Feedback please - incest story

My Day as a Pool Boy was my Summer Lovin' contest entry. Author's notes for the story are here. The story has a number of first for me. I did well with it as it has a score of 4.68 and is #6 on the Top Stories Read in Last 30 Days list. But as always, I'm looking to get better. I would greatly appreciate advice on how to improve. I don't mind harsh feedback as long as it's constructive.

I think opening with dialogue is generally brave. Untagged dialogue is even braver. It is leaves the reader with unanswered questions. The first-person narrator enters in para 4, but is not one of the parties to the conversation. A little bit of jarring the reader can work out well. I think leaving out telling us that the narrator is only overhearing the conversation to the end of that, admittedly short para, is a little too jarring. 'I sighed as I overheard them talking about me' might be a better start to that para.

In para 5, I think the following two sentences should have been transposed.

This was my favorite time of year to talk with her. She was incredibly smart and incredibly driven.

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I think the second sentence interrupts the flow where it is. The first sentence is odd by itself, and the second doesn't answer the question raised in the reader's mind: why is this the best time of year to talk to her? You have to skip the second sentence and read the following ones to get the meaning. I understand what happened: you wanted to say she was valedictorian, so you wrote a sentence telling us how intelligent she is. Seeing as the first sentence is a description of her, the third, which is also description, would have been better following it.

Alex walked over to me.

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This single-sentence para jarred. I had to look back to realise that Emily was talking to Alex. You did tell me in para 4, but I didn't get it. I somehow thought that Alex was one of the friends who couldn't come over, after he said

I had been looking forward to talking with Alex, but my sister Emily was embarrassing me in front of her long-time best friend.

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Somehow I missed that 'Alex' = 'her long-time best friend'.

Alex and Dylan's dialogue goes straight in with full-on banter. You've told us that she has this rapier-like wit, but she's suddenly teasing him with her words and her body. I think a bit more conversation to lead into that might be good.

My sister was good looking as well - dark brown hair that tumbled down past her shoulders, dark brown eyes, long dark lashes, a pretty face and a body with many appealing curves. She was wearing a white bikini that I considered on the skimpy side, though it had a lot more material than Alex's.

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The narrator is her brother. He probably sees her every day, and has even seen her in her bikini before. It sounds like a little too much authorial voice is coming through. It might make more sense to say that this is the first time he had seen her in a bikini since last summer. His little sister had certainly grown into a curvacious woman. Eye lashes: not here, if at all.

Emily was laying out on one of the four chaise lounges

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The verb is 'lying'; this isn't the only place where you make this mistake. I keep reading Americans writing 'chaise lounge', is that the standard spelling, because the French is chaise longue? I would suggest it's a sunlounger that you're describing.

I smiled to myself because Emily didn't know the whole story. Mom had indeed freaked out when she found the bag of pot, and she really had almost called the cops to "teach me a lesson."

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It sounds like she didn't get it that far wrong; wasn't that almost exactly what she told Alex? Is it that you are suggesting that Emily didn't know their dad's admission about smoking pot when younger? I think then that the sentence about her not knowing the whole story should be closer to this revelation.

Dakota's parents had money and their house was much nicer than ours. They had given her a Beemer convertible for her sixteenth birthday.

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This is a bit of a random aside: her house and car are not present, and it's not clear why Dylan cares, until a throwaway line about the boys she dates at the end of the next para.

Of Emily's three best friends, I liked Faith the best.

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No, Dylan, I like Alex. Did you not see that ass wiggle earlier?

I wonder if we could have the Emily-dated-a-football-player bit earlier, because Dylan comes home, notices his sister has grown up and got moody. He asks dad, who tells him. In this position, it's just something to move the story on, but I reckon it's going to more important than that. Oh, and can we do likewise with the few days home from college?

Whenever I said anything, Alex would twist it into an innuendo, much to the other girls' delight.

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It would be fun to read an account of this.

