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Lien_Geller's Story Review Thread.

Curl, Lien, thanks for this!

Lien, I think you're right with the graphic imagery, I can go overboard with similes so I should watch that. The writing is clunky, partly because I was scrambling to get this story done having not really intended to enter the first FAWC, so I didn't get the time to polish it up or get it edited. On the other hand, sometimes the clunkiness worked for me as it may have conveyed the amateur porn site cruising old bufton better.

I was keen at the time to write something that was a realistic portrayal of old age yet still romantic/sexy. I'm not quite there yet, but I am close enough to know that there will be a time when my ex-rugby playing limbs are not going at the same speed as my imagination! :D I was spending time with some (even) older relatives, whom I could tell had secret desires. (I had seen Google searches and text messages which were not intended for my eyes.) I kinda felt, well why wouldn't they and wanted to write something that didn't shy away from the generally perceived unsexiness of old bodies, while celebrating the older dirtier imagination ;).

I did try to create some sympathy for poor Joe by making him more of a moral presence on the websites than an outright dirty old man, and showing how hard it was for him to have his sexuality recognised. I wanted to show how we infantilise older people and are annoyed/amused if they're interested in sex. When does the iron gate of chastity fall? At 45? 50? 63? (To reference the famous Beatles song.)

Aww, curl, now I know how people feel when they read about their stories on my blog! It's so great when someone 'gets it', and also has a suggestion about how I could improve my writing. Please please keep reviewing! I personally don't intend to wait for people to come and ask me to review. When I get a moment, I shall post some more reviews of stories I've been reading on here which had something about the writing I liked and wanted to say more about than would easily fit into a comments box. And let me know if you would like to do a guest spot on my blog!
:)
 
A moment of self-reflection.

I’m happy to splurge my opinions anywhere, particularly if it’s a sci-fi/fantasy focused tale. Send me any stories you want my opinion on, but make sure the author knows about it.

The reason I don’t pick out random stories to review on here is because I tend to be very critical. Sometimes that’s a good thing! It can help if a writer is just starting out and their stories aren’t taking off the way they thought they would. If people don’t like a story on a site like this then they’ll probably just click away before the end of the first page rather than leaving feedback. So if someone can’t figure out where they’re going wrong and want to get smacked over the head by a reader who’ll give detailed criticism then it can be an effective wake-up call.

It can also be effective for a writer who has a lot of great stories but wants to take their material to the next level. I’m not saying I can make a bestseller or anything, it’s just helpful to get a bit more of a detailed response than the usual well-meaning albeit brief fare from the feedback and comments section.

The issue I have is that for a writer who has steeled themselves to take the impact of my critical sledgehammer it could be really effective and useful in improving their work.

If I start reviewing their stories at random, then the writers don’t necessarily have their guard up. Then my style of reviewing can become less of an encouraging smack on the ass and more of a kick in the gut, no matter how well-meaning my intentions.

There’s a big-ass learning curve to effective storytelling. Imagine if a writer started out bad, but really put the effort in to improve a facet of their storytelling technique. If they really planned out a workable plot with a decent twist that landed effectively and they started getting better ratings? That’s a great thing. Knowing they’re getting better and that work has paid off could encourage them to pick up speed in their next story. Then they come on to the forums looking to join in the community and: “Hey! What’s this? A guy named Lien has reviewed my story! Cool!” That’s how it starts. It finishes with me admitting that whilst they pull off an effective twist, their characters have all the depth of a penny and their use of dialogue and descriptive language is atrocious. Oh, and it’s me so I’ll probably find at least 5 things wrong with the opening paragraph.

Lien uses SOUL CRUSH! It’s super effective!

One of the biggest issues new writers have is maintaining enthusiasm through the learning curve. If they want the gauntlet thrown at their feet, then I’m here. If they’re not ready for that yet? I don’t want discourage anyone by doling out potentially heavy criticism at the wrong time.

So here I now sit, twiddling my thumbs and waiting for the next challenger. :D
 
I really learnt a lot from your review of my FAWC1 story, even though it's such a brief piece of work and not in my usual style.
:rose:

I have been thinking about what you said about imagery, and it's so true. I enjoy writerly writing, so I sometimes think of an image that seems hilarious or fab and I bung it in even though it stops the reader and makes them go: "Whaa-a-at?" instead of going with the flow of the story. I think I even have a word for this when I review other people's stories and they do it! LOL.

I do pick up stories which haven't necessarily asked for a review and give them a boost on my blog. I figure they are in the public domain, probably glad of extra exposure. My blog is aimed at readers who want to explore the world of online erotica with some safety harness attached so I don't have to just review 'good' stories, as long as they are fun (and safe sex) they can join the party. I try to be gentle ;). I usually pick a story I've liked so I big it up, although I also identify things which may not be working quite so well.

I did once start a review of someone's story which I felt I had to ask permission before publishing and in the end I never published it. I felt I had taken their story apart like a clockwork toy, and that the author probably wouldn't be able to put it back together and carry on writing the next chapter if I said what I thought about it. It wasn't the writing; the writing was fantastic. It was the way the characters interacted.

