AwkwardMD and Omenainen Review Thread

[Zeronix]

Damn what a glowing review! I’m lowkey jealous. Congrats @PennyThompson! I’m feeling fired up to write my next story now haha

 

[AwkwardMD]

Damn what a glowing review! I’m lowkey jealous. Congrats @PennyThompson! I’m feeling fired up to write my next story now haha

As always, we encourage everyone to read the story. It's better to have the context than to simply rely on us to always, faithfully, "tell it like it is." If Penny's work inspires your next big step, that's amazing, but let it be her work and not our imperfect dissection.

 

[Zeronix]

As always, we encourage everyone to read the story. It's better to have the context than to simply rely on us to always, faithfully, "tell it like it is." If Penny's work inspires your next big step, that's amazing, but let it be her work and not our imperfect dissection.

Don’t worry, that was always part of the plan! Thanks for the reminder though haha

 

[PennyThompson]

Oh wow. I mean... wow. I was not expecting to cry in the bathroom at work this morning, but that's what you made me do, @Omenainen and @AwkwardMD

Obviously it's nice to receive positive feedback from more successful, experienced writers, that makes my day! But this right here...

Given the opportunity and a clear sign, Scout took their shot and it paid off. There are so few characters in my stable who would have had the confidence to do the same (which is 100% a reflection of me as a person). There is a reader who will read your work, who is on the bleeding edge of being confident enough to ask out their crush, and your art will be the thing that pushes them over. That person is out there right now. They’re gonna find you and their life will be better for it, though it may never occur to them to tell you about it afterwards. Fiction is powerful, and I’m deeply impressed with your commitment to using your art to manifest a kinder, more supportive world.

I never even IMAGINED that my stories might influence a reader in that way.

In some ways Scout is a reflection of my own experiences, and in other ways they're an aspirational character, someone who is shy and anxious and overthinks everything, and yet still chooses to push through and take risks and reach for what they want while still being true to themselves. To think that someone might be inspired to do the same thing... that genuinely made me emotional. I'm tearing up again writing this.

It also motivates me to make some intentional choices for the next story I'm starting to work on, I'm going to do my best not to let this feedback psych me out

I don’t think I can bring myself to call the lack of angst and friction a fault, because I can see that your driving motivation is that positivity. I do think that lack probably holds you back from writing a bigger, singular work (because larger works need a more substantial conflict to justify the arc), but I’d have to be a lot more callous than I am to call that a problem.

You are thriving writing works of this length and scope. Do I want to see you write a 30k word epic that blows my socks off? Hell yes. Do you need that? I don’t think so. We’ve often suggested as much to other authors as a next step, learning how to grapple with complexity, but the subjects you’re tackling are complex enough; you have nothing to prove there.

This is so encouraging I often read other writers (erotica and otherwise) who have more conflict and complex plotting, and I feel like I... "should," be doing that too?

But I also love the art of short stories, and wish I could write like Flannery O'Connor, who is a bit of an idol of mine.

On the one hand, having the cross-reference link inside the story definitionally breaks the fourth wall. I’ve used links like this, in the foreword, but not within the body of a story. Is it bad/wrong to break the fourth wall? No. Many successful authors regularly break the fourth wall, but that’s usually a part of their raconteuring style to directly address the audience. This is more… style by way of functional/technical convenience.

I credit/blame @THBGato for encouraging me to link to earlier stories, but deciding to put the link within the story instead of the author's note was kind of an unreflective choice based on web design experience instead of writing experience... I do take your point about it being a bit of a fourth wall break. I'll have to think about this!

We’re also both of the school that a story should stand on its own, with internal justifications for its elements. If two stories are so intertwined that they can’t be told separately, they should probably be one story. On Lit, though, multiple submissions means giving your readers a new piece of content more frequently, and providing opportunities for a single reader to comment on each individual part. That’s a lovely little bonus for them and you, win/win, but is it good writing?

This is part of what I meant when I said I'm not very good at long term planning or being strategic Accessibility was not written with a sequel in mind, if I had intended to continue writing with those characters I definitely could have structured a few things differently!

