Lien_Geller's Story Review Thread.

I genuinely hope you are holding your breath waiting for a response.

And how do you know what requests he's gotten in the last six months? There's a PM system here. Not to mention that posting one entry a year (minus one year) for the last five years is not exactly an active account.

His last story submit here was huge, dozens of Lit pages - he did say higher up in the thread that he was focussing on his own major work (which could well be off Lit), so yeah, he might be away from this thread a while. Breath normally, would be my advice.

Worth waiting for though, and can be brutally honest. When he takes a story apart he's usually on the money. I gave him one of mine to look at a while ago, didn't have the balls to give him another!

Hey!

I'm still around, guys. Since no one was asking for a review I stopped checking in daily and went to check in every week or so. Will hopefully get to review the offered story by the end of the week. Right now it's late and I'm too snoozy.

Later!

Hunters Advent

Here’s Arcerdo’s Hunters Advent and what I thought of it.

A few things to note before I get going with this one. First is that I’m suffering from an absolute bitch of a head cold right now so apologies if I’m more grumpy than my normal sunny-natured self. Also, someone sent me a story that has actual sci-fi/fantasy themes to it! Woohoo!

Unfortunately in news that’s not quite so “Woohoo” in nature, your opening is downright off-putting. The author’s note is almost entirely redundant and the bizarre explanation of font styles afterwards is just a bit strange. You classify normal text as “talking” which I initially thought to mean dialogue but isn’t. Bold being used for narration sent shivers up my spine when I saw it. Italics for character thoughts isn’t exactly uncommon enough that I need it pointed out at the start.

Writing fiction has certain conventions to how it uses font styles for a reason. Don’t go re-inventing the wheel when the wheel we’ve got works fine. You could have just forgotten all this introduction and just got on with your story and I’d be much less confused and put off. The author’s note itself doesn’t have anything meaningful to say in it at all. If it’s going to be a long story then show you can keep my interest. Don’t hope you have the skills to keep that interest. Do the work to make it a sure thing. Either way, just get on with it!

Ok, getting to the actual story and the opening “narration” is odd. Firstly, when I think of the underworld I don’t really think of crime. I’m steeped in greek mythology so if someone says underworld to me I immediately start thinking of a big river and a three headed dog hanging around a well of souls. Or maybe I think about Kate Beckinsale in a skin-tight outfit. Either way, I’m clearly not where you seem to think I am. I also wouldn’t think that an underworld would be in front of us. I’d have thought it would be under us.

My point being is that rather than being immersed here into your story’s lore I’m actually shaking my head. It’s a bit like the “forget everything you think you know about…” trope. I fucking hate that. It’s been done to death. If you want me to invest in a new mythology then don’t start out by being a smarmy twat. Show me what’s cool about it and let me enjoy myself. I love vampire mythology, and the more classical the better. To my mind the mythology of Dracula has never been topped, yet almost every fucking vampire book and film starts out condescendingly telling me to forget everything I know about vampires. You know what? No. No I fucking won’t. Why? Because everything I know about vampires is awesome. They turn into bats, wolves and mist. They control storms. They’re eerie yet sexy. They live in cool castles. What you’re about to tell me is that vampires are some kind of a disease, or that they’re just slightly stronger humans with a drinking problem. Or, god help us all, that they fucking sparkle!

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen this particular issue done a lot worse than you do it here. I am being overly harsh because it’s a pet peeve of mine. That being said, if you want me to get on board then there are much better ways to do it than this. For example…

You could start out your story with a guy running for his life from a predator he could not believe existed! And guess what? You do! This is more like it. If the story had opened here I’d be right on board. There’s tension, action, mystery. You do more for your story in this line than with all the prattling about beforehand. When in doubt, just get the fuck on with it. Ok, here we go then, he’s being chased by something. What’s next?

