8letters’ Incest Story Review Thread

8letters, at the outset you said you would review stories relative to how you would write them. You haven't reviewed my stories, so I don't have a personal complaint but from a reader's perspective it would improve your credibility if your reviews were not quite so relative.

laffalot, I should have added to my critique that the main problem with the story is that the characters are uninteresting. We know next to nothing about Jodi. The only thing we know about Lexi is that she just got beat up by her alcoholic boyfriend. You discuss a number of times Jodi’s physical attraction towards Lexi, but there’s not a lot of chemistry between them - they’re just sisters. Once Lexi said she thought she was bisexual, I knew that they would have sex. However, I never wanted them to have sex.

There’s also the problem that the George was too easily dismissed. He has all of Lexi’s possessions. They probably have joint financial commitments that will need to be dissolved. Will he accept the breakup or will he try to punish Lexi? What about their mutual friends? Lexi loved him and built her life around him, but seems unconcerned about him once Jodi takes her in.

Perhaps slow down the seduction. Have it take place weeks after Lexi moves in. Give Jodi and Lexi time to fall in love before they have sex.

laffalot said:

So, a couple of missed commas, (wait a minute, are you Mr. Edwards, my old English teacher from high school?) and a typo, took you out of the story? That seems kind of sad, but I guess my response to that would be - you get what you pay for.

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I've recently seen a coffee cup that says, "I love eating my cats and leaving out commas". Leaving out commas forces a reader to reread your sentences to figure out where the comma should be. Do it often enough and I'll stop reading.

laffalot said:

Now onto the second part, where you said that Jodi asked about the last two relationships. It's been awhile since I've posted that story, so I had to go back and look it up, but I knew that you was wrong even before I reread that part of my story. They were talking about their intolerant parents, and Jodi was the one who brought up her best friend and lover from high school, saying something to the tune of, "Remember when they used to love Katie? Back before they found out the two of us were in a relationship, that is." She goes on to say a few more sentences about how shocked and angry their father was when she told him she was a lesbian and in love with Katie.

It was after that discussion of their parents that Lexi asked about Jodi's latest girlfriend, and what had happened to their relationship. While you are correct that the two sisters most likely talked since the breakup, some people tend to hold stuff like that inside for awhile because it is too painful to discuss right away. I've seen it before firsthand, so it would make perfect sense for Jodi to not want to discuss the details of the breakup for several months.

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Here is what I was discussing:

Lexi looked up at Jodi, then sat up on the edge of the bed. "Tell me what happened with Alex."

A clouded look came over Jodi's face and she sighed. Then stepped over and sat next to her sister. "What do you want to know?"

"Well, I thought you two were going to stay together forever. Then all of a sudden, she left the state."

"There's not much to tell actually. When she finished her internship and became a surgeon, she was offered a chance to go to Seattle and work with one of the best cardiologists in the country. She asked me to go with her, but I couldn't just up and leave like that. Besides, when she was just an intern, we barely had any quality time together. Her becoming a surgeon only made things worse. The writing was on the wall long before she was offered the job, I just didn't want to see it."

"That sucks... So, what about Katie? You went to live with her and her parents after dad kicked you out. Why did you and her break up?"

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NotWise said:

8letters, at the outset you said you would review stories relative to how you would write them. You haven't reviewed my stories, so I don't have a personal complaint but from a reader's perspective it would improve your credibility if your reviews were not quite so relative.

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Thanks for your PM expanding on your concerns.

What I'm doing now is that I make notes as I read the story, trying to give what I thought as read the story in quasi real time. When I created threads for feedback on my stories, the replies I found most useful were when reviewers did the same for my story.

I guess that one of the problems with this approach is that the things most likely to grab my attention are somewhat trivial things. An uninteresting main character isn’t going to provoke an immediate response, but it’s more damaging to a story than repeatedly leaving out commas. So I agree with your comment that after I finish providing my real time commentary, I should make some additional comments about the story as a whole.

