Feedbak Request - Nomansland I

[nocturn9]

Feedback Request - Nomansland I

Hi all,

i'm interested to know people's thoughts on the first part of my new story. Its pretty fanciful but thats the way i enjoy writing. Looking forward to your feedback.

https://www.literotica.com/s/nomansland-ch-01

All the best,

Nocturn9.

 

[nocturn9]

Please?

 

[WinsomeWeb]

I think it’s well-written, and you’ve established an interesting scenario. The major critique I would have for it, though, is that it’s only a thousand words. You can do a lot with a thousand words, but in this case you’ve really only established the scenario and the characters. There hasn’t been much of a build, or a notable arc to the story. It is hinted that she has used the carrots to pleasure herself and then put them in the soup, which he enjoys, and there is some minor flirting and petting, but I don’t think it’s enough as a self-contained chapter.

If this was a completed book then a chapter like this wouldn’t be a problem, because you could just flip to the next page and see what happens. But here in the format of serial publication, where there could be days—even weeks—between chapters, my expectations haven’t been satisfied. Just when things were building, the story’s been truncated.

You’ve established the scene, but then not let it play out to any kind of conclusion.

In a way, denying the reader with an “Until next time!” can be a good device for storytelling, but to get them wanting more you have to draw them all the way in. Either demonstrate why the scene can’t progress to something erotic (e.g., Another person enters the scene! There’s a sudden kitchen fire! He can’t perform! etc.), or let the scene play out and then give the reader the promise of more so they’ll come back, but don’t just leave the scene unresolved.

Two much smaller critiques:

Firstly, there’s really no need to hide the identity of the point of view character at the start of the story. You’re writing in third person limited, which means that this POV in this chapter is always filtered through John’s experiences. While mysterious to have a stranger arrive at night, it’s unclear why the character from whose perspective we are hearing the story would be unaware of his own name and refer to himself as “the passenger”. That’s not to say that you can’t play with that idea and use perspective to hide a character’s identity (or express dual identities), but if you’re just going to reveal who he is within the first three or four paragraphs, there’s really no reason to be hiding it in the first place.

It’s okay to straight up tell the reader information like a POV character’s name—especially early on when readers don’t know anything. Compared to movies, telling is one of the greatest strengths of the written word, and as much as people champion “Show, don’t tell”, you shouldn’t be afraid to reveal information when it aids a reader’s ability to understand your story. It’s very common for stories to start with some telling early on, even if that telling is as simple as “Once upon a time...”

To demonstrate what I mean, here are the opening paragraphs of the three books I have next to me:

“I know you hate surprises, Stella. In the interests of communicating our expectations and providing you a reasonable timeline, you should know we’re ready for grandchildren.”

See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt. He stokes the scullery fire. Outside lie dark turned fields with rags of snow and darker woods beyond that harbor yet a few last wolves. His folk are known for hewers of wood and drawers of water but in truth his father has been a schoolmaster. He lies in drink, he quotes from poets whose names are now lost. The boy crouches by the fire and watches him.

When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist. They called me nymph, assuming I would be like my mother and aunts and thousand cousins. Least of the lesser goddesses, our powers were so modest they could scarcely ensure our eternities. We spoke to fish and nurtured flowers, coaxed drops from the clouds or salt from the waves. That word, nymph, paced out the length and breadth of our futures. In our language, it means not just goddess, but bride.

All three are telling in some way—even The Kissing Quotient, which is entirely showing through dialogue, is still choosing to use dialogue which is honestly just an exposition dump for the story’s entire motivation. Circe is the most tell-y, as that book has a more fantastical bent and has to redefine the parameters of ‘real’ for the story. Blood Meridian is probably the most common type of telling, where the author tries to ground you in specific moments, but still straight up reveals information like, “His folk are known for hewers of wood and drawers of water but in truth his father has been a schoolmaster.”

Secondly, in the conventional format, if dialogue comes with a dialogue tag (e.g., “he said”, “she said”, etc.) the dialogue itself should end with a comma, unless otherwise ending with a special character like a question mark, exclamation mark, or em-dash (e.g., “Hi, my name is Susie,” she said.). If you’re ending dialogue with a period, the next statement should be an independent sentence, and is often an action performed by the character to whom the dialogue belongs (e.g., “Hi, my name is Susie.” She waved.)

You started using commas before dialogue tags, but then drifted into using periods instead, so I thought I would just mention it. It’s almost certainly not going to hurt anyone’s reading experience, but there it is.

All in all, I think you're a strong writer. You just need to take the next chapter a little bit further and I think you'll get some good attention.

Best of luck!

 

[nocturn9]

Thank you very much for the your detailed reply. I agree with your criticisms. I dimly remember the quotation rule now, thanks for the reminder! I will ponder your main criticism before I embark on part 2..

