"Pool party teaser" first published story feedback

[Sin_Nombre]

Hi,
Would love some feedback on my first published story.

https://literotica.com/s/pool-party-teaser

Thank you for the advice I got on the "story ideas forum"!

 

[Alys21]

Hello! This was well written.
I did find it odd that the husband was narrating detail when he was supposed to be fast asleep though.

 

[AlinaX]

Someone once complained that 'laughed' is inappropriate as a dialogue tag, and it has stuck with me ever since:

"Take it as a compliment, " I laughed.

i.e., better to do something like:

"Take it as a compliment, " I said, laughing.

It's nicely written for the most part, but as Alys21 noted the POV is a real problem.

The first half is all the husband and on the one hand he wants to show off his wife's body and had mixed feelings about her flirtation - and then he basically turns into scenery. The second half shifts between Kathryn and Jackson, and despite the fact she's been aggressively flirting with him she's shocked that he does something about it. The result is a narrative structure of HHHHHHHHKJKJKJKJ - without any scene breaks - and it feels unbalanced.

I've certainly written stories where I shift from first person narrative to third person with other characters, although I always have clear scene breaks. It is certainly possible to have this close shifting between characters - the KJKJKJKJ - but it's very odd to have it when the first half of the story has been entirely first person with another character.

And this ties in also with the obscure motivations and a huge missed opportunity: K is initially irritated by J staring at her tits, but he's young and handsome and isn't she also a little flattered and excited by it? Isn't she imagining the forbidden possibility of something happening? By seeing everything only through the husband's eyes we can only guess at her thoughts. Anticipation is nine tenths of eroticism; the reader knows from the start what will happen, but how do you make it believable that K will fuck J right in front of her sleeping husband? Maybe there's a whole history you're not telling us of H & K flirting with the possibility of her being with other men. Maybe H is only pretending to sleep...

It's a short little story at 2.3k words, and that's fine, but you could have had more of a balanced narrative by shifting between POVs much earlier on, and used the opportunity to get into the conflict between the characters' desires and their anxieties.

ETA: I finally looked at the category: Non-Con. Okay, that explains it a little, but maybe the story would have been better then if entirely from Kathryn's POV.

 

[Sin_Nombre]

Someone once complained that 'laughed' is inappropriate as a dialogue tag, and it has stuck with me ever since:

i.e., better to do something like:


It's nicely written for the most part, but as Alys21 noted the POV is a real problem.

The first half is all the husband and on the one hand he wants to show off his wife's body and had mixed feelings about her flirtation - and then he basically turns into scenery. The second half shifts between Kathryn and Jackson, and despite the fact she's been aggressively flirting with him she's shocked that he does something about it. The result is a narrative structure of HHHHHHHHKJKJKJKJ - without any scene breaks - and it feels unbalanced.

I've certainly written stories where I shift from first person narrative to third person with other characters, although I always have clear scene breaks. It is certainly possible to have this close shifting between characters - the KJKJKJKJ - but it's very odd to have it when the first half of the story has been entirely first person with another character.

And this ties in also with the obscure motivations and a huge missed opportunity: K is initially irritated by J staring at her tits, but he's young and handsome and isn't she also a little flattered and excited by it? Isn't she imagining the forbidden possibility of something happening? By seeing everything only through the husband's eyes we can only guess at her thoughts. Anticipation is nine tenths of eroticism; the reader knows from the start what will happen, but how do you make it believable that K will fuck J right in front of her sleeping husband? Maybe there's a whole history you're not telling us of H & K flirting with the possibility of her being with other men. Maybe H is only pretending to sleep...

It's a short little story at 2.3k words, and that's fine, but you could have had more of a balanced narrative by shifting between POVs much earlier on, and used the opportunity to get into the conflict between the characters' desires and their anxieties.

ETA: I finally looked at the category: Non-Con. Okay, that explains it a little, but maybe the story would have been better then if entirely from Kathryn's POV.

Thank you for your feedback. With the couple of stories I have written earlier (not published) I enjoyed re-writing them from different characters POV. Maybe i will try this with this one. I'm very much a rookie writer, so love the advice from you guys!

 

[Tomh1966]

The big issue was the point of view from first person to something else at the end... almost like he was watching it from out of body.

 

[Passiontyper]

It's a well-written story, as the others have pointed out. As far as the elephant in the room goes, I believe the transition from the husband's POV to it could be made less jarring with a simple paragraph announcing it, like 'only later would I find out... [etc.]' or 'my wife would later tell me... [etc.]'. Though I'm not so sure it would make it any less formally incorrect.