March Review Open Season

[yowser]

I'm taking a break from writing for a bit and am willing to try an experiment.

For the next stretch, at least through the end of March, I'll take on requested reviews for one of your stories, new or early career writers especially encouraged. If you’d like one of your works to get some detailed criticism but have been reluctant, for whatever reasons, from starting a request thread on the Feedback Forum, here’s your chance.

I'll keep a list, in received order, and promise to give a deep read for the first half-dozen or so that accumulate, continuing if time and energy permit. Ideally let me know which aspects of your writing you wish to receive the greatest scrutiny.

I promise to:

Give your whole story a comprehensive read.

Let you know what your strengths are to build upon for future work.

Provide specific advice on at least one aspect of your writing that could use improvement.


Couple caveats: please nothing more than about 20k words. I won't do two topic categories: Incest and Non-consent (I may opt out of some Fetish topics if I have a severe adverse reaction to the specific kink involved.) I reserve the right to decline a review (and I'll give you reasons why in a private message.)

My qualifications:

I've been writing here for nearly ten years, over eighty stories, with fairly broad spectrum erotic interests.

Out in the real world I've published three (non-fiction) books with mainstream publishers, and a good couple dozen academic journal articles and conference papers. I possess two graduate (not English or Literature focused) degrees from public US universities, and have edited academic papers for colleagues. I know my way around the language.

I'm better at the granular level than the macro, but I think I will be able to give you a fairly good idea of the overall success (or lack thereof) of your story. I'm fussy and elitist but generally decline to be brutal. (Another way of putting it: I won't be one of those snooty waiters at the fancy restaurant who will insult a customer on general principle, but will not be shy to do so if your work merits abuse.)

If you want a flavor of previous reviews (nowhere near as thorough as the AwkwardMD/Omenainen thread) here are a half-dozen recent examples. For this trial month, I'll go into much greater depth than what these exhibit:

https://forum.literotica.com/threads/part-2-of-a-very-personal-assistant.1604129/

https://forum.literotica.com/threads/shooting-the-moon-discussion-thread-for-my-stories.1575825/

https://forum.literotica.com/threads/help-me-figure-this-out-please.1601763/

https://forum.literotica.com/threads/fishing-for-feedback.1600954/

https://forum.literotica.com/threads/feedback-request-sinbad-in-the-sultans-palace.1592147/

https://forum.literotica.com/threads/feedback-humbly-requested.1588761/

I'll be honest and thorough, my main commitment to your review. I welcome your requests.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

Well, you've just lit a fire under me to publish the thing I've been sitting on. Can I put my name in your queue, with the title to be provided in a week or so?

 

[TakeItOrLeaveIt]

Hi,

I’m not new to writing generally, but I am new to this genre and new to Literotica. I’ve got a few stories up, one in pending, decent ratings so far, but a limited readership. As such, I would sincerely welcome feedback. This is my most recent story (it’s the first of a three-parter, the second part is currently in ‘Pending’).

https://literotica.com/s/whatever-it-takes-pt-01-trust

It falls very loosely into the chastity/cuckold subgenre - it’ll build in that direction as the series develops.

Totally get it may not be your thing, but would very much appreciate your kind consideration!

 

[yowser]

Hi,

I’m not new to writing generally, but I am new to this genre and new to Literotica. I’ve got a few stories up, one in pending, decent ratings so far, but a limited readership. As such, I would sincerely welcome feedback. This is my most recent story (it’s the first of a three-parter, the second part is currently in ‘Pending’).

https://literotica.com/s/whatever-it-takes-pt-01-trust

It falls very loosely into the chastity/cuckold subgenre - it’ll build in that direction as the series develops.

Totally get it may not be your thing, but would very much appreciate your kind consideration!

Gave it a quick read and will get back to you shortly after a closer look.

It is quite obvious you are not 'new to writing.'

 

[AwkwardMD]

Fantastic!! Love to see this!!

 

[countdowntolov3]

I recently wrote Bitch, I Love You, and I think it turned out a pretty earnest effort that's representative of my current skill. I'd be grateful to have it torn apart in the name of learning.
Content warnings: threesome, creampie, anal, ditzes, casual homophobia (on the character's part)

Writing is a fairly new hobby for me. But I am beginning to feel my style/voice settle in. So I suspect now is a good time to reflect on what is or isn't working--experienced enough to have patterns, but not so set in my ways that I can't change them.

Courtesy of a non-writing profession where my work is routinely picked apart in front of my peers by heartless clients, I've built some pretty thick skin for criticism. So my gift to you as a reviewer is: give me the truth, I can take it.

Nice of you to try this!

 

[yowser]

Whatever It Takes Pt. 01: Trust


@TakeItOrLeaveIt

Overall a promising tale, moves well, gets everyone's identities established early and clearly, mechanics sound and require only a little bit of tweaking, mostly in the area of clarity of meaning.

I'm not keen on the humiliation aspect of sexual arousal, so cannot respond to your tale such as an enthusiast might, but I certainly appreciate the power of the kink and will talk a little about how you might heighten its effect, perhaps get some better mileage from it.

I like how you dive right into the scene, outline the main points quickly, and your capacity for effective description is obvious.

I would say that the greatest weakness in this first chapter involves the clarity of meaning as you express it. Inevitably there is a gap between the ideal image in the brain and what gets translated via words to the page, something we all struggle with, closing that gap.

