Feedback on Stories?

[Jenny_1972]

Hello!

During the last weeks I have been posting some stories in this forum and I am hoping to get some constructive feedback.

But I mostly get either nothing, or 'nice', or PMs about my personal TUG preferences.

I understand that most readers are only 'lurkers' who are not logged in and therefore can't comment.

But I am new and inexperienced as a storyteller and English is not my mother tongue.

Also my stories might - in their own way - stretch the envelope of this forum.

What can I do to get some helpfull feedback?

Best Regards, Jenny (and Katja)

[TuggyBoundMale]

I tried to give you a good feedback on part 10. I hope I did good, sorry if I didn’t

[Xtc]

@Jenny_1972,
I wish I knew the answer. Sometimes I get responses on some surprising episodes and none at all on others.

[BoundGaggedGal]

Hello!

During the last weeks I have been posting some stories in this forum and I am hoping to get some constructive feedback.

But I mostly get either nothing, or 'nice', or PMs about my personal TUG preferences.

I understand that most readers are only 'lurkers' who are not logged in and therefore can't comment.

But I am new and inexperienced as a storyteller and English is not my mother tongue.

Also my stories might - in their own way - stretch the envelope of this forum.

What can I do to get some helpfull feedback?



Best Regards, Jenny (and Katja)

Well I dont have time for multi para replies.

[Bigballgag1]

Its always been a bit of an issue here and one many of us don’t have an answer for. I know polls or audience engaging questions can sometimes help, but it depends on the type of story you are writing.

Ultimately just like a tv show or a new song, the stories here won’t necessarily be read by everyone as everyone has different tastes and preferences. My advice would be to keep trying, test things out and don’t be afraid to experiment with different styles. I’ve had a quick read and your stories seem engaging to read and good, although not usually what I read.

Basically have fun with it and write what you want to write about, thats the important thing.

[KidnappedCowboy]

It's frustrated me when I did not get responses to what I've written. And it's made me question whether I wanted to continue writing the story, BUT...

I realized I have to comment on stories...on what other M/M writers put out there. It's an effort. If I want feedback to what I write, I should also give feedback to others.

[Sablesword]

This site really isn't a good place for feedback. It's a place to show off stories, and to hope for applause, but not so much for discussions about or feedback on a particular story.

A few thoughts:
1. Maybe add a smilie of a figure holding up an "I like this!" sign to the smilie set.

2. Maybe add a subforum for "Story critiques wanted." Or two subforums, one in the "for everyone" section and one in the "for adults" section.

3. Maybe a pinned post on "How to write constructive critiques." The chief point is to make an effort to point out the good parts, the don't-change-this bits in a story, as it's inherently easier to find bad things to say about even a great story than it is to find good things.

[bondagefreak]

I was not going to say anything, but since you went ahead and opened a thread about feedback - or lack thereof - on your stories, I'm going to speak my mind and share my thoughts. My goal is not to vex, but I will be blunt and to the point.

But I am new and inexperienced as a storyteller and English is not my mother tongue.

There is no feedback to give. The texts you post are not those of an inexperienced storyteller, nor are they those of a non-native speaker. Your stories are written better than almost all stories on this site, because you use AI. The language used is as advanced, or even more advanced, than that of most native speakers.

Keep in mind that even had you not admitted to using AI in your first post, most of us would have instantly guessed it based on the first paragraph of your first story. AI texts are very easy to spot if you know how AI writes or rewrites.


As a member of staff, I get to see all new posts from first-time posters/lukers before the rest of the membership. The number of AI stories we are getting from new members now is staggering, to the point where most of the stories submitted by new members (and even existing members who have never written before) in 2025 are AI.

All are written the same. All use the exact same punctuation. All use higher-than-native levels of language. All have the exact same tone. You can even find the same lines and the same exact sentences in different stories. As a mod who approves/disapproves posts from new members and sees these new AI submissions on a daily basis, it is so incredibly boring and dull. The stories all look like each other. They all read exactly the same.

None of these AI stories are performing well. I ignore them completely, as I'm sure many others do.


I will take a human-written text from a non-native speaker (like myself)...with all its human flaws, errors and associated typos, any day of the week over an AI text that was written via a series of prompts and that ends up looking exactly like every other AI text.



