What YOU can do to get better stories

[A.T.Hagan]

To the readers:

Would you like to improve the quality of the stories that are available here in the Members Stories forum?

If you would then here's what you gotta do.

As an author of several stories here in this forum and having read similar comments from other authors here I can tell you one of the most difficult things for a story author to get is meaningful feedback about a given story that has been written.

It's always nice to hear that you liked a story but I do not believe that any of us here think we've written the perfect story. There is nearly always room for improvement so post a note in the commentary thread for a given story and tell us where we need to improve!

Now, I'm not talking about critiquing grammar and spelling but rather these kinds of things:

Did we botch a name somewhere? Start out calling a character one thing then call them something else later in the story?

Maybe a character has appendicitis and I put the appendix in the wrong place?

How about character development? Does a given character seem real to you? Wooden? Two dimensional?

How about interactions? If I'm writing about a female character and you see something that you think a female would be unlikely to say or do then speak up! Maybe I'll think you are right or I may explain why I did what I did.

Plot development can be a real chore to smooth out. Does a given story plot work for you? Seen implausible? Tell us what you think.

How about semiautomatic revolvers? Technical glitches about all kinds of things creep in and sometimes don't get noticed.

Time travel happens a lot in stories too. Sometimes we just get the dates and/or times messed up and don't see it, but you might.

I hope you are getting the drift of what I and the other story authors are looking for. None of us think we got it perfectly right the first time. Many of these stories are written on the fly so to speak in that you often get to see a story post just minutes after it was written! Very easy for mistakes to creep in and it's pretty common not to find them until long afterwards, sometimes so long afterwards that it's not possible to correct them without major rewrites to smooth everything out again.

It's always nice to get positive feedback about how well you liked a story, but what authors really need is meaningful feedback. If you like it then please do say so, but at the same time tell us where we could improve too. The more we here from you the better the stories will gradually become.

.....Alan.

[Christian for Israel]

amen alan, meaningful comments also show that people are really reading the story. anyone can say 'thanks, great job', but only those who really get into the story catch mistakes.

[Fleataxi]

Alan: the only thing I could add is if your comment is REALLY negative - please PM the author instead of posting your reply.

We really live for comments here. It's how our stories get better, and it's one of our few motivations to write stories for free.

Thanks to all the readers!

Fleataxi

[Infoscout]

What would help me tremendously would be that people use the comments thread for comments. I may want to go back and read my story, before posting the next one, in hopes of keeping things strait. Now in my story, Downgrade, I have readers comments in between chapters. If I answer the comments, it looks like I have posted a chapter. I am extremely flattered that people read and take the time to post an atta boy, but please use the comments section for the "where is the next chapter" comments.



Thanks!

[RiJoRi]

>> What would help me tremendously would be that people use the comments thread for comments.

Is it possible to move single notes to another thread?

--Rich

[A.T.Hagan]

Yes, if you have comments in one of your story threads that you would like moved into a commentary thread I can do it for you. Send me a PM with the specific URLS of the posts you would like to have moved. They'll show up in the comments thread in the chronological order they were posted to the board. If you look at the comments thread for my <i>Forever After</i> story you'll see what I mean.

It may take me a few days to get to them as it's something of a tedious process.

.....Alan.