Reviews, characters and rambling

I got around 1500 words done yesterday, which I'm quite satisfied with. Haven't gotten to writing anything yet, today. I've been spending some time today reading reviews of popular erotica books instead. I've mostly stuck to shorts, either stand-alone works or short series of short chapters, each one written in the style of an erotic short. That is, introduction, sex, orgasm, the end. Even in the short series, each chapter was designed to work as a singular work if need be.

Even in my shorts, though, I can't seem to stop myself from writing hints of a greater story into things. I've only tried writing something very situationally-focused once, and I felt empty and quite bad about it even though the readers liked it. I guess it's a bit of a paradoxical situation. All I've ever written has been shorter stuff than my mind really is built for.

This relates to the reviews I read, though, so that wasn't just a random comment. I was looking through all of these Goodreads.com reviews, and it seemed like the one thing in common between most of the low ratings was poorly made characters. I've always been told that my writing was emotional, which I suppose lends itself well to immersing yourself in the characters. I was actually encouraged by these reviews, though it's easy to feel encouraged when you've yet to have any works judged by the harsh eyes of the general public.



An example: One book seemed to tell (Not show) the reader that the main female character was intelligent and independent. She then found herself being threatened with abduction by the main male character, and responded by telling him her full name and then leisurely walking downstairs to have dinner in a restaurant.

...What?

It reminds me of a hentai comic I read some days ago (I know, shoot me) where a victim basically went:

She's raping me!
I want that dick.
I can't believe she's raping me!

I don't really know where I'm going with this, but reading that kind of thing certainly stimulated me to make sure to at least -try- and improve my characters. That impulse then lead to an idea for a small aside to provide some background for the main character of the short series I'm writing right now.

I have 4 chapters planned out for that series. Chapter 1 is written, and chapter 2 has been started. I think I'm going to try and write all 4 chapters before I start releasing, so I could release 1 chapter a week for a month, and give myself some breathing room when it comes to new writing.

And, on the topic of new writing... When I was just starting up, I was worried that I didn't have any ideas or a story. Now, I'm writing on one story and have ideas for 10 more already. There's so much to do with this hobby, and I love it. The feeling you get when you're doing something you love is hard to describe, but I feel it when writing. When it disappears for the day, I know it's time to let the keyboard cool and do something else.

Whew, that was a lot of rambling.