deviant art

Deviant Login Shop  Join deviantART for FREE Take the Tour
[x]
more ▶

Featured in Groups:

Details

January 3, 2012
Link
Thumb

Statistics

Comments: 28
Favourites: 0
Views: 3,244 (1 today)
[x]
In one week, The Battle of Granite Falls got 95 reads and 6 faves.
In 15 HOURS, Lady Phantom Gets Her Man got 99 reads and 6 faves.

Of course, for all I know, the Keywords helped, since "Lady" had a lot more.

BTW, at some point I'm going to reformat all the stories a bit.  When I learned to type, we were taught to put TWO spaces after sentence-ending punctuation, and that's what I do, totally unconsciously.  But in an uploaded story, double spaces are turned into two nonbreaking spaces, which can mess up line breaks, AND really inflates the file size.  So at some point I'm going to re-load every story with single spaces.  I might also go and file the serial numbers off some of the references harder.

Update:  As of now, 1 day, 16 hours after LPGHM went up, it's 99 to 144
2d 17h, 101-166
Two months later, 170-390, so it's slowing down.
  • Watching: Nana to Kaoru OVA (LA)
  • Eating: Homemade Veggie Stew
  • Drinking: Coke
Add a Comment:
 
:icondannysuling:
By the way, re "smut vs. not," there is a fifth option, which might not always be first choice but can be helpful from time to time: and that is, to write smutty stuff that is so exquisite, so beautifully representative of one's writing at it's finest, that the sex stuff becomes not inconsequential but simply the vehicle for an aesthetic experience that both writer and reader value highly. I suspect that this is likely to be challenging for us writers but ultimately insanely rewarding.

In my story writing, this is the approach I try to take, because I love writing sexy stories. Of course, I'm often not sure whether or not I've succeeded (partially or wholly), but I keep asking for feedback from readers, and so keep learning how to get better. I do want to get better at it.
Reply
:iconmauser712:
~Mauser712 Mar 13, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
Yeah, it can be tricky to leave enough details so that they can fill them in with their own imagination (Thus making it more to the reader's liking) while giving ENOUGH detail to fuel the reader's imagination. I hope I did it in "Lady Phantom..." without being sparse enough to look lazy.

And as important as feedback is to writing, when it comes to erotica, while you want to know if they enjoyed the story, sometimes they tell you a little too much about how they enjoyed it....
Reply
:icondannysuling:
(Chuckling....)

Yep, understood. "Feedback" ought not to include getting a copy of one's own story returned by a reader covered with suspicious stains (real or virtual)....

Your comment about amount of detail got me thinking hard about the erotica I've encountered on the web--especially in dA, but in other places as well (like Literotica and BDSM Library and Kristen's Korner). My first reaction was that level of detail wasn't the major issue, that poor writing skills were the biggest culprit. But on reconsideration I'm inclined to agree that, once the writing skills are in place, the ongoing tension between what the writer provides and what the reader provides is crucial to really good erotica. I'd add one thing: knowing when to put in more detail, and when to put in less, at various strategic points in any story. The "erotica writer as consummate tease" approach.
Reply
:iconmauser712:
~Mauser712 Mar 14, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
It is tough, especially when you have a particular machine or device in mind. Sometimes I try to take my details and spread them throughout the story, rather than opening with an infodump about the female lead. It can also be a matter of style. I used to read a lot of Steven Brust, and it was usually very tight prose, but one story was written from the point of view of one of his extremely long-lived Elven characters, and the language was thick and elaborate, and never used one word where ten would do. It was like something written a hundred years ago. Frankly, I cut my reading teeth on Heinlein, and I'd like to think it had some kind of influence on me.

The funny thing is I'm working on a story set a hundred years before Dr. Mauser, and trying to capture that kind of style is pretty damned hard!

The thing that drives me batty reading fetish erotica is adjective abuse. "She slid on her tight black shiny latex opera length gloves, then laced up to tight shiny black latex corset over the tight shiny black latex catsuit." That and the cliches. Just once, I'd like to read a straitjacket story that doesn't say "her(or his) arms were pulled back into a tight self-hug." Or a mummification story that doesn't steal from the ancient "Wet Sheet Pack" story, which you can always tell by a reference to "feet were strapped into an exaggerated en-pointe position." For God's sake people, at least TRY to be original!
Reply
:icondannysuling:
Just a quick note on sentence spaces. There are a few academic journals who still use the 2-space rule, but by and large almost all journalist enterprises have gone to the 1-space convention, now that most printing and publishing has gone digital. And for exactly the reasons you say: in many word processing apps--including even the most professional ones--double-spacing between sentences can cause enormous formatting problems as well as typically increases file size.

There are a number of studies done that test the two approaches for legibility, but the results are not straightforward, partly because other aspects of the printing have primary and secondary effects: font-size, serif vs. sans-serif, page formatting, kerning, etc., etc.

Still, I agree you'd do better by globally replacing the 2-spaces with 1-spaces. Using Find/Replace All does the trick for me.
Reply
:iconmauser712:
~Mauser712 Mar 13, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
I plan to go through all my deviations sometime this year and do exactly that.
Reply
:iconphantomdotexe:
~phantomdotexe Jan 7, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
Oh my.
Reply
:iconrabidgundam:
Sadly that's just how things go. I can do two drawings, both of which I'd spend the same amount of time and effort on, and they'd be of the same quality, but the one that has anything at all to do with smut will get twice the attention of the other. It leaves one with two options, either only do smutty stuff and get all the attention, or work one's ass off to get better so the clean (comparatively) stuff gets as much, or more attention than the smut used to. I have opted for option 3, doing absolutely nothing and then grumbling about it later.
Reply
:iconmauser712:
~Mauser712 Jan 4, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
The fourth option is to recognize that Smut attention is easy, so it's not worth as much, and that the real scale is how much you like your own work. Praise is nice, to be sure, but you can't become a slave to other people's interests while forgetting your own. Please yourself first, and remember that's the most important thing. Otherwise the first jerk who comes by with a criticism will crush you.

Think about it for a second. You have two different buddies, and they're both telling you that a movie they just saw was absolutely fantastic. One was "Primer" and the other was "Jail House Hotties From Beyond Neptune". Which one do you think has the stronger recommendation, praise that is worth more? Which one makes you think your buddy is really impressed by something outstanding, and which one makes you think he's easily pleased?

Anyway, I can write both, and be happy that one story, while harder to approach, is full of dramatic tension and action, character development and a overall story arc, and that the other has the audience either fapping away or saying "Fuck man, you're too weird for me." As long as I'm pleased with what I did, it shouldn't really matter, right?

But damn, praise sure can be addictive if you let it go to your head. :-)

And hey, if the smut gets more readers for my other work, so much the better.

And to steal a verse from Rush - "Anthem"

Live for yourself
There's no one else
More worth living for
Begging hands and bleeding hearts
Will only cry out for more
Reply
:iconsolego:
You said what I was trying to figure out how to say. Basically yea, it gets more attention, but that shouldn't force a person's work away from something else they want to do that doesn't cater to other people. I think my story has gotten a grand total of 6 views, ever... and one favorite, I still can't figure out why. But it was more something I wanted to use to get feedback on my writing style from a few specific people than it was for anything else, which I got. I still have to find out who those six are that read it so I can write them apologies. lol
Reply
Add a Comment: