Looking for feedback

[candiecane76]

Okay so I'm pretty new to this, I've submitted 2 stories in the 'Gay Male' category and am looking to improve my work.

Here are the links:

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=337592 (Chapter 1)

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=340571 (Chapter 2)

Thanks

 

[Varian P]

Hi there, candiecane76.

I read the first chapter of your story. You've got a sweet premise, and an empathetic central character. But I think it would be far more powerful if you let us watch what Quinn's life is like, rather than tell us. You hand us all his woes on a platter, but saying a kid gets picked on and feels bad doesn't pull us in in the same way showing it would.

If, instead, you give us a scene where we watch this small, frail boy trying to be invisible so he won't get picked on, show the bullies descend and torment him, and let us feel the emotions Quinn experiences, we'll feel his pain rather than just acknowledge it on an intellectual level.

In my opinion, there's a little too much summarizing exposition with Galen, as well. If you reveal the decision to let him enter the boy's life as a human via a discussion between the angels, it think it would be a more engaging scene.

When you give us the scene in the classroom, and later the scene when Galen appears to Quinn, it works much better. Now I'm in the story with your characters, rather than feeling like I'm getting a third-hand synopsis.

Your prose flows nicely, but there are quite a few technical errors--punctuation, wrong word (week/weak, etc.) and the like. If you let a volunteer editor go through your stories before you submit, they'll help you catch those sorts of things.

Taking the chapter as a whole, it's quite sweet and moving. The premise of the wounded and lost person being given that kind of tender, unconditional love is one that a lot of people identify with, and your closing scene does a nice job of conveying it.

I hope that's of some help.

-Varian

 

[tickledkitty]

Varian, you give the best feedback.

 

[candiecane76]

Yeah, that deffinitely does help, thank you I will keep all those things in mind for my next chapter. And thank you for taking the time to review it!

 

[sr71plt]

I’m taken with your “hook” for this story series (a guardian angel progressively teaching sex to a barely legal twink). The story weaving is more than a little awkward, for reasons already mentioned, but this has a good foundation, and its shortfalls in technique and presentation shouldn’t overshadow its good “bones” significantly.

As you write more, you should be able to write more elegantly and smoothly. I think Varian nailed it (with all of her comments, actually) that your background setup is too choppy and uses too much “telling” where it could effectively use “showing” (as she says, showing rather than telling how the male classmates treat Quinn in the locker room—you do show how he’s treated in the classroom later, though, so you can do this). The necessary background is all there, like the explanation for why the father isn’t going to be around while Galen is indoctrinating Quinn—but it’s more or less just thrown out there in choppy little separate explanations rather than woven smoothly into a fabric. The situations/scenes are also a little cartoonish. I think you could construct less clichéd and garrish, more fresh and subtle imaging.

Much, much, much more can/should be done in dialogue in fully developed scenes in which everything serves the main and/or minor threads of the story (this helps you show rather than tell).

When this is added to problems with punctuation, spelling, and slightly off word choices here and there (e.g., Galen’s a guardian angel; it’s jarring to have him do anything “evilly”), your chapter 1 gets off to a rocky start—the worst place to be rocky. Your chapter 2 seems much better in all of these aspects.

You use 3rd person omniscient voice, which is OK, although it’s considered pretty outdated. The British are using it a lot more than the Americans are. This means there is a narrator telling the story from above the action, but, in the omniscient part, the reader is told the feelings and inner thoughts of all characters; the reader isn’t put inside the skin of just one of the characters. Having chosen this presentation technique, though, I don’t think you spend enough time/word images relating how the characters feel about anything—especially the sex—thus still giving us the “telling” feeling rather than the “showing” feeling. You lose out on the intensity of intimacy your reader can hook into here, I think.

Since this is a multiparter, there’s disappointment that you don’t develop everything more and make the transitions more seamless; you rush from ticking off one element to the next, particularly in the “telling” background development at the beginning. In contrast, I felt I was getting too much background on the nature of guardian angels in chapter 2. I wanted to see the next level of sex education. (But the fact that I wanted the story to get on with it meant you were being successful in pulling me into the heart of what your story is all about.)

As noted, the shortcomings that hit me at the beginning of chapter 1 started falling away (at least in my perception) as you developed into chapter 2—at which point I had to start looking for nits to pick rather than having them screaming at me.

I’ll be back to read the next chapter, and if this is developing into the education Galen is providing being comprehensive and then transferring Quinn to more human fare and developing him from the subprime twink of early chapter 1 to an accomplished lover of interesting scenarios and positions, I’ll probably continue to read and appreciate your series. (Your sex scenes are done well enough to arouse.)

