I Would Love Some Feedback on My First Story

[scbolder]

I am currently working on part 2 and would love some feedback and tips moving forward. I know there are a few typos that I missed in editing, so no need to point those out. I am more looking for people's take away as to the amount of sex to plot ratio, the flow and timing, etc. Basically, the structure of the chapter. Not to be crude, but is there enough sex to get people off? Would you like more plot in a chapter? Or any other ideas you may have.

Thank you!

(It is a pretty vanilla story, with only some very mild rough sex and dirty talk).

https://www.literotica.com/s/premonitions-senior-year-ch-01

 

[SisterJezabel]

I am currently working on part 2 and would love some feedback and tips moving forward. I know there are a few typos that I missed in editing, so no need to point those out. I am more looking for people's take away as to the amount of sex to plot ratio, the flow and timing, etc. Basically, the structure of the chapter. Not to be crude, but is there enough sex to get people off? Would you like more plot in a chapter? Or any other ideas you may have.

Thank you!

(It is a pretty vanilla story, with only some very mild rough sex and dirty talk).

https://www.literotica.com/s/premonitions-senior-year-ch-01

First things- i am sick of disclaimers stating all characters are over 18! When you submit a story you click a button that says you have read the submission agreement and you understand the TOC of the site. To me, this renders the statement useless! You also specifically state she is an 18yo virgin in the text of the story. YMMV of course!

How do purple flowers on a bra compliment tanned skin? "Why skin, how tanned you are!" Even if you meant complEmented I think you are trying to say that the bra stood out against the tanned skin or blended in or something. I'm not sure if this was one of the typos you mentioned or a misuse of grammar.

To me, tits are either a mouthful, a handful or more than a handful. You describe a girl who is shorter than average with D cup tits. Instead of giving a bra size, how about say despite her stocky frame, her tits looked large and I longed to... You even mentioned she had an above average chest. In Australia, a 32D would be a 10D which size 10 would be a size 6 in the US! I would probably not call that stocky! Later on you describe them as being a handful. I've read lots of discussions on hre regarding physiques and descriptions. There is a lot to be said about letting the reader paint a picture in their own eye based on your description. I met my partner well over 12 years ago on an online dating site. It asked us to describe our build. He described himself as athletic. I described myself as slightly overweight. The reality is we both have very similar builds, work out at the gym a few times per week and get our 10,000 steps in. I like that extra slice of pizza and I'm not going to say no when I'm out with friends because I want to get down to a size 6. I think my point here is that language can usually describe more than numbers. Perhaps something like 'Malory was shorter than most girls in our class, but she looked fit. I could imagine her muscular legs kicking the soccer ball around the field and imagined her ample bosom bouncing as she did..."

So in his mind, she's wearing a bra, yet he manages to jiz on her nipple.

So he's never been with a woman before and yet he can imagine the perfect blowjob? I wonder if perhaps you might have described his dreaming of how he thought it might feel with more questions- would she lick the tip like the porno he watched last night? Would she be able to take all of him in her mouth?

You say she has a "sloppy cunt" and yet later "Her cunt fit me like a sheath to a sword. Tight enough to apply pressure, but soft and warm enough to be eternally welcoming." Grammatically, I would have used a semicolon between these two sentences. Yes, they can stand alone, but they really belong to each other. Now when I think of sloppy cunts, I think of women who've just given birth or had a gangbang with 20 hung black guys! I don't think if 18yo coeds!

I thought it was a fairly solid start and really encourage you to keep going. I think I would have gotten more out of the story if it had been a comparison- 'Having her suck my cock was nothing like I had imagined, it was 100 times better. Imagining those lips and those eyes gazing into mine was nothing on the reality that before lunch had only been a dream...' type stuff.

Some backstory would also have helped. Was he always shy around girls? Had all his friends gone all the way? To get a hot girl like Malory to go from classmate to fuckbuddy in a day- why did she choose him over every other guy in the class/school?

I hope this helps.

Someone has left a great comment about reading your stories aloud too in the comments section.

 

[AlinaX]

I've got around rejections sometimes by adding disclaimers, so I don't have a problem with them. They should be kept short - and this one is.

