Feedback request: Tybalt and Juliet (First Time series)

[SpindleTop]

Hi All!

I’m requesting some feedback on a series which I’ve posted in the First Time category. It's a story about two English high school students and the way that their relationship plays out over the summer before they begin university.

There are fifteen parts in total, and I’m certainly not expecting anyone to start reading through them all in response to this post, but I wondered if there was anyone on this board who read a few chapters as they came out and who might be willing to give their thoughts. All advice is very gratefully received.

Thank you,

SpindleTop

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List of chapters: https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=5133214&page=submissions

First chapter: https://www.literotica.com/s/tybalt-and-juliet-ch-01

Last chapter: https://www.literotica.com/s/tybalt-and-juliet-ch-15

 

[RandyD1369]

With 15 chapters up and every one of them sporting those nice little cinnamon hearts, and after reading 1-2-3-and 4, I'm planning to read all the rest, I'd say you're doing just fine.

No, you're not perfect. There are occasional typos, and rarely an awkward phrase, but by and large, the work is solid, simple, effective good writing. Keep doing what you're already doing.
RandyD1369

 

[SpindleTop]

Thank you RandyD1369

I’m very grateful to you for reading the first four chapters and I'm very encouraged that you would like to continue through the rest of the series! Please do let me know your overall thoughts when you’re ready.

I guess my story is a slower-burn romance and I have been a little disappointed that the chapters with actual sex in aren’t more popular (in terms of numbers of views, votes and comments). I suspect I may have put some readers off by taking so long to get to the actual losing of virginity. (There was also a long gap between posting Ch 11 and Ch12, when real life intervened to disrupt my writing.)

I wondered if anyone would be willing to critique one of two of the later chapters please? Jake and Amy have sex for the first time in Ch 11 (and then each chapter after that includes full penetrative sex). I personally find writing about sex difficult, because I find my descriptions can become tediously mechanical and anatomical, so the emotional intensity gets lost.

The chapters with full sex are:
https://www.literotica.com/s/tybalt-and-juliet-ch-11
https://www.literotica.com/s/tybalt-and-juliet-ch-12
https://www.literotica.com/s/tybalt-and-juliet-ch-13
https://www.literotica.com/s/tybalt-and-juliet-ch-14
https://www.literotica.com/s/tybalt-and-juliet-ch-15

Thank you to everyone who reads and comments.

SpindleTop

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

With 15 chapters up and every one of them sporting those nice little cinnamon hearts, and after reading 1-2-3-and 4, I'm planning to read all the rest, I'd say you're doing just fine.

No, you're not perfect. There are occasional typos, and rarely an awkward phrase, but by and large, the work is solid, simple, effective good writing. Keep doing what you're already doing.
RandyD1369

Agreed; I read the first chapter and it’s a delightful story! The only thing I disliked (solely a personal gripe) is that I’ve now got Lloyd Webber’s Pie Jesu stuck in my head You can make up for it with a sufficient reference to Prokoviev’s March of the Knights later.

 

[SpindleTop]

The only thing I disliked (solely a personal gripe) is that I’ve now got Lloyd Webber’s Pie Jesu stuck in my head.

Thank you Vix_Giovanni

I was after a solo piece that would help me portray Amy as a very innocent school student and which would also raise the hairs on the back of Jake’s neck! If the song's stuck in your head now, just imagine what it did to him!

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

I guess my story is a slower-burn romance and I have been a little disappointed that the chapters with actual sex in aren’t more popular (in terms of numbers of views, votes and comments). I suspect I may have put some readers off by taking so long to get to the actual losing of virginity. (There was also a long gap between posting Ch 11 and Ch12, when real life intervened to disrupt my writing.)

I wondered if anyone would be willing to critique one of two of the later chapters please? Jake and Amy have sex for the first time in Ch 11 (and then each chapter after that includes full penetrative sex). I personally find writing about sex difficult, because I find my descriptions can become tediously mechanical and anatomical, so the emotional intensity gets lost.

The chapters with full sex are:
https://www.literotica.com/s/tybalt-and-juliet-ch-11
https://www.literotica.com/s/tybalt-and-juliet-ch-12
https://www.literotica.com/s/tybalt-and-juliet-ch-13
https://www.literotica.com/s/tybalt-and-juliet-ch-14
https://www.literotica.com/s/tybalt-and-juliet-ch-15

Thank you to everyone who reads and comments.

SpindleTop

I read chs 1 and 11, and thought both are very well written with adorable, likable and sweet characters. I empathize with the difficulty of writing a slow-burn romance—my primary work on Lit is a novel series that is an I/T romance and the first seven chapters and a few subsequent chapters have no sex scenes.

My assumption is that most, if not all, of the falloff you’ve seen is related to the length of your story. There’s lots of observations from other, long-term writers on the site that readership simply falls off on chapter stories. There are of course a few exceptions to this observation, but most of the writers that follow the site’s metrics consistently advise that long stories eventually stop attracting new readers.

Otherwise—and please take this with a grain of salt because I only read chs 1 and 11–I agree that your sex scene descriptions are quite sparse compared to your non-erotic narrative. It’s hard to not notice the difference because you have so much detail everywhere else (not just underwear, but white sports style boxer briefs... not just bandanas but hachimaki style headscarves). But personally, I wouldn’t stress over it: many successful, long time writers on Lit say that writing sex scenes is difficult for them. And even if your sex scenes aren’t necessarily an M80 explosion, they’re certainly quite pretty and enjoyable sparkler displays.

 

[SpindleTop]

Hi Vix_Giovanni!

I read chs 1 and 11, and thought both are very well written with adorable, likable and sweet characters. I empathize with the difficulty of writing a slow-burn romance—my primary work on Lit is a novel series that is an I/T romance and the first seven chapters and a few subsequent chapters have no sex scenes.

Thank you very much for taking the time to read two of my chapters and for your very thoughtful feedback. Thank you also for the link to your novel series, which I’ll certainly work my way through over the coming weeks.

Otherwise—and please take this with a grain of salt because I only read chs 1 and 11–I agree that your sex scene descriptions are quite sparse compared to your non-erotic narrative. It’s hard to not notice the difference because you have so much detail everywhere else (not just underwear, but white sports style boxer briefs... not just bandanas but hachimaki style headscarves).

These are interesting thoughts. One commenter from an earlier chapter complained that I included too much in the way of "minutiae" in my writing, but was then almost immediately countered by another who said that the details helped to make the story more believable.

In the case of the two examples you’ve picked up on, the hachimaki headscarves are mentioned once (in Chapter 1) and don’t make a reappearance, but Jake’s white boxer briefs are mentioned a number of times.* I think for me as a writer, including some of these ‘inconsequential’ details are important to provide the colour to the story and to the relationships between the characters. Perhaps though I haven’t yet found the right balance and there are too many of them. (I’d be very interested to hear the thoughts of other writers on this.)

*Amy sees Jake in his underwear in a few of the earlier chapters and decides that she prefers white boxer briefs to his more usual black ones. So when it comes to losing their virginities together, Jake purchases new white briefs for the occasion. I included this detail, because I wanted to show her taking an interest in his body and him picking up on her preferences, as I think a real couple might.

Thanks again for your insights and your generosity.

SpindleTop