Your next paragraph runs into a couple of newbie issues in that you’ve got a super-long sentence stung together by a lot of commas that could be full stops. You also use ellipsis in a really annoying way. Ellipsis can build tension, but they break up story flow which isn’t a good idea in the midst of a fast-paced scene like this where chases are involved.

You then put the dialogue that follows in bold text, despite making a point of telling me that bold text is for narration several paragraphs before. That’s really fucking confusing.

Garth had simply thought it was some kind of a sick joke, I mean, it had to be have been one, because who comes up to you and says something like that; especially with such an innocent smile?!

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That right there is a piece of very bad writing. Commas where there should be full-stops. It had to be have been one? You need to catch shit like that in your editing passes. I’d be more forgiving with a longer story, but for a single page instalment you’ve got no excuse for missing something like that. Then more commas that should be full stops. Seriously, research sentence structure. You go from a third person narrative to addressing the reader directly, which seems a bit odd and out of place. You could have done this a lot better with minimal thought. Start off by establishing a relaxing mood with a stranger approaching with a friendly smile as if he’s about to ask the time. Then have him declare in a chillingly cold voice that he’s about to murder the guy. Think about tone, tension, build-up. This reads like train of thought writing which does not mix well with the kind of scene you’re building.

You’ve also gone from him being chased in the present to recalling how it started in the past. This leads you into a very passive voice for a very active scene. As a reader, I feel like I’m being regaled upon rather than being actively with the subject of the drama. Wouldn’t this have been better if you’d actually started with him leaving his house, looking forward to meeting this woman? Then instead of going back and telling me what’s happened, instead actually telling me what happens as it happens? Actually writing the scene, building tension and doing the proper legwork to get me into the story rather than giving me the cliff notes after the fact?

It made Garth feel the same pain as whatever he had been cut with earlier, and it took all his strength not to pass out from the agonising pain when he pulled it out. He then forced himself to stand up, but soon found himself leaning against the alley wall for support, his leg radiating with burning pain.

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The word pain shows up three times in that paragraph. That’s word repetition and it’s distracting. Figure out ways of condensing sentences to say more with less, or expand your vocabulary.

And now, the predator was intentionally taking its time coming closer, making sure that he heard every footstep... it was driving him up the wall

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I actually laughed at that. The phrase “driving him up the wall” just does not quite do justice to being driven to the edge of fear and panic caused by an otherworldly creature hunting you down to kill you. It’s a phrase used for when you spend too much time with someone you find moderately annoying.

Using capital letters for emphasis in a story is also distracting. Use italics instead. It looks more professional.

Garth then slowly tried to lift himself up, but his head was still throbbing from the impact with the wall, while asking in a WTF voice: "So, what you're a hitman or something? And you are supposed to hunt me like an animal and kill me?! Who; who the fuck asked you to do this?!?!"

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Okie doke. The phrase “asking in a WTF voice” makes me genuinely question whether or not you’ve graduated high school. “Who; who” that made me think he was doing an impression of an owl. Also, you can get away with one exclamation point and a question mark side by side, but it’s generally a good idea to stop there. You’re writing a story, not texting your friends.

Holy shit. The reveal that Garth is actually a vampire? That was just terrible. I mean look at this:

As Garth felt his life ebbing away, the grinned at the hunter, who he refused to admit was a human being, revealing his two razor sharp fangs and glowing red eyes. He then barely managed to utter: "So you knew what I was; a vampire... I have... superhuman speed, strength... senses... and... healing..."

He then coughed a burst of blood from his mouth, before continuing:

"... You are... without a... doubt... a Night Hunter. I have faced... many things... in my life... even other hunters, like... you. Not once... have I feared... any of them..."

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“Also… before I croak… let me… quickly… describe the past ten years… of Vampire history…”

The point is that is a fucking weird spot for an exposition dump. Also, why haven’t we seen any inkling of Garth’s superhuman speed when he’s been running through the city?

Then he does the cliché of introducing himself after he’s killed Garth and has no one to talk to. A call from Rosie later and you start doing this:

Vincent: "Hey Rosie, it's me, Vincent."

