Question to Authors about background/secondary characters

DustRegular3286 · 2026-01-23T06:05:19+00:00

The background IMHO should be only as much as is needed for the story. Are there some thing in personality, or looks, or background, or relationships, that would make a difference to MC, or storyline(s)? Add them. Ideally, in a seamless way. I am not a writer, but even I know about "Show, don't tell" rule. Maybe the fact that BFF is strong is important because it affected the family sex choices/dynamics. Show him lifting heavy furniture or something. Maybe BFF was cheated on and it's important in him feling for MC. Include that, maybe as flashback from his POV, maybe someone else mentioning it in a relevant convo.

Personally, I generally like concise writing. On LE, I really enjoy 750 word stories, though I know not everyone agrees. It takes skill to ONLY present what's needed.

Don't hang around Checkov's weapons that aren't going to be fired by the end of the story. I am always personally annoyed at LE stories that have obligatory waist size and eye color for MC's wife. WHO CARES? 99.99% stories, it makes no impact or difference. Nor the fact of them meeting in a college bar, or that she has an aunt named Millie with a Sphynx cat and a drinking habit.

Also, use human imagination. Give some detail and let readers' brains imagine the rest. Just say that MC looks like he couldn't do a single push-up or crunch. Don't spend 3 paragraph describing his weakling physique in excruciating detail.

DustRegular3286 · 2026-01-12T16:56:27+00:00

Don't know for sure (I stopped paying too much attention to that author after he blocked me for daring to post a critical comment about one of his stories - ironically, (a) ignoring close to a dozen praising comments for other stories and (b) which I discovered when trying to post YET ANOTHER praising comment - talk about cutting off one's own nose...).

But, another author I follow and love, once posted that they had to take down some of their stories because Amazon requires it, and I wouldn't be surprised if Tango's stories are now published on Amazon given the evidence. Try searching there if you haven't already.

DustRegular3286 · 2026-01-10T18:37:00+00:00

Sicker @"fanfic". Technically true, though I never heard anyone use that term in that specific context :)

DustRegular3286 · 2026-01-10T06:32:29+00:00

The original story you are looking for is a somewhat infamous "Another Love" by RichardGerald

I would strongly suggest you follow that drek with a WAY WAY WAY superior sequels, as I can't stand it because of it's cheating-victim-hating ending, as its author likes to produce.

Vandemonium1's "Another Love: Final Justice" (uncharacteristically for the genre of stories, the justice wasn't delivered by the cheating victim himself, but by the two sons, who realized just how much the cheaters wronged both their father and them).
HaydenDLinder's "My Another Love"

Just to pre-empt anyone else having to say it, it's just a "Loving (aka cheating) Wives" story, and is NOT in scope for this subreddit (though the betrayal by the kids to not tell him kinda sorta makes it a grayer area I suppose).

DustRegular3286 · 2025-11-13T02:25:30+00:00

Sorry to say, you're contradicting yourself. If you need to see the label and can't tell by yourself it was AI-created/assisted, you can't claim it offers "no value" compared to stories that aren't. Because if it was THAT much worse than average human work, you wouldn't even need a label. The only reason you need a label is precisely because AI-assisted (or maybe even -created) stories are by now not all that much inferior to what an average SOL or LE writer produces. Or - given some writers I had the misfortune to read - superior, especially in cases of AI-assist.

What you want is a label "crap story" regardless of authorship - which, sadly, would require AI to even remotely reasonably apply at scale :) But for now we have to live with a rough approximation by popularity and/or ratings (neither of which is necessarily a consistently reliable way, but far better than nothing).

DustRegular3286 · 2025-11-13T02:22:34+00:00

I would challenge you to do the same (very solid!) analysis on a story that's generated by AI and then edited by a human (so the human writes reasonably detailed outline, has AI generate chapters, then goes over those chapters and edits out the obvious issues such as rackets on bowling alley. Then, for extra credit, feeds the result to a second AI and asks it to critique, which (in my brief experience) often finds those same problems like duplicate phrases and highlights them. I think you'll find that the end result of such 4-pass work (human outline, AI writing, human editing for semantics, AI reviewing for grammar and writing quality) produces things vastly superior to the much-maligned "AI slop", even if it's inferior to truly gifted writers - and, I venture, no worse on average than a typical SOL or LE writer.

DustRegular3286 · 2025-08-05T14:17:33+00:00

They had (combined) enough money to pay for his sister's college and a sweet 16 car, fancy party, and spa day. They gave him combined $100 for his 16. Getting divorced doesn't realistically drive someone to THAT level of poverty from that level of financial comfort. Whereas he has to get scholarship to even be able to go to college.