You want the reader’s path to be as smooth as possible, so they are looking at the characters, the scenery, wondering what’s behind the next curve and not concerned about potholes in the road, or pebbles to trip over. You don’t have potholes but you have a fair number of pebbles.

Most of them have to do with antecedents, those pesky things that pronouns refer to. Here are some examples where there is some confusion, and I suspect with a little work you could make the connections clearer. You use ‘this’ and ‘it’ a lot and frequently it's not clear what they refer to. Here are a couple examples:

All of it culminating in a single moment fractured, (‘it’ presumably the totality of the scenario?)

'Lower,' she said, slipping her foot out from her sandal and holding it to my face, pressing it into my cheek, then my mouth. (her foot or her sandal?)

You use ‘it’ and ‘this’ a lot, I suspect you could either eliminate some of them or use more precise (and evocative) terms.

Here are a couple other places that made me stop and think, which I suspect you could have handled a bit better with another explanatory detail or phrase:

Instead, I returned to the Marriott for a couple of nights. (Does this mean Sarah kicked him out? Or wait, maybe this is the place where he meets Kayla for out-of-office trysts? I settled with the first, but I had to think first.)

...Ian from HR, a fucking tosser in a cream suit, interviewed me alongside some lawyer, an attempt to bluff me into spilling it all. But it was clear that whatever they guessed, Kayla had said nothing. I met with them a second time, they hit bottom, and then they were done.

It wasn’t clear to me why HR got involved. If Kayla hadn’t said anything, what was the issue? Just a hint might be all that’s necessary, although that whole paragraph induced confusion.

The box (arriving in paragraph four) is an issue. It is mentioned, and obviously you want your reader to dying to know more about it (contents clinked, metal against metal) but then it gets dropped. Now, many of us will guess (correctly) it is a Chekov's gun type of thing, but I think it would have worked better with just the tiniest hint that you were going to make it show up again later, thereby letting the reader know they are in confident authorial hands here.)

One way to do this might be to reveal Tom’s own reaction ('I had no idea at the time what the box contained' or 'little would I guess that Sarah had packed the box so carefully.’) You can heighten the tension that way and keep the reader engaged.

One thing that I would have liked to know in this first chapter (and maybe you will be getting to it in later chapters, if so, then ignore) is more about Sarah in pre-crisis life. Is this defiant cruelty she exhibits a brand new development in her personality? That Tom never would have seen coming? Or did he have a hint that she might end up acting this way? All sorts of questions along this line may emerge in readers’ minds, you might be able to get some good tension out of this.

An example of an unclear passage:

The first time I fucked her, I held her against my desk, my mouth against her mouth, her tongue probing my ear, her shirt ripped open in our desperation, the heavy swell of her breasts pressed tight against my chest. (wait, mouth against mouth but her tongue is in his ear? Please clarify.)
We fucked weekly, then twice weekly, and then escalated to every other Saturday. (I assume the last phrase means ‘in addition’ but the meaning reads backward, wait they went from twice to only every other Saturday?)

I'd urge you to think carefully about one stylistic choice you have made, the repetition business (first usage in the second paragraph):

Now Sarah looked resolute. Now Sarah looked unshakeable. Now Sarah appeared righteous in her determination.

This works, of course, deliberately for emphasis, but from my perspective you go to the well a bit too often. I'd suggest its use sparingly.

And so they sent Kayla. Kayla of the blush red lips. Kayla of the too short, too tight skirt. Kayla of the gravity defying breasts. Kayla of the pale fleshy thighs. Kayla of the perfect ass.

Sarah rarely went down. Sarah never swallowed. Sarah never rimmed. Sarah would not contemplate taking my cock in her ass.

And I wondered about Sarah as I returned late again, Sarah in the kitchen, Sarah leaning across the stove, Sarah with a glass of red Merlot to hand, not seeing that I'd arrived, hair mussed, dishevelled [check spelling] and stinking of fuck.

Etc.

Some more minor grumbles:

I am never fond of the measurements thing, yet of course it seems you want this to be a major part of your tale. (I think it would have been sufficient for him to mention his ‘undersize’ unit once or obliquely, but he says it repeatedly.) It is of course a quite different matter when Sarah does this, as an insult and I think you are fine there.

Commas should be inserted before an ‘and’ when two independent clauses are getting joined (here’s one example that requires such a comma intervention, there are others):

I worried that they might know and I worried that they might not.

Should be: I worried that they might know, and I worried that they might not.

Sounds like you have good plans for an extended tale. I think a little more thought and energy spent on the final draft will serve you well. Best of luck.

 

[Omenainen]

Hi yowser!

I’m not a new author, but I’d love to get your review on my latest story Flowers (not counting the 750 I did after that). It’s about 8k words, lesbian. Any observations or advice appreciated, though I am a pantser so I don’t know how well I can utilize any of it.

 

[yowser]

I recently wrote Bitch, I Love You, and I think it turned out a pretty earnest effort that's representative of my current skill. I'd be grateful to have it torn apart in the name of learning.
Content warnings: threesome, creampie, anal, ditzes, casual homophobia (on the character's part)

Writing is a fairly new hobby for me. But I am beginning to feel my style/voice settle in. So I suspect now is a good time to reflect on what is or isn't working--experienced enough to have patterns, but not so set in my ways that I can't change them.

Courtesy of a non-writing profession where my work is routinely picked apart in front of my peers by heartless clients, I've built some pretty thick skin for criticism. So my gift to you as a reviewer is: give me the truth, I can take it.