Some of my own regular readers have reached out to me via PM this past year to ask me why I'm not reading/commenting on their new stories. When I tell them their texts are AI and that I'm not interested in reading AI, I'm always confronted with the same excuse: "But I have to use AI. I'm not a native speaker!"

This is frankly insulting to non-native speakers, like myself, @squirrel, @FelixSH, and countless others, who have spent years practising and slowly improving our language skills to near-native levels, the human way...by posting our very imperfect stories on here, reading other stories/books and taking in feedback.


Anyway, I've said my piece.
If you're truly looking for more feedback and comments, my advice would be to ditch the AI.
You may find the readers more receptive to a human text...even with all its little bumps and flaws. Just my two cents.

[Jenny_1972]

I will take a human-written text from a non-native speaker (like myself)…

Understood, although I don’t understand why*.

For me the AI is an extended spell checker. Making my sentences round where they were clumsy.
I give it a 90% finished story. Partly in my native tongue, but with most relevant dialogues already in English.
Then I ask it to translate what’s not English and to correct what is already English.

Finally I compare this AI proposal with my input.
And find that the AI is very sensitive in maintaining my original tone.
Where I read too much AI and too little Jenny I merge back to my draft. (For my liking ChatGPT explains too much and likes to add sentimental sentences.)

Apparently my own English is good enough too tell a non-native speaker from a native speaker, but not to tell a native speaker from an AI.


But what about the content of my stories?
The things Katja and her father do and what they feel for each other are 90% Jenny, although the way it is expressed may be 70% AI.

[This answer was created without the help of any AI.]

(*) When I read a text in my native language every mistake (grammar, spelling, punctuation) makes me moan and roll my eyes. Too many of them and I either switch fully into corrector mode or I stop reading.

[sock slave boy]

I'm in a similar situation to you. I recently started writing a story I'd been imagining for a long time, and I finally took the plunge. But like you, I haven't had any reaction. What bondagefreak says isn't wrong: we often notice a certain reluctance towards any type of AI art, rightly or wrongly—but that's not really the point.

Personally, I have to use AI because I have a disability that, in my native language, hasn't allowed me to learn the subtleties of spelling, let alone those of another language. The best I can do is expand my vocabulary and learn how to use AI effectively, that is, for proofreading and formatting if absolutely necessary.

For translation, I recommend Google Translate. It's certainly imperfect, but that's precisely what makes the translation more authentic.

Finally, the last piece of advice I can give is to wait and persevere. This is something we often learn too late, and almost no one has enough experience to understand or teach properly. But patience and perseverance are the keys to everything.

I noticed that your first post was a month ago, and that you only published a new part in this thread last week. It would have been better to publish within the same month, or even the same week, as your first post. To stand out from the crowd, you have to post regularly and respond to the comments you receive, rather than posting multiple threads.

It's quite a process: long, sometimes painful, and complicated. But as in any artistic field—and even in life—the only key is perseverance and patience.

[ExcessivelyCurious]

Generally, I don't think people know what feedback is wanted (unless explicitly stated). There's a lot of different ways one can potentially give feedback, which generally require more time and effort. Plus constructive criticism could come off as too rude or negative, which people generally don't want.

----

I would generally agree that I'm not interested in reading stories written using "AI". Spelling and grammar check tools can be useful but even those can have errors, and anything that starts changing wording, re-ordering sentences, and that sort of thing will definitely affect the tone of your writing. As a native speaker (with a relevant disability) I've used Grammarly in the past, and found some of its suggestions to be helpful, but there were some I disagreed with (generally awkward wording choices).

[Jenny_1972]

It would have been better to publish within the same month, or even the same week, as your first post.

I have been posting a new Katja story almost every other day.

[gag1195]

First, this is generally not a "feedback" sort of forum. We post stories we want to write, and people read and hopefully comment on the stories. These comments can be feedback, but are more often than not simply expressing what they enjoyed about the piece, thoughts about the characters or scenarios, and sometimes theorizing or suggesting ideas for future chapters/stories. You can of course request specific feedback, but those comments will be much less common. As you've said, most people are probably saving constructive feedback for private messages so as not to appear publicly rude or critical in the comments.

Second, after quickly skimming your many tales, I admit that I am confused why they all seem to be separate posts. They all seem to feature the same characters, in the same location(s) and around the same time period. Why separate these different parts into separate threads instead of building off of the first post and making these different parts into chapters of a growing tale? Having a full complete tale in one thread, with multiple chapters shared periodically, will make it easier for potential readers to find your story and enjoy them. I know you linked each story at the top of each thread, but having them all in one thread as an anthology would certainly allow for more discussion and commenting.