I try to provide a level of feedback which the author can use to develop and hone their story/writing, so they can tell their own stories better. But sometimes the analytic insight is too much and the way a critic views a story makes it hard for the author to see how s/he originally envisioned it. If I think I might have done that, I feel bad about it.
 
Oh yeah, I wasn’t complaining about other people writing up reviews to help writers promote their work or because they’re interesting. I think if you get the tone right then that’s fine. I just think I can be a bit vicious at times and I’m not always sure how caustic I’m being. So I tend to keep my trap shut unless people ask for my opinion.

Then at least it’s their fault. ;)
 
Lien,

Especially since you enjoy sci-fi, I was wondering if you ever read the submissions by hammingbyrd7. I find them delightful and extremely professional.

I am considering proposing them to Naoko for her feminist erotica blog, since the female charcters tend to be capable and wise. I think that hammingbyrd7 might be a fair author to review without a personal invitation, since they have no apparent footprints here for many years.

Several stories combine into a magnificent saga, but I can't recall the right sequence. When I have time to sort through it, I'll post the best links.

- curl
 
Hey Beatnic! Thanks for the request and I'll start up a response tomorrow! Been spending today mostly catching up on some of my own stuff. With it being a few chapters it might take me a couple of days to get a reply back to ya, but it's the only thing on the list right now so it'll get done! :D
 
That time when Lien's head nearly exploded...

Ladies and gentlemen, for your consideration: Finding Time 01 by Beatnic_jazzman.

Forewarning: This is not remotely a positive review. Author beware, and remember that if it’s too bad you can PM me and I’ll be happy to take it down!

I can’t believe I’m going to say this. It could be a first time thing on this thread. I actually quite like your author’s note there. A quick thanks to the editor and a quick question to sum up where the concept of the story? I wouldn’t say the question is necessary, but it doesn’t stall anything and actually on a site like this it’s nice to let readers know what they’re getting themselves into.

It’s a shame that your opening paragraph is one of the worst and honestly outright weirdest pieces of writing I’ve ever seen.

Where to start? Ok, the opening line: It was a fuzzy black ball of mystery. That’s actually not bad, if a little blatant. If you’re a regular reader of my stuff here you’ll know that I think the best story openings present the reader with a question that needs answering. It’s how we catch attention and immediately settle people down into our stories. Your opening line does manage that, but the “of mystery” part is kind of blatantly exploiting the idea. Sort of almost as if you’d said “It was a dark cave of interestingness!” or something like that. If you want the reader to be intrigued then establish a mystery through the writing. Don’t just say “it was a mystery.”

Instead try something along the lines of:

“When we first encountered the anomaly we’d never seen anything like it before.”

That tells the reader very little about the thing, but immediately calls for an answer. People enjoy discovery in literature just as much as in the real world, tell them they’re about to encounter something no one’s ever seen before and your work is done. Don’t be so… obvious.

Then shortly after that opener we get:

The containers we sent into it captured vacuum, while the camera showed what looked like a rapidly shifting star-field, we were also disappointed to discover that while we could safely insert non biological objects, it killed all forms of life, from the higher forms right down to viruses." I explained, looking over the few new faces."

Oh boy. First off, we sent into it captured vaccum doesn’t make a lick of sense. I’m three lines into a story and I see a mistake like that? Toodles. You can’t be bothered at least making your first paragraph legible? I can’t be bothered sticking around to read it.

Then just look at all those commas! Do you know how to use a full stop? Clearly not, because you put one next to a dialogue tag. Just for a laugh I actually tried to read that sentence and nearly gave myself a collapsed lung in the process.

Also, what’s with closing speech marks but not opening them? That confused the hell out of me. THEN you close the speech marks after the dialogue tag!?

Here is your opening paragraph written as someone who hasn’t lost their fucking mind.

“When we first encountered the anomaly we’d never seen anything like it before. Initial scans into the black orb did nothing at all except but freeze our diagnostic sensors. The early sampling drones we managed to recover gave us nothing. Literally. Every container emerged holding nothing but a sealed vacuum. Eventually, we did manage to salvage some information from one of our cameras. As you can see, the images and video we recovered from within seem to indicate that the anomaly is composed of what looks to be some sort of rapidly shifting star-field. Furthermore, whilst non-biological objects don’t get anything but the deep-freeze, it immediately kills all forms of life right down to base life forms and viruses,” I explained. The few fresh faces in the crowd shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

Behold! Sentences! Full stops! Capital letters! No need to fear someone might try to read it aloud and endure a psychotic breakdown due to crazy-assed sentence structure and/or lack of oxygen!

But seriously folks, if English isn’t your first language then you need more practice. If English is your first language and you wrote that? I dunno what to tell you, man. Maybe try learning French or something?

Let’s chug along then.

"Eventually we consulted with the astronomers," I went on. – HA! See! You do know how dialogue tags work!

Graaaah! Your comma use makes me feel like I need to take a step back to elementary school. If it’s a small break in a single thought, then use a comma. Completely different thoughts altogether should be separated by a full stop.

We discovered by varying the parameters that the frequency shift controlled the time displacement and the amplitude of the signal correlated with distance, we now had the means to see across time and space.

