I Need Critical Feedback

I posted a story at the beginning of July about a college girl taking pictures for her boyfriend and masturbating. It's quite short and very much intended for those simply looking to get off. It was not very well received, though, and, to date, only has 9,755 views and one favorite, with an average rating of 2.89. And no comments. Obviously, I messed something up.

I am still fairly new to writing erotica, but my other two stories were received much better. I love writing, and, because I find this genre to be a lot of fun, I want to grow in it. To do so, I would greatly appreciate any and all feedback you have to give me. It can be short, sweet, and to the point, or you can send me an essay analyzing the way it portrays the female orgasm.

Whatever you have to say, please be honest about it. This story did poorly, and it's important for me to know why. It is titled Digital Love and can be found here: http://www.literotica.com/s/digital-love.

First off, I'd say that I don't know how the Toys category usually scores so I don't know how your rating compares. Some categories are scored a little tougher, if you will.

Anyway, I read the story and I'm trying to analyze it. The mechanics were good, spelling and such, although there's a lot of telling the reader everything as opposed to showing it. All we know of Rachel, for example, is what you tell us and we have to take your word for it.

For showing, you could take an approach like this (just an example):

"God, this stuff is so boring!"

Rachel yawned and stretched, then took another swig of her Jolt cola and turned up the music. She hoped the combination of caffeine and loud K-pop would keep her awake as she read her assignment. Ethics of Journalism was a fascinating area, especially in the age of internet reporting, but her professor had found the most boring textbook in the world on the subject.

If nothing else, she thought as she turned a page, she could recommend it as a cure for insomnia.

When she nearly hit her chin on the desk, she gave up. She slammed the book shut and stood up.

"God, I am so bored!" she said to the empty room. "College was not supposed to be like this."

College, she'd thought, would be one long social event. There'd be people to talk to, friends to eat with, she'd be in charge of her own tie, and she'd never be bored or lonely. She hadn't considered the reality of classes, homework, or people going home for the weekend while she stayed at school. Times like this made her miss her boyfriend, Matt, more than ever.

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The texting with Matt is fine, but then it feels like it's really kind of dropped. It might have helped to get Matt's reaction to what she was doing. Instead all we have is her, and although we're told she feels naughty at first, we don't get much more than that. Does she get more excited as she goes along? Well, yes, but what does she think and how does she feel about it?

And if she's sending the pics to Matt, there has to be more than click, doesn't there? I don't have a smart phone, but I'd think you'd need to take the pic and then select an option of what to do.

Hope that helps. If you have more specific questions, I'll try to answer.

PennLady,

Your comments are great. Taking into account what you've said, I can see how the story was a bit too narrowly focused, didn't follow through on themes after they were introduced, and wasn't as natural as it could have been.

Thank you

I read as much of it as I could stand, its boring and comes across as teenage angst about nothing that matters. Is DRILY a word?

James,

Could you elaborate? What about it bored you? What exactly do you mean by "teenage angst about nothing that matters"?

"Drily" is a misspelling of "dryly".

Way too many "and"s. Despite what others have said, you do need an editor. There are several glaring mistakes.

Rachel unclasped her bra, (phrases like, "reaching around behind her", only slow down the action at a critical point) letting it fall to the floor. Softly, she ran her fingers across her stomach, imagining they were Matt's. Up, up they went, brushing against the underside of her breast, up, up circling her silky smooth areola (spelling), gliding over her hard, peaked nipple, twisting. Pleasure shot through her like an electric current.

Click.

She wrapped her hand over her mound, squeezing and kneading. Her own soft moans and rapid breaths filled her ears. She was lost to her pleasure, desperately needing more.

Click.

I am not sure my handling of the "clicks" is better than yours, but the way you have done it cries out for something , something . . . more.

Robert,

Thank you for your comments. I'd appreciate it if you elaborated on what you mean by "way too many 'and's", as well as specifying my "glaring mistakes".

P.S.
"Areola" is spelled correctly. Is your confusion between the singular "areola" and the plural "areolae"? If so, that is understandable.

John988 said:

James,

Could you elaborate? What about it bored you? What exactly do you mean by "teenage angst about nothing that matters"?

"Drily" is a misspelling of "dryly".

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Your character was bored, why not me, too! Always a bad way to start a tale...with boredom or inane teenage banter. The local paper hired a crew of gals to change the tone of the paper. And they did. The op-ed page featured teenage prom angst and college acceptance angst, and old ladies reporting about reunions they had with military friends they made in Germany back in 1948, and the usual whining about how men are assholes. The paper's circulation crashed and they fired all the gals.

You write like a teen girl.

* Comma abuse. The content of your writing has an interesting flow but only because I ignored all the commas. It is better to under-use commas than disrupt your writing with commas.

* You need an editor.

* Masturbating for camera in the toys category: this is exhibitionism. I am not saying you can't cross-polinate stories with fetishes from other categories, what I am saying is you need to properly use the other fetishes if you use them.

* (from above) Rachel is an exhibitionist: the eroticism is in the reluctance, the enjoyment of exposure, and the shame. You had none of that. We want more teasing dammit! I don't care if you want to keep this short, short is not going to give us a fulfilling tease and release.

* You do have a single woman masturbating which is what you need for a Toys&Masturbation story.

* What happened to Matt? He plays a part of this story as the voyeur (the antagonist) He is the reason for her actions: she wants to excite him propelling her actions to be even more sexy, but his audience-ship(?) is also a source of embarrassment or shame or whatever. He is the unseen audience(which your readers fantasize as), and maybe his friends too when he shares the photos with his friends. Oh Matt can be so naughty, he shouldn't be doing that. It's not too bad, maybe his friends will be jealous when they see this dildo in her butt. . . and etc.

* Paragraphs group common ideas together. I felt that your paragraphing could be adjusted a little.

* Your story is too short. Normally I wouldn't mention length but you missed an awful lot of teasing build up play. Did you know there is an unlimited word limit at Literotica? Aim high and have your editor cut out the filler content.

* Countersinking - aka Expositional Redundancy: in short you are over explaining dialogue. You have already said it once in the dialogue, so don't explain it to me again because it gets messy. You lose creditability as an author because the reader will evaluate your analysis of the dialogue. The explanation of the dialogue is unnecessary because it adds nothing, let the dialogue speak for itself [no pun intended]. I almost didn't mention this because you are mild offender, but it is persistent. An example:

Matt's sarcastic reply: "No, but it does require that I - you know - create art."

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