Story Feedback desperately needed.

[MediocreAuthor]

Okay folks, I'm at my wit's end.

Eltrich Pact was a joy to write, but it has gotten a worse reception than any other story of mine. (Except my first, which wasn't very good)

Eldritch Pact has not received any negative comments, just lack luster votes (both in quantity [22 at time of writing], and score [4.45]). (@Duleigh gave it a glowing review in the AH, but then no new votes, until it got a few more down-votes, hours later)

Hit me as hard as you want with this one, people. Was it my playfully snarky forward? The exaggerated diacritics? Where did I go wrong!?!

Please give my your honest opinions. Hurt me if you must... But I gotta get some closure on this one!

 

[AlinaX]

Unbeknownst to Stavos, the yellow poison, which had been seeping through his veins, reversed its flow, and slowly dripped from his open wound. It landed harmlessly in a tiny pool on the ground.

The shadow beasts continued to pace around the fire, unaware of any change. Without a sound, they were instantaneously vaporized into ichor, dust, and hair; they never felt a thing.

Reads like Witcher-style fantasy up until here. The above took me out of the story, though. Why unbeknownst? Why could he not be dimly aware of all these things?

 

[MediocreAuthor]

Reads like Witcher-style fantasy up until here. The above took me out of the story, though. Why unbeknownst? Why could he not be dimly aware of all these things?

Did you finish the story? He was unaware for very plot-relevant, "spoiler-y" reasons.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I'll give it a read and tell you what I think as soon as I get some time.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

All right, I'll try to give you my honest opinion.

First of all, you write well, there is no doubt about it. You are descriptive and you can create an atmosphere.

On to the criticism now

1. I disliked the way the fighting was done. You opened with a tense fighting scene and as I said, you created a certain atmosphere, but you didn't really deliver in my eyes. It certainly isn't easy to write the action scene in a fight, so I can understand you making it so short, yet it still leaves the reader unsatisfied. For example: He hears the crunching of leaves behind him in one sentence and then what we read next is blood dripping from his sword and the beast lying dead. It was a perfect chance to deliver some action. He whirled, dodging to the side and swinging his sword. The beast's claws raked his shoulder and he cried out in pain, his sword catching the beast on its side. The beast snarled in anger and lunged at him again, but this time he was ready. He went on one knee, bringing his sword up and piercing the hide of the immense creature, feeling its warm blood spray his chest and face. He let out a roar of defiance and pushed with his sword, his battle cry deafening the beast's death throes ... etc. blah blah
This was just a quick and not that great example of describing a fight, but I guess you can see what I mean.

2. The first sex scene is detailed and nicely built up, but I felt there is a slight lack of sex dialogue there. Show, don't tell, is a piece of advice most authors will give you and I think you could have added more moans of pleasure and arousal, more body language instead of describing it verbally. The scene was still hot, but I am just saying that from my perspective, it could have been even better.

3. I feel you could have done a bit more character development for both Stavos and L'ventia. The story is big enough to have a bit more about who they are and what drives them, beyond the obvious. Also, there were things that I was asking myself while reading, like: Is Stavos' vengeance aimed against shadow beasts? What happened to his beloved? You do provide answers eventually, but I felt that you could have mentioned the man who killed his beloved and razed the town at the start of the story, to build up Stavos' character and his desire for vengeance towards that man. This way, when L'ventia brings the man and his family, I didn't feel his rage at the man at all. The appearance of that character was too sudden for me and I must say, for half of the story, I thought it was the shadow beasts who took her.

4. All of the things I mentioned do not justify a weak score or reception, as it is still a good story. My biggest criticism of the story is the way you jump from one scene to another, abruptly. Fighting, then he is in a bath and a sex scene follows, then we go back and there is a next sex scene, then L'ventia brings the man and his family, then he kills him and then we jump into an idea of parallel worlds and then he jumps into one of those worlds. It is kind of abrupt, and since the existence of parallel worlds wasn't mentioned at all until the very end, it felt like a Deus ex machina, kinda...

I hope I wasn't too harsh toward your story. I wanted to be honest as you've requested, and I focused on criticism rather than praise. It is still a good story and it should do well with readers.

 

[MediocreAuthor]

Thank you very much.

I'll consider all of the points you've made.

1) I figured that few of my readers wouldn't care much about the fight scenes, so I kept them brief, but I probably should have given them more effort.

2) I probably should have given more sex dialogue. Good point.

3) I concur that Stavos needed more characterization, but I prefer leaving L'ventia a mystery. She's supposed to be unknowable, but I think I already made her a bit too "human." I probably should have explained better who was responsible for Rashãndia's death, but I thought it would be a nice twist. Maybe I could have foreshadowed that better.