I've tentatively dipped my toes into W*ttpad, which seems to be designed explicitly to support long-form serialized stories with regular content updates... and I kind of hate it. I don't think I could write in that way, even if I wanted to.

(We might have to adopt you.)

I... am not opposed to this arrangement

 

[Dreamerman77]

Finnish guy writing a erotic story set in ancient Egypt in English... Doesn't sound like a winning recipe, but I tried to bake the cake. Maybe you could tell me how it tastes?

I know my story The Pharaoh's Bloodline is not for most of the readers in this site, but since this is the only platform I'm publishing in... well, it's here. This one isn't a jerk-your-semen-on-the-wall story, so I'd like to have some feedback from someone who actually reads it.

The Pharaoh's Bloodline (26,9k / 8 pages) is a murder mystery with political trickery, secrets and IT-sex. I politely ask that maybe you could take a look and give me all you've got.

 

[Omenainen]

@sinfantasy
Link

A bit of Trivia. I prefer to finish a story and flush it out of my mind before I pick the next one. I have not been able to do that recently. Partly cause I want to participate in every available lit event and partly I am also doing survivor challenge. I have touched 9 categories so far, and 2 more in waiting to be published. This has an intended side effect on my writing.

I’m a little unclear what is the intended side effect to your writing (or is it supposed to be unintended? Even so, I still don’t know what you mean by it). As far as I can see, the side effect of you writing to every contest and event is that you can’t spare each story the time it would need to mature.

The nature of the Survivor Challenge runs counter to good, strong writing. You’ll have to take an idea, splurt it out, and min/max your polishing phase in order to rush to the next one. Maybe some people can create on a schedule like that, but I’d wager for most the process includes time to let the story sit, revisiting it with fresh eyes to see how to make it better. For me it certainly does.

I think the weakest part in this story is how you skip past dialogue, summarizing it instead. It makes the story sound aloof, and rarely has the effect writing the actual thing would achieve. With dialogue, you can introduce gestures and expressions, choices of words, how each character relates to the things being said, and that builds them in the mind of the reader. Stating things like this does not have the same effect.

She started blabbering to distract her mind.

It was a torrent of stories. Her life as a rich girl. The lavish parties. Men who chased her and got burned. Women she teased for sport. Her business, some vague empire she ruled with a smirk. Her words were sharp and dismissive. They were just fillers, though. She hardly shared anything concrete to relate to her as a person.

You had a lot of dialogue in this too, but it was repetitive and not super expressive. Too many dismissive pet names for him related to his drawings as a shortcut for emotional closeness. A few occasions would’ve been enough to illustrate this, but you crammed it in almost everywhere anyone addressed him. You had both too little and too much dialogue, skimming the important bits but dragging out the unnecessary. It wasn’t balanced.

The narrator, the guy himself hardly said anything, remaining remarkably passive and bland throughout the story. It reads like you had this in third person at first, and then edited to first, judging by the few places your editing passes failed and the third person sentences remained. The thing is, changing perspective to first person would also necessitate (or maybe allow) more insight into the person’s thoughts and feelings and motivations. Adding more would maybe have made him more relatable, adding interest to the story, but it seems like the perspective swap came too late for you to really conceptualize all the changes beyond the technical He->I swaps.

As to the plot, I feel this is the weakest of the stories we’ve reviewed for you. It’s a simplistic revenge fantasy (this girl left me, and wouldn’t it be sweet if I then went on to thrive and then she’d be sorry) but on steroids (and what if I was actually an artist! And rich! And I’d have two girlfriends instead of one, and two babies, and I’d marry them, and…)

This carries over to characterization: it doesn’t really matter who the women are, as long as they’re a better catch than the ex. The lesbian couple that adopts him for no good reason comes off caricaturish (this one is blond and bitchy, this one is brunette and calm), and then for some reason you introduce two more women whose whole purpose seems to be to act as more eye candy and to compliment the protagonist’s sexual encounters with the lesbian couple (but then I guess you need someone there to voyeur your exhibitionists in order to qualify for the V/E category). You even go so far in not differentiating between the women that you have them all magically know everything the protagonist has told any of them like a promiscuous hivemind. Their function is to surround him with a glow of supportive sexual femininity to fluff his ego, and they don’t really need to be persons or make sense for that goal to be met.

