I think you've gotten the gist of what everyone has been saying.. a reader only gets out of the story what the author puts into it.. spend a little more time in prep.. and be sensitive to how you are presenting your fantasy.. you want maximum arousal.. and appreciation.. you will never get that from a token effort.. good luck..
Quote by mister215 gotcha ;)
thanks for the help
in the future would you like to proof read them before I start posting them?
of course i'll fix my spelling before I hand it too you, don't want to give you a headache do I ? ;)
Now you're on the right track.
You kind of waltzed into this forum like a robber strolling into a bank, announcing your intent with a megaphone.
Then some of the guards and many of the patrons all pulled out their pieces and let you have it. That is what forums do better than anything else, on the internets.
You've received fine info and pointers here. My apologies for the light sarcasm I heaped on you earlier.
I was watching snippets of the Academy Awards on the telly last night. Some fellow, and I forget who he is or what he won an award for - gave an excellent, brief and to-the-point acceptance speech.
He thanked his parents for never telling him that he couldn't do 'it'...It being whatever it was, which he attempted to do, in his youth or his life. Then he encouraged all the young people who might be watching, to take his advice and never let people tell you - that you can't achieve it.
He could well have been speaking for everyone in that room last night...and for everyone on this website who has ever submitted a story to this site or any other site.
You can do anything you set your mind to. Just practice. A lot.
Welcome to Lush, Mister .
Find half a dozen or more writers here, whose stories entertain and inform you or make you think...and emulate their styles. When you're young and inexperienced with anything, the best you can hope for - is success, emulating someone who appears to be - successful. Find a proofreader and enlist their assistance.
Exakta66 would make a fine proofreader and, mentor.
The same GQP demanding we move on from January 6th, 2021 is still doing audits of the November 3rd, 2020 election.
You know, Jeff...you were doing so well until that last line...btw, was that you who made that speech??? Read something about you winning an Oscar...
I did proofread and edit a story for another member, Redhotmomacita who's story "Online Lover's First Date" got rejected by Lush...she spent a good portion of her life out of this country and her command of English was not up to the standards demanded by Lush...the story ended up doing really well for her...just checked 4.77 avg with 30 votes, and she hit the Top Author list after it posted, which was nice to see...but, I am not eager to ever do that again...it was very tedious, to say the least. She had a lot of basic structure errors...not starting a new paragraph when someone else speaks, for instance...and there were a lot of instances of things like not double spacing between sentences and bad use of commas. Plus, there were a couple of instances where I just did not understand what she was trying to say, so I had to e-mail her and wait for her reply. It took me longer to work on than doing a whole story myself...
I will offer suggestions here, but I think I have to pass on the mentoring, for now at least...
If mister reads enough stories to get the idea of how basic story structure should look, and learns how to use spell-check, I may reconsider...
But for now...I have to respectfully decline...
Later,
Alan.
yeah thanks people
i'll be back soon with either a more edited version of this story, or a brand new one
and i'll keep my vocab from being to descriptive
well hey you have a point, but I figure that if the story is captivating enough, the reader will ignore the misspellings and enjoy the story .....
I read a lot of erotic stories here on Lush.
Every now and then, one of them captivates me and really turns me on. And then I hit a misspelled word, or a badly constructed sentence, and I'm "kicked out" of the story. I'm back in my chair, just reading, rather than being IN the story.
That's why spelling and grammar are important. Your readers cannot STAY captivated by your story, if they keep hitting "potholes" and losing the rapport they had with your plot and action.
You've been a bad girl! Now take your pajamas off and go to my room!
Quote by mister215 gotcha ;)
thanks for the help
in the future would you like to proof read them before I start posting them?
of course i'll fix my spelling before I hand it too you, don't want to give you a headache do I ? ;)
Now you're on the right track.
You kind of waltzed into this forum like a robber strolling into a bank, announcing your intent with a megaphone.
Then some of the guards and many of the patrons all pulled out their pieces and let you have it. That is what forums do better than anything else, on the internets.
You've received fine info and pointers here. My apologies for the light sarcasm I heaped on you earlier.
I was watching snippets of the Academy Awards on the telly last night. Some fellow, and I forget who he is or what he won an award for - gave an excellent, brief and to-the-point acceptance speech.
He thanked his parents for never telling him that he couldn't do 'it'...It being whatever it was, which he attempted to do, in his youth or his life. Then he encouraged all the young people who might be watching, to take his advice and never let people tell you - that you can't achieve it.
He could well have been speaking for everyone in that room last night...and for everyone on this website who has ever submitted a story to this site or any other site.
You can do anything you set your mind to. Just practice. A lot.
Welcome to Lush, Mister .
Find half a dozen or more writers here, whose stories entertain and inform you or make you think...and emulate their styles. When you're young and inexperienced with anything, the best you can hope for - is success, emulating someone who appears to be - successful. Find a proofreader and enlist their assistance.
Exakta66 would make a fine proofreader and, mentor.
haha sorry for being such a big idiot coming here the first time :P
anyhow thanks for the support and what you said there
Quote by Exakta66 You know, Jeff...you were doing so well until that last line...btw, was that you who made that speech??? Read something about you winning an Oscar...