Rosie: "Ah, about time Vinny. What took you?"

Vincent: "Heh, you know what."

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What the actual fuck? Did this suddenly turn into a play? Why the hell are you writing the character’s name in front of their dialogue?

Ok, so after reading the whole thing the only thing I can think of to say to you is this:

Learn to write.

I’m not trying to be a dick here (though it certainly comes naturally) but you have various symptoms of someone who’s trying to run before he can walk. When I was young I wrote a few short stories that were really badly written. I’d go show my parents these stories and I got immensely frustrated when all they’d do is correct my shitty punctuation and various grammatical errors. But what do you think of the ideas? I’d say, knowing they were the most amazing ideas in the history of ideas. My parents said they didn’t know, because they were too busy pointing out the basic errors to notice the ideas at all. At the time this mightily pissed me off, but the more I kept writing, the more it made sense.

Ideas are cheap. Any idiot can come up with an idea for a story that’s good enough to sell. Learning how to write that story well is another matter entirely. Forget characterisation and plotting for now and go back to school. Learn how to write a proper sentence. Learn how to write dialogue. Learn that grammar is a thing. Learn how to self-edit. Good writers get this shit wrong a lot. Keep writing, keep reading, keep studying. Get better.

Put the work in and you’ll see results, but right now your technical errors are too big for me to see any promise in your ideas or to give you feedback on the stuff I usually talk about here. If I get the time I’ll read the second chapter later and if I see an improvement then I’ll write up a review, but if it’s more of the same then I’m not going to go further with this one.

Anyway, sorry that was a bit of a critical evisceration, and I hope it doesn’t put you off writing. Just remember that everyone was once where you are now. You can either grit your teeth, work hard at it and get better, or you can give up in which case no one will ever get to see if your ideas were worthwhile. Personally, I’d go for option A. It’s harder, but more rewarding in the long run.

Ouch, harsh but fair

Oh boy, i knew i might be getting something pretty harsh back but whew.

First off, thank you for responding so quickly despite the less than pleasant circumstances. Most who i ask don't ever get back to me so this was much appreciated.

It was tough seeing all those errors pointed out, but i asked for honesty and i do not regret it.
As of now i am in the process of looking through your criticism with a fine tooth comb and my own text and as of now, i am quite embarrassed of myself.
So many mistakes...

Which is why i ask that you NOT read chapter 2 as of yet, at least not until i have a chance of revising and editing it with what i have learned here.
I don't want to embarrass myself or put you though this without a chance to fix it first.

As an author i am a newbie and English is not my native language and i am no, i am not going to use that as an excuse.

Thank you for pointing out my mistakes and technical missteps.
I can understand your pet peeve of 'forget everything you know' and i realise now upon retrospect that is how the opening narration came out, that was not my intention and i apologise.
It was meant to try and create atmosphere and interest but i suppose it backfired, didn't it?

Trust me, Vampires in this world are not 'stronger than most with a drinking problem' oh no, they are something way, way more.
Also, sparkling? Oh God... i fucking hate those movies.

Garths revelation as a vampire, yeah i really dropped the ball there didn't i? I was so wrapped up in putting my own twist into a familiar opening scenario of 'being chased by a monster' with the revelation that the roles were reversed that i made so many mistakes.
I am not going to change the idea itself but i need to fix the execution.

I realise i have much to learn and for me the most effective way of learning is through experiencing honest feedback like this.
This doesn't put me off because this is what i asked for, instead of gritting my teeth i am going to smile and put what i learn here to the test over and over.

So again, thank you for the response and i hope next time i can redeem myself of this... yeah, there is no pretty way to say it: Farce i made out of my own work.

Take 2

https://www.literotica.com/s/derelict-0006

This is a sci-fi story I wrote a couple years ago. It's about a Marine stationed in a remote part of the galaxy. I hope you like it.