Third, unfortunately, there are a significantly larger number of lurkers and silent readers than there are commenters. So it may take time for your audience to find your story and comment. Patience is a virtue, and understand that sometimes, seemingly for no reason, you may end up with ten comments on your story, and you may end up with one. That's just the reality of sharing something with the world, it is sometimes met with indifference.

Fourth, I encourage you to stop using AI. It is a crutch that does not help you in improving your writing or skill. Especially when we already have so many tools available to write. Word and Google Docs have built in spelling and grammar checks, Google Translate is more or less accurate in my experience, and you could always try to find someone who speaks the language to help you with your editing. We've survived and written successful stories in many languages without the help of AI. No one on this forum is going to insult your writing because you aren't a native English speaker or writer. You'll probably find a greater audience if you do post your stories without AI help because people will be able to tell that you are earnestly trying.

Good luck in your writing, and I hope you (not the AI system you're currently using) find you audience!

[sock slave boy]

It would have been better to publish within the same month, or even the same week, as your first post.

I have been posting a new Katja story almost every other day.

Yes, but each time in a new discussion thread, you had tracked too many rabbits at the same time.

[Redman]

I guess I'll chime in here, because I recognize a little bit of my own attitude here.

First off, ditch the AI. Like others have said, it's repetitive, and relatively easy to spot. The fact that you announced it in the beginning is why I have ignored your postings. AI is not creative in its own right. It processes the prompts and scours the internet for existing stuff, which it then spits out with the result. That's why whole sentences get repeated in different stories. It doesn't matter how you intend to use it, that's how it operates. I saw it happen recently when a band I work with wanted an animated music video. They tried to do a work around where several drawings were fed to the algorithm and told it to animate them. It did, using scenes from popular cartoons. (Bass player: First you Midied my parts, now you replaced me with AI Murderface?!") Needless to say, they are about to scrap the whole project.

Second: Don't worry about imperfections. I know the desire to get it right every time, and make it perfect. The problem there is that you end up chasing that perfection all the time, and either get nothing done, or cheat. I've been there. And it's a very real temptation. But ultimately, it's so much more satisfying when the project is done and you can see how it turned out after hours of grinding. Even with errors. I've seen spelling errors in my stories before. And I've heard sour notes in music I've recorded. But it's all real, raw, and satisfying! Seriously, just try writing a story on your own. No aids but spellcheck. I bet you'll get more engagement then. And when that perfectionist voice creeps in, remember one thing: "done is better than perfect."

P.S. Wait wait wait... @bondagefreak is NOT a native English speaker?! Fooled me!

[Jenny_1972]

So, no matter what I write, if it sounds like AI it's not worth reading (or commenting)?

[Jenny_1972]

First ... These comments can be feedback, but are more often than not simply expressing what they enjoyed about the piece, thoughts about the characters or scenarios, and sometimes theorizing or suggesting ideas for future chapters/stories.

Second ... after quickly skimming your many tales, I admit that I am confused why they all seem to be separate posts.

Fourth, I encourage you to stop using AI.

First: That's exactly the feedback I was hoping for. But so far it was mostly "AI is bad."


Second: As a story reader I hate these endless posts where new chapters of the actual story mix with comments on previous chapters.

In the specific case of Katja stories: Those stories have no particular chronology or succession. They are parallel, maybe I add some more later, etc. Therefore I found parallel threads more suitable.
The Epilogue will be one big thread (as you seem to prefer) because it follows a stringent timeline.


Fourth As mentioned before, as a reader every single mistake puts me off. After finding a handfull of them I switch into full 'corrector mode' and mark every single mistake (I even spot double blanks) with my mental red marker. Unfortunately this means I can't really follow the story I'm correcting.
Error-free AI texts help me concentrate on the actual text.

[rtbw]

Somebody mentioned it before on this thread, but I don't think this is a site intended for constructive feedback, which is more for writing workshops and writers groups. Here, people want to be entertained with good stories to read and satisfy their enjoyment of TUGs.