How about instead we try…

We discovered by varying the parameters that the frequency shift controlled the time displacement and the amplitude of the signal correlated with distance. Now we had the means to see across time and space.

There’s also some stuff like this which isn’t as bad but still worth noting:

I built another device, in part to check that we could replicate it, and in part to tidy it up a bit, but mainly so I could conduct my own experiments.

3 commas there.

I managed to replicate the device to smooth out the kinks and start conducting my own experiments.

0 commas there. Took me a whole 5 seconds to do that and it reads a hell of a lot smoother than yours.

Ok, I’m going to try to stop being so nitpicky about the language now or this review will be longer than the story it’s reviewing. All I’ll say is that this stuff matters!. I know I go on about things on this thread like plot pacing, info-dumping, character development. I don’t feel like I can do that in this one though because I see grossly clunky sentences in every single bloody paragraph!

It doesn’t break immersion. There is no immersion. Immersion has left the building.

Every writer is going to have some issues with this sort of thing. The occasional one too many commas or a sentence that’s hard to grasp. Hell, I didn’t even know about dialogue tags until I wrote Unleashed. It’s just that your story is so saturated with it, it’s like you don’t even care.

As I said, if English isn’t your first language, or if there’s some other reason then consider some slack cut. If there isn’t then please, for the love of Jeebus, make editing a priority!

Let’s stop and rewind then, and I’ll try to ignore the writing problems.

Your opening actually starts out interesting. As I said, you start with the question of the mystery object and add to it’s allure by making it potentially dangerous. Unfortunately, you describe it as a “black fuzzy ball” a lot and so every time you mention it I get the image of a kitten curled up in front of the fire. It’s probably not what you’re after.

After the opening though, my god man there is SO MUCH EXPOSITION! No one should have to read this much about theoretical physics without coming out at the end with a degree.

You could have avoided this by maintaining the set-up you started out with of having a student Q & A at the lecture or wherever your protagonist was giving his talk. That way we’d have gotten a more active narrative and I wouldn’t have to add “sleep inducing” to the list of things I can describe this story as.

Relatively smaller note on dialogue tags. Unless it’s super necessary, keep it to “he said, she said.” I’m seeing a lot of “she replied”, “I parried”, “she queried”, etc.

“He said” and “she said” are great because they’re invisible. Readers don’t acknowledge them as they’re conjuring up an image of the story. If you constantly get flourishy (that might not be a word) with your tags then it becomes unnecessarily distracting. Stuff where it’s clearly required such as “I whispered” in a quiet situation is perfectly fine. I’m just seeing a lot of tags here that aren’t really necessary.

Alright, next problem. When the main guy and Sally start talking about the potential uses and misuses of the doohickey the story starts getting really preachy. They talk about all the things they could do with the thing for way too long. I’m sat here thinking “please! For the love of buggery, I don’t care what you do with it just DO SOMETHING!”

Continuing on, the actual relationship between the protagonist and Sally is fairly decently put together. I can see their mutual excitement about the project, and their evolution to something deeper is pretty believable. I just wish they’d do something more interesting than sitting around telling me how good history was. It’s like you’ve dreamed up this machine and gotten so thrilled with the idea that you just want to show it off. “Look, dear reader! Look at all the cool things this thing could do! Look at all the important things it would change!” I’m sorry, I just don’t care about that. The sheer volume of nothing that’s happening here is mind boggling.

I made it! I made it to the end! (I skim-read quite a bit of it, but that’s cool, nothing interesting happened!) Fucking hell, I feel like I deserve an award.

Alright, well this chapter is basically: How not to write Sci-Fi 101.

Clunky writing. I don’t really feel like you fleshed out the characters much at all. I don’t know much about them other than that they think the machine is really cool. The plot is almost non-existant. It’s just them looking at stuff and remarking about how life-changing it all is.

It’d be like if the movie Pacific Rim was 2 hours of Raleigh and Mako sat looking at Gypsy Danger with variations on the following dialogue.

“It’s huge, isn’t it?”
“Sure is! It’s really going to change the world! We’ll be a match for those pesky Kaiju’s now!”
“We will! I can’t wait to use it to do something important.”
“Know what else we could use it for? Disaster relief! Imagine one of these bad-boys turning up in a hurricane.”
“Yeah, that’d be awesome. Wait, what about the religious ramifications?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, what happens if we’re working and some isolated Amazon tribe sees Gypsy and starts worshiping it! Hell, people will worship anything!”
“Nah. Hey! Let’s see if the hand-cannon works!”
“I’m sure it could work, but first let’s check the windscreen wipers.”
“Awesome idea!”
“Hey, maybe we should go fight some Kaiju’s?”
“Don’t be an idiot. Once we’ve checked the windscreen wipers, we have to go to the U.K. to let other people see Gypsy!”
“Isn’t that in the Atlantic ocean?”
“Yeah, so?”
“I thought this movie was called Pacific Ri- Y’know what? Screw it. I could go for some tea and crumpets. Let’s do that!”
“Woo!”

I’d like to say your story isn’t that bad, but y’know what? It is! It is exactly that bad!