Nice of you to try this!

Will do. Although truth is never easy.

It's a longer tale so will take some time for a close read. Hard to resist a 'perfect' threesome.

 

[yowser]

Hi yowser!

I’m not a new author, but I’d love to get your review on my latest story Flowers (not counting the 750 I did after that). It’s about 8k words, lesbian. Any observations or advice appreciated, though I am a pantser so I don’t know how well I can utilize any of it.

'New' is not essential by any means. There's one in the queue before you but I promise you a good read. These flowers can't be orchids by any chance?

 

[Omenainen]

'New' is not essential by any means. There's one in the queue before you but I promise you a good read. These flowers can't be orchids by any chance?

They most certainly are, in that it’s my entry for this year’s Pink Orchid. Thank you in advance!

 

[TakeItOrLeaveIt]

Whatever It Takes Pt. 01: Trust


@TakeItOrLeaveIt

Overall a promising tale, moves well, gets everyone's identities established early and clearly, mechanics sound and require only a little bit of tweaking, mostly in the area of clarity of meaning.

I'm not keen on the humiliation aspect of sexual arousal, so cannot respond to your tale such as an enthusiast might, but I certainly appreciate the power of the kink and will talk a little about how you might heighten its effect, perhaps get some better mileage from it.

I like how you dive right into the scene, outline the main points quickly, and your capacity for effective description is obvious.

I would say that the greatest weakness in this first chapter involves the clarity of meaning as you express it. Inevitably there is a gap between the ideal image in the brain and what gets translated via words to the page, something we all struggle with, closing that gap.

You want the reader’s path to be as smooth as possible, so they are looking at the characters, the scenery, wondering what’s behind the next curve and not concerned about potholes in the road, or pebbles to trip over. You don’t have potholes but you have a fair number of pebbles.

Most of them have to do with antecedents, those pesky things that pronouns refer to. Here are some examples where there is some confusion, and I suspect with a little work you could make the connections clearer. You use ‘this’ and ‘it’ a lot and frequently it's not clear what they refer to. Here are a couple examples:

All of it culminating in a single moment fractured, (‘it’ presumably the totality of the scenario?)

'Lower,' she said, slipping her foot out from her sandal and holding it to my face, pressing it into my cheek, then my mouth. (her foot or her sandal?)

You use ‘it’ and ‘this’ a lot, I suspect you could either eliminate some of them or use more precise (and evocative) terms.

Here are a couple other places that made me stop and think, which I suspect you could have handled a bit better with another explanatory detail or phrase:

Instead, I returned to the Marriott for a couple of nights. (Does this mean Sarah kicked him out? Or wait, maybe this is the place where he meets Kayla for out-of-office trysts? I settled with the first, but I had to think first.)

...Ian from HR, a fucking tosser in a cream suit, interviewed me alongside some lawyer, an attempt to bluff me into spilling it all. But it was clear that whatever they guessed, Kayla had said nothing. I met with them a second time, they hit bottom, and then they were done.

It wasn’t clear to me why HR got involved. If Kayla hadn’t said anything, what was the issue? Just a hint might be all that’s necessary, although that whole paragraph induced confusion.

The box (arriving in paragraph four) is an issue. It is mentioned, and obviously you want your reader to dying to know more about it (contents clinked, metal against metal) but then it gets dropped. Now, many of us will guess (correctly) it is a Chekov's gun type of thing, but I think it would have worked better with just the tiniest hint that you were going to make it show up again later, thereby letting the reader know they are in confident authorial hands here.)

One way to do this might be to reveal Tom’s own reaction ('I had no idea at the time what the box contained' or 'little would I guess that Sarah had packed the box so carefully.’) You can heighten the tension that way and keep the reader engaged.

One thing that I would have liked to know in this first chapter (and maybe you will be getting to it in later chapters, if so, then ignore) is more about Sarah in pre-crisis life. Is this defiant cruelty she exhibits a brand new development in her personality? That Tom never would have seen coming? Or did he have a hint that she might end up acting this way? All sorts of questions along this line may emerge in readers’ minds, you might be able to get some good tension out of this.

An example of an unclear passage:

The first time I fucked her, I held her against my desk, my mouth against her mouth, her tongue probing my ear, her shirt ripped open in our desperation, the heavy swell of her breasts pressed tight against my chest. (wait, mouth against mouth but her tongue is in his ear? Please clarify.)
We fucked weekly, then twice weekly, and then escalated to every other Saturday. (I assume the last phrase means ‘in addition’ but the meaning reads backward, wait they went from twice to only every other Saturday?)

I'd urge you to think carefully about one stylistic choice you have made, the repetition business (first usage in the second paragraph):

Now Sarah looked resolute. Now Sarah looked unshakeable. Now Sarah appeared righteous in her determination.

This works, of course, deliberately for emphasis, but from my perspective you go to the well a bit too often. I'd suggest its use sparingly.

And so they sent Kayla. Kayla of the blush red lips. Kayla of the too short, too tight skirt. Kayla of the gravity defying breasts. Kayla of the pale fleshy thighs. Kayla of the perfect ass.

Sarah rarely went down. Sarah never swallowed. Sarah never rimmed. Sarah would not contemplate taking my cock in her ass.

And I wondered about Sarah as I returned late again, Sarah in the kitchen, Sarah leaning across the stove, Sarah with a glass of red Merlot to hand, not seeing that I'd arrived, hair mussed, dishevelled [check spelling] and stinking of fuck.

