Would love feedback on my sci-fi writing

[DarkCosmos]

So the first chapter of my very first story on Literotica was just posted. It's a bit of a slow burn, but if you're interested I'd love some feedback on it. It's a sci-fi erotic with alien tentacles and other nonhuman elements. First chapter isn't terribly erotic, but it does set up the rest of the story nicely.

https://literotica.com/s/organism-ch-01

 

[MajorRewrite]

Really good writing. You threw several characters at us all at once, which isn’t my favorite thing. But by the end of this chapter the characters were easily sorted in my head. You’re doing a good job of making the characters come alive too. Keep it up.

 

[Stimtheone]

Well, as a sci fi writer I do appreciate the odd look at other works. Let's see what we are working with.

Missing some proper punctuation here and there. Mistakes I make as well. Periods instead of exclamation points or question marks. Enough context at times to judge that. Sometimes it is highly obvious like a comma ending a question. My advice is that google docs can catch that sort of thing. Most of the time. And the occasional error in wording. Lookup "Standy" instead of "stand by". Yeah, you might want to use google docs or something. I assume english is not your first language. Yes, I once used "wander" instead of "wonder". You used "sight" instead of "site".

Good setup on every actor of the crew. Seems extensive. Though at times the diversity did mean that some felt less developed than others. However... at times they did feel a bit flat. I must not be the only one annoyed that Kevin talked exclusively about getting paid. I have a guy in a tabletop game which is 100% greed to the point that he steals coins you flip, but he has more going in conversation. If you want my advice on characters, I develop "archetypes" for people to act with, then give them motivations. Helps at time to even differentiate who is speaking without declaring it when you can tell the tone.

On the plot consistency part, there might be two holes. I think it might have warranted a comment on why they could just not keep quiet and move on (AI is required to give full report) and why would a proper scientist insist on such an improvised exploration rather than coming back with a full crew (yes, the monetary incentive is there, but a proper scientist would want full backup. A better explanation would be that he is actually cast out and such a discovery might put him back in the graces of academia).

Honestly, you are focusing WAY too much on the sci-fi details. Okay, not a bad thing, but most people here come to see quick fucks. This here has the level of detail of Asimov. I do enjoy that, but sometimes in such a context people want to focus more on the sex. I am sure some could argue that the setup could have been summarized to get to the sex. I don't, but just saying it how some might think. And sometimes you want that to not show your shortcomings. It's "XO" as in short for Executive Officer. But I assume you heard Ex-oh. If you insist on detail, research them. Plenty of other moments of research fails. My stories do get a lot of hand-waving so I don't have to explain how inertial dampeners or quantum storage work.

In the end, I think you don't really have an audience here. You want to write sci-fi more than porn. True, it is as good a place as any but might not get enough hits. You've got a lot of oversights but also a lot of thought in there. So I would say 3.75 stars. Rounded to 4. Potential, intrigue... though I will be honest that with nothing to really entice people other than the sexy women, the sex going on the ship and the mention of tentacles... not much to want one to continue.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Congratulations on your first couple of stories/chapters. You can write and should be encouraged to write more.

The main problem I had with the story was just how similar it was to the film Alien. So much so that there is no way it could be unintentional. Now, within erotic short stories, borrowing heavily from existing universes that readers are familiar with is a good way to get into the action fast. I've done it myself with my most recent story which borrows heavily from Star Trek and every other universe full of humanoid aliens story. The problem I had was that the story doesn't just borrow the atmosphere, the technology, or general plot, it's borrowing whole scenes - waking up from cryosleep, being sent to investigate a signal of unknown origin, arguing over letting the infected crewman back in and so on. Even this wouldn't be a problem if the story was set up with a clear erotic focus or idea or it was presented as some kind of porn parody of the source material. It doesn't really help that there's no real sex (bar a mention 'off-screen') in chapter one and the sex in chapter two is more character based than sci-fi based and to a certain extent seems bolted on (yes, there's relationship stuff being built up, but you've also done a lot of work building those relationships up in the daily life section).

The result is that I read a lot of the story in a perpetual state of 'okay, when is it going to deviate from Alien' and being continually disappointed. We're now over 20k words into the story and I'm not yet really sure what the erotic draw of the story is. A lot of the conversations follow the Alien script so closely that I knew how they were going to go and, while reading them for any real divergance that would give a hint of what the story was actually about, but frequently there wasn't anything substantial. Too often I ended up reading pages and pages going 'yes, I know'.

This is a pity. If you treat it as a simple novelisation of Alien it's pretty good. (For that you'd need to add in more about how the spaceship works but again, I didn't need that as I know). The writings is good. The sex has emotions and character behind it. I just struggled to get over the overall format of the story.

 

[Sanzas]

I'm gonna agree with the "it was maybe too much like Alien." I was wondering which of the characters was a robot! As noted, if it's a sex-treatment of the story, that's fine--but then I'd expect to get to the sex. I did find it well written as far as that goes. It got my attention and I read through to the end. I think that if, in the end, it had been the same basic approach and writing style but not a re-skinned Alien, I would have been far more curious about where it was going.