I hope that's useful on the first page.

Onto pages 2 and 3.

"I didn't..." Emily gave me a withering look. "Okay, I got carried away. I'm sorry. I wanted today to be a good day for you and I'm sorry I messed it up."

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I'm a bit of a stickler for this. In the same way that you use separate paras to distinguish speakers in a conversation, I think it is also good practice to separate characters' actions when they fall between lines of another character's dialogue. Basically, I suggest you put 'Emily gave me a withering look' in a para by itself, between the two lines of dialogue. I see you're not into a dialogue tags, but starting the second with 'I continued, "Okay..."' would make sure the reader knows who's talking.

When I turned around, Alex was bent over a kitchen counter with her bikini bottom pulled aside to reveal her shaved pussy.

"Drop your shorts and fuck me."

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The first thing you have to do is break up with Megan. Understood?" It was a command.

"Understood."

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I thought he gave that up pretty quickly. Perhaps his obedience would have been more believable if she had dangled the possibility of more and/or dirtier sex in front of him.

Alex obviously wanted me to eat out Emily and I wasn't going to be able to fuck Alex unless I did.

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Does Dylan really know this to be the case. He seems really calm about the crazy sex happening in his sister's bed. I think Alex has to say something more to encourage Dylan to do something this seriously messed up, like dangling hot sex with her if he does this for her. As it is, it's all in Dylan's head. Why does he take his shorts off? I would have left them on, just in case I needed to get out of there.

I'm bi, though I prefer guys.

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This sounds a bit authorial. I'm not sure she would say it quite like this.

Back to me.

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Not a sentence.

He's my boyfriend now.

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Did we sign up for that? I know we dumped Megan, and I know we fucked, but...

I liked the sex. It was all rather touching, and almost believable. I think if Alex's manipulation had been more obvious, rather than left inside his head, it would have been more believable. I think if Alex were to lay it on thick, "Come up to your sister's room in ten minutes and I will give you your due reward. But when you come in, you might see something that'll make you want to run away. If you do that, you get nothing. You have to be brave, and do exactly what I tell you to do when you come in". After all, if there's a chance that Dylan will run away when he sees Alex and Emily having sex with each other and that he's expected to eat his sister's cunt out, then Alex will have ruined everything. I think she needs to make his compliance watertight.

Incest babies aren't cool. Alex might be a hottie who's on the pill just in case, but I wouldn't have thought Emily would be. In her state, she would have stopped taking it. I don't know about availability of contraceptive pills in the US, but I would guess that it's expensive. Alex packing condoms is one way around it. The other, not so foolproof, way is for Dylan to pull out of Emily and for Alex to finish him in her mouth, or elsewhere.

Thanks for the feedback!

Thanks for the feedback, Gorza. You have a lot of good points. As you are English, I'm going to put the Americana replies in this post.

Gorza said:

Emily was laying out on one of the four chaise lounges
The verb is 'lying'; this isn't the only place where you make this mistake. I keep reading Americans writing 'chaise lounge', is that the standard spelling, because the French is chaise longue? I would suggest it's a sunlounger that you're describing.

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"Chaise lounge" is the way I've always seen it spelled. For example, this is similar to what I was thinking of.

When it comes to sunning, I've always heard the phrase "laying out". If she was lying on the chaise lounge, she could be doing so for any reason. If she's laying out on a chaise lounge, she's lying on it to tan.

Gorza said:

Incest babies aren't cool. Alex might be a hottie who's on the pill just in case, but I wouldn't have thought Emily would be. In her state, she would have stopped taking it. I don't know about availability of contraceptive pills in the US, but I would guess that it's expensive.

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Because of the Affordable Care Act, all medical insurance plans in the US must provide at least one version of each type of birth control for free. So at least one brand of oral contraceptive would be free for Emily. As to whether Emily would have stopped taking oral contraceptives after her experience with the football player, it's not certain. There are advantages to being on oral contraceptives beyond birth control such as having a regular cycle that allows a woman to know when to use feminine hygiene. Alex as her best friend would know if Emily was still on oral contraceptives.

