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Writing a story is easy to do. First graders are able to write stories often without much help.
Carefully penning a gripping and interesting story is a lot harder. Doing so with beautiful prose and turning your story into literature is even more complex.
I wish I was a professional author with easy prose and perfect vocabulary, but I am at best an amateur writer who sometimes revise a piece of work enough times to make it elevate above the fold.
Let me give you examples of what I mean, in successive steps, to show how a story can get better.
Imagine this is a paragraph of a story, on the level I often found when searching for online stories:
The other day, i went to my best friend jude's house and could hear her in her pool, so i went to the back and saw that she was naked! OMG! She seemed surprised but told me that now her familie were nudists now and i decided to strip naked too since it seemed exciting. It was fantastic and now we swim naked in her pool.
In that first example, there are a few mistakes (notably, the i is not capitalized) and the sentences are telegraphed. The story sounds forced and childish.
Let's try to make it better:
Jude had been my best friend since kindergarten. We used to tell each other everything, but recently she became more distant. I decided to confront her at her house and could hear noise coming from the back yard. I quickly discovered Jude swimming in her pool, completely nude!
I was shocked but soon, she wrapped a towel around her naked body and joined me on their park bench. "My family spent our vacation in a naturist resort in Florida this year. That's why I am not wearing a bathing suit".
Jude and I talked and eventually I decided to give it a try. Guess what? Swimming in the water in the nude is really something special. I am not sure if I would be ready for more, but it sure opened my eyes.
Better, isn't it?
It would be possible to refine it even better, such as :
Jude had been my best friend since kindergarten. We used to tell each other everything, but recently she became more evasive, refusing notably to tell me what she did on her vacation. I decided to confront her at her house and could hear noise coming from the back yard. I decided to let myself in, and quickly discovered Jude swimming in her pool, completely nude!
I was shocked and appalled, but soon, she wrapped a towel around her fully tanned body and joined me on their park bench. "My family spent our vacation in a naturist resort in Florida this year. I hope I didn't shock you, I didn't know you were coming".
Jude and I talked for a few hours and eventually, with nothing to lose, I decided to give it a try. Guess what? Swimming in the water without a soggy bathing suit is really something special. I am not sure if I would be ready for more, but it sure opened my eyes.
As we go along, every word of a story can be replace and each sentence improved.
Sometimes, on some of my stories, I go through several revisions. The first half of "The Deserted Beach" went through 5 or 6 of them, each time improving the sentences, the flow, the descriptions, the dialog, the action, etc...
Each time making it a little better. Making it flow in a more gripping and exciting way.
If I was to publish that first half professionally, I would revise it even further, spending hours re-mixing each paragraph until they are all perfect.
But the second half was revised only once, mainly for grammar and spelling errors. It didn't go through the complete rewriting and restructuring that the first half went through and it's a shame because if you got hooked on by the quality of first half, the second one disappoints severely.
To make matters worse, the first half was written 18 months before the second half was, so the flow feels forced.
It took 2 months to write the first 60% of the story, and about 2 days for the remaining 40%.
I wish I could tell you that all my stories would be refined, revised, edited, proof-read, put on hold to settled down a little and revisited in another mood.
But I am not a full time writer. I write when I can, often early in the morning or late at night.
I do what I can and some of my stories turn out better than the others.
I try to improve them, but the reality is that sometimes, I have a story I want to tell and point A was amazingly written, point C is what interests me to write next, but point B is in the way and I simply can't find a way to make it work.
I wish it wasn't like that. I wish I was a better author. But at least, with naturist-fiction.com, you get your money's worth when you decide to read one of my stories, and from time to time, I manage to write a pretty decent story.
At least, I think so. It's what helps me sleep at night...
Meanwhile, I'll do my best but whether I like it or not, many of my chapters will be weak but if you send me constructive criticism, I can perhaps get better.