Feedback for "Untrusted"

[DrHappy]

I’ve been writing erotica for years for my wife, but I’ve just published my first story here. I completed this one about a year ago, but I just got around to publishing it here. It was fun to re-read after about a year, and I was happy that I still enjoyed it just as much during my final edits.

It's in Erotic Couplings and it's 9 Lit pages (~30K words). It has a bit of suspense, some dark overtones, and some intelligent characters. I tried to give it an engaging story line while maintaining an erotic intensity.

I’d be grateful for any feedback anyone could share. What worked? Did the character development work for you? Suggestions?

Click here for "Untrusted"

 

[ElectricBlue]

I started reading, but found it heavy going - too much exposition, I think. So many writers feel they must explain everything early on, but I think context can be delivered with more subtlety, trickled out as you need it. Let the reader do the work by dropping hints, rather than by telling us all the detail. This is an example, I think, of the often used expression, show, don't tell.

A couple of mechanical things - I suggest you break your paragraphs up more. Many readers are reading on phones and other small devices, and you can make it easier going by giving us more white space. It's a simple thing, but does reduce the "wall of text."

Also, you have some strange tense shifts (don't worry, I see them all the time now, after someone rightfully pinged me for my own sins). Your narrative is fairly consistently past tense, but then this:

In his opinion, this location wasn't the wisest choice. It's small, and everyone is aware of everyone else in the room.

Then you immediately return to past tense.

Tighter proof-reading, too:

His slowly swept to her cheeks, her nose, and finally to her mouth.

His what? Gaze, presumably.

"...slowly swept..." sounds odd to me - you have a slow word (slowly) followed immediately by a fast word (swept) coupled with a slightly strange face scan. I'm getting overwhelmed by contradictory detail - these examples sound trivial in isolation, but you seem to do this quite a bit - pile detail on in long sentences which I have to read twice to parse the correct meaning.

But, I'm a bit of a fan of Cold War spy yarns, so I'll give it another go, see how far I get .

 

[Jada59]

I’ve been writing erotica for years for my wife, but I’ve just published my first story here. I completed this one about a year ago, but I just got around to publishing it here. It was fun to re-read after about a year, and I was happy that I still enjoyed it just as much during my final edits.

It's in Erotic Couplings and it's 9 Lit pages (~30K words). It has a bit of suspense, some dark overtones, and some intelligent characters. I tried to give it an engaging story line while maintaining an erotic intensity.

I’d be grateful for any feedback anyone could share. What worked? Did the character development work for you? Suggestions?

Click here for "Untrusted"

This should end with a question mark or an exclamation point.

"Yes, I would agree," she said. She looked around again, and then stepped closer to him. "You took a chance with me by kissing me. You don't regret taking that chance, do you."

This might be a personal thing but the term "erect penis" seems clinical and not erotic to me and some of your sentences seem a bit clumsy. Such as how you describe her unbuckling his belt and unbuttoning his pants. I don't think the word "and" should be in there twice.

In this sentence, "site" should be "sight"

"looked downward in apparent disbelief at the site of this beautiful and intelligent"

The cold "temperatures" should be "temperature".

The whole sex part of chapter one was hard for me to read as there was very little dialog. You were merely telling us what happened. And to me, you never really explained why they had sex. It just seemed kind of random.

The first paragraph of chapter two left me confused. How could she actually place the building under surveillance if she only peered out at it? I assume that she checked the closet and shower to see if anyone was lurking but you didn't say that. And why did she frown? Why would I care that she piled her clothes? Why would that matter?

Why were her thoughts raging? What does that even mean?

You described his thoughts of fantasies and said they were intensely raw and animal like, but they didn't seem that way to me. He was just sort of wondering about stuff. Surely he wasn't just sitting there thinking this stuff. I want to hear more of what he wanted to do to her. How aroused he felt while thinking of these fantasies. What he did to act on that arousal.

Again, she piled clothes and why was she agitated?

You seemed to do a slightly better job of her fantasizing about him but you still gave no reason or reasons why they had sex to begin with. And I don't understand this sentence.

"Why did I bother to wait to do this," she said aloud with a smile." What does "bother to" mean?

Now you tell us were *he* put his clothing. Details that in my mind don't matter. You said he had a secret animal like persona but I'm not seeing/feeling it. He seems to be jacking off in a rather clinical fashion. And in *my* mind, most if not all guys want to fuck every attractive woman they see, but most don't act on that. The following fantasy seemed a bit tame for me. Once again your described his animal nature but I didn't feel it. I want to know how full his balls were. How aching he was to cum. I didn't get that.

The rest of the masturbation for the two of them seemed to go a little bit better but reading about it didn't arouse *me* in any way. And I arouse easily.

