Feedback request: VanessaTG, new trans author here

[VanessaTG]

Hi! I am a long-time reader of erotica, but have never set virtual pen to paper until now. I just published my first story to Literotica: https://www.literotica.com/s/nick-a-transgender-womans-first

For a lot of reasons, I'd like feedback on both big-picture and little-picture issues.

1. Voice. Does the narrator's voice strike you as masculine or feminine? I have certainly read stories that are very male-focused (with very sex act-driven elements). And perhaps there are stereotypically "erotica for women" elements. Subject-matter aside (to the extent we can set it aside), where does the narrator fall?

2. Protagonist description. I never directly describe the narrator, although there are appearance clues dropped in there. Is this an effective technique (to let the reader fill in the details in their own mind), or does it detract?

3. Vocabulary. Was it too overt, what I was trying to do with vocabulary and sentence structure?

4. Authenticity, "fit" and ratings. I really am a middle-aged transgender woman, and I suppose that makes me a bit of an oddball for the "Transsexuals & Crossdressers" category. (It seems that a lot of the popular stories there deal with forced feminization or transformation erotica.) To the extent this is a popularity contest, I am pretty sure my ratings are suffering because people are reading my story and not encountering what they expected. I briefly toyed with placing the story in a different category (it certainly spans a whole host of 'em) but ultimately decided that at its core, the story was a trans one. I'm not sure I care about pandering for more votes, but... Is there some other reason I might be getting lousy ratings?

I'd love to hear other feedback, positive or negative. Thanks!

 

[blin18]

Wow. Okay, I'm into pretty vanilla stuff - MF, FFM, FF, no anal - so I would definitely never have read your story (or any other in Trans or Gay Male) were it not for your very lucid an well-presented request. The fact that it was a little over a Lit page helped too.

1. Voice - Struck me as decidedly feminine
2. Protagonist Description - I think you did enough. Hot, middle aged woman. Let them work for it. You described your general appearance and particularly your breasts in a positive manner. If there are any other features that are a general turn-on - like long hair or clear, soft skin - it couldn't hurt to toss them in too.
3. Vocabulary - Like a breath of fresh air. The first half was sublime. The second half was better that almost everything on Lit. I'll put some typos below for you.
4. Authenticity - Pitch perfect. Maybe too much so. First times are rarely excellent for women, so to get "good" was a positive, but uncommon for erotica. I think the authenticity was part of the story's appeal though. If you had simultaneous, mind-numbing orgasms and sprayed all over his chest in great arcing ropes, it would have lost a lot.

I don't know about lousy ratings - 4.59 average at the time I read it is pretty good for something under 2 pages. 4.6 has been about my ceiling for that length of story, so I'd be pretty happy if you can keep it above 4.5.
You have one troll response. I think I might have got one from the same reader.

General Positives:

I especially liked the femininity of your protagonist and the use of language to moderate her pre-op gender. As a reader who doesn't enjoy (non-toy) anal, I read your erotic vignette without feeling icky, which is not the case when I read hetro anal stories. I didn't feel aroused, necessarily, but that would be too much to ask given it's not my kink.

And like I said, I love the narrative style, language, structure. Beautiful and engaging writing.

Negatives:

You changed to present tense in the middle. (At "The waiter clears away our plates") I don't know whether you did it for effect (if so, I would have thrown in a section break to give the reader a hint that some type of shift is occurring) or whether it was unintentional. It didn't work for me. The shift itself interrupted my enjoyment of the story, and your present tense prose felt clumsier than the flawless first half of the story.

Your dialogue felt pretty natural, but there were several exchanges that suffered from a lack of he-said she-saids. They weren't long enough to lose track of who was talking, but if you break a line of dialogue in two with a "he began" or similar, it gives you a chance to describe a facial feature, a reaction, or an inflection.

Some typos:

sharp(l)y
Riesling (riesling)
Make you feel(") (Closing quote")
proper all (hall?) (didn't understand this sentence)
.... (In one place you had a four-dot ellipsis - they should be three)
I stride toward him and hugged him (hug - you are in present tense at this point)

Suggestions:

It can help to have a minor erotic scene early to hold the reader's interest. You do that while masturbating with the camera, but you could spice it up with some more sensations and a more detailed description of your orgasm. Just sex it up a bit.