Joking aside, in this chapter you’ve shown a concept for a story and the very basic beginnings of a relationship. As concepts go, it’s actually a fairly interesting one. It’s just put forward without any sense of danger, tension or action at all! Where are the government agents coming to seize the discovery? Where are the alien supreme beings trying to recover the fluffy black ball? Give me some actual conflict for crying out loud!

I suppose that was the biggest gripe for me. It’s a story completely devoid of conflict. There’s pontificating and self-congratulations up the wazoo, but nothing to really vest my interest in what’s going on.

This story also got a score of 4.72. So I guess my finger isn’t exactly on the beating pulse of Lit fandom.

Phew, ok then. Sorry to be so harsh on you, but as you can probably tell this story really wasn’t my idea of a good time. I hope some of the stuff I’ve said is useful for you in continuing writing and I hope this doesn’t put you off. I’d also like to say that I have personally made pretty much every mistake I’ve flagged up against you here, which is why they probably annoy me so much!

Keep up the effort!
 
Thanks.

Well, I can't say I wholly enjoyed your crit, but I know you make some very valid points. Thanks for taking the time to look it over.

I was trying for a softer adventure, not some Tom Cruise crash bang wallop, I didn't manage to bring it off. Let's hope my current crop of stories fare better. As you noted, I did thank an editor, I assumed my editor had corrected the grammatical errors, but it seems my reread of their work wasn't thorough enough.

My take on your take is that the bones of a good story are there but I failed to flesh it out well enough and picked some peculiar words and phrases to cement it together. Not what I hoped for but more likely what it deserved.

Thanks again for your assessment.

Beatnic.
 
Following up.

Glad I was of some help!

Softer adventures are fine and good. It’s just that ALL stories need conflict somewhere. Is it a conflict against time to get the patent on their invention? A romantic conflict between the two leads? A conflict between their newfound power and some malevolent outside force? In that opening chapter there doesn’t seem to be any conflict at all. It’s really what makes it feel like nothing at all is happening that’s of any interest.

My take was that you have a good basic concept for a story but for me the execution is like watching a literary car crash.

Also, if you used an editor and they sent it back to you like that then it’s time to at least add another editor to the roster. More so, I think if I gave my editor a story in this condition she’d bitch slap me half way to the arse-end of Russia. Editors are there to tighten up the language for you and suggest ideas. This story needs it’s author to look over it properly first.

Self-editing is how we get better. It’s about reflecting on your own work and honing the writing as much as possible to make it flow clearly for the reader. As I said, unless you have a big excuse along the lines of English not being your first language then you really need to allot more time in your writing process for editing. Particularly pay attention to sentence structure and overuse of commas.

As I said, this pisses me off because it’s something I used to do a lot myself. I still catch myself doing it when I’m writing up my drafts. Now, when I’m re-reading my story I usually try to look at any sentence with more than one comma and try to make it work without them. For my particular writing method the use of excessive commas is symptomatic of periods where I haven’t really been concentrating on the writing of the story. Sometimes just to get through a scene I’ll just write in an almost stream-of-consciousness sort of style and sort of half zone out a bit. Looking back over my work, it’s these spots where multiple commas and clunky sentences appear the most.

It’s fine for a first draft, but that sort of thing shouldn’t make it into your last one.

Again, I apologize for being overly harsh on you but I’m glad some of my points have landed. Hope to be reading something new from you soon!
 
The next step

I would like to request feedback on my story Light Rays Coming Out of the Computer (https://www.literotica.com/s/light-rays-coming-out-of-the-computer-ch-01). Of all of my stories, this one has gotten the least amount of feedback and the lowest view count despite a strong rating. The whole thing is a shade under 40,000 words, but I don't expect that you'll get that far.

Towards the end of it, there are characters appearing from different stories, and author notes indicate what stories one would need to read in conjunction with the one I'm wanting feedback on. The story almost stands on it's own without reading those other stories, but my writing partner and I were intending them to be at least partially integral to each other.
 
Nerp!

Hey there, AwkwardMD. I started out your story but it got a little too close to transsexual for my tastes. Won't be reviewing it cuz as I said in my opening post, that's not my idea of a good time. :D

Nothing against the idea, but it's just not for me. Sorry!
 
What are your length limits here, Lien?

I'd love for you to check out The Oldest Curse.
https://www.literotica.com/s/the-oldest-curse

I'm thinking of writing a sort of spin-off. So, it'd be good to revisit it.

It's probably my favorite story I've written for the site, though not my best scoring. It's a contest winner, so, obviously, some people like it. Still, I don't get a lot of solid feedback on it. People tend to either adore it or dislike it, and say so in a couple sentences. "Oh, this is great! You deserved to win! I want to have your babies!" Or, "This is not all that great. You didn't deserve to win. I'll pass on the babies, and when you do have them with someone else, I hope they are still-born and full of wasps."

It is a bit on the long side, however. So, I don't know if it's something you'd like to tackle. It's also
fantasy, and that is your territory. Though, it is a darker variety than most you see here. It also has its share of sloppy errors.

Knowing your history in the category, I'd love your opinion.
 
No probs!

