The Story Contest

This post is one of three relating to the story contest. The other two are the story as it was published and a chronological version.

It was so hard! I hate not being able to share my work here on my Patreon. This post is compensation for you. This is the making of Love Yourself.

We managed 7th place! this might not seem like a big achievement but let me put this into perspective. My first story contest was back in 2012, it was a crush with only 2 votes, one of the worst stories in the contest. Next year (2013) I got to 13 place out of 19, that story received harsh reviews calling it not worth the time to read (doesn't matter if I agree with them, it's just how people felt). So, I think 7th place out of 14 is a big step up.

Like many things, this story started with an idea. High school drama and growing up, that was the theme from the get go. It was something I wanted to explore and so, we set out.

First came the frame, a draft about a futa named Chris. If you read through the paper, you'll notice the story is quite different from what was published. I worked on that page for a few days getting things right. It was at that time that I also decided to divide the story into parts and mix them, I felt a Pulp Fiction approach will be a good way to convey the time perception of a teenager.

Next came the writing, I wrote the story in chapters and gave each its own feel and flow. For example: scenes with sex are faster, dialogues are slower, I analyzed a few conversations by teenagers to get the dialogue just right (Lucky me for doing a research paper on oral fluency).

Soon enough the draft was done and next came the edit. I went through the story and looked for any mistake in continuity, clarity and context this was the hardest part. In the meanwhile, Serephine was super kind and helpful, he went over my story Araby and did an amazing job editing and polishing. What Serephine didn't know was that his work will be used for a second edit of Love Yourself, I learned from his notes and implemented changes into the story. A big shout out to Serephine for helping without even knowing he was helping, thank you.

I wanted the story to feel grounded in reality and felt the way to do it is to insert music, in this link you will find a YouTube playlist with the songs from the story as well as some of the songs I listened to while writing this story, hope you enjoy. 

Lastly, I change Chris into Zoe, I felt like Chris is too masculine and Zoe sounded like a much better name. All that remained was a short polish and the story was published.

A thank for all of you. Thank you for supporting me, for being patient with me when delays happen, and most importantly for walking alongside me in this strange road. 

Thank you. I’ll get back to Alene now, god, I missed writing her story.