The romance you tried to retroactively pour into the story (“but they fell in love at first sight!”) is a poor substitute to showing us how they fell in love, but then they were too busy fucking to have room for that, I guess.

There is some progression I can see with the three stories we’ve reviewed for you. Your scenes have improved. Your dialogue has improved. I’m certain that once you stop running on overdrive to hit every goal, and you’ll slow down enough to keep up with your ideas, you’ll go on to write some good stories. That being said, I feel three reviews in four months is quite enough and you’ve now filled your quota with us.

Good luck with the survivor challenge and all the contests!

 

[sinfantasy]

Wow... that was brutal, but i guess that's exactly what I needed. Thinking back, I should have invested more efforts in editing this story, but I was kind of burned out by then.

Your feedback echo's what I have heard from reader feedback in emails. My last three stories fell short on editing efforts.

I should have also reviewed and edited my request. What i wanted to say was UNINTENDED side effect of things spilling over from one story to another. In fact, I did not even realize that the FMC name Elena was carried forward from my another submission "Burn for Glory". Somehow that character lingered in mind and the effect was not what I had intended.

You had mentioned this before in your previous feedback, but I did not really understood it then. I can't just keep molding my stories in the event and random category format. This gives me no joy.

Not surprisingly, I have not been able to write anything after this story. Guess, I should drop this idea of survivor challenge and take a break to recharge and flush out my mind.

I feel three reviews in four months is quite enough and you’ve now filled your quota with us.

I won't abuse this privilege, but would you kindly reconsider renewing my quota for the next year?

 

[Omenainen]

Thinking back, I should have invested more efforts in editing this story, but I was kind of burned out by then.

I haven’t attempted survivor challenge, my output hasn’t been that plentiful even in my frantic first year on the site, but I imagine burnout is exactly what it produces. Along with what we in Finland call “juosten kustu”, which means doing something quickly and poorly (literally “pissed while running”).

I won't abuse this privilege, but would you kindly reconsider renewing my quota for the next year?

Who knows if any of us are on this site next year, and never say never, but I can confidently say that I’m not doing three of yours in a year ever again.

 

[sinfantasy]

Oh, I forgot the most important part. @Omenainen and @AwkwardMD thank you so much for your detailed reviews and guidance. It helped me a lot understand the writing process in depth.

I will stick around to read your other reviews and learn passively.

 

[SugarStorm]

Hi, um, me again

About two months ago, you reviewed Better With You (link) and gave me some helpful feedback, see below (paraphrased):

1. Truncation hurt the characterization. Cutting it down likely cost some depth or clarity.
2. The characters felt too similar. Their names were close, and their personalities didn’t contrast enough.
3. Emotional continuity was lacking. (This one was a real eye-opener.)
4. Bantery dialogue undercut emotional weight.
5. Be mindful of who’s doing what in the physical space, and keep track of their limbs.
6. The opening could have been stronger and more grounded.
7. The POV needed more clarity and consistency.

I took all of that to heart. If you’re open to it, I’d love for you to take a look at my new story Side by Side (link) which is a lesbian romcom, and give feedback specifically on those seven points. You're of course free to add other remarks, but I'm trying to compare where I'm at today with where I was a few stories ago. It is quite similar to Better With You in terms of its setup and themes, and thus I think it makes for a good comparison.

Have I improved? Did I mess something else up?

A few notes:

• It’s a longer story (39k words, 12 Lit pages).
• There’s even more banter and dialogue.
• It’s self-edited (though @redgarters for their input).
• Because I shift paragraphs around as part of my writing process, there may still be a few repetitive phrases, but I’ve done my damndest to clean it up.
• No sex until page 11. (The LS audience has proven incredibly patient. I’m honestly amazed the story hasn't been downvoted to hell and back for its lack of sexy-times.)

When writing this, I had three main goals (besides addressing the above):

1. To be a fun and sweet read. Feel-good type of stuff.
2. I wanted the main characters to complete each other and for the relationship to feel earned.
3. I leaned into some tropes, but tried to avoid clichés.

