AwkwardMD and Omenainen Review Thread

[PhiloDaddy]

I agree. CNC is not NC, IMHO. But it works in the NC category, especially if it's not clear that it was CNC until a reveal afterwards.

I disagree. CNC is just a form of NC. A variation on a theme. And frankly, so what? I'm the proponent of the ABCNC theorem: Avocado, Bacon, Cheese, and Non-consensual on rye with mustard and a pickle on the side.

 

[AwkwardMD]

It does not appear that these conversations are based on having read the story in question. Let's let that be a prerequisite for further discussion.

 

[Omenainen]

"Oxbridge" is a colloquial way of saying "Oxford/Cambridge". Although they're separate universities, they're very similar culturally and in being very prestigious, so it's common to refer to "Oxbridge" when that prestige or snobbery is more important than which specific university it is, or when referring to a group of people with a mix of Oxford and Cambridge.

So for instance, if I say "John is a professor at Oxford", I might be saying that he has an impressive job, or I might just be telling you where to look for him if you need to talk to him. But if if I say "John is an Oxbridge professor" I'm definitely saying something about social status.

Riiiight, thank you! I could certainly tell that there was implications to the prestige of the places, but I hadn’t encountered Oxbridge before and couldn’t quite figure it out. The things I learn from Lit

I think it’s quite okay to make cultural references that won’t be accessible to (me) everyone, but it’s a choice and it’s good to be aware of it. Similarly, the story contained places where the way the main character speaks is taken as a tell of their social background, and while those also are alien to me, I could tell what was implied through the context. It’s a fine line to walk on and sometimes it might be difficult to tell how a random reader will see it when you’re part of the culture yourself.

 

[AlinaX]

@dara1833

A very curious way of writing. Reminds me of some scientific adventurer's journal. Descriptive of each step. And... And... And... Often redundantly so.

And then I saw ahead of me a man, a man standing ahead of me, and he wore a hood and this frightened me, as well it should, and I turned and started to walk back from where I had come, knowing this took me further from safety. And now I saw another man, standing ahead of me on the path, a second man, also wearing a hood and this frightened me more. And then he started toward me and I turned to run, but the other man was now very near and I headed off the path into the woods. And, before I had gone fifty meters they caught me and one held my arms while another pressed a cloth to my nose and held it tight and, though it took a minute, I fell unconscious.

And then the kidnap, and then... a very calm reaction. (The natives, having trussed me thoroughly, escorted me at spearpoint to their village where I observed the head of my archrival Watson stuck upon a stake some two metres in height.)

No panic. No terror. No dialogue (but that's a separate point). Just observation, until the chains come out and suddenly we're out of very obvious non-con territory and into BDSM fantasy...

... so maybe this could have worked as BDSM but the setup makes this chapter, at least, non-con. But there's no reason not to keep the whole story in non-con.

The fourth wall break at the end is unnecessary and distracting.

 

[LetsMisBehave]