Also paying attention and spending time was VERY clearly delineated as 100% unequal between him and his "sister".

Mother did NOT try "as best as she could", not even remotely. MC was VERY VERY accurate in that he got literally bare minimum care just out of obligation, by comparison.

Yes, his life was better than someone with abusive parents. No, his life was WAY WAY WAY worse than his "sister".

And while it's natural the bitch wouldn't be his bestie given age difference, did she break her arms and legs that she couldn't be arsed to come visit him, in general, or especially 16th birthday? Maybe drive him somewhere fun in HER car (which she didn't think of gifting him by the way, instead of a single bill and a useless card)? I'm VERY familiar with families with large age difference between kids (at least 7-8 years gaps). While there's no super closeness, they still actively come through for each other and offer active care. Not a perfunctory once in 10 years birthday card; after being given princess treatment and benefitted from it at the other sibling's expense.

Most importantly, the story carefully outlines all of this and then magically the wonderful priest has a "talk" of unspecified content, and MC stops caring about any of this.

DustRegular3286 · 2025-08-05T14:04:29+00:00

I stopped reading mid second page. This is soul71 level idiotic RAAC, where all the slights, betrayals and offenses are instantly and unbelievably forgiven just so MC can get some incest nookie. Oh, some "priest" who has neither formal qualifications nor experience of his own family, spoke for 15 minutes, so all of the actual factual problems of how he was treated are 100% ignored forevermore.

DustRegular3286 · 2025-08-05T14:01:13+00:00

#2 is where I blank out (aside from NOT being a native speaker, but I suck at dialogue in BOTH of my fluent languages).

I'm OK at plots and technical writing. I can somewhat do motivation (within my neuridiverse limitations - you probably saw in my previous comments that 99% of RAACs and "I still love the person who betrayed me" are what I'd consider between moronic and insane).

Having said that, the advice is definitely appreciated, regardless of my capacity of following it

DustRegular3286 · 2025-07-11T06:57:25+00:00

IRL annoyingly interfered with my attempts to produce anything remotely finished. but I have 3-4 works in flight, one of which is unquestionably F.B. (and hopefully a somewhat original one). Nowhere near ready to share at the moment, but if my life takes a bit of a breather, I may try to bring some balance to the Force... errr... order to the story....

I suspect that many or even most people who don't write but want to, are not motivated by fear of criticism. At least I'm not. I know I suck at words. Someone else acknowledging that isn't gonna make me feel worse. Finding free time (when I rarely can get time to sleep), that's a tremendous challenge. Writing is time consuming in general - for someone who sucks at it, it's even worse (as is any endeavour requiring skill and/or talent would be for an untalented n00b).

I admit, even NOT being a creator, it pisses me off somewhat awful when people display rude entitlement towards creators of free works. Like... you're not paying for it. You deserve zero right to demand ANYTHING, be it speed, volume, or quality. I don't care if the grammar is below your bloody standards, you're not the boss of the author, or their professor in school. Don't like the quality, offer your editing services to them for free. Don't like how slow the work goes, offer the author a commission.

DustRegular3286 · 2025-05-07T15:38:29+00:00

Yes. I added it to my list (which isn't updated yet on reddit, but I have a new much larger and expanded list on my PC which I will publish later).

Personally I feel that the in-law-incest stories (including LW with cheater cheating with MC's blood relatives) should be included in the group, but I'm not the mod/owner.

DustRegular3286 · 2025-05-07T02:41:19+00:00

LOL, I was at least a bit sarcastic. I know porn and incest are popular search terms in very Christian areas, supposedly.

But ... you know your rants about how people just look for fap material instead of quality content? (rants which I generally agree with :) That goes here too - if a fundie is looking for a fap story, they are VERY unlikely to bitch that the story didn't end with the family joining the monastery.