4) I can agree that the story is probably structured a bit choppily. I'll keep that in mind with future projects.

Lastly, The existence of other worlds was LITERALLY deus ex machina, considering the fact that L'ventia is a "deus" of sorts. But perhaps I should have given it some more foreshadowing as well.
Thank you for your review! I really appreciate it!

 

[TheRedChamber]

I read this last night, but didn't have time to write my thoughts down. AwkwardlySet has now come in and kind of covered a lot of the ground I was going to.

Firstly, more than anything else I suspect the answer to your 'low' score (4.45 is a good score, remember some categories just rate lower) is simply that you put it in NonCon and then had your male MC anally violated. To get a 4.5 score you need 7 five star votes to 1 one star, so to get the H its as much about not upsetting the minority as it is about making everyone happy. And guess what, male anal play upsets some people.

So, I don't expect my advice below would raise the score one iota (assuming even that its good advice), but consider it general feedback

There's a real problem with writing short story fantasy about getting exactly the right amount of the world-building and character backstory in. Like AS, I felt a bit that you didn't quite get the focus on the right things.

The starting fight seen feels a bit generic. I feel like I've read a lot of stories where the story starts with the hero in the woods running/fighting 'shadow beasts' and the like. The summoning stone is the interesting part, but we don't really get enough context for what this is or how the hero comes to have it. At a more basic level, its not really clear where the setting is (or what it is based on) - medieval, Viking, Ancient Greek - there's trees and cities and swords but not much to grasp hold of. This becomes a little important later when we hit the sex scenes as suddenly Stavos is very conservative and virginal, which kind of ran counter to the image I had of him as a barbarian warrior up to that point.

The other thing I'm coming to think about fantasy writing, and this has happened a few times to me reading stuff lately, is that I struggle when a sex scene is part of the journey on the way to the next plot point rather than a destination. That is to say, when Stavos and 'Rashandia' get together, it's pretty obvious that it's not her, so I'm reading it waiting to get the reveal (which I've guessed but want to find out more about the demon), similiarly when I'm reading about L'ventia abusing Stavos, I'm waiting for his escape/the resolution rather than enjoying the sexual writing. That may just be a me thing, but I feel that plot and sex can be working against each other sometimes in this kind of story.

As AS said, the resolution felt a bit rushed. The demon taking pity, resolving his vengence and then getting him to another dimension seemed to happen to quickly and easily to have any weight. In a longer work, you could introduce the multidimensional nature of the setting earlier on - here it's more difficult and hence comes as a bit of deus ex machina resolution. Also, I have to say, the switch to another dimension where you've just died and live your best life is no longer a plot point I can really take seriously after Rick and Morty.

This probably sounds negative, but its not meant to be. There's a lot of good stuff/writing in the story.

 

[MediocreAuthor]

I read this last night, but didn't have time to write my thoughts down. AwkwardlySet has now come in and kind of covered a lot of the ground I was going to.

Firstly, more than anything else I suspect the answer to your 'low' score (4.45 is a good score, remember some categories just rate lower) is simply that you put it in NonCon and then had your male MC anally violated. To get a 4.5 score you need 7 five star votes to 1 one star, so to get the H its as much about not upsetting the minority as it is about making everyone happy. And guess what, male anal play upsets some people.

So, I don't expect my advice below would raise the score one iota (assuming even that its good advice), but consider it general feedback

There's a real problem with writing short story fantasy about getting exactly the right amount of the world-building and character backstory in. Like AS, I felt a bit that you didn't quite get the focus on the right things.

The starting fight seen feels a bit generic. I feel like I've read a lot of stories where the story starts with the hero in the woods running/fighting 'shadow beasts' and the like. The summoning stone is the interesting part, but we don't really get enough context for what this is or how the hero comes to have it. At a more basic level, its not really clear where the setting is (or what it is based on) - medieval, Viking, Ancient Greek - there's trees and cities and swords but not much to grasp hold of. This becomes a little important later when we hit the sex scenes as suddenly Stavos is very conservative and virginal, which kind of ran counter to the image I had of him as a barbarian warrior up to that point.

The other thing I'm coming to think about fantasy writing, and this has happened a few times to me reading stuff lately, is that I struggle when a sex scene is part of the journey on the way to the next plot point rather than a destination. That is to say, when Stavos and 'Rashandia' get together, it's pretty obvious that it's not her, so I'm reading it waiting to get the reveal (which I've guessed but want to find out more about the demon), similiarly when I'm reading about L'ventia abusing Stavos, I'm waiting for his escape/the resolution rather than enjoying the sexual writing. That may just be a me thing, but I feel that plot and sex can be working against each other sometimes in this kind of story.