Interesting thread. First time I saw it as I only joined this year and it wasn't active at the time.
I have a story that I'm submitting for the Geller treatment. Doesn't contain any of your bugaboos.

https://www.literotica.com/s/hoary-the-horny-snowman

Derelict 0006

Once more unto the breach dear friends, once more! This time with AwkwardMD’s Derelict 0006.

I like your opening. You do a successful “awakening from a dream” sequence, which isn’t that easy to pull off since they can be a bit by-the-numbers due to general overuse by many writers. Yours feels fresh and genuine despite that. The main character and situation are introduced successfully whilst also adding some context of the world around her. The focus is kept where it should be with no meandering or forced info dumps. It’s also pretty kinky and the sexy times are written well enough that the reader is allowed to feel the frustration along with the protagonist.

This is all very good.

Going into her interaction with Givens, things continue on the up-and-up. In reading this I have a really clear picture of Hitomi in my mind, and I’m starting to get a feel for her attitude and motivation. That’s been done with a lot of good characterisation in a relatively small amount of paragraphs. Nicely done.

The call from her commanding officer successfully shifts the tone from being relaxed to urgent, and I like the added dose of humour from him too. In the next scenes I like how you stay focused from one task to the next. It maintains the pacing of the story and the building excitement. I’ve seen some writers attempt things like this only to try and do everything at once. This normally leads to a literary clusterfuck as they try to explain what’s going on whilst writing three separate scenes into one. You keep your protagonist on point. Receive the call. Get equipped. Search for ship. It’s nice and easy to follow along with whilst maintaining interest and building up to… something I haven’t read yet. Still, it’s working and working well. Thumbs up.

Ok, first slight hitch that I’ve run into here. There’s a solitary marine exploring an alien spaceship. She comes upon a long lost lover inexplicably. Immediately she decides to get straight to the shagging. Huh? I mean, ok, I get that she’s happy to see her. Still, there’s a time and a fucking place!

I just went ahead and read the whole thing from there on out. No reason to get nitpicky with this one. You can definitely write. Time to talk about the more interesting stuff, because I think that’s where this story struggles.

Don’t panic. I think you ultimately succeed in what you set out to do. It’s just that some of the bigger beats don’t land quite as successfully as they could. This criticism is also a bit more wibbly-wobbly than usual because I’m not pointing out any distinctive flaws, but rather just giving feedback on how it worked for me personally.

I think you could have used a longer build-up between Alise and Hitomi to that initial love scene. To your credit you do lay some groundwork for it in the opening of the story, but it just feels like too much too soon. I’m ready to explore alien space ships and instead I’m thrust into the inner workings of an old relationship I don’t know much about and have little investment in. I know good sci-fi often uses outlandish settings and adventures to explore human stories, but this approach left me feeling a bit cheated. It might have been nice if there was a genuine problem that Hitomi and Alise had to solve together rather than just spending most of the time recollecting their past tragic separation. It would give the story a more active feel to it, and give the reader a clear goal for them to achieve whilst you did the soul-searching along the way. It would also allow Alise to be more of a sympathetic character and probably make the ending have more impact. I like that you left it ambiguous. I did that with one of my own stories, and it does not go over well with a lot of people who want a definitive ending. It’s a ballsy thing to do, so well done for having the guts to do it. My only issue is that ambiguous endings like this work best where the reader can fill in the ending for themselves as the writer offers up a probable happy ending or a probable tragic ending. Yours seems to err more toward the tragic because the evidence built up in the story seems to indicate Alise is fake. There’s no real counter-point to show that there might be a happy ending in there too. I think having Alise follow Hitomi and genuinely contribute to keeping the marine safe might blur that line a bit more and suggest that there could be a non-sinister force at work.

That being said, your characterisation was spot-on, your plotting was generally good although I did feel you started getting repetitive in the final third. Overall it was an interesting concept and a good read. I don’t want a sequel, but I do feel like it could have been fleshed out a bit more than it was.

