"The beauty of a little girl cannot be mimicked, fabricated, or created by human means; it only occurs naturally."
~ Pam Callaghan ~
Some Advice For Authors
First Of All, I am not the be all and end all of perfect grammar and spelling. Far from it. I decided to write this very short piece of advice for several reasons. I'm going to sound like a literary critic here, and I apologize for that. But to me, utter carelessness and sloppiness when writing is nearly a criminal act.
I Have Found some amazingly well written pieces of erotica here at ASSTR. I have also found some stories that are, in my opinion, utter trash. They are not trash because of the story, or the content, or the sexual acts described. I define them as trash because of the way that they are written. Finally, I have found varying degrees of writing skill that cover every possible level of skill in between the best and the worst.
The Reason That I find this so distressing is because I find it impossible to focus on the story when I'm busy trying to decipher a sentence that runs on for an entire paragraph - one sentence, one-hundred-ninety-seven words long. I counted. I can't enjoy a story like that, and I suspect that I am not alone in this.
To Me, a person who puts a story out for an audience without first running a spell check on it, at the very least cares nothing for either the audience or for the story. Which raises the question, why is this person putting the story there in the first place? As an author, you have a story that you want to tell. As a reader, I have become interested in the story. If you do not pay attention to the spelling and grammar in your story, you do a disservice to both your story and to your reader. My question to you would be: Why should I care about your story, if you don't?
If I Come Across sounding like a snob, or as far too critical, then I apologize. It's just that I care very much about my stories, and it's hard for me to imagine anyone who would write a story and not care about it enough to even try to fix spelling errors. I would add that if anyone needs an editor, I would be willing to do that, if you think that I might be able to help. You can use my contact page to get in touch with me.
My Initial Intent had been to make a few comments on this page, and leave it at that. As I've been taking breaks from my own writing though, and reading stories from other authors during my "down time," I've come to the conclusion that while there is already some good advice for writers here, I really want to add my two cents worth into the mix. Not that most people will likely care what I have to say on the topic, but I'll feel better having put it out there to be seen. Just click the links below to go to the different discussions.
Topics of Discussion