Gorza, thanks again for the feedback. There was a lot that I agreed with and quite a bit that I think is just a matter of difference in writing style. I was thinking of discussing it here in this thread, but I've decided to send you a PM instead. It's given me a lot to think about. I was going to clean up some minor stuff in the story and I'll make some changes based upon your feedback.

Thanks again.

Chaise longue is the correct term, I noticed it in a 40s novel by Raymond Chandler.

I used my natural mind reading gift to determine who said what.

8letters said:

"Chaise lounge" is the way I've always seen it spelled. For example, this is similar to what I was thinking of.

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OK, I'd seen this spelling used before. It looks odd to me. I checked with the OED, which said:

Apparently folk-etymological alteration of chaise-longue n., after lounge n., although compare later lounge n. 3. Now chiefly N. Amer.

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I picture a chaise-longue as an upholstered piece of furniture, and the OED refers to it as a 'sofa' or a 'couch'. That also seems to be the chief American use of the word. Obviously, courtesy of the House of Penney, the name is applied to outdoor furniture. Perhaps the first time you mention the chaise lounges, you could add a light description of the one in the picture: 'wooden chaise lounge', 'chaise lounge of undulating acacia slats', etc.

8letters said:

When it comes to sunning, I've always heard the phrase "laying out". If she was lying on the chaise lounge, she could be doing so for any reason. If she's laying out on a chaise lounge, she's lying on it to tan.

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This is quite a common mistake. The verb 'lay' is often used as a replacement for the verb 'lie' in colloquial speech. They are quite easy to confuse. As you say "I've always heard...", I bet you have, so have I, but it still doesn't make it right. If you do this in dialogue, then it is reflective of the speech habits of American youths, but you shouldn't do it in narrative.

I'm sure you could google a dozen grammar websites that will tell you what the difference is between these two. Basically, 'lie' means being in or moving into a recumbent position (when it isn't used for not telling the truth). 'Lay' means to put something in a recumbent position, so it is transitive, and is the causative of 'lie'. The OED gives over 40 separate definitions for each of these two verbs, so they do get more complex, but those are the basic meanings.

The added confusion is that the past tense of 'lie' is 'lay': "she lay out on the chaise lounge all of yesterday, and she will lie out on it again tomorrow". Just so we get the whole conjugation: the present participle of 'lie' is 'lying' ("she was lying out on the chaise lounge while we spoke"), and the past participle is 'lain' ("she had lain out on the chaise lounge for hours").

If you use the verb 'lay' (past 'laid', pres. ppl 'laying', past ppl 'laid'), you either need to use the passive voice or use an object for the transitive verb. The passive is "she was laid out on the chaise lounge" (using the past participle; passives are avoided by many authors). With an object you could have "she laid her body out on the chaise lounge", or use a reflexive "she laid herself out on the chaise lounge". In these examples, I use simple past as 'was laying' suggests she was in the middle of the process of lying down, which either sounds like she took a long time to get comfortable or she's obese. Employing this verb as an intransitive, as you did, is wrong: passive voice or object (even a reflexive) is what's needed.

See, it is complicated, and way too easy to get wrong.

8letters said:

Because of the Affordable Care Act, all medical insurance plans in the US must provide at least one version of each type of birth control for free. So at least one brand of oral contraceptive would be free for Emily. As to whether Emily would have stopped taking oral contraceptives after her experience with the football player, it's not certain. There are advantages to being on oral contraceptives beyond birth control such as having a regular cycle that allows a woman to know when to use feminine hygiene. Alex as her best friend would know if Emily was still on oral contraceptives.

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OK. I don't suggest you write that into the dialogue.

"Come inside me, Dylan."

"Are you sure, sis?"