Anyway, keep up the good work!

Spot on.

Plot pacing is a tough lesson. Having the right amount of the right kind of buildup before asking readers to care.

I appreciate the read and the notes!

Delayed

Hey folks. Rutger5, I'm really sorry about this but I tried getting into your story and it just generally wasn't my idea of a good time. Thought I'd told you sooner but I must not have clicked the submit button or something. My bad. Big apologies there.

Maxwell Spanx, I can't review your story today but will have a look through the weekend and get back to you.

Chaos in the Middle East.

Right then, after that humongous delay, let’s get on with it. This one’s by MaxwellSpanx, and it’s called Chaos in the Middle East.

Alrighty then, your opening isn’t terrible by any stretch of the imagination but it is a bit bland. I understand you’re forming up the character of your protagonist and establishing a rapport with your audience. In that goal you’re moderately successful in getting me to feel for her and her situation. It’s just that, as I’ve said time and time again, this is the part where you’re supposed to plant my interest. A recollection of how crappy and shit someone’s life is just doesn’t do that. Ok, her life sucks. Why should I care? She’s been having an affair with her boss. Again, that ain’t exactly something new around these parts.

This goes on a bit with some more familiar recollections in establishing she’s a bit of a tart. Although I’m not remotely against that, it is once again failing to capture any spark of interest or originality. It’s not as if you’re even writing up these situations in a remotely sexy way. It’s just casual recollections of things that could be other Lit stories by hitting the random spin button. It’s also quite a long time before I get a name for Valerie. This can sometimes be done in interesting ways, but with your story it just comes across like you forgot to mention it which is a bit odd.

The first time you’ve really gotten any sort of response out of me is with the case of mistaken identity of the TV repair guy. That was pretty funny. It could have had more set up and pay off, but the idea was great.

Getting on with it, by the time her and Derek are getting down to the nasty I’m a bit underwhelmed. First off, during these scenes I’m usually more interested in the lady than the dude and so far you haven’t given me an inkling as to what Valerie actually looks like. I’m not massively superficial or anything, but an inkling would be nice.

My melon boobs broke free from the dress.

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Ha! Ok, I’ve heard boobs being compared to melons but when you phrase it like that it sounds like her boobs are melons. That’s a bit weird.

Alright so again, the sex was as basic and by-the-numbers as possible for me. There was no real feeling or interest in it. Not enough build-up for the payoff. Not enough meaningful interaction to invest me in what was going on. This is a first time experience of prostitution. Nerves? Excitement? Understanding between two strangers? Interesting disagreements? Maybe some conflict? Nerp. It’s just a finger up the bum and off to the races between two people I don’t really give a fuck about at this point.

To get a bit unnecessarily deep into this issue, it actually reminds me of something JJ Abrams once said in a speech about “mystery box” writing. A lot of it was utter bollocks, but he did mention something about the movie Jaws that stuck with me. He said that the reason the sequels didn’t work as well as the first was because they took the wrong thing from the movie. It’s a film about three guys setting themselves against nature and coming together despite their differences to face the threat. That’s something that delves deep into the nature of humanity’s struggle and success since the dawn of our species.

Then the sequels were about a big fucking shark.

You’ve got a big fucking shark problem, mate. It’s like you’ve read a lot of erotic stories and taken the bits that seem the most interesting. The kink, the sex, the climax, and forgotten about things like human emotion, set-up, sensation, connection and everything else that makes sex actually interesting.

The beginning of the story, after reading the whole thing, also feels far too passive. It’s all just Valerie’s recollections with nothing actually happening in the moment. You give her a snarky voice, and to your credit you do succeed in giving her a voice, but there’s just too much of it. She wanders off on tangents and loses focus with what’s going on. There was a dreaded “back to the story” moment in there as well when you seemed to realise that you’d rambled off in a different direction for far too long.