I’m fully aware this is my second request to you, and while I have no intention of abusing your good spirits and critical minds, I understand if you’re not able or willing to support. If you do decide to give it another go, I’m also aware of the ten-page limit. The last two pages are basically sex and an epilogue. Still, if you feel like it and are looking for a compromise, a natural stopping point would be at the end of Chapter 3 (middle of page 6).

Thanks again for your time, and for the thoughtful feedback last time. It meant more than I can say.

 

[AwkwardMD]

@Dreamerman77
Link

The Pharaoh’s Bloodline is a very, very good story. It’s competently written and fulfills the genre requirements flawlessly, for what we’re able to evaluate.

In a recent review, I stated that I hadn’t seen third person omniscient done well, in a way that played to its strengths. I can’t say that anymore. This story is omniscient, but you showed so much restraint in how much of the story you were revealing that you still pulled off tension, and you still pulled off twists. We’re both so entrenched in third person limited that we don’t know how to appreciate the nuance beyond recognizing that you avoided the pitfalls we have come to associate with it.

You did, though. You managed multiple perspectives within the same scene in a way that doesn’t feel rushed, doesn’t feel cheap, and doesn’t feel like you aren’t trusting the reader. Bar eclipsed!

The dialog was consistent and distinct. Personally, I wasn’t a huge fan of it because it sounded very British to me, but I also recognize that I was reading the story like it was Ben Hur or The Ten Commandments. There are any number of prestige, Golden Era of Hollywood films about Egypt where any given line of dialog could be swapped into a Robin Hood film, or a King Arthur film, and it wouldn’t sound out of place. The Pharoah’s Bloodline was no different.

Also, and I can’t understate this, it’s wildly impressive that you pulled this off in what must be your second or third (or fourth) language. Given the way British inflection permeates the understood voice of fantasy fiction, it’s hard to even be sure that I’m not just hearing a little bit of formality inherited from the structure of learning English later on.

And even then, given the high social circle of the characters, it’s not out of place for them to sound formal, or be formal in all ways. What I want, my preference for the informal and less strict, would probably be much more out of place in this kind of story.

The world building and the level of detail gave this story a mirror-smooth level of polish. Not a word out of place. No opportunities missed. It’s lush, and it’s engaging, and it’s beautiful. You have obvious talent for this kind of historical fiction, and that has me extremely excited for another story I think I saw you talking about, set behind the Iron Curtain. The skills you put on display here will serve you well, and it’s only a matter of time before you start attracting a dedicated and fanatical audience.

It’s always more difficult to give positive reviews. For actual improvement points, you would need someone with intimate knowledge of the period or writing this type of historical fiction. About all we have to offer is “well done!”

Bravo, sir.

 

[Omenainen]

PS: hyvä Suomi!

 

[Dreamerman77]

PS: hyvä Suomi!

Joskus mekin onnistutaan

 

[Dreamerman77]

@Dreamerman77
Link

The Pharaoh’s Bloodline is a very, very good story. It’s competently written and fulfills the genre requirements flawlessly, for what we’re able to evaluate.

In a recent review, I stated that I hadn’t seen third person omniscient done well, in a way that played to its strengths. I can’t say that anymore. This story is omniscient, but you showed so much restraint in how much of the story you were revealing that you still pulled off tension, and you still pulled off twists. We’re both so entrenched in third person limited that we don’t know how to appreciate the nuance beyond recognizing that you avoided the pitfalls we have come to associate with it.

You did, though. You managed multiple perspectives within the same scene in a way that doesn’t feel rushed, doesn’t feel cheap, and doesn’t feel like you aren’t trusting the reader. Bar eclipsed!

The dialog was consistent and distinct. Personally, I wasn’t a huge fan of it because it sounded very British to me, but I also recognize that I was reading the story like it was Ben Hur or The Ten Commandments. There are any number of prestige, Golden Era of Hollywood films about Egypt where any given line of dialog could be swapped into a Robin Hood film, or a King Arthur film, and it wouldn’t sound out of place. The Pharoah’s Bloodline was no different.

