Review of "mommy's boys???" By: starxconvse@ jediarcher2001

[Unregistered (imported)]

I have just attempted to read about twenty different stories posted here on the eunuch archive. This is my first time visiting the Eunuch Archives. None of those stories, including this one, are readable. Please, I am begging all posters of stories to please stop posting rough first drafts as though they are finished stories. I have encountered stories written in ALL CAPS, storieswheretherearenospacesbetweenthewords, stories where the letters are all jumbled around as though written by someone drunk, and my personal favorite, stories with no punctuation at all. It is not a good reflection on this archive that the first twenty stories that I attempted to read here are so completely unreadable that I could not get past the first sentence, which in some cases went on for about five hundred words.

My first impression of the stories here is that they are all written by people with a second grade education. But I shouldn't say that because I do not wish to insult the second graders whose writing skills vastly outshine what I have thus far encountered here.

If your story is not worth your time nor trouble to read and edit to make it readable then it is not worth posting at all. It is very obvious that not one author has bothered to take the time to read back, even once, anything they wrote. They are just typing off the top of their head then posting. If you are too lazy to read your own story and at least use spell check, at the very least consider a caveat at the beginning of your story warning that it is just a first rough draft and invite people to edit and repost as a finished story. Remember, rough drafts and free writes are NOT literature.

I know this is a free site. But I also know that it costs money to run a free site. That money comes from donors, like me, who wish to support such sites. I support sites like ASSTR and others with good free erotic literature. I may consider supporting the Eunuch Archive at some future date but not until the garbage is taken out. If I have to weed through dozens of unreadable stories just to find a few rare gems written at least as well as my four year old nephew writes, then it is not worth my time and certainly not worth granting an endowment for.

In closing, I would like to offer a few suggestions to aspiring authors:

First, after you think you are done writing your story, read it back, preferably out loud, to yourself. If you find it difficult to read so will your readers.

Second, use spell check, it is free and easy to use and even if you make a few mistakes, at least it will make your story readable and understandable.

Third, if you have to take more than one breath while reading back any one sentence, it is too long. Break it up into smaller, more digestible sentences.

Fourth, print out your story on 8 1/2" x 11" paper double spaced using 14pt Times New Roman as your font. If there are any paragraphs that exceed one page in length after doing this, consider breaking those paragraphs up into smaller ones. Sentences and paragraphs that are excessively long are difficult to read and will lose your reader's attention.

Fifth, never write a story in ALL CAPS or all bold, or all italic. You should reserve these for titles or drawing attention to specific words or phrases.

Finally, pay attention to your point of view, switching back and forth between first and third person in the middle of a story creates confusion and will usually cause a reader to stop reading. Never, ever write second person point of view. There is no such thing as a good story written entirely in second person point of view. Second person point of view should only be used as part of dialogue and in quotation marks.

I am not demanding perfection or professional writing, that would be unreasonable and would reduce participation. I only ask that the stories be at least as readable as what would be written by an elementary school child.

[Unregistered (imported)]

Sorry you found the first 20 stories you attempted to read less than stellar in composition or format. I, too, have noted there are many here that fit your description.

However, I have found MANY excellent stories here, some worthy, in my humble opinion, of actual publication because the plot, characterization, and overall style make them eminently readable and totally enjoyable. My personal favorites have been just about anything by Paolo or slammr.

Additionally, remember that all of the authors here are posting to this site with NO opportunity for remuneration for their time, effort, or talent. That being the case, some stories will indeed be "trash" and not worth the time to read; in fact, many of them appear to be rants so some personal issue can be gotten off their chest. Others are written by authors whose usual language is not English but are making a valiant attempt to post their stories so many more people can read them (I gave up long ago on the stories in German or Spanish!).

I will echo, though, that taking the time to "tune up" one's story before posting should be a given. As you well point out, spell check and re-reading a story before posting is so easy to do and will definitely increase the enjoyment--and readability--of any story. I never expect any story posted here to be as "polished" as a published book, so I am often amazed--and pleased--when I find those that are.

Please don't give up in the stories on this site. There are truly some gems here that are worth seeking out. After all, when you go looking for gold, you have to sift a lot of sand before you find that treasured nugget!

[Kortpeel (imported)]

This is my first time visiting the Eunuch Archives. None of those stories, including this one, are readable. Please, I am begging all posters of stories to please stop posting rough first drafts as though they are finished stories.

I suspect that Unregistered started out to write a review of a story and let himself get side tracked after the first sentence. It does happen.

Most of what Unregistered says is sound advice for any one who wants to write a story.