By the time the prince shows up I’m bored. I read a bit more into it but by this point I’m actually actively disliking the story so I think I’ll stop reading. It’s just more meaningless sex, everything just seems to revolve around the kink of a mature, slutty, woman having it off with a foreign prince. If you’d actually invested or interested me with either of those characters you might be faring better, but it seems more like sexual role-play at this point than anything meaningful. It’s also a role-play that’s not really up my street.

So with that, I’m going to stop reading here and hope at least some of this feedback is useful for you. As usual, since I didn’t like this story very much, if you want me to take down this review then feel free to PM me and I’d be happy to delete it for you. If you have any arguments to make or questions to ask then feel free and I’ll try to get back to you ASAP.

Have fun writing new stuff in future, and remember all it takes to get better is to write more. ^_^

Hey Lien,

Good to see you're back on the Lit forum. I've been away a lot too.

One of the most common points you've made about my work is the overdose of melodrama and how it works to the detriment of the story.

While I'm still guilty of it to some extent, I have tried to improve and make my stories more light-hearted than they were. In that regard, I have a story for your review. It's quite short at 3 Lit pages. I'll be upfront in saying there is a bit of melodrama, but that is one minor subplot and is counterbalanced by a lot of other stuff.

Let me know what you think.

https://www.literotica.com/s/yuppie-and-bitchface

Yuppie and Bitchface

Alright then ladies and gents, after getting utterly fucking buried in work for the past several months I’m gonna try and ding off some rust to finally get around to looking at Yuppie and Bitchface by LaRascasse.

Right then, your opening few paragraphs where Theodore tries to get a flight booked in a blizzard weren’t exactly my idea of a good time. Theodore himself is put across as a rather repugnant character, but not an interestingly repugnant character. Putting across characters, especially protagonists, that the reader isn’t meant to like is a tough job to pull off. Usually, you have to make them either in some way relatable, or you have to bring in plot elements that make their particular flaws interesting in context.

You don’t do either here.

Just as an easy (and admittedly overused) example, let’s take Walter White. This guy is thoroughly nasty to the point where eventually his actions are repellent. Yet it’s fascinating to watch his downfall, because initially he’s doing it for a good reason. We see how downtrodden he is, and we initially root for him even though he makes all the wrong choices. Then by the time he becomes utterly horrible, we’re already invested. Also, the context of his situation is always compelling since he has to balance a double life so even when he does things that make us dislike him, it’s usually in a situation that we want to see him navigate because it’s interesting.

You, on the other hand, give me a spoilt brat whining about not being able to get his way. It’s not even as if his character flaw is compelling. But that’s ok because you soften the blow of dullness with… wait for it… business jargon! If I’d have come across this story randomly on the site I wouldn’t have made it past the first **.

"I'll have to break out the good stuff," smiled the woman behind the counter. Her English was delightfully accentuated by Quebecois French. Each syllable sounded like a note of music. She could probably sing the Yellow Pages if she wanted to. She went to the backroom and came back with a bottle of ochre coloured Hennessy cognac.

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Now that right there is a really rich and quite interesting piece of descriptive writing. One saving grace of the opening, that I’ve until now forgotten to mention due to my excessive need to complain, was that you handled the dialogue well. I didn’t like what was being said but the conversation flowed naturally and from remembering some of your earlier work I do have to say you’ve come up by leaps and bounds in this particular area.

The description itself really paints a picture of the woman for me, not just the characterisation of the woman but also of setting the mood of the scene.

To your credit, I actually am even starting to enjoy the conversation between him and the bartender. I like the humour and the set up for a potential relationship.

Then he gets drunk after 1 cognac and disappears up to a mysterious even larger penthouse. Alas, I fear that nice bartender girl is never to be seen again.

Waking up randomly on someone else’s couch is pretty weird. Immediately following this with an argument about hotel bookings is weirder.