Etc.

Some more minor grumbles:

I am never fond of the measurements thing, yet of course it seems you want this to be a major part of your tale. (I think it would have been sufficient for him to mention his ‘undersize’ unit once or obliquely, but he says it repeatedly.) It is of course a quite different matter when Sarah does this, as an insult and I think you are fine there.

Commas should be inserted before an ‘and’ when two independent clauses are getting joined (here’s one example that requires such a comma intervention, there are others):

I worried that they might know and I worried that they might not.

Should be: I worried that they might know, and I worried that they might not.

Sounds like you have good plans for an extended tale. I think a little more thought and energy spent on the final draft will serve you well. Best of luck.

@yowser I just wanted to sincerely thank you for this feedback. You truly exceeded my expectations in terms of the rigour, detail, and care that you have evidently taken in reviewing the work. So thank you again.

Having reflected, there is much here that feels ‘familiar’. I’ve had feedback regarding the use of repetition in my long-form work - I’ve worked hard to limit it there. It’s clear I need to apply that same care to short-form writing (which is a form with which I am less comfortable).

And, again, my writing does - on occasion - incline towards the opaque, and so your observations regarding the need for clarity is a helpful corrective and reminder.

So once again, thank you. I so appreciate the feedback and the time you have taken to do this.

 

[yowser]

@countdowntolov3

Bitch, I Love You​

I’m a difficult reader to please, so it was a treat to have a superior story in front of me. With a couple exceptions, there are no major issues with your story, either conceptually or structurally. Really a sweet read.

This is a threesome story, always a bit more complicated than some others, but you handle the characters well, outline the setting and establish the personalities of the two friends quickly and efficiently. (I had just gotten to the question point of wondering the identity of the first person narrator when you let the right details furnish the answer. With a first person POV it is always a good idea to establish this right away.)

Although you specified location up front (my dorm room) I ended up with some confusion about whether these two were suite mates, more clarity would have been handy.

My only two major issues are with length and transitions.

I bet you could have cut a good quarter of the words out and made for a better, tighter, more focused (and satisfying) story. (Then again, I could say this about 90% of Lit’s offerings, and even many well-edited mainstream works. My own writings as well.)

There is a lot of repetition of character traits, and after a while they start to get irksome (how many times do we need to hear about Heather’s curls?) You can establish the details and reinforce them over time, but I suspect you could eliminate a lot of words and achieve a better result.

Having complained about the ‘curls’ I do have to say that you captured the girls wonderfully, without cliches or over-description, it was easy and enjoyable to get a mental visual of them and their banter.

Same reaction to dialogue, which you mostly handled extremely well. But I grew tired of the repetition: the ‘dude,’ the ‘bitch,’ the ‘hoe’ references, you could ditch them by half. But mostly, bravo at a good ear for speaking.

Two transitions jarred. The first one, in the classroom, made me stop for a minute to think. The binder had been introduced in the dorm room (fine) and reappeared in the class room (also fine, but you didn’t introduce the setting change adroitly.) Not a major hiccup here, since I figured it out quickly enough, but a descriptive sentence or clause would have explained the transition better.

The last one also was unsmooth. Okay, back at the dorm room, time has elapsed (not immediately clear how much) and then it appears Heather lives clear across campus (you gave hints earlier that I could/should have picked up) and the immediate situation is whether she will spend the night with Mel. I think you could have handled these logistics early on and saved some reader confusion.

The characters all came to life, were appealing even with their cynical perspectives, and you developed the unusual power dynamic between Heather and Mel nicely over time. The wrestler, even as a largely 2-D character, was great (having been one myself) and I loved one passage:

"I don't date during the season," he said.
"So what, you just put her on ice?"
"Well, I don't really date in the off season, either," he admitted.

You had some other fabulous funny lines, really appreciated your humor.

The sex was great, a few difficulties emerging with the various contortions (a perennial issue with threesomes) but events weren't overdrawn and were eminently arousing.

So the following are minor complaints, some of them idiosyncratically mine, which you can take or leave.

Far fewer typos and other word errors than usual here, but they tended to cluster during the sex sequences for some reason.

Her blind, almost gold, curls
Bare skin on bare skin, burning hot where her upper thigh cradled.mine.
Heather's thin flingers
To quiet for Davin to hear.
not-quite-sex sent
seel (twice)
whitty retorts,
Now it was my turn to yielded to her tongue.

I’m pretty sure the idiom is ‘Holy fuck,’ not ‘holly fuck.’

One more read through or another set of eyes and these would be handled.

Only one real clunker of a sentence (in the whole thing…)

thick spittle connecting him to her before it snapped to join the rest of its like down her chin and shirt.

More than offset by some exceedingly vibrant and memorable lines:

Once I'd preened every part of my body to the point where I really was about to develop a neurosis, I left the bathroom.

She was sparkling wet and stuck together for a moment before unfurling, flawless and feminine.

My modesty blanket was gone, but I didn't care.

Last quibble, and I leave it to you to investigate. I probably over-hypenate words myself (and don’t have my dictionary or Chicago Manual of Style next to me, so cannot offer an outside ruling) but I think you use a number of words/compound words that would work better with a hyphen:

self styled, oversized, self pitying, self effacing, ear splitting, whiplashed, singsonged, backstopping, self conscious, self pleasure, spiderwebbed.

Please research if it matters to you, these are minor points and consistency matters more than anything else.