Also, and I can’t understate this, it’s wildly impressive that you pulled this off in what must be your second or third (or fourth) language. Given the way British inflection permeates the understood voice of fantasy fiction, it’s hard to even be sure that I’m not just hearing a little bit of formality inherited from the structure of learning English later on.

And even then, given the high social circle of the characters, it’s not out of place for them to sound formal, or be formal in all ways. What I want, my preference for the informal and less strict, would probably be much more out of place in this kind of story.

The world building and the level of detail gave this story a mirror-smooth level of polish. Not a word out of place. No opportunities missed. It’s lush, and it’s engaging, and it’s beautiful. You have obvious talent for this kind of historical fiction, and that has me extremely excited for another story I think I saw you talking about, set behind the Iron Curtain. The skills you put on display here will serve you well, and it’s only a matter of time before you start attracting a dedicated and fanatical audience.

It’s always more difficult to give positive reviews. For actual improvement points, you would need someone with intimate knowledge of the period or writing this type of historical fiction. About all we have to offer is “well done!”

Bravo, sir.

Wow. Thank you. You don't know what your words mean to me and my motivation to keep writing. It's not like I don't get comments, but to really have someone review the story is important.

This one was a huge work with all the research and editing. I think a over used the read aloud in Word to get it just right.

And you're right ... In school we learn British English, and American English from quality TV shows like the Bold and the Beautiful ...but finding the right style for the dialogue wasn't easy. I think I rewrote every line multiple times.

Thank you, once again

 

[AwkwardMD]

I hope that all of the lurkers will give The Pharaoh's Bloodline a read. It's excellent, and deserves every pair of eyeballs we can push toward it.

 

[Omenainen]

@SugarStorm
link

This is a tricky review to do. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to come up with what would be the gist of this, and I still don’t know, so I’ll just pants it.

(Contains spoilers so for everyone wanting to read maybe all SugarStrom’s stories before reading this, please proceed to do that. I will wait.)

Starting with the obvious: you have a very appreciative readership for what you do. Many Lesbian readers love this kind of meandering, slow, cutesy stories with cute protagonists and only a token amount of drama. They love it, and you like writing it, so the question becomes, why would you do anything different?

You said in your first request that you want to improve. Improve how? What would you like to do better? How can we help you?

In other words, if you aren’t already creating the kind of art you want, what would that look like?

One point I absolutely want to make right off the bat is that you’re still a new author on this site, still finding your groove, and I do not want to discourage you. Take everything I say with a grain of salt.

You had questions compared to the last story we reviewed, and indeed, it was very similar. You did do some things better. I didn’t get the truncated feeling from this, and the characters differentiated better. Emotional continuity was handled better, though you did it largely by “fading to black” to let all the not-cutesy parts happen off screen, which is a lost opportunity in my mind but also is something the Lesbian readers will not only not criticize you for, but they will love you for it.

One issue with this is that there is not very much story in this almost-forty-thousand-words. You open with them already having the relationship they will end up having throughout. They do progress a little, for the HEA, but “nice-to-better” is not at all steep for a dramatic arc. You could have compressed the relevant happenings into, say, fifteen thousand words, twenty thousand if you wanted to luxuriate in the witty banter you do so well (and you do), and it would have been a more impactful read.

Once again, there is a type of reader (not only Lesbian reader) that loves more more than just about anything else, and occasionally I fall into this category myself. If an author has managed to create a world and characters that captivate me, I would gladly just linger forever and see everything they do, plot or no plot, but for that (for me) the world needs to be there first and it takes denser storytelling.

I think for me personally the biggest issue is the premise. Both these stories have the setup of a person working for someone else, so it is a working relationship and there is a power dynamic where one is above the other. It's not "side by side" if one pays the other to mother her. Now, I do work to earn a living, and in my worldview flirting with your boss is unprofessional, and flirting with your underling is sleazy. I would need you to do something to sell to me the idea why in this case, with these two, it’s suddenly okay. Just opening with “here are these two, flirting on the job,” makes me not like either character, so you lose me long before you get to the back-and-forth of them circling closer. It would be interesting to see you start this dynamic from, say, Rey starting at the job, facing this immature and reckless star for the first time, and show us how the attraction develops and how, and why, they cross over those professional boundaries. That way you could keep me with you and have me rooting for them.