Thanks again.

 

[Andrew1968]

Feedback Request - Nomansland 1

The opening couple of paragraphs were quite nicely written. I like some of the imagery conjured up here, particularly the headlights in the misty forest on a dark winter’s night. I got a sense of a “rural film noir.” Nomansland is an evocative title, but it needs illustrating.

I am interested in how evocative descriptions of scenery or places can add to the story and evoke moods or even psychological states, which mirror the moods and psychology of characters and storylines.

The comments below are meant to be constructive and not nasty at all.

I had some problems with the story. It was, unfortunately, far too short. All of those evocative scenes really could have been built upon and extended, so a whole ambience or background of feelings and mood could have been established right from the start.

I don’t have much context here. I mean I don’t really know anything about the main character. From out of a dark misty night comes a man, but I need to have some stronger sense of this man. He can still be a “mystery man,” but I need more development of his appearance, his character and his purpose while he was riding in a train and that cab through the misty night. This man must be strongly wrought. I must have sympathy for him and some appreciation for him. Is he a criminal escaping the law or is he a loner who’s wife has died, etc.

Why is that man there in that place? I mean I guess you can state that in later installments, but I wouldn’t really keep the reader waiting. He shows up in the middle of the night all alone. The cab drops him off and he is all alone there. Why would he go there? What is his purpose or project there? The story seems to only state: ‘1 room Nomansland, £10/week - looking for someone to help me out over winter.’ That is not actually a good reason. Why does he take up this offer? Why go and do this job and not another job? Is he running from something?

There appears to be only 2 characters in the story, so their lives are important and need fleshing out in detail. The dialogue between the 2 of them is all important. Are they going to fall in love? Will it just be sex? Her character is important and her history is important. She doesn't come across as a sex symbol so her attractiveness and her desirability needs to be established in another way, rather than just physical appearance.

The carrot storyline unfortunately didn’t add to a storyline, which could be quite profound and dramatic. It is difficult to write a sincere relationship between a man and a woman who are living together all by themselves in Nomansland. This may be a tough sort of story to write.

 

[nocturn9]

Thanks for your detailed response, much appreciated. You are right that it is too short. I write in short installments because I have a condition that makes me tire quickly. The answer is to take a bit longer I suppose! I will flesh out the characters in future installments but you are right that it is asking a lot of the audience to persist with the story given so few details. I'm planning to take the story in a different direction from a sincere relationship. I hope that doesn't disappoint anyone who enjoyed the first part.

Thanks again.

 

[nocturn9]

Wow! It seems like the more people read it, the more they hate it. I suppose the rating system saves me from ploughing on with something that is unpopular from the start. Thanks for the feedback, I guess I'm not cut out for this.

Best regards.

 

[nobodyridesforfree]

Keep working

Hello,
Posted to the story page as well.

As writers or authors, the hardest thing for any of us to do is to lose the ego. Critique can be sufferable if we can readily apply some level of humility to the work we create. There's good advice here. Use it as a learning guide, nothing more.

You have obvious talent, keep rolling with it, but concentrate on continuing to write and evolve the story.
Don’t ever let critics, or worse – your Self – get you off track or stop you from your intention.

What you have given birth to in this particular piece is a lead-in to a story. Make sure all content aspects jive with the setting (use GOT as an awesome lesson). Keep your descriptives, while creative, appropriate. Ask yourself “So what?” to determine if something is extraneous or needed.
Focus on content, structure and flow first. Your strong points.

Keep it simple and save grammatics as a later chore to focus upon.

That said, basic grammar is always an issue w/every writer during initial work. Just do your best with it as you write. Don’t get stuck in it while writing or forget it after the story has been told.
Long sentences often suffer from continuity & flow issues. Just something to keep in mind later. You have a talent in using that. Continue developing it.
I wanna see where you take this if you haven't posted more already because this sample of work is interesting to me.

Thanks for the opportunity & keep at it!

 

[nocturn9]

Thank you very much! Excuse my current preoccupation with them but sometimes we need the carrot as well as the stick so your comments have put a smile back on my face. The next section is not nearly so sedate. I'll get on and write it!

Best regards.

 

[nocturn9]

I think it is fair to say that part 2 takes a different direction: https://www.literotica.com/s/nomansland-ch-02

It is still short though, sorry.

 

[ElectricBlue]

You can write. You've still got some technical things to get right - your dialogue punctuation is much better, but still not 100% - but that's refinement. Learn how to punctuate dialogue properly - it's important.

A few suggestions: separate your dialogue from your narrative more. The convention is a paragraph break for each piece of dialogue. You tend to merge your dialogue with your narrative, and sometimes the narrative is about him, then her, in the same paragraph, which blurs meaning.