Overall a fine read, thanks very much for the opportunity to review. You have a wonderful (un)healthy imagination and a talent for telling a good tale. Best of luck in future efforts.

 

[countdowntolov3]

@yowser ,

Wow. What a thoughtful, and useful, review. How lucky am I? All of your points ring true to me. I don't think there's one I'd quibble over. I will try to reply to a few of them though.

Same reaction to dialogue, which you mostly handled extremely well. But I grew tired of the repetition: the ‘dude,’ the ‘bitch,’ the ‘hoe’ references, you could ditch them by half.

I'm not surprised to receive this advice, and I'm sure it's good and accurate. I really wanted to try and write characters that were talky--and in the way my friends and I talked at that age. There is no doubt that I overdrew it.

There is a lot of repetition of character traits, and after a while they start to get irksome (how many times do we need to hear about Heather’s curls?) You can establish the details and reinforce them over time, but I suspect you could eliminate a lot of words and achieve a better result.

This feels accurate as well. I suspect that it's a similar struggle as the above (which I think you pointed out). I often see the advice, "you must trust the reader," given to new writers. I think this is some flavor of that: where I'm not trusting the reader to remember character traits or that a few lines of, "bla bla bla, bitch," will paint a lasting picture of how the character talks.

Two transitions jarred. The first one, in the classroom, made me stop for a minute to think. The binder had been introduced in the dorm room (fine) and reappeared in the class room (also fine, but you didn’t introduce the setting change adroitly.) Not a major hiccup here, since I figured it out quickly enough, but a descriptive sentence or clause would have explained the transition better.

The last one also was unsmooth. Okay, back at the dorm room, time has elapsed (not immediately clear how much) and then it appears Heather lives clear across campus (you gave hints earlier that I could/should have picked up) and the immediate situation is whether she will spend the night with Mel. I think you could have handled these logistics early on and saved some reader confusion.

I really appreciate the specificness in your feedback here. It's super helpful. As a reader I often enjoy the "smash cut" style of scene transition where you have to play a little catch-up to figure out exactly what's going on. It helps me feel pulled along by the story. Anyway, I tried to do that in a few instances here. I think some of them work okay. But, of course, if you don't bring the reader up to speed smoothly, it's awkward. Re-reading that first transition, I totally see it. Annoying, because I don't think I needed to restructure it, just add a few more early details to clarify the scene.

The last transition also feels awkward looking at it now. I'm actually thinking that the issue might be that the previous scene ends so abruptly? I do think the final scene quickly clarifies where it and the characters are. But, jeez, you're right, it really is quite the time jump from the middle of some action.

It's funny to me that the distance Heather lives across campus felt important to you. I was more worried about setting the precedent earlier that the girls were nervous walking alone at night. But, you're right, It would have been trivial for me to make it clear that Heather lived in the sorority house and it was a significant walk away, and that's why she hung out in Mel's room in between classes so often.

Last quibble, and I leave it to you to investigate. I probably over-hypenate words myself (and don’t have my dictionary or Chicago Manual of Style next to me, so cannot offer an outside ruling) but I think you use a number of words/compound words that would work better with a hyphen:

Yes. I admit to a grammar blind spot for hyphens. And this is going to sound silly... I use Grammarly to flag errors when editing, which highlights those a lot. But I usually ignore its suggestions. My reasoning is that I often think it's over-hyphening. And I am worried by work will get flagged as AI if I trust it to hyphenate all over the place. Probably silly. But that's my current "process".

I bet you could have cut a good quarter of the words out and made for a better, tighter, more focused (and satisfying) story.

Are you talking about the prose, scenes, or elements of scenes here (or maybe all three)?
If you're talking about the prose. Yes. I totally agree. This is something I'm trying to work on. But it's haaaaard.
If you're talking about scenes or elements of scenes, I'd love to know what felt boated to you. I don't want to ask you to write another essay. But if you wanted to throw what ones felt weird to you at me, that would be helpful to think on. It's less obvious to me what I'd cut here then in the prose department.

So, yeah. Thank you again. Really useful. And I have to admit the nice words made me really happy too. I'll aim to return some portion of the favor with some nice comments on your work. But that's going to have to for tomorrow.

 

[yowser]

Thank you. It sounds like it was a helpful review, which is gratifying.

Please no commentary reciprocation needed or even desired. Like all of us here, I get pleasure out of readers who enjoy my words.

But I am doing this trial review period out of a desire to contribute to the writing community here. I enjoy reading about how authors go to work, how they surmount difficulties, try different techniques, craft a story. Many of us appreciate a close read of our tales, a different set of eyes and a different brain that can provide reactions, point to what worked and what didn't. I'd rather compartmentalise this particular effort of mine, and certainly don't want to give even the appearance of someone thinking that if they give me nice commentary on my stuff, that they could thus expect the same in return. My goal, given all its built-in biases, is to provide honest feedback, from my point of view and training.

I thought your whole story could have been condensed, a lot of scenes would read better if more tightly constructed. (I thought your scene in the pub, when meeting Davin, was perfect: no extraneous detail, just enough description and narration to set the stage. If you looked at every scene compared to that one, I think you'd get the idea, the less-is-more business.)

Despite my grumping about repetition in dialogue, I think you actually handled it well. Conversational, easy, it delivered a lot of information that mattered to the story without have to do narration. Just overuse of some of the vocatives expressions: bitch, hoe, etc. Absolutely introduce them early, it lets the reader into their relationship, but you can back off later, just sprinkle them in sparingly, you don't need to overseason.

