Hey everyone,
It's been a journey of over thirteen years with BCTS, a journey filled with laughter, tears, and moments that left me utterly captivated. When I first stumbled upon this place, I was here for the erotica, but soon, I found myself falling deeply in love with the community and the stories it held.
I've been a bit of a lurker, gobbling up stories from many authors, sometimes sneaking in a DM or two. Watching the comings and goings of some fantastic writers, I've been the silent spectator in the corner, hand metaphorically (and sometimes literally) in my pants.
But now, I am stepping out of the shadows. I am here to stir up emotions, make you laugh, maybe cry, and perhaps feel a bit... heated. My first step was an attempt at continuing Armond's captivating "Kemeia Ascending". A challenge that pushed me to try a style of writing that was not native to me.
You can read the prior parts from the links below:
Kemeia Ascending Part 1
Kemeia Ascending Part 2
Kemeia Ascending Part 3
You can check out my additions from the links below:
Kemeia Ascending Part 4: Act 1
Kemeia Ascending Part 4: Act 2
Kemeia Ascending Part 4: Act 3
Then came my second piece, an unplanned journey that evolved from a simple teaser of an idea into a dark and steamy narrative of its own, Binding Resolutions.
So, what transformed me from a silent reader to a saucy scribe? It was the help of some AI-powered assistants. But make no mistake, the writing – every steamy, thrilling word – is all me. These tools act as invaluable sidekicks, helping me put the story first. They assist in refining and polishing the narrative, allowing me to weave the tale and then tidy it up, ensuring that my not-so-innocent thoughts are expressed just right.
First, there's Grammarly, which helps with spelling and grammar, but it can be a bit irritating at times as it tends to oversimplify things. No obvious typos in this blog thanks to Grammarly.
Second, I use Word Tune for alternative suggestions for words and phrases to enhance my language. However, not for anything longer than one sentence at best. You can try it for paragraphs but it turns them into inelegant gibberish. 'sexy storyteller' became 'saucy scribe' thanks to this little assistant.
Third, OpenAI assists me in visualising scenes and settings, ensuring spatial consistency. For example, while writing Chapter 2, it helped me visualise the party location, allowing me to create a mental map for Yvonne's navigation.
I highly recommend trying these tools if you're looking to gain more confidence in your writing. However, remember that they are most effective as assistants, not replacements, for your own writing or storytelling skills.
Other invaluable tools I use include:
Google Translate: I don't speak any French, but my character Yvonne needed to. Thanks to Google Translate, she fluently does.
Online-utility.org Text Analyzer: This is probably the most valuable tool I use, especially towards the end. It helps me identify any repeated words and phrases, allowing me to hunt them down and change them as I desire.
Comments
We Don't Care
How you got here! What we do care about is that you have arrived! Welcome! Thrice Welcome! and we hope that you will continue to contribute many stories in the future. And please enjoy our site as the best place on the internet.
From One New Writer to Another
Glad to see I'm not the only one.
Another long-time lurker here. In my case, it was enjoying stories here on different levels over the years, having ideas accumulate in my head over that time and deciding I needed to get them out and, knock on wood, come up with something people enjoy reading as I've enjoyed others' work.
And I love that the newer writers all bring something different to the table in terms of themes and style. The terrain you're exploring in Binding Resolutions, for example, is not something I could pull off.
Fascinating!
Ah, brave new world, with such wonders in it! The important thing about tools is how they are used, and I think you’ve got it exactly right. You are using technology to help you refine your stories to the point where you are comfortable sharing them. That’s wonderful.
I tend to use older tools (like a thesaurus!), and my encounters with smart tech like autocorrect are often acrimonious. But that mostly means things take me longer. I’m still doing the same tasks — checking for errors in spelling and grammar, testing to make sure I’m not repeating words and phrases in a way that degrades the story, weighing syntactical choices, and replacing tired metaphors with something new (e.g., “waving a red flag at a bull” with “wearing a bow tie in a biker bar”). I think it’s great that there are software tools than can make those necessary tasks easier, and it was thoughtful of you to share your know-how.
— Emma
Thesaurus
It baffles me how you manage to use a dinosaur in your writing. U do u.
Jurassic Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Google translate
Is possibly the most hilarious system since I saw a menu in the Camargue translated into English by way of a dictionary. A classic example of GT is "Annecy est une commune francaise" (Annecy is a French community) which it rendered as 'Annecy is a common Frenchwoman'
Similar examples were someone shouting "This way!" to fugitives, which was not rendered as 'Par ici!" but as "En cette facon!" (in this manner), or one from this site which was Portuguese, where the word used for "You can't keep running" wasn't the one for speedy locomotion but 'trabalho' (work) as in running in the sense of 'operating machinery.
If you HAVE written in French, please pass it to me and I will take a look.
Edited to add: just found the French. Definitely not my sort of story--sorry! I doubt I could face that sort of passage. And yes, Google has made some errors there. The main errors are in agreement in number and gender, clunky choice of words and failure of past participle to agree with gender of object.
Thanks for this
Yes please. No idea to know if the French came out correctly without knowing how to read the damn language. Btw. Chapter 4 should be out tomorrow. An entirely different story if I may say so myself.
No spell check here. Excuse my brevity and typos. On the phone and on the go.
I don't rely too much on software when writing
Autocorrect is fine as long as you disable the "auto" part and only regard the corrections as friendly advice.
Google translate works very well on single word level where a range of different possible translations are presented. Or when translating from a language you are less familiar with into one that you know well. Then you spot things that are strange but usually can be understood from context.
Wikipedia, switching between languages to get the correct term for some lesser known things.
Wiktionary is quite reliable as well.
My biggest problem, most likely related to dyslexia that runs in the family, is that I tend to skip entire words when writing.
Finding your routine is the key
I agree 100%. Finding your routine is the key. Not many of us are in a situation to hire an editor, but feedback is important. The Online-utility.org Text Analyzer you mention looks great. I may add that to my process in future stories.
I write on an ancient Linux laptop using LibreOffice. Spell check and thesaurus are invaluable but the addition of LanguageTool, a Grammarly alternative, takes LibreOffice to a new level. You can enable LanguageTool in LibreOffice in two ways. The easiest is to go to Tools-Options-LanguageSettings-LanguageToolServer and click on enable. This option sends info to the LanguageTool servers. The second option is to download LanguageTool. I prefer this option because my machine does the processing. You can find the download and instructions here ---> https://extensions.libreoffice.org/en/extensions/show/langua....
I also re-read an advice article written by writer/editor Allan Guthrie. Many of us read style guides, but it's hard to keep the "rules" in your head. Guthrie created a list of 32 simple writing rules which takes two minutes to read. His original post is gone, but you can find it by searching "Hunting Down the Pleonasm". I've saved the article to my computer for frequent access.
My favorite advice from Guthrie is #32. If something works, forget about the rule that says it shouldn’t.
kudos
its funny i can stand in front of a crown as long as i have my sax in my hand and im fearless but without it i become a scared girl standing in the corner hiding and writing on here i feel the same way im still that scared person hiding guess ill never get over that feeling but i so love reading all the stories its taken me years go get up enough courage to even leave comments on storys that i love
We don't bite, well, mostly not.
BCTS really is a friendly place.
Some of us may be a bit weird at times but we don't mean to hurt anyone. Please remember that if any of my comments hurts or scares you.
Take a stab at it anyway
This place is a canvas. It is yours to do with as you please. No greater gift than sharing what your imagination craves to express.