I think, on some level, you were trying to counter the employer/employee relationship by giving them a kind of interpersonal mother/child relationship. Rey takes care of Jessica, and watches out for her the way a parent does. I’m not sure it quite balances things out, but I see the outline and I appreciate it. For me personally, parenting kids is hard enough and if I'd have to parent a grown ass person I would not be attracted to them, but that's neither here or there.

Of course a boss-underling-story can be done. Anything can be done. But for this type of story, just saying “okay here they are,” is not enough. Again, as you’ve seen, not nearly everyone thinks like I do and some readers do lap it up and ask for more. Even if you have a reader who doesn’t feel the same way about this kind of power imbalance, it’s still worth pointing out that you don’t address said imbalance. You use it as a setting, but then you hand-wave it away, like it wouldn’t affect their life that one of them is filthy rich and the other one is not. Or, in the previous one, that one is still the boss of the other once they become a couple. It could be used as a story vessel to have them discuss power dynamics in their relationship. It could be used to have the more powerful one be a bit of a prick, trying to utilize that power, before they realize that it doesn’t fly in personal relationships like it does in professional ones. (Or, if you’d want to use it as a point of how it does fly in personal relationships, you would really need to convince me of why the other one still wants to stay.) In any case, it’s kind of too big a thing to just hush-hush past.

You did say that you wanted this to be a “fun and sweet, feel-good type story”, so if by that you mean that it doesn’t really need to have a plot or make sense, then fair enough.

As a comparison, I have also read your story Chasing You, Finding Me, which was a Pink Orchid entry. In it, the premise is different: there is a master criminal and a police officer chasing her. The structure and the flow of the story is similar-ish to these other ones, it is also long, and it also includes elements that are dubious if you stop to think about them, like how this one street urchin girl is such a mastermind, and how, despite all the misfortune in her life, she is emotionally capable of just such a fairytale ending, and how come she doesn’t end up in jail, and and… but I didn’t stop to think about all that even once. I was captivated with the story, and it held me in its grip throughout. It read like a movie, and how many action movie plots would survive closer scrutiny? Verisimilitude, not realism. Plausibility, not probability.

What I’m saying is that you do have the skill to grip the reader and keep them reading no matter how long your story is. You do have the skill to have the reader wish for their happiness. It just doesn’t activate for me in these boss-underling-stories, and the difference is that in the police officer versus master criminal they start off as equal. They’re on different sides of the law, for sure, but neither of them is above the other. Then the back-and-forth, the cat-and-mouse, the push-and-pull works, and I’m right there with them, waiting to see how it unfolds.

Maybe not everyone approaches professional settings like I do. Maybe not every reader needs the premise to make any kind of sense, there probably are readers who skim past the original “setting of the scene” to get to the steamy parts. We talk about it in almost every review, that we’re steering you toward “a well written story” when “good enough” is good enough for most readers.

In conclusion, if I can wish for improvements for your next boss-underling-slow-burn, I’d want it to be even slower by starting earlier. Don’t start with the established dynamics, show me how it develops. Introduce one or both of the characters to me, make them likable to me, before you expect me to care about their witty banter and beautiful breakdowns. Do the groundwork, and you can have them banter for tens of thousands of words, and I will join the chorus of singing your praise in your comment section.

 

[Omenainen]

I hereby announce that as good as the last few stories have been, we have amongst us accumulated a backlog of things that take priority over reviewing, and so we are taking a break. We won't be taking new requests before November this year.

Meanwhile, for anyone interested in asking for reviews in other than "here is my story, talk to me about it" -thread, we direct you towards @yowser in thread Yowser Yelps.

Have a nice autumn, everyone!

 

[alohadave]

Thank you both for all the hard work you put into these reviews. Enjoy your break.

 

[SugarStorm]

As a new author it's challenging to publish on Lit. Having written for myself at first, but now finding an audience here, I'm no longer sure who I'm actually writing for. Have I begun to pander to an audience that likes what I like? I'm worried I'm getting stuck in a bubble in terms of my own creative writing.