Cool, I'll probably check it out for ya tomorrow!

My rules on story length are that I'm happy to read a long story, but I don't have infinite patience. If I'm not enjoying something then I'm not going to spend 15 hours reading it. :D

If I'm into it then I'll keep going, if not then I'll just write up my thoughts of the first few pages and leave it there.
 
Lien_Geller said:
Cool, I'll probably check it out for ya tomorrow!

My rules on story length are that I'm happy to read a long story, but I don't have infinite patience. If I'm not enjoying something then I'm not going to spend 15 hours reading it. :D

If I'm into it then I'll keep going, if not then I'll just write up my thoughts of the first few pages and leave it there.
Click to expand...

Fair enough.

I'll look forward to your rather short or rather long review.
 
Lien_Geller said:
Ladies and gentlemen, for your consideration: Finding Time 01 by Beatnic_jazzman.

Forewarning: This is not remotely a positive review. Author beware, and remember that if it’s too bad you can PM me and I’ll be happy to take it down!

I can’t believe I’m going to say this. It could be a first time thing on this thread. I actually quite like your author’s note there. A quick thanks to the editor and a quick question to sum up where the concept of the story? I wouldn’t say the question is necessary, but it doesn’t stall anything and actually on a site like this it’s nice to let readers know what they’re getting themselves into.

It’s a shame that your opening paragraph is one of the worst and honestly outright weirdest pieces of writing I’ve ever seen.

Where to start? Ok, the opening line: It was a fuzzy black ball of mystery. That’s actually not bad, if a little blatant. If you’re a regular reader of my stuff here you’ll know that I think the best story openings present the reader with a question that needs answering. It’s how we catch attention and immediately settle people down into our stories. Your opening line does manage that, but the “of mystery” part is kind of blatantly exploiting the idea. Sort of almost as if you’d said “It was a dark cave of interestingness!” or something like that. If you want the reader to be intrigued then establish a mystery through the writing. Don’t just say “it was a mystery.”

Instead try something along the lines of:

“When we first encountered the anomaly we’d never seen anything like it before.”

That tells the reader very little about the thing, but immediately calls for an answer. People enjoy discovery in literature just as much as in the real world, tell them they’re about to encounter something no one’s ever seen before and your work is done. Don’t be so… obvious.

Then shortly after that opener we get:

The containers we sent into it captured vacuum, while the camera showed what looked like a rapidly shifting star-field, we were also disappointed to discover that while we could safely insert non biological objects, it killed all forms of life, from the higher forms right down to viruses." I explained, looking over the few new faces."

Oh boy. First off, we sent into it captured vaccum doesn’t make a lick of sense. I’m three lines into a story and I see a mistake like that? Toodles. You can’t be bothered at least making your first paragraph legible? I can’t be bothered sticking around to read it.

Then just look at all those commas! Do you know how to use a full stop? Clearly not, because you put one next to a dialogue tag. Just for a laugh I actually tried to read that sentence and nearly gave myself a collapsed lung in the process.

Also, what’s with closing speech marks but not opening them? That confused the hell out of me. THEN you close the speech marks after the dialogue tag!?

Here is your opening paragraph written as someone who hasn’t lost their fucking mind.

“When we first encountered the anomaly we’d never seen anything like it before. Initial scans into the black orb did nothing at all except but freeze our diagnostic sensors. The early sampling drones we managed to recover gave us nothing. Literally. Every container emerged holding nothing but a sealed vacuum. Eventually, we did manage to salvage some information from one of our cameras. As you can see, the images and video we recovered from within seem to indicate that the anomaly is composed of what looks to be some sort of rapidly shifting star-field. Furthermore, whilst non-biological objects don’t get anything but the deep-freeze, it immediately kills all forms of life right down to base life forms and viruses,” I explained. The few fresh faces in the crowd shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

Behold! Sentences! Full stops! Capital letters! No need to fear someone might try to read it aloud and endure a psychotic breakdown due to crazy-assed sentence structure and/or lack of oxygen!

But seriously folks, if English isn’t your first language then you need more practice. If English is your first language and you wrote that? I dunno what to tell you, man. Maybe try learning French or something?

Let’s chug along then.

"Eventually we consulted with the astronomers," I went on. – HA! See! You do know how dialogue tags work!

Graaaah! Your comma use makes me feel like I need to take a step back to elementary school. If it’s a small break in a single thought, then use a comma. Completely different thoughts altogether should be separated by a full stop.

We discovered by varying the parameters that the frequency shift controlled the time displacement and the amplitude of the signal correlated with distance, we now had the means to see across time and space.

How about instead we try…

We discovered by varying the parameters that the frequency shift controlled the time displacement and the amplitude of the signal correlated with distance. Now we had the means to see across time and space.

There’s also some stuff like this which isn’t as bad but still worth noting:

I built another device, in part to check that we could replicate it, and in part to tidy it up a bit, but mainly so I could conduct my own experiments.

3 commas there.

I managed to replicate the device to smooth out the kinks and start conducting my own experiments.

0 commas there. Took me a whole 5 seconds to do that and it reads a hell of a lot smoother than yours.