As for “That’s My Girl”, it’s an unusual case in that the writing bothered me so much that I didn’t finish the first page. I wanted to give feedback beyond “your writing bothered me so much that I didn’t finish the first page.” From your comment, I guess the amount of feedback reached overkill.

Anyway, I’m open to suggestions on how to do a better job of giving feedback. I’d prefer PM’s to posts to this thread.

The Invitation

Story is here.

This story has a 3.90 score which I assumed was because of poor writing. The writing is fine and I think the low rating is because the story isn’t a good match for the Incest/Taboo category. For openers, there is incest in the story but it is somewhat tangential to the story. The story is about a camping trip with six people - the narrator Lacey (18), her college roommate Debbie (18?), Debbie’s Dad Mark (48), Mark’s girlfriend Karen (38), Karen’s son Matt (18?) and Mark’s friend Greg (mid-40’s). All the men have sex with all the women, so there is incest but as Lacey isn’t related to anyone, it’s tangential as I said.

The story is to me more of a modern-day horror story. The main character makes some questionable decisions, some minor characters make some odd decisions and soon everything goes to hell. There was very little that was erotic to me.

I think to have pulled this off you would have made Lacey a very compelling character - someone with a strong point of view that we liked. I never got a feeling for her personality. She spends a year at college and makes no friends there beyond Debbie, but quickly bonds with this group of strangers. She’s disgusted with alcoholic Greg, but is strongly attracted to him despite him having no appealing qualities.

The first questionable decision happens the first evening at the campground. Greg has been drinking hard all day and the rest of the group has been having some beers. After dinner, the group is playing the party game “Cards Against Humanity”. I’m not familiar with the game, but after it is described in the story it seems wildly inappropriate for the group. Then this happens:

"So tell me, Lacey, do you have personal experience with [a broken condom]?" asked Mark.

"I have to admit that I don't. Although I'm a college freshman, I've only been laid twice, and neither time was memorable," I replied. "Thank God the condoms didn't break. The guy I fucked was a lousy lay. I swear he creamed his rubber in about thirty seconds each time."

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A guy almost three times her age asks her a very personal question about her sex life and not only does Lacey not blink, she provides even more personal information about her sex life. I was totally unprepared for this. A few paragraphs later, Lacey thinks:

Just talking about my sex life (or lack thereof) with a bunch of people that I just met was a little odd, but we were buzzed on drink and having fun.”

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It was not a little odd, it was really, really odd and the justification was terribly weak.

I never got a feeling for anyone’s sexual morals. Karen, Mark and Lacey share a trailer and the next morning, Karen stays naked as she cooks breakfast for Mark and Lacey. Lacey thinks Karen is “a little unusual”. A little? Greg propositions Lacey and shows her his dick. When Lacey tells Debbie about it, Debbie finds it funny. Karen, Matt and Debbie go out fishing and when Mark and Lacey join them, Debbie and Matt are having a 69 while Karen is at the next table smoking a cigarette with her jeans unbuttoned. Debbie had meet Matt and Karen the day before. This was too much for me and I skipped to the page three. On page three, Karen fucks her son Matt and that’s too much for Lacey. She goes over to the other trailer alone while the other five continue to have sex. Lacey decides the next morning to go home, but has a fuck with Mark before she goes.

To make all the sex work, you needed to have laid the groundwork that everyone camping was sexually adventurous. You didn’t. In fact, Lacey seems sexually unadventurous as she has had sex only twice. There’s nothing in Lacey’s description of her roommate Debbie that indicated that she was that sexually adventurous. Lacey, Debbie and Matt spending the night in a trailer having a threesome with Mark and Karen’s permission would have been bold but understandable. The orgies were way too over the line.