Use more paragraph breaks so it's clearer - his narrative (one paragraph), her narrative (another paragraph). This not only helps comprehension, but also gives readers "white space" which is important on small devices like phones or small tablets. Digital devices "read" differently to paper - your format is more paper oriented at the moment.

Your first two chapters are scenes, not stories.

Publish in much longer chunks. One Lit page is around 3750 words, but you're doing barely a third of that. You should try for longer chunks at a time, say 5000 - 6000 words, especially since your style is very slow moving, very dense. Your style won't suit everyone, but it will suit those who like lots of detail. Your chapters, though, need more resolution within each one, to be more "complete." These are fragments of a story, but not yet a complete story.

 

[nocturn9]

Thank you. What do you mean by a Liter page? Good tips about the dialogue, at least that should be easy to fix. The next 'scene' is written and everso slightly longer then I'll have to write something more substantial.

Thanks again.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Thank you. What do you mean by a Liter page? Good tips about the dialogue, at least that should be easy to fix. The next 'scene' is written and everso slightly longer then I'll have to write something more substantial.

Thanks again.

A Literotica page - if you are reading on a tablet or computer. I guess if you read on a phone it's just a continuous scroll.

Most writers probably don't know or care about the page length, but those of us who hang out in the Authors' Hangout regularly talk about page lengths (approx 3750 words).

 

[nocturn9]

Ah! Thanks.

I'm interested to know if it made anyone laugh or maybe wince?

 

[nocturn9]

It seems everyone is unhappy about the short entries but I don't really get it. Some stories have long chapters, others short. Does it matter? Isn't it up to the author and what suits their style?

 

[ElectricBlue]

It seems everyone is unhappy about the short entries but I don't really get it. Some stories have long chapters, others short. Does it matter? Isn't it up to the author and what suits their style?

It's a very strong preference of Lit readers to want something longer than thousand word bites. As an author you can go some way towards meeting that preference by writing longer chapters, or you can exercise your stylistic prerogative and stick with your approach. If you stick with your approach, though, you will get a less favourable response. That's a pretty safe bet.

What you should consider, when writing erotica, is that most people read it to get aroused. A thousand words might get a tingle, but I doubt you'll get much arousal. That's the fundamental reason why readers want longer chapters - they want to get satisfaction, and generally speaking, it takes more than one scene to do that. Write longer chapters and you'll get a better response.

It's Literotica, not Littlebiterotica .

 

[nocturn9]

Part 3: https://www.literotica.com/s/nomansland-ch-03

I've got a feeling you won't like it.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Part 3: https://www.literotica.com/s/nomansland-ch-03

I've got a feeling you won't like it.

It barrels along like an express train, and the introduction of Ibby was fun.

You take a prize for a terrible sentence:

Her tits were not as big as John had supposed as he had surreptitiously ogled them last night so they had escaped the worst of gravity's ravages and could still be described as pert

Other than that, over too soon, but I see you're sticking to your style .

 

[nocturn9]

Thanks! Thats kind of you to say. Yes, there is rather too much going on in that sentence. I think I realised as I was writing that I was contradicting something that I said earlier. Very clumsy!
I wrote parts 2 and 3 almost at the same time. I was going to edit it based on your suggestions but it didn't feel like it was working so i decided to have a proper try with part 4. Then I forgot about it all for a while. Your words were not wasted, I truly appreciate your advice.

 

[nocturn9]

Another short chapter: https://literotica.com/s/nomansland-ch-04

But I tried to space the dialogue a bit better.

Interested to know what you think as always.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Another short chapter: https://literotica.com/s/nomansland-ch-04

But I tried to space the dialogue a bit better.

Interested to know what you think as always.

I've got to say your scenarios are not to my taste, but you certainly go about them with enthusiasm so cudos for that!

The flow of your writing is much better - this rollocks along with gusto.

 

[nocturn9]

Thanks for sticking with it and thanks for the encouragement. I must admit that it is more black comedy than erotic so I'm going against the grain really. It's funny my rating has increased but readership is dwindling. Maybe it's time to call it a day.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Thanks for sticking with it and thanks for the encouragement. I must admit that it is more black comedy than erotic so I'm going against the grain really. It's funny my rating has increased but readership is dwindling. Maybe it's time to call it a day.

That's always the way with chaptered stories. If you kept going, the Views you're getting for this last chapter would pretty much continue at the same level regardless how many more chapters you write.

 

[NotWise]

Thanks for sticking with it and thanks for the encouragement. I must admit that it is more black comedy than erotic so I'm going against the grain really. It's funny my rating has increased but readership is dwindling. Maybe it's time to call it a day.

You probably shouldn't worry about the dwindling readership. It's very normal for the number of views to drop off from chapter to chapter in a serial story.