I did proofread and edit a story for another member, Redhotmomacita who's story "Online Lover's First Date" got rejected by Lush...she spent a good portion of her life out of this country and her command of English was not up to the standards demanded by Lush...the story ended up doing really well for her...just checked 4.77 avg with 30 votes, and she hit the Top Author list after it posted, which was nice to see...but, I am not eager to ever do that again...it was very tedious, to say the least. She had a lot of basic structure errors...not starting a new paragraph when someone else speaks, for instance...and there were a lot of instances of things like not double spacing between sentences and bad use of commas. Plus, there were a couple of instances where I just did not understand what she was trying to say, so I had to e-mail her and wait for her reply. It took me longer to work on than doing a whole story myself...
I will offer suggestions here, but I think I have to pass on the mentoring, for now at least...
If mister reads enough stories to get the idea of how basic story structure should look, and learns how to use spell-check, I may reconsider...
But for now...I have to respectfully decline...
Later,
Alan.
What you have just described is known as doing an English to English translation, something I do in real life from time to time. I agree, it's incredibly time consuming, and at times, frustrating. I have also done proof-reading and editing for people who are native English speakers and writers, and that is difficult in itself at times.
haha sorry for being such a big idiot coming here the first time :P
anyhow thanks for the support and what you said there
I would suggest that you go back to the text you posted here in this thread, read it over yourself, and sit down and analyse what it is you want to say. Make a resumé of the story you have in mind. Do it in about six to ten sentences, and structure the sentences in a way that makes the idea or action you are describing clear to the person reading it. Keep in mind that the reader cannot read your mind, so that if the idea isn't clearly expressed, it takes too much effort and work to disentangle it in order to understand it and have it make sense.
Doing this will give you an outline of your future story. Think of it like a map, as a way of getting from your point of departure to all the stops or events that happen on the way to your destination, which is the satisfactory conclusion of your story.
You are the one who is writing, you are the one who should be doing the work, not your readers.
As for having had your first story rejected, well, I can assure you that you are not the only one to have been rejected, either here at Lush, or elsewhere in the world of publishing.
Recently, I had a poem rejected here, and the reason given was that "your story is too short". I had submitted it to the Poetry category, which is the only category on Lush that accepts short pieces of writing. I asked about it, because I didn't understand why it had been rejected from that category as being too short.
The answer I received from the Moderator was that she hadn't realised it was submitted as poetry, because it didn't read as poetry, and she suggested I submit it again.
I haven't done so, because in fact, she was correct, it did not come across as poetry. Who is at fault there? NOT the Moderator, that's for sure, but myself. It is up to me to go back and either rewrite the poem so that it does indeed read as poetry, or rewrite it and lengthen it, so that it falls into the guidelines for length as a story.
So don't worry, we all get rejected, and we all continue to learn and improve our writing.
And for those who have not had a story rejected, bravo! Your turn will come, lol. Just kidding.
One more thing mister...I don't think you are an idiot for wanting to improve your writing or even posting what you wrote here...anyone who thinks so really does not have to read through the whole post...
I can understand the Lush team not wanting to encourage people posting their stories in the forums for public review first, though...
I did a quick Google search...there are quite a few articles on writing regarding paragraph structure, etc. I suggest you do your homework, read as many stories as you can, make corrections to your story and then re-submit it through the correct process...
There are also some forum posts right here regarding writing tips, I believe Necho posted one about paragraph structure recently, and she may have others...
I expect we'll all be reading it on the front page of Lush one of these days...
Again, good luck,
Alan.
Hey Mister: Writing, like anything in life, should be done with as much grace and elegance as possible. Proper grammer and spelling not only enhances the topic of choice, but also includes the reader into the story that you are attemping to relay.
Unfortunatly, many people are judged by their education or lack there-of. In that light, always-always always proofread your work and even simple posts in this forum. A trick used by many professional proofreaders is to read the paragraphs backwards. In this manner they concentrate on the actual words instead of getting lost in context. (or you can hit the proof button - same thing).
As u can c. this is much easer to red and folow than nay of the other stuf on the site nad u wudnt wnt 2 red 2 much of this b4 you flip ovr 2 the nxt 1.
LOL... sorry, I couldn't resist that. All I'm trying to say is to take a little pride in your work and all will be good and you will get better with practice and experience.
I didn't read the whole thing, but if you want readers to remain engaged, aside the grammatical errors, spelling errors and punctuation issues. A few things I did notice right away. Your tense and point of view fluctuate. Its confusing to a reader when they are blurred, blending and staggered throughout a story. Pick one tense, one POV (for instance, you have several places where your 1st person narration is describing what the girl is feeling. from "his" POV, he doesn't know how it feels to her.) You have a lot of passive verbs, mixed with "telling" sentences, where you should be showing.
Grammar and spelling can be fixed, so I wouldn't worry about that if your intention is to revise this. First, clean up your points of view. Fix your tense. Next, concentrate on re-writing all your telling sentences, replacing them with showing sentences. If you can fix the story, the grammar is much less of an issue. Lastly, and I don't mean to be insulting, based on what I've seen of your grammar, I would cut and paste this into a word processor that has grammar and spelling check. At your apparent level, I would trust the word processor's recommendations for the first revision. After that, you should have a relatively workable manuscript.
Don't sweat it... I'm a published author and grammar is my bane, too! *lol* But it has to be readable and yours crosses that line. Few will ever know if the story is interesting, because the writing is plagued with errors.
(this post alone should be proof how lousy my grammar is. *lol*)