After that, Lacey’s life goes to hell. Mark and Karen broke up Lacey’s last night at the camp because Karen told Mark that she was off of birth control and hoping to get pregnant after Greg and Matt had both fucked her twice. When Lacey is back at college, Mark goes insane - he showers Lacey with money and gifts and begs her to marry him. She tells him no but he keeps refusing to take no for an answer. After she calls Mark and convinces that she wants nothing to do with him, Mark uploads a video he secretly took of them having sex in the trailer to some big porn site. Lacey’s friends find out and start mocking her. She drops out of school and takes off, her life ruined. The unhappy ending happens because everyone reverts back to standard sexual morals, which makes the crazy sex at the camp even more inexplicable.

Another one?

Hey 8letters. I have another Incest story of note if you'd like to have at it. This one is longer and more romantic in both the build-up and sex.

Link -> Lucid Ending

I hope you like it. In any case, let me know what you think.

Lucid Ending

Story is here.

This story has an awesome score (4.83) and lot of gushing comments (including one from Lovecraft). However, it’s not a story that appeals to me.

I didn’t like the structure of the story. To me, the information you gave about the present day gave too much of the story away. Are Adrian and Karen going to fall in love and have sex? Obviously yes. Is Adrian going to take over control of Carmichael Industries? I would say obviously yes even though I haven’t read that far yet. There isn’t much in the way of suspense to the story.

Another huge problem to me is that you get wrong a lot of details. Getting one or two details wrong is fine - I can wince and move on. But getting details repeatedly wrong kills the enjoyment for me. Particularly when whole set up for a scene is based on a lack of knowledge of what would really happen in that situation. In the first scene, Adrian is in a generic hospital, getting the same crappy hospital care that Joe Blow would get. The press throng is stationed not far from Adrian’s door. The reality is that the ultra-rich get far different medical treatment that the average Joe. Adrian would probably be at home with doctors visiting him or in a super-private, super-secure hospital for only the ultra-rich. He’d have a personal doctor and a personal nursing staff. Everyone would be waiting on him hand and foot. Nothing would happen to him without his approval.

You got hammered in the comments for getting medical facts wrong. I don’t have that level of medical knowledge but I found it the mom’s story unbelievable - out of the blue she’s diagnosed with a cancer which is going to kill her in six weeks and she stays in bed the whole time. She should have had symptoms earlier; she may be really weak but I doubt that she’s that weak for the whole six weeks. “Undiagnosable” doesn’t mean what you think it means.

You write:

His father was tied up in a meeting on the top floor of his building so he could not be there. Adrian knew that, given the presence of the hot redhead from Accounting, he was quite literally "tied up".

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How would Adrian know the details of what his dad is doing at the his office? All he would know is what his dad told him.

You botch the first scene between Adrian and Karen. Harvard Business School is a graduate school, so Adrian wouldn’t be applying there at 18. Maslow's theory of needs isn’t a modern day management theory - it’s from 1943. Karen’s whole comment is a bunch of gibberish that has nothing to do with the topic Adrian is suppose to be writing on. Harvard doesn’t give merit scholarships and with his family’s wealth, he wouldn’t have qualified for any type of a need-based scholarship.

There’s so much that went unexplained or seemed wrong:

Eighteen year old Adrian was determined to ignore his father and his plastic wife. He had no family, he had no friends. He had no one. Hundreds of girls threw themselves at him. His chiselled body coupled with his brooding persona made him very popular. It did not hurt to be the son of a man who routinely figured in the Forbes' top 10 list either.

One day he sat in his library contemplating taking admission to Harvard Business School. His stellar record in academics, extra-curricular brilliance (and his father's influence) meant he would get in quite easily.

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How did he get a chiseled body? If he had no friends, how could he be very popular? What extra-curricular brilliance?

The above to me points out a problem of leaning so heavily on narrative summary. If you had to tried to show that he had no friends while at the same time he was very popular, you would have realized that that doesn’t make sense. Or by showing Adrian interacting with his classmates, the reader might see that Adrian is friends with everyone but close to no one. Likewise, if you had shown the Dad talking to Adrian about how he’s too busy to spend time with his dying wife, you would have realized that Adrian can’t know about his Dad’s continued cheating on his Mom (though he can suspect it). Perhaps Adrian could have had a phone call with his dad where his dad says he’s tied up with meetings and can’t come home while in the background there’s slurping and smacking sounds like someone is giving him a blowjob.