Dialogue is tough. You want realism, but a verbatim transcription of how everyone actually speaks in real life (with all the fragments, hesitations, and dopey asides) doesn't work well in a story. Each exchange should push the story forward, it should be realistic but not real-life tedious and fragmented, and I think you largely succeeded.

Best of luck moving ahead.

 

[AwkwardMD]

When I was much younger and DVDs were still a thing, I used to watch a lot of commentary tracks on TV and film, to try and absorb the way different writers, directors, and actors worked. I was fanatical.

For a long time, my favorite film was Unbreakable. I just liked it. I thought it was interesting, though it took me a long time to realize it was because it was an interesting take on a superhero origin story. I didn't know that's what it was when I first latched onto it. I just liked it.

On the DVD for Unbreakable, there's a commentary track from Bruce Willis, and it was really, really interesting for me. He talked about how, earlier in his career, he'd been a bit of an overactor. He was very animated. He delivered his lines with a lot of enthusiasm, and a lot of color. If you're imagining him in any of the Die Hard's right now, you're probably imagining him bug-eyed and frazzled.

Unbreakable was a turning point for him because, and I'm paraphrasing because it's been decades since I've seen it, he realized that he didn't have to do everything himself. He could just stand still, and let the cinematographer set the mood with a slow zoom, or the way the lighting is focused, or the music. All of these things could come together to do a better job, in total, than he could ever do all by himself.

After that, I had this hunger to write efficiently. How to tell the most amount of story in the least amount of space. How to leave the biggest impact with the smallest footprint. Instead of writing a whole scene showing a conversation that was important but kind of boring, I learned how to move to the next scene, which was more interesting, and recap the conversation in a way that fills in the reader. Obviously, some stories benefit from showing all of these parts, but I was always on the hunt for moments where I could just excise an entire chunk of a story from a linear perspective, and use my medium to get the same feelings across.

I think this story, The Perfect Storm, was the best I've ever managed at that. I'd be grateful to hear what you think it, and how well I succeeded at compressing a big story into a very short form.

 

[yowser]

After that, I had this hunger to write efficiently. How to tell the most amount of story in the least amount of space. How to leave the biggest impact with the smallest footprint. Instead of writing a whole scene showing a conversation that was important but kind of boring, I learned how to move to the next scene, which was more interesting, and recap the conversation in a way that fills in the reader. Obviously, some stories benefit from showing all of these parts, but I was always on the hunt for moments where I could just excise an entire chunk of a story from a linear perspective, and use my medium to get the same feelings across.

I think this story, The Perfect Storm, was the best I've ever managed at that. I'd be grateful to hear what you think it, and how well I succeeded at compressing a big story into a very short form.

Some of my favorite writers (Nabokov, Borges) have the extraordinary ability to relay a huge amount of backstory or character element out of the hint one single phrase or sentence provides. The detail that reveals. It is often easy to forget that one of our main duties as a writer is to to seduce the reader, and we fail if we try too hard, go overboard on that first date, when something subtle, just a raised eyebrow at the right moment, is so much more effective than a long narration.

Be happy to take a look.

 

[yowser]

@Omenainen

Flowers


Thanks for this, an enjoyable read. You set the stage quickly and efficiently, allow the main characters to dribble out their histories and characteristics in a pleasing, well paced fashion. And the reader's interest grows over time. Okay, we know these two are going to get together, but how?

There is a lot of emotional energy held behind the visages of the two and I think you do a satisfying job of letting the energy do its snapping release, not just in the sexual arena, but overall. The punching exorcism of anger in the hotel is excellent and accomplishes many things in a single event.

Appealing characters, well drawn, a satisfying read.

I see two areas that might have made for a better story if they'd been handled differently.

The first is a global issue, and endemic to same-sex stories when handled in third person narration: pronouns and antecedents. (Reading the story again, I see no reason why first person POV wouldn’t have worked just as effectively, no deficit would accrue and this approach would eliminate virtually all the pronoun issues.)

There are quite a number of confusing sentences when the reader is left wondering which 'her' is this?

I'll leave some examples below, but they are fairly frequent. Even when there is no confusion, the accumulation of the pronouns can make for some awkward reading.


Katie eased up her oral assault, kissing her pussy lightly (presumably two different antecedents.)

Katie kneeled at the foot of the bed, spreading her legs and settling between them. (probably Bee's legs?)

Katie's mood didn't seem to waver with her mood swings at all, and yet the other woman took her feelings seriously and responded to them.


The second issue is a minor structural piece, that if clarified, would have cleared an important gap in the event-narrative and provided a bump-free story arc.

We discover Katie is in town for her sibling's wedding (and you handle the trans aspects here clearly and with admirable honesty for the respective characters.

I loved this exchange:

"Your sister in law?" Bee frowned.
"No, my brother. She's marrying a man."

Wonderful.)

But Bee says in conversation:

"Uh huh," Bee said. "But I still don't get why you're here and not at her wedding."

How would Bee know the wedding is happening at that moment, since she would only know if Katie had told her? [Or maybe I am misapprehending and a better word choice might have been 'wedding events' or 'wedding weekend', but that's what was said.] Has the wedding already happened? Katie relays the insulting/aggravating scene LATER but the timeline at this point is foggy. As a reader I had some confusion.

A little energy clarifying timelines and actual events would help enormously with understanding the scene.