And that's why I'm here, in this thread, taking advice from the two of you.

If I understood you correctly, you didn't like the premise, and because of that it made you not like either character. The way I interpreted what you wrote is that you didn't dislike them for how they were written or who they were on the page, but that you didn't like them because of the situation I had placed them in. I didn't justify it, so to speak.

As a consequence, I guess I lost you long before page one was over, but you powered through anyways. Thank you. I won't lie though, that was a bit of a bummer, and difficult to swallow. And it’s given me food for thought in terms of where I can apply creative liberties, and where I cannot.

I worked quite hard on getting Jessica and Rey right. Giving them personality, humor, unique voices, mannerisms, keeping them consistent. This is basically a drama-free feel-good ride about their relationship. And yes. It is a bit of a fluff piece, totally with you there. I could have introduced jealousy, ex partners, a difficult childhood or any number of situations to create "real" drama but chose not to.

The power imbalance: I kind of felt I did address that one with its culmination/conclusion as part of the second date (page 10-ish). I ensured that Rey was never in a compromised position (financially or emotionally), and I kept kisses and sex off the table. Hand-waving… Yes, okay, but I wasn’t ignorant of the situation.

I don't agree with all of the points raised but I can see where you are coming from. I'm sorry the premise didn't work for you. Had I known you felt so strongly about it, I wouldn't have shared this one for review, saving you the trouble. Lesson learned: I took a creative shortcut that obviously didn't work for some as I'm sure you're not alone in how you feel.

Having said that, I really appreciate the time and thought you put into this. I've gone through the review more times than I dare to admit, filing away things I should bear in mind moving forward. You read with a sharp eye, even if you were side-eyeing the employer/employee dynamics the entire way.

I’ll for sure do better when it comes to character introductions next time around.

I hope I'm not coming off as ungrateful. I'm not I'm just processing. Also, “beautiful breakdowns”? I’ll take it.

Thanks again. Wish you both all the best, and an amazing summer break.

 

[Omenainen]

As a new author it's challenging to publish on Lit. Having written for myself at first, but now finding an audience here, I'm no longer sure who I'm actually writing for. Have I begun to pander to an audience that likes what I like? I'm worried I'm getting stuck in a bubble in terms of my own creative writing.

Yes. I think it's important to dance to your own music so to say. I hope you will follow you own muse wherever that might lead you. Getting good scores and comments can be validating, and it can be a golden cage. Ultimately, I think writing for your own goals is the only thing that is truly worthwhile. Other people's experiences and motivations might vary.

For a while, back when I started publishing, all my stories were "hot". When I wrote my first that I knew wouldn't cross that threshold, maybe ever, it felt liberating because I had started to align myself with "oh but will the next one be better received, or at least as well," and that didn't feel good.

And that's why I'm here, in this thread, taking advice from the two of you.

I'm glad you appreciate our opinions. Then again, we are also just two strangers on the internet, so aiming to write whatever might be good writing in our mind is not necessarily what you'd feel most satisfied doing. Trying to please us is as futile a goal as meeting category expectations or whatever.

I don't agree with all of the points raised but I can see where you are coming from. I'm sorry the premise didn't work for you. Had I known you felt so strongly about it, I wouldn't have shared this one for review, saving you the trouble. Lesson learned: I took a creative shortcut that obviously didn't work for some as I'm sure you're not alone in how you feel.

We don't need to like the stories we review, that's not what it's about. If we are shown a story we do like, and wouldn't have found otherwise, that's just icing on the cake. Believe me, yours are nowhere near the top of my "review stories I didn't like" list

Ultimately nobody writes what I want to read, and this is why I write my own. I like to think I can evaluate writing based on the story's merits regardless of my personal tastes.

I hope I'm not coming off as ungrateful. I'm not I'm just processing. Also, “beautiful breakdowns”? I’ll take it.

I'm aware that this was probably a bit of a shocker after the feedback you're used to in your chosen category. You're quite a new author so I was conflicted on saying anything beyond "welcome and may you find success here", but since you came back for seconds, I thought I'd dole out a bit more. I hope there was something useful in it for your future endeavors.

Happy writing!