I think people should be happy with simple encouraging comments about how readers like a story. It shows that you've written something that people enjoy. I try to leave comments whenever I enjoy a post, and although I think good writing is really important, I refrain from giving critical comments because that's not what this site is about. And as @BoundGaggedGal said earlier, it does take a lot of time to provide thoughtful, critical comments. I'll be honest and say that I don't want to engage the forum here like I do with all the writing and reading I have to do at work.

Having said that, there really should be more of the short comments saying that the reader enjoyed the story. Perhaps it would help if we have a "thumbs up" button. I've also private messaged people when I wanted to talk more about a post, and I hope people can do that some more too.

Last, I think people should engage in writing for the sake of the writing itself. People shouldn't be discouraged too much if there's little feedback. There should be enjoyment in the writing itself. I've posted both real and fictional stories here, and I consider it just a way to put down my experiences and fantasies, and perhaps others may enjoy it. In the end, I hope you've enjoyed writing your stories for the sake of engaging in the writing and not mostly in the hopes of getting critical feedback.

[FelixSH]

Regarding AI: As soon as you let AI change your sentence structure, it's not you anymore. And it sounds, like you did it that way. Stories shouldn't be an unreadable nightmare, but I certainly don't mind an error here or there. As a non-native speaker, I won't even realize that something might be a grammar error. And some things that might be errors are, imo, just the personal style of a writer. Which gives a story way more flavor, than AI translated sentences.

I tested this, giving ChatGPT sentences to correct. And it would always change my words or phrases, because it "thought" that others were better (read: more correct). But it just changed my writing style.

Write, and you will get better. And I know, it's a big ask, but don't write for others. Yeah, we all want feedback, when we post here (even just a "nice story" is better than dead silence), but I also always enjoy writing, if I do it.

When I give a response, I always try to say a bit more than "nice one", like I will take a paragraph or sentence, and explain why I liked them specifically. I hope this helps the writer. But I don't give negative feedback, except in rare cases, where I know the author well. They might not want any, they might not take it well. And the last thing I want is to hurt a writer here, who took the time to write a story.

But also, I'm not a native speaker, and even in German (my native language), I find most things just style differences. I'm not a professional writer. Who am I to tell someone here, that something was written in a bad way. Maybe I just have a different taste.

To come to an end: It's not just "AI bad", it's that it changes your style, and at that point, why would I read it? I sometimes see pictures that look nice, but I lose all interest, as soon as I realize that it's AI. Even if the content is what the person wanted to show, it's not their work. I get that it's not quite the same here, but in the end, it's not your style. I would just write. You will get better.

[Jenny_1972]

Write, and you will get better.

But I don't give negative feedback

Write without feedback and engrain your mistakes deeper and deeper - that's my experience.

If people don't give negative feedback ... then the absence of feedback means it would all have been negative?

[FelixSH]

Why are you ignoring that I told you, why I don't give negative feedback?

If you want professional feedback, you need to ask a professional (and probably pay for it). Whatever feedback you get here can as well be complete nonsense.

[Redman]

@FelixSH You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink... *Shrug.*

[RopeBunny]

Linking this here, because it's relevant and has/raises many good points.

viewtopic.php?t=9588

Ideally, in a perfect world ANYONE, who reads ANY STORY would comment on said chapter(s)

Even a sentence:
'Great chapter, loved the hogtie.'
Is better then the wall of silence we authors often find. Speaking as a fairly prolific poster of chapters (often 2 a week on average) it is of course frustrating to find repeatedly there's nothing coming back. No comments, short or long.

However. My opinion has always been that ultimately we (you) should firstly be writing because you want to. This isn't a pay site, you can't charge people to read your stuff and so the only incentive- or the main one at least -should surely be that you write out of enjoyment. A wish to share.

Comments would be great, we all wish for more, but there's no solid dependable way of controlling the flow.


(Not, purposefully, commenting on the Ai side of this debate.)

[Jenny_1972]

Isn't it ironic? Instead of getting feedback on my stories I got this very active discussion why I get no feedback!

[Jeffpa1967]

I'm kind of odd because I don't try to write anything except for myself.
I've written only two things here. One was a true story that I explain why I wrote it. I thought it read better because it was a heartfelt and emotional story. Some people seemed to like it because of that.
I started writing a fiction story. Definitely a different vibe because I'm trying to create as I go and I suck at it. A lot less views and responses to it. But in the end, I'm catering to myself.
If people like it, then I'm happy I gave you a small amount of enjoyment. If you didn't like, I'm sorry it wasn't your type of thing.