Since the theme surfaces often enough in the tale, might I recommend an authoritative discussion of it?

'Ascent of the A-Word: Assholism, the First Sixty Years' by Geoffrey Nunberg.

I thought your mirror scene in the bathroom worked marvelous well. (I love most mirror inclusions in stories, Borges' famous quote and so on, as long as the mirror isn't co-opted as a narrative device to minutely describe the MC's physical description, and your application is far from that, and serves as an important pivot point in the story.)

Sex is fine, not overdrawn, and you pull us into Bee's emotional headspace nicely.

A few questionable words/word choices or otherwise mangled sentences:

stand up for his dad (better: 'up to his dad.')

Bee followed the cloud of curls no across the crowd,

evaluatively (not a real word, methinks - it's not in the OED)

grinded (correct past tense is 'ground').

I would have hyphenated 'half hearted'

(This reader's perhaps overactive imagination: loved the possible 'Bee Gees' reference and perhaps BMW as well.)

A sweet connection between two appealing characters, handled adroitly within a variety of settings, and a satisfying conclusion. Happy Pink Orchid Celebration.

 

[Omenainen]

Thank you! Oo, let me read and re-read that and get back to you. As a quick note I’m amused by the pronoun thing, because in Finnish we don’t have any gendered pronouns and somehow we still manage to keep track who’s doing what to whom. Maybe that makes me somewhat blind for spotting the confusing parts when I self-edit.

 

[Omenainen]

Again, thank you so much for this! Very nice to be in the receiving end of a review for a change. I didn't know what to expect or what I could gain from a review, since I'm a pantser and my process is largely subconscious, but there's a few things I did realize while ruminating on this so I thought I'd share.

Appealing characters, well drawn, a satisfying read.

Ït's short and pretty straightforward, not very plotty or sophisticated. I chose it because it's my latest so I thought it's the best example of where I'm at.

I see two areas that might have made for a better story if they'd been handled differently.

The first is a global issue, and endemic to same-sex stories when handled in third person narration: pronouns and antecedents. (Reading the story again, I see no reason why first person POV wouldn’t have worked just as effectively, no deficit would accrue and this approach would eliminate virtually all the pronoun issues.)

As noted, English is my second language, the first being Finnish with only one pronoun for everyone. So this is a thing I've encountered before, but I haven't thought about it as thoroughly as I did now. So, I'm not used to thinking that pronouns signify gender, more like gendering is an added layer of complexity when writing in other languages that I have to go through: "okay this was the gender thing, which one is this, what was the word for that, okay I'll use that one then."

However, this was the first time that I really stopped to think what it means in writing and reading. Obviously Finnish prose uses more of character names, because we can't rely on his-her in any context, I'm sure some linguistics have studied this in depth. But now I realized that reading in Finnish has probably made me accustomed to keeping different kind of tabs on who's doing what to whom, where different characters are in space, etc. So I suppose I really am kind of color blind to what can be confusing. I don't consider it essential to have every single sentence so that there is no chance of mistaking who's who, because for me the level of "good enough" is different than for an English native. That's definitely something to keep in mind, even if I'm not aiming to accommodate the dimmest ones.

(One other thing we do differently is marking dialogue. Which is why I find it amusing when people go into fits of "this was completely unreadable! I was so confused!" with slightest mishaps. I'm like dude... it's just notation. Get used to it and focus on the story. But I can appreciate how for me, who have had to learn a different notation for dialogue for writing on this site, this might be easier to do than for someone who's only used to the single notation before. It's like learning languages. Once you get your brain to realize there's more than one language, learning the subsequent ones gets easier. Which has also been widely discussed on the forums, how many monolingual Americans get so confused and offended when encountering the slightest amount of text they can't read. Different perspectives.)

The other interesting thing about this is the first person - third person -observation. I'm a pantser, so my method is to sit down and write and see what comes out. I very rarely write in first person because I don't like it. Then again, this doesn't mean that some stories couldn't work better from first person. So this is also something to keep in mind and ponder further, especially if I'll get my process more under control and can outline what I want to write about and how before the actual writing - I'm much too lazy to rewrite anything for this kind of change even if it did make sense. So I'll try to keep my options more open and consider different approaches more broadly going forward.

How would Bee know the wedding is happening at that moment, since she would only know if Katie had told her? [Or maybe I am misapprehending and a better word choice might have been 'wedding events' or 'wedding weekend', but that's what was said.] Has the wedding already happened? Katie relays the insulting/aggravating scene LATER but the timeline at this point is foggy. As a reader I had some confusion.

A little energy clarifying timelines and actual events would help enormously with understanding the scene.

I reasoned that since Katie is dressed to kill, making her more stylish and groomed than the others in the bar, it's an indication that she's coming from the wedding as opposed to the wedding being at the next day or something. I also thought that the time of day was such that the wedding party might have reasonably still be going on. So I thought Bee just jumps to that conclusion, but maybe there wasn't enough to justify it - maybe there are enough weddings that don't last late into the night that it's not enough to go on. I could've dropped a few more hints to make this clearer.

Since the theme surfaces often enough in the tale, might I recommend an authoritative discussion of it?

'Ascent of the A-Word: Assholism, the First Sixty Years' by Geoffrey Nunberg.

Yes please? Looks like an interesting book. I didn't quite catch what you mean by this.

