazing friends I could bounce ideas off of!)

1 year

Letters And Numbers

Had to block my first person today

Letters And Numbers:
Would a flagging/report system for obnoxious people work or would that just be abused?

Like if 5 differnt people flag someone for being a pest they get banned?

ILuvChubbyChix:
A voting/karma system like this with that kind of penalty would likely cause more problems than it causes. Imagine if there's a clique, and then someone gets on the "shitlist" of that clique for a petty reason.

One person could also try to open multiple accounts to try to game the voting system. You aren't supposed to open multiple accounts, and we crack down on this when discovered, but this isn't always right away.

That said, it does help when multiple users report the same troublemaker, and give as much detail as possible.

It's best if an administrator directly observes the behavior when it happens, though this isn't always possible.

We do wish to get rid of obvious troublemakers, trolls, and scammers. We also want to strongly discourage obvious, intent, disrespectful behavior. But we don't want to mistakenly remove someone because of petty, minor disagreements.

I agree with all of that, and I guess I’d never take moderator judgement out of the equation, but I’m sure that most of the most obnoxious (but not really breaking site rules) behavior takes place in DM, which (I hope) mods don’t have access to unless shown screen shots. A flagging system for people who aren’t specifically violating site rules but who could also be chasing away users (and the type of user who brings revenue to the site) and generally acting scummy might be useful?

1 year

Letters And Numbers

Had to block my first person today

Would a flagging/report system for obnoxious people work or would that just be abused?

Like if 5 differnt people flag someone for being a pest they get banned?

1 year

Letters And Numbers

Updates to story formatting

The formatting problem for story image/title is fixed now! Thanks!

1 year

Letters And Numbers

Wg tropes/situations

Stevita:
Least favorite:

-Gaining accompanied by some truly extreme and implausible health conditions (I get that that's part of the thrill for some readers, but it really shows when somr writers simply have not done their research)

-Fat protagonist who hates their body until a thin person comes along wanting to date them

Both of these for me. If a story is going to be completely unrealistic, it might as well be magic or sci-fi or something that is fun or has a sense of humor (or a sense of horror? I like horror stories, too).

For me personally, I like a dynamic where there is a public side and a private side to the character who’s gaining, so you can have some public uneasiness or embarrassment but in private those emotions can be flipped and embraced. It sets up a character arc sometimes.

1 year

Letters And Numbers

Bbws and calisthenics

Munchies:
Well, that's when you go see a doctor.

This!

1 year

Letters And Numbers

Where is litmistress?

VonNeumann:
Speaking for myself, I really appreciate the well-written Bohemian Rhapsodies that scratch just the right itch. It has only recently occurred to me to actually, you know, *compliment* or pay for work that I’ve truly enjoyed.

It’s a conundrum— it’s hard to keep going as a creator with no feedback, doubly so when people have hang ups about their fetish / sexual preferences that work against reaching out!

I guess what I’m saying is that I’ll try to make a more active effort to say “hey, I like this, thank you for making it!”

+1

I always try to compliment authors when I like their stuff, especially when it’s high quality or high effort.

I just got a random compliment DM yesterday, actually, and it made my night!

1 year

Letters And Numbers

Where is litmistress?

Occamslaser:
I always kinda figured she just got fed up of writing fucking novels and getting less recognition on the site then wanky drek written by people who don't bother to use spell check.

That being said I also hope shes ok.

Reflection Of Perfection:
Pretty much I've learned that we're trying to write Bohemian Rhapsody when I Wanna Rock N Roll All Nite will do.

Yeah, frustrating, but that’s the game.

1 year

Letters And Numbers