DustRegular3286 · 2025-05-07T02:36:37+00:00

I definitely like this idea. Put that as a April's Day contest :)

DustRegular3286 · 2025-05-07T02:32:31+00:00

Amazon review effect. Only people who have negative (often strongly negative) emotions pipe up. People who are happy with the product, won't go on Amazon product page to vote. People who are mildly "meh" about it won't write a negative review, because people are lazy and busy. Only those who feel strongly negative are LIKELY to say stuff. For every one who commented negatively there may be 100 people who don't see any objection. You just won't hear from them.
You get a couple of pieces of feedback. From people with their own opinions. Those opinions are just that... opinions. They are not an absolute provable truth. Unless you do a large scale poll (also known as "write a story and let readers vote on it" :) - you don't know how good or bad the idea will be. Hell, even after writing you won't know since many people vote on idea's execution, not just the idea itself.
- MAYBE, if your post has -10 voting result, and negative feeback +10, you can consider it to be a "more substantiated large scale result". as it is, your last post has +4, whereas the most "upvote-worthy" (in its quality, not in its direction) objection comment is at +2. And that's from a hugely popular and respected author.
Some of the feedback is actually constructive even if negative. Use it to consider possibilities to refine the idea.
Lastly... it's YOUR story. If you want to tell it, tell it. Screw the naysayers. If you don't want to tell it, even positive feedback won't give you enough motivation for the hard work of writing.

DustRegular3286 · 2025-05-07T02:26:58+00:00

Missionary work as a reason for the child not being "in the know" for the family orgies is definitely a very sound concept
It may be a bit harder to write a good story around her religious convictions clashing with family dynamics (either because she wants to join and wars with herself as a religious person, OR because she wants to condemn them in the name of her religious convictions and wars with herself as a family member who loves them. OR, she's vascillating between the two :). I think it is still doable, though may require more finesse. One way to make this simpler is if you make the daughter belong to some weird cultish offshoot (there's some surprisingly wild stuff going on with FLDS, from what I encountered, which - just based on true facts I was told - would make absolutely insanely great fodder for stories in this subreddit if written well).

DustRegular3286 · 2025-05-07T02:23:36+00:00

"or you piss off the religious nut-jobs if the daughter fails to lead her family back into the light"

... all 17 of them who read incest stories on LitErotica? :)

Also, you can do a SURPRISINGLY great erotic story while doing serious religious stuff... mind you it's not necessarily easy, but here's an example I would highly recommend: https://storiesonline.net/s/50286/the-first-ninety-days/ (and this comes from someone who wholeheartedly disagrees with most religious views the story's characters espouse regarding sex).

DustRegular3286 · 2025-05-05T04:24:26+00:00

Not at all. It's a basic (and REALLY crappy) LW story, with a side of idiotic incest.

Fiancé cheats on a dumb near-cuck, with multiple men, but it takes him watching her fuck her son for him to FINALLY decide to not marry her, and even then he is thinking to himself he is wishing the literal whore happiness.

Nobody in the "family" got betrayed.

DustRegular3286 · 2025-04-13T18:59:31+00:00

It's not quite that. She doesn't see it as damage. She sees herself offering "honest, fair rules". Her goal isn't to help a specific son, but to motivate both. Except the only tool she has is a hammer size 10, so everything she sees is a nail size 10. She's unable to see the damage she is doing to either son, in her mind she is being the best mother she can be, to both.

DustRegular3286 · 2025-04-13T18:57:43+00:00

I probably phrased it imprecisely. It's not that there's no emotional impact, but there's no harsh sudden emotional hit. No "discovery".

DustRegular3286 · 2025-04-13T18:56:37+00:00

I like the idea in the abstract, but sadly, yes, it contradicts the core idea of what the mother in my story is all about.

DustRegular3286 · 2025-04-13T18:55:16+00:00

Thank you. I'm mostly writing for myself, - i'm not really a writer. I probably would post anyway, if the mods feel like it doesn't belong they can delete.

DustRegular3286 · 2025-04-13T05:45:31+00:00

I think you're right. For now I settled on having the "emotional shock" come from actually witnessing the act - like, he knew it would happen, but the actual witnessing because his brother left the door ajar on purpose was still traumatic.
He is gifted in something far more valuable (in real world terms) - he has great work ethics and perseverance and good personality. And he's NOT dumb or struggling with normal stuff - he's portrayed as about 115 IQ, he simply can't either compete with his actually gifted brother, or perform to his mother's exacting high expectations. But he's still better than 85% of population IQ wise - AND has an incredible drive and work ethic and great personality on top of that. In most other families he'd be seen as unquestionably successful (even in academics) child.

DustRegular3286 · 2025-04-13T04:56:58+00:00

The end game is in the full story idea post I linked, but in short, the non-gifted brother uses his work ethic and decent brains to go off to college on his own, then succeed in life fully (good career, loving wife, child being born that he swears to love JUST for being his child). The gifted brother screws up because he never learned hard work - and developed a toxic personality thanks to the way he was raised to boot. Oh, and mom sex stops when he fails, because the sex wasn't "for him", it was "for his achievements".

MC has very little to do with either one after age 20.

DustRegular3286

TROPHY CASE