I found the scene where Karen catches Adrian reading a Hustler odd. Adrian thinks that Karen is hotter than the naked women in the magazine because…she unties her auburn hair? How about a description of her face and body?

I stopped reading after Karen got Adrian out of jail after the rave party. To this point, Karen and Adrian seem attracted to each other not because they each find the other more interesting than everyone else they know, but because they don’t really know anyone else. They are winning by default. I prefer that each half of an incestuous relationship beat out some competition to win the heart of the other person.

Also, I like some uncertainty in my incest stories. I like Adrian wondering if Karen feels towards him what he feels towards her. Because you’ve head hopped and because you’ve told us about their future, there is no uncertainty. At some point, Adrian is going to make a move on Karen and she’ll offer no resistance (or vice versa).

Again, just my opinion. Obviously, lots of other people enjoyed your story much more than I did. Hope that helps.

My preference for a taboo story is to lead into the climax of the story with some voyeurism....some peeks....some "I wasn't supposed to see that"...and being descriptive of clothing, lingerie, etc. it just makes the detail of the story that much more realistic to me.

Appreciate all the authors who contribute to the genre here!

review request

8letters,

Could I get your review of this story? It's a mother/son romance in just over 7400 words.

I've gotten general feedback on some of my stories but, except for a few reader comments, nothing very specific. I know some readers have a problem following through the fashback sequence on the first page. The story was well-received but would probably be better rated if that sequence were written differently. That's a write-and-learn sort of thing.

His Father’s Lover

Story is here.

I’m going to pick several nits with your beginning:
* You start two scenes - at the vanity and outside the mom’s door - that you end as soon as a character has one thought. Low plot development per word. You could have moved the thoughts to other scenes and saved the reader some time
* I thought you gave too much away with the “She also did it for Toby” bit. Once the main characters are introduced, we know it’s a mother-son story. I’d think those thoughts would have been better much later after the ball is rolling
* Toby’s living circumstances were unclear though they seem an important plot point. He’s moved away for college, granddad, something.

You did get into a main conflict - that Toby feels that his mom doesn’t treat him as an adult - fairly quickly. You had a number of images early on that I liked - Toby towering over his mom; Toby comparing his hand size with his mom.

Yeah, the flashback sequence was confusing. I didn’t catch at all that it was a flashback until it was over.

I was completely caught off guard when Toby started kissing his mom. Yes, he wanted to prove to his mom that he was a man. But there are lots and lots of other ways to do that. At this point, the only emotion Toby had shown towards his mom was anger. There hadn’t been much of a description of the Mom’s looks, particularly from Toby’s point of view. The mom put up a tiny amount of resistance, then submitted.

The sex that followed was well-written. You are very good with descriptions - the moonlight and the water as they walk along the beach, the mom’s satin gown, her soft skin, etc. The sex scenes were well-described and erotic.

I would say that there are two main problems with the story and they are related. The first problem is that I didn’t get to know Toby and the mom very well. The second is that I didn’t see why they were attracted to each other. To me, a good incest story has a lot of a character being attracted to his/her relative and then being disgusted that he/she is attracted to the relative and fearful about that the relative rejecting him/her. There was almost none of that in your story. Instead, the son says, “Let’s fuck”; the mom says, “We shouldn’t; the son says, “We should”; and the mom says “Okay”. You should have spent a lot more time on what each character was thinking when things turned sexual.

Hope that helps.

8letters said:

Hope that helps.

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Thanks, 8letters. It does.

That story was fairly well received, but reader comments and now your comments along with the reactions to the story I wrote after His Father's Lover have lead me to a simpler story-telling style. I don't think that corrects all the problems you pointed out, but it will help in the future.