"Yes, I've been suffering from heavy and erratic menstruation, so the doctor put me on oral contraceptive to give me a more regular monthly flow, with a lot less bleeding."

"Ugh!"

"So, come for me, Dylan!"

"Erm."

"Are you still hard?"

"Erm..."

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Laughs aside. I think it's something authors should think about as it is the reality of sex.

Perhaps the point of chaise longue/chaise lounge (Webster's prefers the first. It lists the second but with no definition; just refers back to "chaise longue") is to try to avoid using such terms at all so the reader doesn't stop and be tempted to dispute the word. One in the bedroom could be simply a "chaise" or a "reclining couch" and by the pool it could be a "pool bed."

Gorza said:

I picture a chaise-longue as an upholstered piece of furniture, and the OED refers to it as a 'sofa' or a 'couch'. That also seems to be the chief American use of the word.

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It's not. I've never heard of a chaise lounge that wasn't outdoor. I can't remember seeing a chaise lounge not next to a pool. Here is a picture of a water park. All those white things - they're chaise lounges in their natural habitat.

Gorza said:

This is quite a common mistake. The verb 'lay' is often used as a replacement for the verb 'lie' in colloquial speech.
:

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You're not understanding. I'm saying that "laying out" is an idiom with a specific meaning that doesn't follow the standard rules of English and that I used it correctly in the story. In the picture above, the woman on the chaise lounge is laying out. If I didn't use "laying out", I would consider her sitting on the chaise lounge and not lying on it.

Gorza said:

I think [birth control is] something authors should think about as it is the reality of sex.

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Sometimes I put it in my stories and sometimes I don't. Sister Has a Plan has quite a discussion of birth control. In Heather and Michael Ch 02, the brother asks the sister beforehand if she's on birth control and I got dinged for that by one commenter who felt that the brother should have known already. With Plan B pills readily available, condom use to me is more about preventing STD's.

sr71plt said:

Perhaps the point of chaise longue/chaise lounge (Webster's prefers the first. It lists the second but with no definition; just refers back to "chaise longue") is to try to avoid using such terms at all so the reader doesn't stop and be tempted to dispute the word. One in the bedroom could be simply a "chaise" or a "reclining couch" and by the pool it could be a "pool bed."

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If I go to Walmart.com and search for "pool bed", I get (link) inflatable floating air mattresses meant to be used in a swimming pool. If I search for "chaise lounge", I get both indoor and outdoor furniture but the indoor version is called a "chaise lounger". But what does the biggest retailer in the world know?

Sorry, I have to agree with 8letters on this. "Laying out" is a common term I've been hearing and using most of my life. It's like "Hooking up" as a term for having sex. Saying it can't be used in narrative doesn't make sense.

I also have four chaise lounges in my backyard, and a chaise that came with my sofa A pool bed makes no sense, because it has nothing to do with a pool. It's for sunning, or just relaxing.

I've never heard of seniors not taking finals, but it didn't take that much away from the story.

Need to ..

I will take a look and let you know what we think.



J & K

Canada

8letters said:

If I go to Walmart.com and search for "pool bed", I get (link) inflatable floating air mattresses meant to be used in a swimming pool. If I search for "chaise lounge", I get both indoor and outdoor furniture but the indoor version is called a "chaise lounger". But what does the biggest retailer in the world know?

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Funny that you should pick Wal-Mart (notice that? You didn't use the spelling they themselves have trademarked--and neither do a lot of their stores).

The biggest retailer in the world isn't a publisher. So, they need not know much about how we do it in publishing. If you're a sales clerk at Wal-Mart, you need not worry about how it's done in publishing either. If you're trying to make it in publishing, though . . .

How does this detract, incidentally, from the advice to avoid using terms that are going to stop the reader in his/her tracks and disrupt the flow of the read? Hardheaded much?

