Hi everyone;

Extremely long-time visitor here, finally signed up for reasons that should become apparent.

Back in the mists of time when I first became aware of online gunge communities, everything was led by fiction, stories that were often exceptional. Obviously, with the onward march of technology, these started to get squeezed out, firstly by images, then video. So, I am led to wonder if these original stories were only written and read because there was nothing better on offer, or on their own merits?

I ask because I am a writer professionally, and, over many years, have helped my muse by writing gunge fiction on the side, purely for personal enjoyment. I find that I've now written an enormous amount, and wondered if there would be any interest in sharing it, or even in writing more should there be such a demand.

Best
Gemma

Absolutely

Hi Gemma and welcome.
You probably know there is a "stories" section on the forum. Click 'people' then 'stories' to access if you're not aware.
There are a wide variety and amount of stories stored, but as I have mentioned in other threads, I believe a large numbers of visitors to the site are unaware of their location.

To answer your specific question yes there would be significant interest I'm sure.

Is this you offering a service?

I check the story section everyday for new ones and almost daily read ones I have saved on my phone. I have a problem. Please help. Lol. Jk. Well mostly.

My point is there is still a small community of writers and readers on here. Also, several of them combine the use of stories with pictures (usually artificial) to help illustrate their stories.

Not sure what you have in mind for yours; I have a very narrow interest in what I like, but I hope regardless that you will consider adding your works to the archive!

I'd love to read some good messy stories.

Oh yes, I still very much enjoy the stories on here.

There is a small but passionate community of writers both on here and on other sites. As madmalc said, stories suffer a bit from discoverability but the ratings are usually pretty reliable on what's higher quality

Another vote for more stories! I've been online since '94 but somehow mostly missed the story era so I'm enjoying them now.

Can we see you being pied and slimed while you write them?

Hi Gemma. If it helps at all, as someone with a few stories out there, write for your own pleasure, when time permits, then edit and publish, when time permits.

The clicks and views for effort put in probably won't ever match up (my best and longest story is my least read, oh damn you reading public! ), but just putting the story out there, for others to enjoy, that's the achievement, knowing others have also maybe possibly liked your work.

Good luck - If you fancy a longer thread, would be interested to see the older stories which inspired you.

Thanks everyone.

Yes, everything I've written has been for my own enjoyment - for some reason, it helps me out when I get writer's block on my mainstream work.

I'm more than happy to post if there is an audience. It seems to me (perhaps I'm wrong) that a smaller percentage of video product now is gameshow-style - my novellas certainly fill a gap if so! In fact, as mentioned up thread, I've experimented a little myself with AI 'promotional' images to accompany my work - it's fun to see how the characters turn out.

There's an interactive element too, as, like any decent gameshow, there's always a vote or two, which I'd be happy to open up as well - even if it means rewriting the ending!

I always really enjoy well written stories about wam. Unfortunately, a lot of would-be messy story sites I've found since the old archive went down don't make clear story quality via community ratings or similar, so I don't read many anymore. But I'm always up to read a good wam story, I love them! I write my own occasionally as well, sometimes just to satisfy an interest of what I haven't found elsewhere.

I'd love to see more stories posted, especially novellas written by a professional.

By the way, should you decide to use AI promotional images, one thing to be aware of is that, unfortunately, the current 'synthetic' tag makes no distinction between 'entirely written by AI' and 'human-written with a few AI images'.

Definitely wish stories were more visible on the site here, they do feel tucked away.

Hi Gemma and welcome!

Your story sounds very similar to mine! A few years ago I realised that I'd been writing quite involved WAM stories - also for my own enjoyment - for nearly two decades. I'd also been a lurker and hardly interacted with the community at all. After all that practice, I felt my stories were getting pretty decent, and I thought sharing them might be a nice way to feel a bit less secretive/ashamed about my kink. Long story short, I took the plunge (haha) and I'm so pleased I did.

I chose to share stories on Substack - I do like the UMD as a community hub, but I think the Stories section leaves a lot to be desired. Posts sink quickly, the formatting options aren't great, and there is some pretty low-quality content to wade through. (Plenty of good, of course, including writers who are now my friends/collaborators/favourite authors!)

Substack has let me build a brand, a persona, and my fictional world(s) more independently - and I've managed to make some beer money, via people who kindly donate or want to work together. Best of all, my stories go straight to people's inboxes, and I've definitely got new readers from the Substack recommendation system. It's worth exploring as an option.

However you choose to do it, my advice would be - go for it! I for one would be super keen to read your tales - especially as you're into the Gameshow vibe, which is 100% my wheelhouse. Publishing has helped me sharpen my writing, given me ideas I'd never thought of, and introduced me to some lovely people to talk sloppy fun with (even been to the pub with some of them!).

Good luck - and feel free to DM if you've got any questions.
Shameless plug for the blog: https://daisydduncan.substack.com/

Always room for a good story on here. Especially because you can break boundaries of feasibility with them!

It's not a huge selection of the community, but there is a good group of those who enjoy the written world of WAM. I always look forward to new authors.

There is certainly a community, as niche as it may be, who are still very much interested in fiction and written work!

If anything, I've noticed a growing trend more recently among newer writers (including myself) and a growing conversation about written work.

A few posts in the recent weeks have explored these topics and even the potential for more visibility of stories, whether it's a main header link or a sub forum purely for fictional writing.

Either way, there will always be an audience who will greatly appreciate your work! Share away!

I know I always love reading stories if the WAM in the stories is WAM that I would enjoy watching on video or doing myself. There would absolutely be interest! Especially if you advertise when you put out new stories.

Thanks for the replies everyone, it seems that there is a much more thriving writing community than I had realised, which is great.

I've gone ahead and posted a sample work to gauge interest. It isn't by any means first chronologically but the setup is self-explanatory and a nice jumping on point.

You can check it out here:
https://umd.net/stories/i/the-gunge-show--season-3-episode-1/return/%2Fprofile%2Fi%2Fgemmathewriter%2Fsection%2Fblogs%2F

I have posted a lot of stories to the story section here which is not great on formatting or picture options but I do it because the stories I write are for me but it is great to get a few comments and views of something you create. I have recently tried out the game show troupe (oldie but Goldie) so I will read your first story with interest!

If anything I often prefer a good story to a real video, and I'd include your recent post in that! The chances of seeing the kind of things you write about in real life are so vanishingly slim it's great to read and fantasize about such brilliantly over the top ideas.

I think a big problem with stories is over the years there's been more than one occasion where a site where stories are posted has shut down suddenly resulting in losing a lot of archive content. I can think of a number of stories from sites like Splosh, Ecgunge and Tellygunge that sadly disappeared overnight. Some things have been recovered but many sadly haven't. As great as the UMD site is the community is nowhere near as active as they were

we have most of the tellygunge stories in our archives, unfortunately they are mainly paper copies, but we have maybe 95% of the tellygunge stories! The other big problem is that the wam fiction community is now very, very fragmented rather than centralised like it used to be! But there are sites out there, some better than others but only a few I'd personally recommend for various reasons!

Yes there absolutely is still interest in wam fiction, the community is very fragmented these days though, but the interest is definitely there!