Ok, I’m going to try to stop being so nitpicky about the language now or this review will be longer than the story it’s reviewing. All I’ll say is that this stuff matters!. I know I go on about things on this thread like plot pacing, info-dumping, character development. I don’t feel like I can do that in this one though because I see grossly clunky sentences in every single bloody paragraph!

It doesn’t break immersion. There is no immersion. Immersion has left the building.

Every writer is going to have some issues with this sort of thing. The occasional one too many commas or a sentence that’s hard to grasp. Hell, I didn’t even know about dialogue tags until I wrote Unleashed. It’s just that your story is so saturated with it, it’s like you don’t even care.

As I said, if English isn’t your first language, or if there’s some other reason then consider some slack cut. If there isn’t then please, for the love of Jeebus, make editing a priority!

Let’s stop and rewind then, and I’ll try to ignore the writing problems.

Your opening actually starts out interesting. As I said, you start with the question of the mystery object and add to it’s allure by making it potentially dangerous. Unfortunately, you describe it as a “black fuzzy ball” a lot and so every time you mention it I get the image of a kitten curled up in front of the fire. It’s probably not what you’re after.

After the opening though, my god man there is SO MUCH EXPOSITION! No one should have to read this much about theoretical physics without coming out at the end with a degree.

You could have avoided this by maintaining the set-up you started out with of having a student Q & A at the lecture or wherever your protagonist was giving his talk. That way we’d have gotten a more active narrative and I wouldn’t have to add “sleep inducing” to the list of things I can describe this story as.

Relatively smaller note on dialogue tags. Unless it’s super necessary, keep it to “he said, she said.” I’m seeing a lot of “she replied”, “I parried”, “she queried”, etc.

“He said” and “she said” are great because they’re invisible. Readers don’t acknowledge them as they’re conjuring up an image of the story. If you constantly get flourishy (that might not be a word) with your tags then it becomes unnecessarily distracting. Stuff where it’s clearly required such as “I whispered” in a quiet situation is perfectly fine. I’m just seeing a lot of tags here that aren’t really necessary.

Alright, next problem. When the main guy and Sally start talking about the potential uses and misuses of the doohickey the story starts getting really preachy. They talk about all the things they could do with the thing for way too long. I’m sat here thinking “please! For the love of buggery, I don’t care what you do with it just DO SOMETHING!”

Continuing on, the actual relationship between the protagonist and Sally is fairly decently put together. I can see their mutual excitement about the project, and their evolution to something deeper is pretty believable. I just wish they’d do something more interesting than sitting around telling me how good history was. It’s like you’ve dreamed up this machine and gotten so thrilled with the idea that you just want to show it off. “Look, dear reader! Look at all the cool things this thing could do! Look at all the important things it would change!” I’m sorry, I just don’t care about that. The sheer volume of nothing that’s happening here is mind boggling.

I made it! I made it to the end! (I skim-read quite a bit of it, but that’s cool, nothing interesting happened!) Fucking hell, I feel like I deserve an award.

Alright, well this chapter is basically: How not to write Sci-Fi 101.

Clunky writing. I don’t really feel like you fleshed out the characters much at all. I don’t know much about them other than that they think the machine is really cool. The plot is almost non-existant. It’s just them looking at stuff and remarking about how life-changing it all is.

It’d be like if the movie Pacific Rim was 2 hours of Raleigh and Mako sat looking at Gypsy Danger with variations on the following dialogue.

“It’s huge, isn’t it?”
“Sure is! It’s really going to change the world! We’ll be a match for those pesky Kaiju’s now!”
“We will! I can’t wait to use it to do something important.”
“Know what else we could use it for? Disaster relief! Imagine one of these bad-boys turning up in a hurricane.”
“Yeah, that’d be awesome. Wait, what about the religious ramifications?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, what happens if we’re working and some isolated Amazon tribe sees Gypsy and starts worshiping it! Hell, people will worship anything!”
“Nah. Hey! Let’s see if the hand-cannon works!”
“I’m sure it could work, but first let’s check the windscreen wipers.”
“Awesome idea!”
“Hey, maybe we should go fight some Kaiju’s?”
“Don’t be an idiot. Once we’ve checked the windscreen wipers, we have to go to the U.K. to let other people see Gypsy!”
“Isn’t that in the Atlantic ocean?”
“Yeah, so?”
“I thought this movie was called Pacific Ri- Y’know what? Screw it. I could go for some tea and crumpets. Let’s do that!”
“Woo!”

I’d like to say your story isn’t that bad, but y’know what? It is! It is exactly that bad!

Joking aside, in this chapter you’ve shown a concept for a story and the very basic beginnings of a relationship. As concepts go, it’s actually a fairly interesting one. It’s just put forward without any sense of danger, tension or action at all! Where are the government agents coming to seize the discovery? Where are the alien supreme beings trying to recover the fluffy black ball? Give me some actual conflict for crying out loud!

I suppose that was the biggest gripe for me. It’s a story completely devoid of conflict. There’s pontificating and self-congratulations up the wazoo, but nothing to really vest my interest in what’s going on.

This story also got a score of 4.72. So I guess my finger isn’t exactly on the beating pulse of Lit fandom.