However, It is horribly unfair to be scathingly critical of some of the efforts that you can find in the archive. I know of writers who sweated blood to turn an idea into text. Writing did not come easy to them and probably they were never comfortable at school with spelling punctuation and grammar. I'd say that the archive serves a valuable educational function for such writers. It has got them writing and this is probably something that all the professional educators never managed while they were at school.

Surely what some guys need is a word of encouragement and perhaps even a bit of coaching. Holding them up to ridicule ain't gonna do no good.

Kortpeel

[Slammr (imported)]

I just checked out Mommy's Boys http://www.eunuch.org/Alpha/M/ea_4323mommy_s_.htm, and it is unreadable, but it was submitted in 2001.

I can't imagine it would get past Paolo or whoever is checking out stories today. There are thousands of stories ,which have been submitted over a span of years, on this site.

It's difficult to submit an error free story. I've re-read my stories several times before submitting them only to find errors after they've been posted, after it's too late to change them.

The first story I ever wrote was posted to this site, and it's probably nothing for which I'd want to take credit today. I learned by writing and posting stories to this site, though, and if my writing has improved, this site deserves much of the credit for that, for allowing me a place to try my hand at writing.

Certainly, I have read stories here that could have benefited from spell checking, better grammar, or formatting. For instance, I hate paragraphs that go on forever without breaks.

But I have also read stories written as well - sometimes better - than many published by the mainstream media. Kortpeel and Paolo, in my opinion, can write better than many published authors, and if I went through the list of authors in the archive, I'm certain I'd find many more.

Mommy's Boy should never have made it into the archives, and I doubt that it would make it into the archives if submitted today. I don't know what the other stories were, but I think well written stories - at least among those submitted during the last several years - will greatly outnumber the poorly written ones.

[Paolo]

Yeah, I wasn't moderating then, but I know who wrote it.

And no, I would NOT have let that one out.

The error count was almost as high as the word count.

The story text has been removed.

[Francis (imported)]

It seems to me that anyone who has real problems with the grammar/spelling etc should write a new version of their own without the defects instead of bitching about it. There are a lot of us here who haven't gone to the trouble of writing a contribution (myself included) and I for one would never dream of criticising the way someone else more enterprising than myself for not putting up an error free story. I have never run across a story that was so bad that it wasnt at least understandable. There are just some people who would complain if their ass was on fire and you pissed on it to put it out - hopefully not on EA;);)

[Unregistered (imported)]

I came to this site yesterday and went directly to the story archive. The first story that I clicked on was completely unreadable. So was the second and the third and so on. I got to about twenty and gave up in frustration.

I work in the field of quality control. Perhaps that makes me a little anal retentive about some things. When checking a batch of parts we use statistical random sampling. In a sense that is what I did yesterday. Here is how it works. You randomly choose several parts (or stories in the case of the archive) then you inspect them for quality. The size of the batch and the tolerance for error determines the size of the sample. For example a batch of 10,000 would require a sample size of 100 or 1% if 99%+ is the desired quality tolerance (it's actually a bit more complicated than that but for this discussion I think it will suffice). If all the samples pass the quality inspection then the batch is passed and certified for shipment. If any of the samples proves defective the procedure is to take a larger sample of the batch (usually 10%) to get a more precise picture of how many are bad parts. From the second inspection we determine whether it is worthwhile to glean out any good parts or if we should just simply scrap the whole batch and start over. If 50% or more of the original sampling fails inspection we don't bother with a follow up inspection we just scrap the whole batch and remake the parts. We use a similar method to determine if a vender sent us good parts or not.

I applied the same principle to my visit to the Eunuch archive yesterday. I took a random sampling of twenty stories. 100% of the samples that I read were unreadable (scrap) and so I rejected the whole batch (the entire archive), hence my review. I did make one error, I should not have simply singled out one story as I did but rather I should have just made a general comment about the stories I encountered. "Mommy's Boys" just happened to be the twentieth which was where my threshold limit for unreadable stories was reached. I did not determine the number of stories in the archive so the batch size was an unknown factor which would (in my field) have an affect on the validity of the sampling procedure used. I am sure there are some readable stories in the archive. I just felt it was not worth searching further to find them. If the twenty first story turned out to be readable that would still have made my sample 95.2% unreadable which would have still justified my words.

Perhaps to some this may seem a draconian approach. Perhaps I should have just wrote a quick "These stories suck!" and left it at that. However I honestly do believe there are some very rough diamonds here worth polishing into gems if only the authors would put in the effort to polish their work if just a little. That is why I went to the trouble of writing a constructive criticism.