You said that the woman had blond hair. Was she a man in drag? Men have blond hair. Women have blonde hair.

Why would he say, "Yes, it's Ivan!" Wouldn't he say, "Yes, it's me!"

This should end in question marks.

"What did you do it me!" she screamed at him. "What the fuck did you do to me!"

You totally lost me on the drugged part. Maybe I missed something somewhere but I don't know of any drugs that make a person suck cock. And sucking cock isn't date rape unless the person is somehow forced to do it. That wasn't the case here.

Why was her taking the drink sexy to him? You didn't describe anything sexy. And then the drink was drugged? But we really don't know why. You just mention sex trafficking.

She surveilled his clothes? Maybe you mean surveyed?

I don't get the next part about him, being rough with her. So they were being watched? Why would that make him be rough?

The audio part makes no sense either. He heard her having orgasms but no sound from a guy? Why then would he assume there was a guy?

And now I finished it. So many unanswered questions such as why did they keep meeting? That just made no sense to me. And while there was sex, it just wasn't erotic for me. Sorry.

 

[DrHappy]

Electricblue66,

Thank you for reading and especially for taking the time to give specific examples.

I compose and edit inside MS Word on a large monitor, and yes I would agree with your observation that long paragraphs can become a wall of text on a phone. Reading the text from a phone as a very different feel from a large compute screen. Once it got published, I was curious to see how my story looked with the Lit formatting on my phone, and I noticed that as well. Thanks for pointing that out.

Regarding the tense shifts. Ouch! No excuses here. I’ll make a point to pay more attention to this in the future.

I’ll dig deeply into the wording of the phrases that you mentioned. I think that there are some lessons to be learned here, and I don’t won’t to dismiss them.

 

[DrHappy]

Jada,

Thank you for taking the time to read the whole story, and thank you for taking the time to give specific examples.

I’ve read over your comments a couple of times, but I still need to dig through each comment more deeply. Some of your items are definitely technical errors that are objectively wrong on my part. I’m over 50 years old, and I never realized that “blond” and “blonde” were gendered terms.

... Maybe I missed something somewhere but I don't know of any drugs that make a person suck cock. And sucking cock isn't date rape unless the person is somehow forced to do it. That wasn't the case here.

I thought that Ivan essentially made that point when he defended himself:

And if a pharmaceutically company had patented a medication that could make women extremely horny and uninhibited like that, they’d be richer than Microsoft,

The point of her anger was that she wasn’t ready to acknowledge that her actions were the result of her own decisions. After Ivan pointed out the problems with her drug accusation, she responds with “…you seem to imply is that I’m a slut.” As with most people in a highly emotional state, her arguments aren’t entirely reasonable or logical. Also, given the nature of the storyline, I purposely left open the tiny possibility that maybe there was more going on than meets the eye here. I'll reread the whole chapter with your comments in mind.

I'm still digging through your comments and rereading the original text. Thank you.

 

[CoffeeWithMonkeys]

Jada,

Thank you for taking the time to read the whole story, and thank you for taking the time to give specific examples.

I’ve read over your comments a couple of times, but I still need to dig through each comment more deeply. Some of your items are definitely technical errors that are objectively wrong on my part. I’m over 50 years old, and I never realized that “blond” and “blonde” were gendered terms.

I kind of feel like this isn't really true much anymore in the US.
While the words blonde and blond are french(I believe) where words are gendered, I feel like now in the US we use them for either sex. I know I switch them up, kind of like grey and gray.
Kind of like brunette is female and brunet is male, no one in the US uses brunet ever. At least that I know of.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I kind of feel like this isn't really true much anymore in the US.
While the words blonde and blond are french(I believe) where words are gendered, I feel like now in the US we use them for either sex. I know I switch them up, kind of like grey and gray.
Kind of like brunette is female and brunet is male, no one in the US uses brunet ever. At least that I know of.

The American convention is, I believe, "blond" for both genders, the English convention "blond" and "blonde" for male and female. I personally prefer the latter usage, as the two words are signifiers containing additional information (gender), and besides, Australian usage follows English English. As it should .

 

[KeithD]

Nope. Webster's Collegiate, the dictionary of choice by most American publishers, still distinguishes between "blond" (male) and "blonde" (female). If American publishers are not following this, it's by individual publisher style.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Nope. Webster's Collegiate, the dictionary of choice by most American publishers, still distinguishes between "blond" (male) and "blonde" (female). If American publishers are not following this, it's by individual publisher style.

Okay, ta.

It's certainly a very noticeable trait of American content vs English or Oz, and blond and blond is very common here on Lit. Confuses the fuck out of me. "Wait, wasn't she a girl in the last sentence? Oh, an American girl, it's just the colour of her hair."

Marilyn will always be a blonde, as far as I'm concerned .