8letters said:

You're not understanding. I'm saying that "laying out" is an idiom with a specific meaning that doesn't follow the standard rules of English and that I used it correctly in the story. In the picture above, the woman on the chaise lounge is laying out. If I didn't use "laying out", I would consider her sitting on the chaise lounge and not lying on it.

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lowphat said:

Sorry, I have to agree with 8letters on this. "Laying out" is a common term I've been hearing and using most of my life. It's like "Hooking up" as a term for having sex. Saying it can't be used in narrative doesn't make sense.

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I was ready to call bullshit on this, until I saw the Wiktionary entry for 'lay out'. This entry was added by an American linguist, so I respect it. It is the only sense of the verb that is marked as intransitive, which makes it unusual. So, go ahead and use it, but be aware it's a colloquialism. There will be a number of readers, perhaps including some Americans, who balk at this usage in narrative. Its intransitivity is the thing that makes it feel quite clunky. It is also highly likely that this usage is a simple mistake for 'lying out'. So, if I cannot say that this is wrong, that this is bullshit, I can still say that, in narrative, it should be written 'she laid herself out' to avoid the problems associated with use of a narrow colloquialism. In dialogue, it's not a problem if that's how people speak.

sr71plt said:

How does this detract, incidentally, from the advice to avoid using terms that are going to stop the reader in his/her tracks and disrupt the flow of the read? Hardheaded much?

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I'm not sure of your point. Are you saying that "chaise lounge" isn't the widely accepted American term for the piece of outdoor furniture that tanners usually lie on? That "pool bed" is a better term? Or are you saying that I shouldn't use American colloquialisms that will cause an English reader to stop in his/her tracks? As I am an American, I really have no idea if a term that I commonly use will confound an English reader. They'll struggle through "Mom placed the flashlight and the cookies in the trunk next to the gas can, then drove to the football game."

8letters said:

I'm not sure of your point. Are you saying that "chaise lounge" isn't the widely accepted American term for the piece of outdoor furniture that tanners usually lie on? That "pool bed" is a better term? Or are you saying that I shouldn't use American colloquialisms that will cause an English reader to stop in his/her tracks? As I am an American, I really have no idea if a term that I commonly use will confound an English reader. They'll struggle through "Mom placed the flashlight and the cookies in the trunk next to the gas can, then drove to the football game."

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I thought I stated pretty clearly twice that it's best to avoid questionable terms if you can so that the reader doesn't stop the flow of the read to consider the term. Sorry if this means nothing to you as a writer. I have no responsibility to make a publishable writer out of you.

If you want a professional editor's answer on "chaise lounge," following the American authority for spelling for most publishers using American style, the proper spelling (found in the spelling authority, Webster's Collegiate dictionary), is "chaise longue." Beyond that, do as you like. I'm sure you will anyway.

As for myself, I think I've been spelling it "chaise lounge" for years without realizing that wasn't accepted style. I've also done all I could not to have to use the term in writing at all, because it usually is a presumptuous, high-brow word for the mood I'm trying to create.

8letters said:

As I am an American, I really have no idea if a term that I commonly use will confound an English reader. They'll struggle through "Mom placed the flashlight and the cookies in the trunk next to the gas can, then drove to the football game."

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There's not a problem with this phrase at all. The only thing that would be ambiguous is that we naturally think that 'football' means 'association football' rather than 'American football'. All of the other words are unambiguous in context and British people are exposed to enough American culture to understand. Experience shows -- we have plenty of American students here at university -- that Americans are often not quite as 'bilingual'.

"Mum placed the torch and the biscuits in the boot next to the petrol can, then drove to the football game."

I think 'chaise lounge' is acceptable, but there seems to be enough doubt that I suggest you introduce the furniture more clearly. I think 'laying out' in narrative is far less acceptable in narrative. I believe that American readers will have problems with the repeated use of these phrases.

Feedback

Not to detract from the raging "chaise lounge" debate, but here's my two cents:

Seems like you wanted to add some realism to a stroke incest story, but it didn't work out so well.

