Looking for feedback on a new story

Hello everyone,

Just wanted to throw out my story and see if I could get some feedback on my new story. This is my first time writing on literotica and I enjoyed writing, but would see if my "writing" itself lends itself well to an audience and worth writing more.

Would love to hear anything! Please positive vibes, helpful criticism and construction is welcomed, just no "it sucks" completely negative comments. It would be appreciated.

Search "Oh, Julie!" or here's the link https://www.literotica.com/s/oh-julie

Average, nuthin to write home about.

feedback

1) Paragraphs are huge. Many of them probably could be broken down into 3 or 4 paragraphs. A reader needs white space.

2) The amount of dialogue is low, I do not think there is any on page one, that is 3300 words with no dialogue. Having people talk makes the story better.

If you have not done so already, I would advise you to go to writer resources and read the "How to make your characters talk " article. It covers many issues. I think it is written by Whitesilkstockings.

Once you make improvements to your story you can resubmit it as an (edited) version and Lit will replace the current version with the new version.

If you feel you are explaining / giving too much background, you may consider a prequel and put 1/2 of the background there but have it be a story in its self.

feedback

@timelord1963

Thank you very much. Definitely appreciate the helpful tips on your post. I've gotten some good responses but I have found ever since I posted it mistakes and improvements. I will definitely check out the resources you gave me.

You have a LOT of filler words and phrases here. Here's a 263-word excerpt:

Despite her looks, she was actually the kind of girl who didn't seem completely out of reach. And while I was fair to say there were "hotter" looking girls than her, she was definitely one of my of not biggest high school crushes. And unlike my many other high school crushes, she was a person that I was lucky enough to have formed a nice little friendship with. Julie was an easy girl to talk to, and me being in high school, that was a big thing to say. She didn't stick her nose up at anyone and she wasn't really into hanging out with the other cheerleaders and jocks. So for me that meant I had a chance.

I think that was the biggest factor for me actually getting enough courage at the end of our freshman year to actually ask her out. And to my surprise she didn't say no and actually said to give her a call as she wrote her number in my yearbook. Needless to say it was the highlight of my very awkward first year in high school.

As my luck would have it though, we unfortunately never went out on that date.

I remember finally getting the courage to call Julie. When I did, I was heartbroken after the call. She was moving. And not only was she just simply moving and going to another school, she was completely moving out of town all together. It would be the last time I would talk to her or see her again for a very long, long time.

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Here's how I might rewrite it:

Despite her looks, she didn't seem completely out of reach. While it was fair to say there were "hotter" looking girls than her, she was definitely one of my high school crushes, if not my biggest. Unlike many other crushes, I had formed a nice little friendship with her. Julie was easy to talk to, and in high school, that was a big thing to say. She didn't stick her nose up at anyone and she wasn't into hanging out with the other cheerleaders and jocks. That meant I had a chance.

That was the biggest factor for my getting enough courage at the end of our freshman year to ask her out. To my surprise she wrote her number in my yearbook and said to call her. Needless to say it was the highlight of my very awkward first year in high school.

We never went out on that date.

When I finally got the courage to call Julie, I was left heartbroken. She was moving. Not just going to another school, she was moving out of town all together. It would be the last I would talk to her or see her for a very long, long time.

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That edit drops it to 200 words; I've cut out almost a quarter of your words, and I don't think it's lost anything by it. There are situations where a roundabout style is a good thing - e.g. establishing a character who speaks that way, or to control the pacing of a story, or creating an effect through repetition - but unless you have a specific reason for doing that, try to keep it succinct. All in all, this felt like a three-page story trapped inside a five-page story.

In particular:

- Beware the seduction of the adverb. Do a word search for "ly"; every time you find an adverb, stop and ask yourself: if I had to pay five cents to use this word, would it be worth the cost? Ten cents for "actually".

- Watch for roundabout phrasing: "Julie was an easy girl to talk to" isn't telling me anything more than "Julie was easy to talk to", so why go the long way around?

- Watch for conjunctions at the start of a sentence ("And", "But", etc.) A pedantic English teacher will mark those as incorrect. In fiction the rules are a bit less formal, and sentence fragments can be fine, but you tend to use those conjunctions as filler. In a lot of places you could delete them without losing anything by it.

- Watch for phrasings that are hard for the reader to parse. For example, "And to my surprise she didn't say no and actually said to give her a call as she wrote her number in my yearbook". We can start by editing that down to "To my surprise she didn't say no, and [optionally "instead" here] said to give her a call as she wrote her number in my yearbook".

But the flow of that sentence is ambiguous. Does the "as" mean that Julie said "call me while I write my number in your yearbook", or that while writing her number, Julie said to call?

From context, it's clearly the latter. But I have to pause a moment to figure that out, and you don't want that; most of the time, you want readers flowing smoothly through your story without having to stop and start. So restructuring to "...she wrote her number in my yearbook and said to call her" helps with flow.

I didn't waste any time trying to contact her, in the least creepiest way possible of course.

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This is another structure that trips up the reader (at least, this reader): does the "I didn't" apply to the "in the least creepiest way" bit? And does that mean "I didn't try to contact her because that would've been a waste of time"? Again, meaning is obvious if I stop and think about it, but you don't want me to have to stop and think about it.

In fact, you don't really need the second half of that sentence at all; it's not something the reader's likely to worry about if you don't raise it.

I wasted no time before trying to contact her.

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I didn't have time to read the whole story, but I did notice that some of your commenters found the pacing a bit hard to believe, and I agree with that. As soon as Julie and Carlos meet up again, it's pretty clear that they have the hots for one another something crazy, but they wait a year and a half before doing anything about it, and even then Carlos doesn't seem to understand for ages that Julie is his for the asking. Yeah, I know they're both still getting over previous relationships, but they're not behaving like that. I'd suggest either reducing that year-and-a-half, or putting more work into showing why they're taking so long.

Opinions can differ!
I think the long paragraphs are fine, and I'm happy with the relatively light amount of dialogue.
The slow development of the relationship is good IMHO, more realistic than the usual jump-into-bed stuff on this site.
The reader shares Carlos's torment and frustration, waiting for sex.
The long slow foreplay section on p4 is good too.
But when at last it does get to the sex, things go wrong- it doesn't make much sense and is not realistic. People have commented on this under the story. Neither of them had a condom?? Another example is when she asks if he came, and he says no. She would know he did.

I didn't read the whole story but what I did read was good. I think you need help with punctuation plus you could stand to omit some words. I found a verb tense that was wrong plus the use of then instead of than.

The use of a second set of eyes could have helped. I agree that dialogue would have helped this story.

Personal preference - I don't like stories that start with huge amounts of narrative summary. I prefer the story start with an interesting scene.

I'd have started the story:

One weekend, I was was casually watching TV and playing a game on my phone at the same time when a text bubble popped up from my friend Julie.

> You wanna go to Florida w/ me?

I had known Julie in high school, we lost touch for a long time and had rekindled our relationship little over a year and a half ago. Since then, we had become close friends and flirted a lot. I laughed as I read the text message figuring it was Julie being Julie.

> Yeah let's go LOL

I set the phone down and took a bathroom break. By the time I got back to my phone, Julie had sent me another text.

> I've found a pair of round trip tickets for under $300

My eyes were wide open as I stared at my phone for a few moments a little befuddled.
: Discuss Julie for a while

The text sound played on my phone. It would be Julie saying LOL or something that would show she was joking around.

> So? What do u think?

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