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

Congratulations on your first published story! It’s a really nice job and looks like it’s already well-received!

You have a few, repeat grammatical problems that careful proofreading could easily fix. You have lots of comma mistakes—I was kind of baffled by it, because otherwise, your punctuation was fairly good—and are missing commas between phrases and in dialogue punctuation while incorrectly comma splicing some sentences. You also have dangling modifiers, and a few obvious malapropisms as your Anonymous commenter pointed out.

What I thought was most problematic in your story was the pacing. The premise is built on Scott’s premonitions (and the full sensory experience!) of unbelievable sexual encounters with unbelievably hot girls. But to keep this trope clever rather than banal, the rest of the story needs a plausible narrative.

You were off to the races in the beginning, with the set up of an average class day and hanging out with friends. But the circumstances that led Scott and Malory to his first blowjob were even more unbelievable than his ESP. In other stories, the slammed door, blindfold and “I’ll do whatever you want” whisper can work well; here, Malory’s behavior had no anchor, and thus the ESP of her giving Scott a blowjob was just as unbelievable as his premonition. Your writing is good, so I think that most readers are willing to overlook this disjointedness; however, I do think that working on your narrative pacing will make you a strong writer, and retain readers over multiple chapters.

I agree with AlinaX that there’s no reason not to use an age disclaimer: many authors do. And likewise, there’s no rule about using, or not using, measurements in your story—as I’m sure you’re well aware, most stories on this site describe characters with measurements of some kind. You’ll never satisfy the personal gripes of every peevish critic; my advice would be to ignore what’s ridiculous.

Hope this is helpful, and congratulations again!

 

[gunhilltrain]

I've got around rejections sometimes by adding disclaimers, so I don't have a problem with them. They should be kept short - and this one is.

I think one should be sparing with disclaimers. It's all right to mention the age issue and high school.

As for the rest of the one by the original poster, most of it goes without saying. Just publish it and let the readers come to their own conclusions.

Most professional writers of short stories and novels do not have disclaimers. I hope this seems amusing rather than snarky, but Melville didn't start Moby Dick with, "This is a really long book and it's full of details about whaling."

Imagine the disclaimers that someone like William Burroughs could have written.

 

[scbolder]

Thank you all for your feedback, I really appreciate it.

I know I should have gotten someone else to proofread it, but I got antsy to post it to see how people liked it. For some reason I have never been able to proofread my own work, even when reading aloud.

I actually wanted the circumstances of the hookup with Malory to be on the unlikely side to leave readers wondering why that happened. I should have found a way to make that intention more clear. I am planning on going back to revisit that and answer questions that were left about it and the premonitions in the following chapters. I wanted to jump into the action with the first chapter and not bog it down with too much back story. I figured I could add that in the later chapters, but I now see it leaves the first chapter lacking as it does not stand alone.

I can now see the benefit of writing the whole thing first and then posting the chapters individually, but as I said before I was eager to see how it was received before I spent a ton of time on it.

Again, thank you to those that gave me feedback.

 

[SpindleTop]

Hi scbolder!

Well done on your first chapter! I really enjoyed reading it.

I think my comments will echo those of Vix_Giovanni, but my main observation is that there’s very little build up before we are into the first blowjob scene. Perhaps you could have included a little flirting between Malory and Scott - having a little dialog over lunch might have helped to establish the chemistry a little more. I also wondered whether moving the ‘premonition’ to after lunch (after Scott had found out Malory’s name), might have worked a little better.

Overall a very enjoyable first chapter and I’m looking forward to the next one.

SpindleTop

—

My stories: https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=5133214&page=submissions
First blowjob: https://www.literotica.com/s/tybalt-and-juliet-ch-05
Latest chapter: https://www.literotica.com/s/tybalt-and-juliet-ch-15

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

I actually wanted the circumstances of the hookup with Malory to be on the unlikely side to leave readers wondering why that happened. I should have found a way to make that intention more clear. I am planning on going back to revisit that and answer questions that were left about it and the premonitions in the following chapters. I wanted to jump into the action with the first chapter and not bog it down with too much back story. I figured I could add that in the later chapters, but I now see it leaves the first chapter lacking as it does not stand alone....

