First story accepted! Looking for feedback.

Hello fellow readers and writers! My first submission to this site has just been approved and I'm really excited to see if it resonates with people and what I can do to improve as a writer.

My pen name here is manny_har, the story is called Thunder Crash and contains an encounter between the viking sailor Arvid, and an unnamed local Maya girl somewhere on the Yucatan peninsula. I placed it in the interracial love category.

Here is a link to the story:
https://www.literotica.com/s/thunder-crash

I hope you enjoy it, and I would appreciate any feedback that can help me become a better writer for future stories.

I can only give a personal "reader's opinion", I don't consider myself enough of a specialist to give a more technical opinion.

I thought it was great as it is. But you want advice so: there's not much I feel *has to* be changed, but there's a lot I'd love to see expanded (I like slowish stories, that's just me).

The little things I would change if it were me would be:

1) the use of the word "love" in some of the descriptions seemed off to me, In think it popped up twice. "Love juices" and something about feelings of love. For me this was about curiosity, lust, and the beliefs of the characters, not really love at all. So I'd zap out the usage of "love".

2) The tent collapsing didn't feel right to me. I think an experience sailor would be unlikely to build such a crappy tent. He would be an expert at rigging up lines, yards, and canvas to withstand incredible forces, and would have camped on many islands in rough weather. Also his buddies would be like, "Whoa, your tent just collapsed, you okay?" Maybe something else could show how intense what they were doing was.

3) the lack of sentries was a weird, there's no way a watch would not be posted even by civilian sailors, but I understand that they would get in the way of the story. Maybe have the girl appear inside the camp, hiding just outside the tent, and he can think, "how did she get past the guards?" who are stationed far enough away not to interrupt things.

I think the story is okay now, but fixing these things would help me stay "in world" a little more.

Now for areas I'd expand (this is just a personal preference):

I think the time setting up camp on the island, checking it out, maybe the lads having a quick meal and discussing the place a little, would be a good way to set things up. You could explore their belief system, maybe set the mood a bit more. It must have felt awesome to finally get off the ship onto such a lush place, with curiosity and a little reasonable fear as well. A bit more here would have been nice imo. The Island's lushness, beauty, and abundance, and how the crew interact with and feel about it, could foreshadow the feelings of the mayan woman and the viking.

Once the girl was in the tent, the change in her from fear to curiosity to lust could have been slowed down. Maybe she's terrified at first, even if she planned on being captured, but calms down after he feeds her or something, signalling he's not going to harm her, she relaxes, gets curious, etc. I also would have liked to hear more of her perspective, how she felt and thought.

That's about it. I thought the writing was great, interesting story and setting. I'd definitely read a sequel or expanded version. My criticisms and ideas are really just to help, it's a great story as is.

Thanks for the feedback! Yes I agree that things were hurried a bit. I could probably have written a lot more. I think I was a little anxious to get to the sex scene to be honest, and wanted to set up a minimum world before starting. Finding the balance there is probably one of my main challenges right now.

wxpprnpprnt said:

I can only give a personal "reader's opinion", I don't consider myself enough of a specialist to give a more technical opinion.

I thought it was great as it is. But you want advice so: there's not much I feel *has to* be changed, but there's a lot I'd love to see expanded (I like slowish stories, that's just me).

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I liked the story. The setting is unique and intriguing, and the main premise—the mating of a man and a woman from two completely different, mutually unintelligible worlds—is quite interesting. I liked that they both thought of their coupling as being blessed by the gods, even though they believed in different gods.

You're a good writer, both technically and in your ability to create believable, interesting scenes and characters. (The lack of sentries and the collapse of the tent didn't particularly bother me.)

One thing that was a bit confusing to me was that at first you seemed to be implying that Arvid didn't know how sex was supposed to work and was surprised by every little thing that the girl did. This was hard to believe for a Viking sailor. But then later he certainly seemed to know his way around. Were you just trying to say that he was sexually inexperienced and was experiencing for the first time things he only knew about in theory? This didn't come through as clearly as it might have, to me at least.

To me the unique part of the story is the meeting of the two cultures. You do touch on this, but this is the part of the story that I would have liked to have seen developed more—what it felt like for each of them to be so intimately engaged with someone so utterly alien. The sex was good, but sex is sex, you can find it in any story. It's the characters and the emotions that bring the physiology to life.

Anyway, very nice story. Thanks for sharing it. I hope you keep on writing,.

Thanks! Next time I will spend a little more time with the ambiance, and bringing out the world and inner world of the characters, like you suggested.

HectorBidon said:

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One thing that was a bit confusing to me was that at first you seemed to be implying that Arvid didn't know how sex was supposed to work and was surprised by every little thing that the girl did. This was hard to believe for a Viking sailor. But then later he certainly seemed to know his way around. Were you just trying to say that he was sexually inexperienced and was experiencing for the first time things he only knew about in theory? This didn't come through as clearly as it might have, to me at least.

To me the unique part of the story is the meeting of the two cultures. You do touch on this, but this is the part of the story that I would have liked to have seen developed more—what it felt like for each of them to be so intimately engaged with someone so utterly alien. The sex was good, but sex is sex, you can find it in any story. It's the characters and the emotions that bring the physiology to life.

Anyway, very nice story. Thanks for sharing it. I hope you keep on writing,.

Click to expand...

Just skimmed it. First thing that stood out was the use of Yucatan. Assuming these were Vikings prior to the Spaniards arriving it was the Spaniards that named Yucatan in 1531. I'd also have to assume (and it makes sense) that they were in the Gulf of Mexico because that is the only place the land would be to the West. East is Cuba, Jamaica etc. In the Gulf there's pretty much land/islands everywhere.

I also can't imagine experience sailors and warriors not setting up guards in a new unknown place. And why would the crew be down the beach when his tent is collapsed on him. You'd think they'd go wake him up first.

The plot is interesting and you write well. But if it's historical, the details will kill you every time.