Every erotic story needs a kink, and this one is a pre-op trans woman. Or in porn parlance: chicks with dicks. I don't think you played that angle hard enough, and as a result you came out without exploiting your kink. Erotica without a kink is going to struggle - I've made that mistake. Like I said above, that approach worked better for me in the scene with Nick, but I wonder whether trans readers would like to hear more about your penis. If so, you would have to couch it with a LOT of femininity (breasts, long hair, curves, heels, makeup, soft hairless skin) to maintain the kink.

If you want to write a fictional piece that really nails a kink, write a pre-op trans woman having sex with a cisgener female. First person narrative from the trans woman's perspective, with a LOT of emphasis on her feminine features, her cock, and her very male orgasm. You could probably even put that in Erotic Coupling with a warning at the top, because I think it would be pretty acceptable to most readers in that category.

Well done - good story.

 

[VanessaTG]

Thank you. Very much appreciated!

I don't know about lousy ratings - 4.59 average at the time I read it is pretty good for something under 2 pages. 4.6 has been about my ceiling for that length of story, so I'd be pretty happy if you can keep it above 4.5.

It was at 3.0 when I posted here.

I wonder whether trans readers would like to hear more about your penis
[...]
If you want to write a fictional piece that really nails a kink, write a pre-op trans woman having sex with a cisgener female. First person narrative from the trans woman's perspective, with a LOT of emphasis on her feminine features, her cock, and her very male orgasm. You could probably even put that in Erotic Coupling with a warning at the top, because I think it would be pretty acceptable to most readers in that category.

I suspect that heading in that direction would feel like pandering on my part. As a trans woman, I feel like a lot of erotica (and porn) involving trans women isn't made for me. And I know I'm a bit unusual among trans women in that I feel relatively little genital dysphoria and actually enjoy doing a few things with my penis (or having things done to it). But the reality is that I know many trans women who don't want sex to involve their penis at all, and who feel really strong dysphoria when they think about their genitals. Reality is often different from porn, right?

And for me, personally, being the penetrating partner with a cis woman works if I'm in the right mood, but sometimes is a bit dysphoria-inducing.

I'd like to be able to try to flex some writing muscles and capture some of that, but I'm wondering how much I'm charging uphill against perceptions of what erotica involving a trans woman *should* be. As opposed to what works for me.

Well done - good story.
[...]And like I said, I love the narrative style, language, structure. Beautiful and engaging writing.

Thank you!

 

[blin18]

I suspect that heading in that direction would feel like pandering on my part. As a trans woman, I feel like a lot of erotica (and porn) involving trans women isn't made for me.

By all means, write what excites you. That's what makes erotica so rewarding to write, and its also very powerful to read when it comes from the heart.

I'd like to be able to try to flex some writing muscles and capture some of that, but I'm wondering how much I'm charging uphill against perceptions of what erotica involving a trans woman *should* be. As opposed to what works for me.

Like I said earlier, EVERY erotic story should hit a kink. As long as the people who share your kink can find your stories, you'll do okay.

The more popular the kink, of course, the more readers - its a simple formula. It's a formula that got me writing a story in Loving Wives and planning another one for Incest - two things I never saw myself doing. My one LW story brought dozens of new readers who then went back and read my other stuff EVEN THOUGH IT WASN'T THEIR KINK. I don't feel as though I've pandered by writing a story in an unfamiliar category - it feels more like marketing.

Good luck.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Hi! I am a long-time reader of erotica, but have never set virtual pen to paper until now. I just published my first story to Literotica: https://www.literotica.com/s/nick-a-transgender-womans-first

Congrats on taking the plunge!

1. Voice. Does the narrator's voice strike you as masculine or feminine? I have certainly read stories that are very male-focused (with very sex act-driven elements). And perhaps there are stereotypically "erotica for women" elements. Subject-matter aside (to the extent we can set it aside), where does the narrator fall?

I don't know about masculine per se, but certainly forthright and assertive, which is often taken as masculine. One thing that did seem a little inconsistent in the voice: you mentioned personal-safety concerns at the start of the story, but they seemed to have vanished once it got into hooking up with Nick.

2. Protagonist description. I never directly describe the narrator, although there are appearance clues dropped in there. Is this an effective technique (to let the reader fill in the details in their own mind), or does it detract?

This is one of those "every approach has its fans so you might as well write whatever comes naturally" things. Some readers want a detailed physical picture, some prefer the approach you've taken.

