Commenting: "The Importance of Feedback": A reluctant rebuttal

My following comments are in response to Februs' article in WellRed Weekly, from June 3, 2012. I wasn't here in 2012, so I just tonight found that article after Googling the Latin motto for this site, so that I could find out what it meant (I'm an ancient history buff, so the Latin sucked me in). The first link Google gave me was the link for Februs' article. I will ask for some indulgence, as I still consider myself to be somewhat "new" here.

As an author, yes, comments/feedback are vitally important to my writing. But, I should comment first myself upon the origins of my writing.

I wrote my first spanking story when I was 14 years old (1980). It was ridiculous. I had no idea what I was talking about, aside from my own personal experience with being spanked as a child. At 14, I had already had a number of opportunities to view pornography, via my younger friend "borrowing" his dad's Hustler mags, or the guy whose lawn I mowed letting me peruse his Playboy collection. There was no WWW then.

My other source of sexual entertainment was the local convenience store. In my sexually formative years, I guess I was fortunate that the "men's magazines" were not kept behind the counter as they are now. They were right there on the newsrack with all of the other magazines. So, there was a convenience store close to where I lived at age 13-14, and there were all the "adult" magazines, and the 20-30-year-old guys behind the register just chuckled and turned a blind eye to my "sneaking" looks into those magazines.

So I perused Playboy and Hustler and Penthouse, goggling at the pretty naked ladies. For some time, I had noticed that there were some smaller magazines off to the side. They had names like "Penthouse Forum" and "Variations".

One day, out of curiosity, I sneakily picked up an issue of "Variations", and I was initially disappointed to discover that it was mostly written stories, not pictures of naked ladies. But that particular issue that I picked up that day contained a spanking story. At that age, I was already an avid reader. I really enjoyed reading. So, what the hell, I read that story.

In hindsight, the story itself was pretty lame, by my current standards. But ... by the time I finished reading it, at age 14 in 1980, I had the hardest boner I'd ever had. Pictures of naked ladies had never turned me on as much as that spanking story had.

So, at age 14, in 1980, with very limited access to "real" porn, I started writing my own. I wrote in longhand, in spiral notebooks, carefully hidden. I would write each night until I had to "relieve myself". I wrote, every night. And, in hindsight, my stories were completely ridiculous. I was a 14-year-old virgin, trying to write sex scenes, and spankings, and even BDSM scenes. Mostly based on continued sneaks into Variations magazine. I honestly wish I still had those stories to share for laughs.

When I was about 17 years old, my mom found my stories. And she read them.

All of them went into the fire, and my mom became a berserk "prayer warrior", praying over her "perverted" son.

Once things settled down, I started writing again, and got better about hiding it. Still pre-Internet, but now I could at least write my stories and save them to floppy disks (at school - we didn't have a computer at home). I kept writing, and kept writing, with only myself for an audience.

Fast forward to 1996, me at age 30, and finally discovering the Internet.

The first spanking story author I encountered was Flogmaster. And, holy crap, here was a guy writing exactly what I had been thinking ever since I was a teenager. I think I wrote an e-mail to him back then, but accidentally sent it to the wrong address (and I lived in terror, wondering what the recipient, if there was one, must have thought).

Inspired by Flogmaster, I started writing again, but via the Internet gained more information and education, and wrote better stories.

But I still had no audience aside from myself, writing masturbation material.

So I eventually stumbled upon a site for spanking stories. I shared a couple stories I'd already written. The response to those stories was encouraging, so I wrote more. And more. And more.

And here is where I start to rebut Februs. (Apologies for the bolding of your name, Februs - it's a habit from my primary forum, into which I'll explain below.)

In 2003, about the same time I discovered that forum to which I could post my stories, I found another message board: The Straight Dope. This was a forum dedicated to eradicating ignorance. But the main thing to me was that it was a "general interest" forum. No specific topic, just whatever you wanted to talk about.

The key, to me, is that I have been an active participant in that forum for almost twelve years.

And this is where I finally come back to the topic of "commenting " on stories.

But first I will say that I love the way this Library presents the stories in an uninterrupted fashion, clicking on "next" to read the next chapter in a series.

But that's where comments come in.

I love, love, love comments on my stories.

But, between the sites to which I originally posted these stories, and The Straight Dope, I've learned a few things.

The Straight Dope has one overriding rule: What you post will remain here forever, so own what you say". Meaning, what you post cannot be deleted. The second rule is, "provide cites for the 'facts' you present".

The site to which I originally posted my stories differed greatly from this site. That site was a "discussion forum", and stories were posted as "original posts".

So, I would post a story, and people would comment, and that would develop into a conversation.

The key here is that that conversation was visible to <i>everybody</i> who read the story. And anybody else who read the story could, not only read the comments, but they could participate in that conversation.

And that is what I think is lost with the current commenting system here.

I submit a story, and people comment on it, and I respond personally to those comments ... but nobody else sees my responses, because they are private between me and the commenter.

It boils down to, "make a comment, and own it". And be willing to defend it. If you speak it publicly, be willing to defend it publicly. And that doesn't work with the current commenting system.