I've recently learned that asshole is rasshøl in Norwegian and I seriously want to use it in a story. Amazing word. We say persreikä, but it doesn't roll off the tongue the same way, and we don't use it as the same sort of insult as in English. Personally, I prefer arsehole. Ass sounds somehow feeble compared to the more sturdy arse.

One aspect of ESL is that I don't have the level of nuance in swear words or name-calling that I would have in Finnish. I probably do miss the mark at times. I simply don't know all the connotations. The same goes for all of my writing vocabulary, obviously. I consider it both a nuisance and a blessing. I can't express myself as well as I could in Finnish, and there's things I am unable to do like using slang or period appropriate words or really big words. My level of nuance is limited. On the other hand, it helps with my perfectionism. I could easily get stuck on the editing phase inevitably, making round after round and polishing forever and ever. Telling myself "you can only get so far because this isn't even your language" helps me accept that good enough is good enough and let go of the thing.

I'm not trying to say "don't judge me because English is my second language." By all means, tell me what goes wrong. I'm not using that as a crutch to not having to write well, I'm using it as an aid to avoid excessive perfectionism and also to let the growth come naturally instead of trying to force it too much. I do write better English now than when I posted my first, but I don't want to make that my goal, because I feel that in some ways it will always be unattainable.

I thought your mirror scene in the bathroom worked marvelous well. (I love most mirror inclusions in stories, Borges' famous quote and so on, as long as the mirror isn't co-opted as a narrative device to minutely describe the MC's physical description, and your application is far from that, and serves as an important pivot point in the story.)

Thank you! What quote is that?

Sex is fine, not overdrawn, and you pull us into Bee's emotional headspace nicely.

I felt the sex was a little uninspired. Fine is probably a good word for it.

A few questionable words/word choices or otherwise mangled sentences:

stand up for his dad (better: 'up to his dad.')

Bee followed the cloud of curls no across the crowd,

evaluatively (not a real word, methinks - it's not in the OED)

grinded (correct past tense is 'ground').

I would have hyphenated 'half hearted'

That there wasn't more to point out makes me happy with my language skills. Though I do argue that if evaluatively isn't a word it jolly well should be. Get it sorted out folks.

(This reader's perhaps overactive imagination: loved the possible 'Bee Gees' reference and perhaps BMW as well.)

It is a Bee Gees reference! I don't know what you mean by BMW so probably not that.

A sweet connection between two appealing characters, handled adroitly within a variety of settings, and a satisfying conclusion. Happy Pink Orchid Celebration.

I had to translate "adroitly" so, you know, thank you so much.

Let me know if I can do something to repay the favor. I'm guessing you don't need beta readers or anything, but I owe you one. Happy Pink Orchid to you too, and my warmest thanks for writing the first ever Gay Male Pink Orchid! So good.

 

[ElectricBlue]

@Omenainen Fascinating insight into the issues faced by an ESL writer. Thank you. God knows how you've coped with my Australian .

 

[Bazzle]

Hey @yowser if you "like" mirror based stories https://literotica.com/s/watching-her-13

Yes its smoking fetish, yes there isnt any sex. But its a smoke and a mirror story, with a bit of paranormal stuff thrown in too.

I may fall into the cliched trap of using it to describe the characters...but hey ho.

 

[Omenainen]

@Omenainen Fascinating insight into the issues faced by an ESL writer. Thank you. God knows how you've coped with my Australian .

I read much better than I write, of course. And my talking vocabulary is even smaller than written one because I’ll talk around the words I can’t pronounce. I am also somewhat blind to what’s Australian and what’s Canadian and what’s British and what’s American and what’s Indian. So there’s that.

One time, I had a snowplow in the story. I’d spelled it snowplough, and then someone pointed out that snowplow is the American spelling. I was in despair, like isn’t it enough that I know the fucking word?

And there’s times when I’m told that “nobody uses ‘reckon’ outside old westerns” and then someone else uses it in a conversation with me, or “hoarfrost is the word you ask but it’s an archaic word and no one uses it anymore,” and then someone else spontaneously uses it in a forum post soon after. So mostly I just do what sounds good to me.

 

[Omenainen]

Oh, also, something that every ESL reader knows how to do compared to native ones is coping with words they don’t understand, relying on the context to make sense of it. It’s just not possible to learn to read in a foreign language without that skill, because in the beginning there’s so many words you don’t know. That’s why I find it funny how some people struggle with for example @Kumquatqueen ’s lovely British dialects, and I don’t, although I surely don’t understand them any better than the American readers.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I read much better than I write, of course. And my talking vocabulary is even smaller than written one because I’ll talk around the words I can’t pronounce. I am also somewhat blind to what’s Australian and what’s Canadian and what’s British and what’s American and what’s Indian. So there’s that.

One time, I had a snowplow in the story. I’d spelled it snowplough, and then someone pointed out that snowplow is the American spelling. I was in despair, like isn’t it enough that I know the fucking word?

And there’s times when I’m told that “nobody uses ‘reckon’ outside old westerns” and then someone else uses it in a conversation with me, or “hoarfrost is the word you ask but it’s an archaic word and no one uses it anymore,” and then someone else spontaneously uses it in a forum post soon after. So mostly I just do what sounds good to me.

Well, I'd have a snowplough, and also could conceive of a hoarfrost, and I reckon shit all the time. So fuckem, ignorant sods with a limited vocabulary who think they're the centre of the world, when obviously, they're not. That's why Australia has drop bears, and why we get on with Canadians, eh?!