Yes, I do realize that the authors do not get paid. That, however is not an acceptable excuse to be lazy. There are many hobbies in which not only do the participants not get paid but even pay for the privilege of participating. Many people put a great deal of effort, time and yes money into such hobbies as show dog breading and entering art shows with no expectation of financial reward. They do it for the pride of doing something well and to promote excellence. Most art shows, as an example, require an entry fee and very few participants get prizes and in many shows there are no cash prizes yet the artists still pay the fee and submit their art so they can show it off to the public. Many, if not most such shows require that the art in question be of reasonable quality. Some shows have very high standards and reject most entries. I occasionally attend such shows. Were I to visit an art show where the first twenty exhibitors had nothing but garbage on display all inferior to what my four year old nephew could have produced I would probably have walked out of the show at that point and then wrote a letter to the organizers of the show telling them my thoughts. (unless the show was displaying children's art or art produced by persons who are developmentally disabled).

It is commendable that people put a lot of sweat into a story and pour their guts out in the process. I fully support such efforts, especially if doing so has a therapeutic value. However, I am not your therapist and this, I presume, is not an archive of therapeutic rants but rather one of erotic literature (emphasis on literature).

Please note that this and my prior post are readable. I make no claim of perfection or professional presentation. In fact I consider my writing skills below average. My education in regards to writing ended at the high school level. I am sure that a professional editor will find numerous technical errors as well as errors in style in my writing. Any number of writers would have said what I have said but done a better job of it. There are probably a dozen ways of saying better what I have just said. Yet you can read it and it is easy to read and understand. I did not spend a week writing and rewriting to get it just right. In fact I wrote this off the top of my head. What makes a huge difference is that I went back to the begriming and read what I wrote, fixed the obvious errors and used a simple spell check program. Then I copy pasted it into the field to post here, that simple and that easy. If simple me with an average to below average education can do it, then anyone can.

I also commend all the people who attempt to write in English when English is not their first language. I understand that English may be the language best suited for Internet postings due to the fact that most of the Internet is controlled or visited by English speaking people. So for those people who are not adept with the English language it is especially difficult to participate. That being said, all that I have said should still apply. You still have the same tools available that I do. Grammar and spell checkers are readily available. Translation programs, while flawed, will still help you get started. Online dictionaries and thesauruses are available for free. Were I to attempt to write in another language and submit that writing for publication I would be held up to the same standard as a native speaker. I see no reason why we should not do the same here. I also wish to note that I noticed many stories written in other languages posted to the archive. while I cannot read those stories as English is my only language, I think that is a wonderful idea. Writers in other languages not able to write in English should post in their own language and invite people to translate for them. If a story is truly good, then surely someone will offer to take the time to translate.

Now, to the last poster who complained that I should have rewritten the story myself instead of complaining about it. You should be aware that doing so then posting it without the author's permission is a violation of copyright laws as well as presumptuous. It is one thing to criticize but in some circles it is considered even more rude to offer to redo their work for them. If you saw a painting in a gallery that you thought was absolutely horrid would you simply say so and why or would you go up to the artist and offer to repaint it for him? As an artist (amateur) I can say I prefer even the most scathing criticism over such an offer which I would take as the ultimate insult. Criticize my work, tell me you hate it, and especially tell me what you don't like about it and how to improve it but you many not take the brush from my hand.

[Jean Op den Kamp (imported)]

As English is only my third language, it's a hard job to get a story on the board, that run's in english, not just a translation of the Dutch and it take's hours of work to fix most of the errors

One hour of my story takes about a day to work it out in english, and it will never be free of mistakes

But I prefer to make my mistakes inside my words, ratter then I would like to make mistakes, with the power to rule the universe

loveUall

[Jean Op den Kamp (imported)]

I came to this site yesterday

100% of the samples that I read were unreadable (scrap) and so I rejected the whole batch (the entire archive), hence my review.

Perhaps to some this may seem a draconian approach. Perhaps I should have just wrote a quick "These stories suck!" and left it at that. However I honestly do believe there are some very rough diamonds here worth polishing into gems if only the authors would put in the effort to polish their work if just a little. That is why I went to the trouble of writing a constructive criticism.

Hey,

Living in a far country, I don't speak their language, and most of them don't even speak english, let's forget that they speak dutch.

But we can talk, we do understand each other even if we sometimes need hand and feet

If I review your draconic long text, I wonder, if you like it without mistakes, why the hell do you need so many words?

I want to be short and friendly to you, as it is a serious advice and I don't want to blame you for anything.........................

Please take some human lessons, it will do you so good

Thanks for the time you spend on your quote

with love and regards

J***

[Paolo]

Just to point out - a lot of the older stories cannot be edited via the tools we have now, because they reside in a different database (old) run by a different script that won't "talk to" the new one. That's why you'll some pretty strange formatting, along with ones that were accepted long before I or Plix was in charge of submissions.