It is helpful to know that this was your goal; yes, unfortunately, if information isn’t telegraphed in someway (and, tbh, even when it is!), it’s hard to touch base with readers that don’t understand your intentions or follow where the story’s heading. And unfortunately, on Literotica, it seems like that’s always a potential setback for clever stories written outside of the site’s typical story tropes, like yours is.

A story with a slightly similar problem that’s done really well is Alex’s Gifts. You may want to take a look at a few of the chapters, the author’s notes and the comments sections and see how Magnus Rhodes handled forecasting and reader feedback, etc.

I think that most long-term writers on the site would advise you shouldn’t worry about revisiting chapter one at this point: editing and resubmitting won’t give you a renewed audience exposure, and at this point, you’ve probably gained the bulk of attention you’ll attract there. The best way to keep increasing exposure, and to answer questions about chapter one, would probably be to go on and finish chapter two. Looking forward to seeing it published!

Hope this is helpful!

 

[scbolder]

It is helpful to know that this was your goal; yes, unfortunately, if information isn’t telegraphed in someway (and, tbh, even when it is!), it’s hard to touch base with readers that don’t understand your intentions or follow where the story’s heading. And unfortunately, on Literotica, it seems like that’s always a potential setback for clever stories written outside of the site’s typical story tropes, like yours is.

A story with a slightly similar problem that’s done really well is Alex’s Gifts. You may want to take a look at a few of the chapters, the author’s notes and the comments sections and see how Magnus Rhodes handled forecasting and reader feedback, etc.

I think that most long-term writers on the site would advise you shouldn’t worry about revisiting chapter one at this point: editing and resubmitting won’t give you a renewed audience exposure, and at this point, you’ve probably gained the bulk of attention you’ll attract there. The best way to keep increasing exposure, and to answer questions about chapter one, would probably be to go on and finish chapter two. Looking forward to seeing it published!

Hope this is helpful!

Thank you for the feedback. I am taking a break from working on chapter 2 as I type this. I will check out Alex's Gifts.

 

[AnnieLit]

Hi scbolder.,
Congratulations on having your first story publised! And even bigger one on working on your next one.

About your idea of writing the whole thing first and then publishing it chapter by chapter. You could do that, but there is no need for it. What helps me with longer pieces is planning: I first write a list of titles, then add a one to three sentences discription to each one, or sometimes do a bullet point list of what's supposed to happen there. That's enough to keep track of the ideas, not to forget where I wanted my story to go, but it does not take too much time.

If you write the whole thing, publish first chapter or two, and somebody points out an inconsistency, what are you going to do? Re-write everything? If you have only the outlines, you can still tweak your story enough to fix an earlier problem, but not that much if everything is fully written.

Good luck with chapter two!
A.

 

[Bad_Egg]

Woowee, you's a....

First things- i am sick of disclaimers stating all characters are over 18! ....

 

[gunhilltrain]

Hi scbolder!

Well done on your first chapter! I really enjoyed reading it.

I think my comments will echo those of Vix_Giovanni, but my main observation is that there’s very little build up before we are into the first blowjob scene. Perhaps you could have included a little flirting between Malory and Scott - having a little dialog over lunch might have helped to establish the chemistry a little more. I also wondered whether moving the ‘premonition’ to after lunch (after Scott had found out Malory’s name), might have worked a little better.

Overall a very enjoyable first chapter and I’m looking forward to the next one.

SpindleTop

My stories: https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=5133214&page=submissions
First blowjob: https://www.literotica.com/s/tybalt-and-juliet-ch-05
Latest chapter: https://www.literotica.com/s/tybalt-and-juliet-ch-15

I'd like to know more about who Malory is besides her looks. Maybe he only has a physical attraction to her; that has been a factor in sex for millennia. But what does she see in him?

She came from the Midwest, but I'd like to know more about this small town, even if it's a fictional place. But that's my thing; some writers leave the setting unspecified.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy publishing here!