The female characters seem to be some adolescent teenage boy's idealized version of how women, and Lesbian women in particular, think, feel and behave.

The dialogue of the female characters started to get cringe-worthy after I read "Eat my (your) pussy" for the thirtieth ??? time. Do any women actually talk like that? I haven't met any.

sr71plt said:

I thought I stated pretty clearly twice that it's best to avoid questionable terms if you can so that the reader doesn't stop the flow of the read to consider the term. Sorry if this means nothing to you as a writer. I have no responsibility to make a publishable writer out of you.

If you want a professional editor's answer on "chaise lounge," following the American authority for spelling for most publishers using American style, the proper spelling (found in the spelling authority, Webster's Collegiate dictionary), is "chaise longue." Beyond that, do as you like. I'm sure you will anyway.

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Ah, I think I know where you're coming from. Here I ask for feedback on my story; you make the excellent point that my story should stick to spellings from the spelling authority, Webster's Collegiate dictionary; and I appear to blow off that advice. If it came across that way, I'm sorry.

From what I understood you said, both "chaise longue" and "chaise lounge" were offered as valid spellings in Webster's. Given that, I then went to other sources I consider authoritative (websites for major retailers) to see which one is currently in use. "Chaise lounge" won hands down. I'm sure if you did one of those graphs where you show the usage of each term in publications, you would see both being used.

sr71plt said:

As for myself, I think I've been spelling it "chaise lounge" for years without realizing that wasn't accepted style. I've also done all I could not to have to use the term in writing at all, because it usually is a presumptuous, high-brow word for the mood I'm trying to create.

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As for using an alternative term, I feel that there are none. Chaise lounges are ubiquitous poolside furniture and there's no other term that comes close to describing them.

Thanks for the advice. I don't aspire to having my work published, but I do aspire to writing the "right way" and as an editor, you know far more about that than I do.

Dream_Operator said:

The female characters seem to be some adolescent teenage boy's idealized version of how women, and Lesbian women in particular, think, feel and behave.

The dialogue of the female characters started to get cringe-worthy after I read "Eat my (your) pussy" for the thirtieth ??? time. Do any women actually talk like that? I haven't met any.

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This story was the first time I wrote FF sex. Can you advise me on what I should have written?

8letters said:

This story was the first time I wrote FF sex. Can you advise me on what I should have written?

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No, you need to figure that out on your own.

Read some of the Lesbian stories posted here on Lit -- and find out.

I found how to do a graph of uses of different words/phrases - it's the Google Ngram Viewer. Here is the link for "chaise lounge" and "chaise longue". The usage of "Chaise Longue" starts climbing around 1910, hits a peak in 1944, drops dramatically to a trough in 1970, climbs back up to a plateau in the 80's and then drops a little bit from there. The usage of "Chaise Lounge" is close to zero from 1900 to 1960, where it begins a steady climb that nears the usage of "Chaise Longue" but ends well short of it.

At the bottom of the graph is a link to click on to see the usage in different time periods. Sadly, it doesn't give a search for both "chaise lounge" and "chaise longue". Checking out the searches for 2004-05 for Chaise Lounge and Chaise Longue, both are used in novels. "Chaise Longue" is used in books about furniture and in English usage books that discuss how "Chaise Longue" is the correct term instead of "Chaise Lounge".

Another thing I found interesting is that, according to books that say "Chaise Longue" is the correct term, I've mispronounced "Chaise Lounge" all my life. Per those books, (for example, The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations), "Chaise" is pronounced "SHAZ" as is done in this Canadian Acura commercial. I've always heard it pronounced like the word "chase" with the vowel held slightly longer, as it is done in this commercial.

On prononce chaise, comme SHEZ en français.

It's the French word for 'chair', any chair. It rhymes with the shortened men's names Des, Les and Wes.

However, in English, it often is given a longer vowel, SHEYZ, which rhymes with 'haze', 'maize' and 'raise'.