Neptune's Blessings - feedback and tag advice

[NuclearFairy]

https://literotica.com/s/neptunes-blessings-ch-001-006

I would love some feedback on my story, but mostly I'm not very familiar with tags. I put in the ones I could think of, and left one out on purpose. I'm just sure there were more I could have done and I wanna do better for my next set of chapters.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Your story begins with a big info-dump, about 1300 words of explaining how merfolk work. This is generally not something I would recommend in storytelling. You're trying to get the attention of readers who have half a million other stories they could be reading on this site, who have the option of closing your story and skipping on to something else.

The opening of your story needs to give readers a reason to keep reading. That can be a sympathetic character, an interesting situation, a mystery to be solved, lots of things. But a discussion of how the pigmentation of coastal mermaids varies from that of deep-water mermaids probably isn't it.

This can be a challenge in SF/F, where that kind of world-building often is an important part of the story, and there might be some things readers need to know in order to follow the rest of the story. But even there you're probably better off drip-feeding it to readers, finding opportunities to drop it in along the way rather than dropping it on them at the start of the story. Even if you keep the "guide to non-humans" format, a short excerpt at the beginning of each section may work better.

Give them a reason to care about the story first, give them a taste of what kind of story you're telling. Check out some of your favourite SF/F stories, those with a lot of world-building, and pay attention to how those authors balance that side of things with the story-telling. It's very rare that they'll present so much information up front.

There were some technical issues that could be improved:

Typos e.g. 'tight nit groups'.

Number agreement e.g.:

'The coastal mermen make and maintain nests in the shallows. This is where his spouse will deposit fertile eggs'.

This could be written either in singular ("The coastal merman makes and maintains nests...") with the understanding that you're talking about mermen in general not one particular merman, or in plural ("This is where their spouses..."), but the mix of plural and singular doesn't work.

Tense switching mid-scene, e.g.:

'With a mewling moan he gushed, "So hot! So good!" Whimpering his hips slap back to the sand as he complains, "But on land, I'm so heavy." Chuckling she pressed her lips back to his so that their tongues can duel while she roughly rides his throbbing penis. Mathias eagerly kneaded at her hips...'

"Gushed" is past tense, "slap" and "complains" are present tense, "pressed" is past, "can" and "rides" are present again, "kneaded" is back to past. This is confusing to read.

Head-hopping: your story is mostly told from Mathias' POV, but occasionally it gets into Clara's head:

"Clara's lips twitched briefly as she fought down the smile that her dirty mind tried to draw up from his words. Humming a soft lullaby she rested her chin upon the side of Mathias' forehead. Such gentle intimacies was not something that a harpy often allowed outside of her flock. But she could not bring herself to reject someone who was alone with such pain."

A scene can be written either in "close" POV (where the story picks a single character, and shows only what that character can perceive) or "distant" POV (where it shows more of a bird's-eye view, and can explore the thoughts of more than one character). Either is valid, but it's generally better to pick one and stick with it than to tell something that's 95% from one character's perspective but occasionally slips out of it.

I did enjoy Clara showing friendship by bringing Mathias bloody dead things to eat. I wonder if that side of her could be brought out a bit more in the dialogue too?

That's all I have time for right now, but hope some of that is useful to you.

 

[NuclearFairy]

Yeah I worried the info dump might be a bit of a problem, but I had a hard time fully describing Mathias without it feeling clunky until I came up with that idea. I can see how breaking up the excerpt might work, although I couldn't see it at the time. Hmm, maybe also just putting it at the back of the segment and letting people know it's there at the beginning so they can jump to it if they want?

I'd like to think I've been getting better at the typos and tense switching. At the very least I've been catching them more when I do my own read through.

I hadn't even noticed the number thing though, I'll have to keep an eye out for that to try and keep my sentences consistent so that they make sense.

I'm not sure I'll be able to refrain from the occasional head hopping, is it really that distracting?

 

[Bramblethorn]

I'm not sure I'll be able to refrain from the occasional head hopping, is it really that distracting?

It's not a big thing, less jarring than the other points I mentioned. But small things can add up if there are enough of them.

 

[NuclearFairy]

It's not a big thing, less jarring than the other points I mentioned. But small things can add up if there are enough of them.

Alright, thanks I'll keep it in mind.