As AS said, the resolution felt a bit rushed. The demon taking pity, resolving his vengence and then getting him to another dimension seemed to happen to quickly and easily to have any weight. In a longer work, you could introduce the multidimensional nature of the setting earlier on - here it's more difficult and hence comes as a bit of deus ex machina resolution. Also, I have to say, the switch to another dimension where you've just died and live your best life is no longer a plot point I can really take seriously after Rick and Morty.

This probably sounds negative, but its not meant to be. There's a lot of good stuff/writing in the story.

I really appreciate the feedback.

I suppose I wrote the story opposite of how you wanted to read it. By that, I mean, I came up with the idea of a powerful man being used sexually by an even more powerful female, and I worked backwards from there. It seems like you were hoping to read a good fantasy story featuring noncon, but I was trying to write a good noncon story featuring fantasy.

Many fantasy authors create a SUPER detailed world, and then place their characters within it. I've done that in the past, but not in this case. In this case, I came up with an idea for an interesting sex scene (to my mind) and then created a setting around that. Obviously that isn't what some readers (yourself included, I believe) were looking for.

All of the fantasy elements in this story were created to bridge the gap between the character of Stavos, (a relatively box-standard, traditional fantasy "fighter-class" hero) and his immortal, undesired paramour. I intended to paint with very broad stokes, letting more established fantasy worlds (D&D or WoW or what have you) fill in the gaps within the readers' minds.

In all honesty, no one seems to have noticed the Meta content within the story... It was intended to be an Easter egg for my fans, but so far no one has seemed to have caught it.

Athœr, the creator of the universe, is a humorous reference to me, as the creator of that universe. And all of the random worlds that Stavos' sees are based in other Lit works that I've published ("Test Subjects" "Women's World" and "Fucky Friday")

Without that knowledge, I'm sure the ending seems incredibly random, but my overall goal is building towards the idea that all my stories are set in an alternate multiverse (as hinted in my bio).

And I realize that the "taking over your dying self's body" has been fucked by R&M, but as I wrote, I REALLY wanted Stavos to have a chance at happiness, and it was the only out I could see fit to give him.

Regardless of all of that, thank you so much for reading, and reviewing my work!!! I really appreciate it! And I'm sure I'll keep your thoughts in mind going forward

 

[joy_of_cooking]

My biggest problem was that I expected something of human scale and L'ventia was too powerful to have in that story. I started off worrying about these shadow beasts, and then she killed them all with a wave of her hand. Then I got to thinking about Stavos's revenge, except she flitted away for a few minutes and came back with this guy who has eluded him for years. The stakes are too low: either Stavos get what he wants or L'ventia waves her hand again.

I get that she's literally deus, but the god comes out of the machine at the end. At least, that's how it's been in all the ancient Greek plays I've read. The deus ex machina comes down to tie up some loose ends or deliver an epilogue after the humans have had a chance to tell their story. Imagine Oedipus if Hermes had come down in the middle to explain, "Hey, dude, you fucked your mom, now I'm gonna poke your eyes out." It has to be Oedipus who discovers this fact, Oedipus who makes that decision.

By the way, am I correct in guessing that the whole thing was a setup? L'ventia set the shadow beasts on him. That's why they were displaying that unusual pack-like behavior. Maybe she only hoped to make him call on her again. Maybe she had the whole thing planned, down to the guard captain and the parallel worlds. But however the parallel worlds thing got started, it did end with L'ventia inserting herself into his life as Rashanda's sister.

 

[MediocreAuthor]

I find it interesting that you would say that L'ventia does not belong in Stavos' story.
While I wouldn't have said it that way myself, I'm inclined to agree. L'ventia is horning her way into Stavos' life, doing whatever she can to toy with him, because of his general sense of unwillingness to be with her.

As a creature of lust and desire, most of her playthings instantly sway to her side, begging her to stay, which she finds boring. Stavos is the only one who continues to resists her, and she finds that infinitely desirable.

As stated within the story, she does basically ruin his quest for revenge, and he is not satisfied with the results.

There was a dull listlessness to his voice. Obviously, revenge had not brought him the deep satisfaction he had been seeking.

In effect, Hermes did show up early, call Oedipus a motherfucker, and poke his eyes out for him. Stavos' life is ruined yet again because of her endless meddling.

To partially answer your last question, L'ventia was not responsible for Rashãndia's death, however I will neither confirm nor deny on her involvement with the shadow beasts

The parallel worlds are actually an Easter egg for my fans, as explained in my comment to Redchamber above.

Thanks for reading and reviewing!