As an author, I am happy to defend what I wrote.

But, if you're critic, be just as happy to defend your criticism. I won't judge you. I will take your criticism into consideration.

Not just in private messages with me. If you criticized me publicly, be prepared to elaborate publicly, not in "private messages".

And, likewise, if somebody loves my story, and publicly says so, I want to thank them publicly. Not in a private "popup".


(Edited to remove unnecessary profanity).

You make some interesting points, points, Rik. I post comments, and if there's something I feel doesn't work for me, I'll say so. Politely, I hope. If it's a small internal error - something factual, say, or a persistent misspelling, I'll usually PM the author. Otherwise my comments are right there in public - and sure, I'll be happy to defend them if called upon.

Take what you say about your being able to thank readers or defend your work publicly. At one time, an author's response(s) to comments would appear in the comments box. This was changed, I think about a couple of years ago, but there might well be a case for reinstating them. Perhaps it could be done so that an author's comments on his/her own stories didn't count towards his/her tally of comments, which would seem fair. How do other members feel?

I guess this wasn't so much a "rebuttal" as it was just me expressing my own feelings as an author, because I actually agree with everything Februs said in that article. Ultimately, what I miss is being able to draw all, or at least many of my readers into a group conversation. And I will confess to feeling a bit guilty when somebody comments on my story and I don't personally respond to their comment.

I think my issue is that, when multiple people make similar comments, positive or negative, it feels a bit tedious to have to make essentially the same reply to each of them individually, rather than making a single reply addressing them as a group. I suppose that could be addressed by allowing author comments to appear on their own stories. Maybe allowing author comments to appear would also encourage people to leave comments. Some readers may be reluctant to comment because they don't know how the author will react; seeing the author's previous responses, if those responses are cordial, might encourage them to go ahead and make a comment.

Of course, this issue can be also addressed somewhat by the author creating a forum thread for the story, as I did for one of mine here after multiple readers left similar comments about a particular idea in the story. But that separates the discussion from the story, and a story reader who doesn't participate in the forums may not see it.

While there is no facility for "back and forth" discussion in the story comments section, you can make a general "author's" comment, which will reside at the top of your comment page for that story.

An author's comment is a good place to defend and/or explain some part of your story if you are receiving similar comments from several readers. One limitation with author's comments is that folks who have already commented are unlikely to ever see them, but that is easily corrected by PMing those folks a "cut & paste" of your author's comment.

I would hate to see forum threads started for stories on a regular basis. What a mess that could become!

First off I hope you found out what the motto means...LOL. Is it no amazing how starting to search for one item leads one off into pathways they never expected to be at the end?

Comments to me and every other author on site are important, and that includes positive and negative ones from any reader. I make a few comments and get a few comments and I like things exactly as they are. The Forum has discussed 'commenting' in general several times in the past and on occasion a particular story has been discussed because of the comments received on it. I would like to see it remain that way as the whole area can be a lot trickier than it appears to be.

Author's comments on their own stories are good because they can lay out back ground material and set the scene without have to spend paragraphs in the story that could be very boring to a reader.

I do think we will never ever succeed at getting as many readers as we would love to have to participate in commenting regularly either on stories or the Forum. That is a great dream but only a dream it appears as the thousands of readers have proved over the years we have discussed it on site.

I do agree with sticking to what one writes, whether in a story or a comment. I think I have done so over the years on both comments and stories and cannot think of anyone on site who has not done so. I do not think one has to 'defend' what they write. If another does not like a story or a comment one can say so but no one should have to respond to such if they choose not to.

CS

I agree with you one hundred percent, and made a point of inviting criticism on my author profile. I'm also happy to entertain public critique on my plugboard threads.

However, I've also learned the hard way that not all writers are like that, and the library must cater to them as well.

^ This.

I may only speaking for myself (but I doubt it), but I think one of the primary reasons people read stories here is to satisfy their prurient interests--prurient interests of a very special type. And as an author myself, I can say that the process of composition itself allows me to fulfill my desires, i.e., it is a way of turning myself on with the hope that I can also turn like-minded people on.

I personally like to read the comments on stories sometimes as much as the stories themselves if the commenters spend some time and put some effort into the comments. And I'm not referring to comments that attempt to critically analyze a story. I'm talking about a comment that tries to take a story a step further--basically trying to extend the erotic appeal of the story. With a critical mass of dedicated commenters, it is possible to prolong the excitement of a story. I'm not saying this happens all the time--it doesn't. But when it does, it can be wonderful. A dialogue among commenters is helpful here and as can be observed in the comments on a number of stories, such dialogues occur. Whether it would on balance be helpful to allow the author of the original story to participate in that dialogue is an open question. Even if an author were permitted to participate, s/he may not wish to.

Personally, I can identify with some of the women who receive punishments in some of the stories in this Library. Whereas I have complimented the authors, I admit I have not, to the extent that I perhaps should, properly show how I identify with these women by being more specific than I have been in my comments. I really think I would get a charge out of being a bit more explicit about how I identify with their characters and with any luck, perhaps some of the other commenters would be moved as well.

commentators, not commenters, sorry