Phew, ok then. Sorry to be so harsh on you, but as you can probably tell this story really wasn’t my idea of a good time. I hope some of the stuff I’ve said is useful for you in continuing writing and I hope this doesn’t put you off. I’d also like to say that I have personally made pretty much every mistake I’ve flagged up against you here, which is why they probably annoy me so much!

Keep up the effort!
Click to expand...

FWIW, I haven't read many of your reviews, but this one sucks. It reminds me of a circus. Anything for a laugh and to show how much you think you know at the expense of the writer.
 
Hi there, LadyVer! If you’d like to write up an argument as to why I’m wrong about the story, then I’d be happy to hear your thoughts and I’m sure Beatnic_jazzman would appreciate the positive feedback.

In the mean time I’d appreciate it if you could delete that massive quote in your post. It’s just a reproduction of my review, which can be found by simply scrolling upwards.

Thanks!
 
Lien_Geller said:
Hi there, LadyVer! If you’d like to write up an argument as to why I’m wrong about the story, then I’d be happy to hear your thoughts and I’m sure Beatnic_jazzman would appreciate the positive feedback.

In the mean time I’d appreciate it if you could delete that massive quote in your post. It’s just a reproduction of my review, which can be found by simply scrolling upwards.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

I'm not deleting the massive quote. I used it to refer to in my comment. Maybe your reviews are too long?

I've beta read for the jazzman. He knows what I think. I also didn't act like an ass when I gave him my feedback either. Anyway, carry on. :)
 
FWIW, LadyVer, I think you have a point that the review you take exception to seems at some points overly gleeful about skewering its subject matter. On the other hand, you obviously don't need to blockquote the entire review to "refer" to it; what Lien is asking there is basic netiquette that makes the thread easier to read for everyone, and I'd second it.
 
I’d like to say that I kind of just took for granted that everyone would just know how much of an ass I can be by this point? Pretty much every negative review on this thread shows my sense of humour.

I also made it blatantly clear in the second line of that review that if the author had a problem with it then I’d be happy to delete it from the thread. What’s more, I apologised at the end if I was overly harsh.

At least I’m honest about my dickishness, which is why I don’t dole it out to people who haven’t asked for it. I try to be funny to entertain other readers that might be interested in this sort of thing, and believe it or not I do it to try and get a laugh from the writer I’m criticising. I’m from England, we take the piss out of each other a lot over here. Sometimes it doesn’t translate well. Also, sometimes a joke can fall flat. I’m not perfect!

Anyhoo, I assure you that my intent is never to be critical just for the sake of being cruel. I didn’t find a lot to like about that story and decided to get a little more humorous than usual to avoid a really dreary and depressing analysis.

If you didn’t like it? Fair enough. Not everyone needs to share the same sense of humour or the same opinions.

I also make it clear in the opening post of this thread as to who I am, what sort of experience I have, and what sort of advice I can offer. I’m not the Master Yoda of erotic writing. I’m just a guy willing to give some in-depth feedback on stories flung my way. If a someone doesn’t think my feedback is useful? Then I’m perfectly happy to refund them the cost of what they purchased for it.

If you don’t like my style then there’s plenty of other people on this section of the forum willing to give feedback. If you disagree with something I’ve said then I’m happily open to constructive argument.

That’s the last I’ll say on it. Apologies if I’m not up to everyone’s standards! :D
 
The Oldest Curse.

Here we go with AMoveableBeast’s The Oldest Curse.

I really like your opening paragraph. I usually prefer a strong opening line to catch my interest, but you successfully set a scene that works just as well in compelling the reader to continue. Starting with a potential ritual sacrifice is obviously exciting and makes the reader immediately wonder what the hell is going on. Nicely done!

My only relatively minor gripe is that you’re a bit comma-happy. It’s nothing like the issues I had in my previous review, but let’s take a look at something like this:

My faithful, a mix of mortals and piru demons, wore less elaborate robes of "leaves" and circled the priest like a grove of trees, chanting back to him a heartbeat later, creating an echo-chamber effect. In the middle was the offering, a pretty, young thing, stripped bare, her eyes shining and her nipples erect, proud and excited to be chosen for such an honor.

3 commas in the first sentence and 4 in the second.

A mix of my faithful mortals and piru demons stood wearing less elaborate robes of “leaves” and circled the priest like a grove of trees. Each one chanted back to him a heartbeat later to create an echo-chamber effect. In the middle was the offering. She was a pretty thing stripped bare of clothing with shining eyes and hardened nipples, proud and excited to be chosen for such an honour.

There it is with just the 1 comma. That flows a hell of a lot easier to me.

Like I said earlier, excessive comma use tends to be a symptom of writing off the cuff. We write and half way through a sentence we might think of something else to add. So we plop down a comma and keep up the flow of ideas which we need to write. Sometimes this can happen multiple times on one sentence and we end up with some slightly clunky looking writing that should be honed to express the ideas as smoothly as possible.

It’s something I notice because my first drafts look a lot like that. It might not be the case for you, and you might just prefer that style. Either way I hope it’s food for thought. I try to keep my commas to 1 per sentence where possible.