Some nits to pick that jumped out at me:

Chapter 1

1. After the first section break, you start off with “Quinn woke up the next morning,” but what came before wasn’t about a specific day. A jarring, awkward transition—unnecessarily so.

2. Quinn’s father asks Quinn about the moaning he’d done in the night. You then say he knew it was because Quinn was having a wet dream but he didn’t mention that because he didn’t want to embarrass Quinn. The motivation is off here. If he didn’t want to embarrass Quinn, and he knew what the moaning was about, he wouldn’t have asked him about the moaning in the first place. In fact all of the father’s analysis of Quinn’s problems seemed rushed and simplistic.

3. You render “father’s” as a plural. This is possessive, not plural.


Chapter 2

1. “Galen manouvered himself so that he was straddling Quinn’s thighs; and without any warning engulfed Quinn’s cock in the warmth of his mouth.” I can’t image how you can straddle someone’s thighs and reach their cock with your mouth. The very fact that I stopped reading to try to figure out the contortions necessary to accomplish this meant you’d lost me from the story you were trying to weave, if only momentarily. This isn’t good.

2. “his eyes were clothes.” Presumably you mean “his eyes were closed.” / “In case you decide to peak.” Presumably you mean “In case you decide to peek.” / “your given the test.” Presumably you mean “you’re given the test.” False images like this ruin the fabric of absorption in the story you are trying to weave around your reader.

 

[Varian P]

Varian, you give the best feedback.

Well, you give the best feedback feedback.
And I've seen you dish out some fine story-oriented feedback, yourself, TK.

 

[candiecane76]

That is a big habit of mine when typing, putting words that are kind of close to the ones I mean to say, and I'm pretty bad at catching my own mistakes as well. Hmm, I'll be sure to use a volunteer editor for my next story.

Thanks for the feedback!

 

[tickledkitty]

Well, you give the best feedback feedback.
And I've seen you dish out some fine story-oriented feedback, yourself, TK.

Well, thanks! That's good to see, because I'm not feeling very confident lately.

 

[Varian P]

Well, thanks! That's good to see, because I'm not feeling very confident lately.

I suspect it goes with the territory. Much of any critical take on a story is subjective, and we're all so good at disagreeing with each other (which makes for fun for the author, too!). Half the time I can give my opinion on something, read someone else's totally contradictory opinion, agree with them, but still think I'm right too.

And, inevitably, I see others' comments on a story and wonder how they got to the dozen things I noticed but couldn't put my finger on, or how they got to the core of a story's failing in a single, succinct sentence.

So please, don't linger on the sidelines--you're a valuable contributor in this forum, TK.

 

[tickledkitty]

I suspect it goes with the territory. Much of any critical take on a story is subjective, and we're all so good at disagreeing with each other (which makes for fun for the author, too!). Half the time I can give my opinion on something, read someone else's totally contradictory opinion, agree with them, but still think I'm right too.

And, inevitably, I see others' comments on a story and wonder how they got to the dozen things I noticed but couldn't put my finger on, or how they got to the core of a story's failing in a single, succinct sentence.

So please, don't linger on the sidelines--you're a valuable contributor in this forum, TK.

Thanks again, Varian. I will continue to contribute. The lack of confidence is more with my writing than with commenting on others' work.

(Sorry for the thread jack, Candie! )

 

[candiecane76]

don't worry about it, lol
I have a question, is it possible to lose votes? because I had 15 vote on my second story and 13 on my first, but now it says I have 12 on my first story and 11 on my second

 

[tickledkitty]

don't worry about it, lol
I have a question, is it possible to lose votes? because I had 15 vote on my second story and 13 on my first, but now it says I have 12 on my first story and 11 on my second

Yes. There are sweeps of low votes frequently during contests. Your scores probably went up even though you lost votes.

 

[candiecane76]

Yes. There are sweeps of low votes frequently during contests. Your scores probably went up even though you lost votes.

I wasn't aware of that, thanks for clearing it up!

 

[candiecane76]

Okay so, I was thinking about changing the perspective of my story to Quinn's perspective but wasn't sure, because I already have 2 chapters up. So I wasn't sure if it'd be a stupid idea to suddenly change the perspective of the story in chapter 3.

Anyone here have an opinion on that?

 

[sr71plt]

Okay so, I was thinking about changing the perspective of my story to Quinn's perspective but wasn't sure, because I already have 2 chapters up. So I wasn't sure if it'd be a stupid idea to suddenly change the perspective of the story in chapter 3.

Anyone here have an opinion on that?

As long as it changes at a major break in the story (like at chapter change), go for it if it feels like a natural progression. In literary terms, it's legitimate.