Abigail doesn’t exactly capture my interest. Unfortunately, I’m also getting the impression that she’s going to be the main love interest. So, once again I find myself reading about two of your protagonists who I actively don’t like form some sort of connection that I’m probably not going to be invested in. I hope you prove me wrong, but this is a hell of a recurring theme with you, buddy.

When they’re both drinking at the bar you start to break down the barriers by mentioning that he finds Abby’s shapely eyes and aquiline features “almost cute”. Ugh. I think if you’re going to set up your two protagonists in conflict with each other then you need a more compelling reason to break that ice than that one finds the other cute. I’m not saying attraction can’t break barriers, but he hasn’t really mentioned that about her until now and it’s not something easily overlooked. I think a more thought out moment of initial connection between them might have been what the doctor ordered here.

In fact, you actually do something like that when Theo offers to help put her in touch with her family. I’d just have swapped these two moments around. Get the real moment they connect front and centre, then mention that he finds her cute when her face loses the competitive edge. Otherwise it just sounds superficial.

Then in the usual LaRascasse style you go from 0 to 10000 without so much as a glimmer of set-up. He’s put out a meme about her calling her resting bitchface and now she’s furious. There’s no build-up to this moment so it just comes out of the blue. The excuse is her drinking too much but that seems a bit convenient. As a reader I’m just left thinking “wait, where the hell did that come from?”

The next day she’s apparently feeling bad about it and wants to apologise whilst he continues to be a jerk. I’m pretty much only still reading at this point because I’ve written this much and stopping now feels wrong, but my response to this is just a resounding shrug. I don’t really get where Abby is coming from. I thought she was genuinely angry and now she’s just done a complete 180 to go for an apology instead. I don’t really see why this person would care about his feelings at all because you’ve done no real character building with her. It’s your usual issue with excessive melodrama and no real substance beneath it. At this point from what I really know about Abby she could sprout wings and fly off into the sunset and it wouldn’t really have any impact. I just don’t care about her, Theo, or their relationship because you haven’t given me a reason to.

You then introduce an outside factor to get them back in the same room together and again I’m left feeling cold about it. The family needing a room just sounds really contrived, especially since I doubt we’ll be seeing them again for the rest of the story. That’s just lazy writing to me. It’s like me writing my way through a fantasy series and realising that I had an issue with how my character was going to get out of a problem.

“The werewolves launched their attack at Jim without mercy, their vicious maws foaming for their imminent meal. Then, a magical wall inexplicably appeared out of nowhere and they each came crashing into it with a bone-crunching impact. This was fortunate for Jim, as he could now continue his conversation with the busty farm girl.”

You’ve written yourself into a corner where your two protagonists genuinely don’t want to see each other, and rather than having them interact or do something themselves you introduce a random outside factor to get them back in the same room together.

You then actually do something decent and make them gasp have a genuine conversation. Unfortunately for me, this conversation is about the NFL and I have absolutely no fucking clue what they’re talking about. Oh well, points to you for trying to make them have an actual connection through a shared interest.

Now, I actually don’t mind the scene where it’s revealed Theo suffers from depression. It’s actually a nice and actually genuine moment between him and Abby. It’s just that, once again, it comes completely out of fucking nowhere. Not even a hint of his situation has been given thus-far in the story and as a result this moment lacks the impact it could have otherwise had. Again, you let yourself down by your utter lack of any kind of attempt to build up to these big, weighty moments you seem to love writing.

Holy fucking shit, you actually prove me wrong and do have the family show up again. Yeeeey! This is more like it. The scene also builds on the previous one. Although, to my mind what you needed was an additional scene before this where Abby came across the family’s problem in the lobby. In fact, having that initial scene to let us get to know the characters of the stranded family and build sympathy to their situation would have given the following scenes an incredible degree of impact because of it. It’s basic show, don’t tell. It also allows me to outline a point that, to me, is your greatest weakness as a writer.