Continuing on, I like the voice you give to your protagonist. I really enjoy subverting expectations in the genre and having a sacrifice to a god who just isn’t really into it is a fun thing to explore. The idea of a god who’s just having a bit of an off day is amusing and it infuses the character with personality right from the get-go.

I’m not sure about the description of love that is given in the Hallmark card shortly afterwards. For one thing, it’d be one fecking huge card to have all that inside it. Mostly, I think it’s just a bit of a jarring shift in tone. You go from ominous sacrifice to wise-cracking god to a long letter-of-desperation in the space of about 6 short paragraphs.

It’s feels like less of a subversive twist instead just becomes tonally disorienting.

Thankfully, you ground us back in the voice of the protagonist shortly thereafter. It’s a good voice that shows us effectively and entertainingly what sort of person (or god) he is.

Short aside:

The high priest, whose real name was Herbert but who preferred to be called Dathos "in circle" (Who was I to judge? I had many names. Thankfully none of them as despised as "Herbert". Jutas came close. What's one letter, right, Christians?) picked up the crinkled old book that lay on the altar table before him, opened it to the right page and began reading from it--with gusto.

There’s another mistake that I’m very familiar with. You open the brackets there and by the time you’ve finished musing about the guy’s name I can’t remember what’s going on when you pick up the sentence. It could easily be re-written a different way:

The high priest was a guy called Herbert, who understandably preferred to be called Dathos by his followers. Not that I’m judging, you understand. I myself have many names. Thankfully none of them as despised as "Herbert". Jutas came close. What's one letter, right, Christians? I watched as Herb- excuse me. I watched as Dathos picked up the crinkled old book that lay on the altar table before him, opened it to the right page and began reading from it--with gusto.

See? Again, I think this is a symptom of you just splurging thoughts on the page as they come to you. It’s fine, and even useful to write like this on the first draft to get everything down that you need to. You just need concentrate more on going back over your work and make sure the writing is clear and flows properly to the reader.

This is a smaller thing and more of a personal preference than anything else, but I do think that Po’s musings sometimes detract from the action a little bit in this opening scene. It’s like every little movement sends him on a tangent. Admittedly these tangents are given life by your talent for giving him an entertaining voice, it just gets a bit overdone at some points. I’m thinking “what’s he gonna do with the knife? Is the priest actually going to kill this girl?” and then you go off reminiscing about a gruesome twist on Ben and Jerry’s.

I’m not coming down on you too hard there, because that did get a laugh from me, and it lets us know more about Po’s past. The humour in his other diversions and anecdotes really works too. It’s just the consistent distractions give the story a weird pacing to the action.

Good lord this gets pretty gruesome. You’ve been effective in maintaining interest so far by mixing Po’s sense of humour with his general despicableness for entertaining effect. I think you go a little bit over the top with the extensive description of his nefarious past. I don’t really get much from it that you haven’t successfully implied more effectively during the ritual. It just feels like it’s there for shock value and it’s also quite info-dumpy too. Lots of “look at how awful and badass I was” without much in the way of feeling like the story is moving forward at all.

Again, you successfully recapture attention by settling us back in the present with a great mix of scathing sarcasm and reverent cult worship. I really do like these parts of the story a lot. You’ve actually made me genuinely laugh aloud a few times, which is rare for me.

Aaand then you have a celestial incest scene which is one of my no-no subjects. You’ve also danced the line along a few other things that aren’t really to my tastes, so I’ll stop here I think. Nothing personal or wrong with the material, but I can’t really critique something like this.

No hard feelings and I’ll put this up in the hope that my thoughts thus far have been helpful. You’ve got an interesting and vivid imagination and a great sense of humour. I’d just tone down what I’d consider to be unnecessary shock value and take a closer look at giving your writing a little more clarity. No major faults here though, just a difference in personal tastes!
 
*chuckle*

Thanks, Lien.

You know, it didn't even strike me that the story contained incest. I hadn't even thought of that! The characters are so far off human that I think of them more like Greek gods, where incest is the order of the day. Since I don't treat it as a kink, I didn't even consider it. My apologies. And here I was thinking I'd never written an incest story!

The beginning is a bit gruesome. If it helps, that's the blackest part. Mostly.

Your observations on commas are interesting. I will have to take that under consideration. One comma a sentence? What would I do with myself? :p

Of course, there are many great writers who shun the comma almost entirely: Gertrud Stein, Cormac McCarthy, Saramago. And others who strew them about like party decorations, like Marcel Proust and Dostoyevsky. I guess I'm more of an exceedingly poor man's version of the latter kind of author. I like using the traffic signals to control the flow and speed at which the reader experiences the words. I can do that with full stops, of course. And I do. But sometimes, I want the reader to pause before they gobble.

Still, it's something to think on. Worthwhile advice. Particularly for this story, which has a pronounced stream-of-consciousness feel to it at times. You hit on one of my major concerns. Which is, how much is too much? That's something I want to get a better feel for before I revisit this world.

Thank you for your insights. Sorry for the squick. I honestly never thought about it. It's such a minor part of the story to me. Glad I made you laugh.
 
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