For myself, I'm not a terribly visual reader, so I tend to ignore physical description except where it has social import (class signifiers etc). This story worked fine for me in that regard.

3. Vocabulary. Was it too overt, what I was trying to do with vocabulary and sentence structure?

I didn't pick up on a specific goal with those, other than "telling a story", so you can probably take that as a no.

4. Authenticity, "fit" and ratings. I really am a middle-aged transgender woman, and I suppose that makes me a bit of an oddball for the "Transsexuals & Crossdressers" category. (It seems that a lot of the popular stories there deal with forced feminization or transformation erotica.) To the extent this is a popularity contest, I am pretty sure my ratings are suffering because people are reading my story and not encountering what they expected. I briefly toyed with placing the story in a different category (it certainly spans a whole host of 'em) but ultimately decided that at its core, the story was a trans one. I'm not sure I care about pandering for more votes, but... Is there some other reason I might be getting lousy ratings?

When I looked you had a 4.59. That's quite a decent score! Your story's only gone up in the last day or so, and I'm guessing it hasn't picked up a huge number of votes, which means the average can fluctuate a lot just from one or two readers.

Yeah, there is a fair bit of trans-fetish stuff in the category, but I think it's still the best place to post a story like this; while it might not be quite what some readers are after, I think they're likely to deal with it better there than in somewhere like Erotic Couplings where people are expecting cishet.

One thing to watch for in writing: you drift back and forth between tenses quite a bit, sometimes even within a sentence, like here:

I stride towards him and hugged him, my head rubbing against his chest. I realize that I have a shit-eating grin on my face, and that it had been there for quite some time now.

"Thank you," I said. "I'm not sure what else to say, but...Thank you."

I breathe in the smell of his sweat mingled with my perfume and our sex

Other than that I thought it was well-written and interesting, although it left me wanting a bit more info in some areas. I was curious about the wedding ring mentioned early on and how that fit in with the situation in the story. Either the relationship's over and you're still wearing the ring, or it's not over but you're looking for action elsewhere; either way, as a reader I'm interested in hearing about how that works.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I suspect that heading in that direction would feel like pandering on my part. As a trans woman, I feel like a lot of erotica (and porn) involving trans women isn't made for me. And I know I'm a bit unusual among trans women in that I feel relatively little genital dysphoria and actually enjoy doing a few things with my penis (or having things done to it).

It's a rich and varied tapestry. I know trans guys who enjoy PiV, but feel guilty about not feeling dysphoric about it...

For what it's worth - just because you don't see a particular type of story heavily represented here doesn't mean people won't want to read it. There are readers here for just about every sort of story, and if you're the only one writing the stuff they want to read, they will remember you for it!

 

[VanessaTG]

I don't know about masculine per se, but certainly forthright and assertive, which is often taken as masculine. One thing that did seem a little inconsistent in the voice: you mentioned personal-safety concerns at the start of the story, but they seemed to have vanished once it got into hooking up with Nick.

Thanks for the comments. My own thinking on the personal-safety issue is that the danger comes when an insecure guy realizes he's been attracted to (and flirting with) a trans woman. Someone responding to an online post by a trans woman who discloses her status up-front doesn't present the same risks.

Other than that I thought it was well-written and interesting, although it left me wanting a bit more info in some areas. I was curious about the wedding ring mentioned early on and how that fit in with the situation in the story. Either the relationship's over and you're still wearing the ring, or it's not over but you're looking for action elsewhere; either way, as a reader I'm interested in hearing about how that works.

Ahhh, I suppose that's where the personal details sprinkled through the story probably need more explanation. Definitely food for thought (and I had missed that reference in my pass of removing some personal details, oops!)

 

[Bramblethorn]

Thanks for the comments. My own thinking on the personal-safety issue is that the danger comes when an insecure guy realizes he's been attracted to (and flirting with) a trans woman. Someone responding to an online post by a trans woman who discloses her status up-front doesn't present the same risks.

Certainly a different type of risk. The scenario I was considering there was premeditated trouble from somebody feigning interest as a way to find a trans woman to target. But I don't know how common that scenario is.

Ahhh, I suppose that's where the personal details sprinkled through the story probably need more explanation. Definitely food for thought (and I had missed that reference in my pass of removing some personal details, oops!)

Sequel hook