Plots of all stripes have a beginning, a middle, and an end. You write middles and ends. You don’t write beginnings. To think of it another way, try: Set-up, conflict, resolution. Conflict in your stories often shows up out of absolutely fucking nowhere giving huge melodramatic impact. Sometimes you don’t even resolve it and just end up writing a series of middles leading to a random end. To give your conflict and resolution actual impact you need to set them up properly. Mentioning that Theo had issues with depression, even briefly, would have painted him allowing Abby to move into his penthouse in a very different light. Rather than Abby telling him that a random family needed to move into her room, showing that family interacting with her before she went to him would again have given that scene much more meaning.

What follows on from this is another issue with your storytelling in that you’ve seemed to put the set-up after the resolution. When Abby begins to explain herself and her motivations? Yeah, I could have actually really used that at the beginning of this story when she was acting like a random freak on the edge of a psychopathic breakdown. I mean, you’re not writing a fucking detective story where you only get to find out the killer’s motive at the end. Stop trying to impress me with big twists and lay some fucking groundwork!

It is bothering me that I’m half way into this story and Theo actually seems like a different person than he was at the beginning. I know characters should grow throughout a story but the change in Theo is inexplicable. He doesn’t even sound like the same guy he was at the start of the story now. It’d actually be pretty funny to show the conflict in his nature in that he’s quite spoilt and selfish when it comes to minor things, but actually quite generous on a grander scale. Like, he knows and cares for the causes of his charities and works diligently for them, but also hates it when his private jet is late. Your portrayal of him seems to be going for this, but rather than feeling like one character it feels like he has multiple personality disorder from one scene to the next.

Then after all that build-up we get down to them doing the nasty and I have to say that it was disappointingly brief. Not badly written by any stretch, but that was a shitload of build-up for a pretty run of the mill sexual frolic. Work on some balance, and think more about the sex and how it fits into your story. In some of your other tales I’ve seen greater care than this. It seems almost by the numbers as if you were more interested in the formation of the relationship and realised when you got to the sexy fun times you didn’t really have much of an idea of how to spice it up. Again, it’s not that it’s bad but I’ve seen you do better than this.

So let’s collect some thoughts. This story wasn’t actually that bad at all as a concept, but it was let down by some of your particular frustrating habits that I’ve seen many times before. Really think about set-up in your stories. You don’t have to write pages and pages of it, but stop bringing things in out of the left field. I feel like you’re trying to make these big twists and impactful moments, but I’ve read a lot of your stories now and I’ve yet to see you actually land one of those moments successfully. It’s a shame too, because when it comes to the minutia and the details you’re actually quite good. Your story concepts are also often quite interesting too, and even those big melodramatic moments would benefit so fucking much if you’d just put some effort beforehand into getting me invested in what’s going on. Stop just writing middles and ends.

For what it’s worth, I actually did like Abby and Theo by the end of this. Which was a monumental task to achieve given my thoughts on them at the beginning. I can’t say I liked the story (you’d have to drag me kicking and screaming to get me to read the first 1 ½ pages again) but I did like the ideas behind it. For me, you just let yourself down by falling into some bad habits that I’ve given you a verbal lashing for before.

Anyways, hope this was helpful! Sorry again about the staggeringly huge delay in getting it done.

If you're up to reading something longish, will you take a look at my Serendipity series?
I wrote it years ago and I do know my dialog isn't all formatted correctly, but I'd love to know what you think of my writing other than that.
https://www.literotica.com/s/serendipity-ch-01-2

Read a few of your reviews and found them thoroughly frank and revealing . If you have time I wouldn't mind your thoughts on one of mine. I have never been taught to write and it most likely shows so I would welcome some creative advice.

I have chosen a more recent one which is also not too long. Don't worry if you haven't the time.

Thanks in advance, Steve

https://www.literotica.com/s/secretary-to-slut-susans-journey-ch-13

Updates?

Any hints on if there will be a sequel to "The Warlock"? Or another entry to the Missing Dragon series?

Thanks.