Again, thank you for the comments on Rebecca Goes to the Theatre. They have helped me think about how best to achieve what I want in the confines of writing stories that are meant to be erotic. In case the thought process is useful to others, I set out some of it below.
I was definitely trying to do much in this story. Too much of it was setting up a series of stories down the road and filling in details on previous stories. If I'd either just kept them for myself as backstory only I needed to know or put them in different stories, then that would have been better.
Thank you, Bramblethorn, for the Oxbridge discussion, including that both universities consist of nearly thirty separate colleges and the social status issue. The college she has been accepted at is one where social status was likely to be especially important. Establishing that she was justified in feeling nervous about fitting in and that she needed money is an important character motivation. It just didn't need to be spelt out in this story.
For similar reasons establishing that the teacher feels attracted to her and worried for her at Oxford is a good basis for a story but should have been introduced in a stand-alone story where he was the main character. Removing his first POV aspects would definitely have been better. I think, on balance, the second was needed as it sets up why he is at her home, and having an outsider looking at her home reinforces the reasons why my protagonist is socially awkward at school – maybe only including the bit that explains why he is there and the social embarrassment with Marion. It would have been better placed after she ran away from the car with the four men. Rebecca’s POV should have dealt with the scenes after she got home, including how the cover story was agreed to.
Omenainen - I probably overdid the cultural and local references here. I had assumed that Oxbridge would be understood in the same way as I would understand Ivy League, even if some of the subtleties that Bramblethorn mentions would not. Such references work for me in other stories if they give a sense of authenticity or locality, trigger shared memories or suggest local equivalents. If I’m setting a story in 1980 Birmingham, then it makes sense for the geography to be broadly accurate or the music on the radio or at discos to be contemporary. However, there are chunks here that risk taking people out of the piece. The whole sequence in the car with five (later four men) only makes sense if you remember the Kenny Everett Video Show or a Pepsi-Cola advert from the 1970s. It’s a pity as her gradual realisation that it is moving from them making jokes to expecting hand jobs and then to intending a gangbang only makes sense if the joshing part could be read as good-natured initially. I think the football shirt sequence and jokes about local soccer teams’ work, as that is a localised example of something that makes sense universally.
What I was trying to do with this story was complicated enough without throwing in the first 4,000 words and some of the Alan POV aspects. If I had dumped those, what was I really trying to achieve?
It is a sort of origin story meant to demonstrate that (a) Rebecca enjoys the physical aspects of sex but is more comfortable with it being fun rather than emotional – she is interested in the mechanics as a means of heightening enjoyment, (b) she has reason to be paranoid about her reputation, (c) she needs to engage her brain to understand other people - she doesn’t do so instinctively (no, she is not autistic - just coming from a different place), (d) she can improvise wildly and pretend to be someone else, (e) she has no objection to being paid for sex provided it does not impact on her reputation.
If I were rewriting now, then I would start with the conversation with Claire telling Rebecca that the boys she goes on dates with are telling lies about her and showing how she breaches the understood social etiquette by being so blunt about what happens on a date and when and that she doesn’t want to go out with any of them more than once a month. It also explains why Alex treats her like a slut on the date. He believes that by taking her to the theatre, he is entitled to do what he likes with her, and she knows the score. It does not matter that she is at least his intellectual equal, and he accepts that she is.
It would also have been clearer that the main thrust of the story is how Rebecca comes to be paid for sex for the first time and why it was not a big taboo for her intellectually, provided that no one knows about it. It was in the teaser line, but rightly most readers would have forgotten by then.
I knew the description of Measure for Measure was clunky at the time. The plot line in the play that the heroine is told that no one would believe her is important to the plot of the story, but now I would have reduced the amount of information about the rest of the play and drip-fed more of it. It was also meant to show that there was a potential intellectual and even emotional connection between her and Alec if he had thought she was worth the effort.
A bit that you found hard to accept, which, possibly with my cultural background, I found self-evident, was why the teacher accepted her word. First, protecting the reputation of the school was important to him. In my mind, the school has a history of a few hundred years, and he had been a student there. What she told him suggested a horrible can of worms which should not be opened. Second, she offered an out which worked. She would keep quiet about the attempted rape, and they would expel the boy for drunken driving and keep quiet that she had indulged in sexual activity with him. Accepting that she had walked rather than being driven by the boy made an awful lot of sense. Third, she was intellectually one of his brightest pupils, and she was in trouble. If he could protect the school without throwing her under the bus, he would do so. Indeed, the honour of the school required that he protect her as well. Fourth, she looked like a drowned rat. It brought out the protective instinct in him. The fact that he found her attractive and that he reminded her of his fiancée was something that embarrassed him. Now I accept that is a lot to take for granted, especially as some of the background for that was in the earlier POV, but it was what I had in mind. I will try and spot similar things in the future and establish them better.
On re-reading, possibly the fundamental problem is that it is not an erotic story for most of its length. I feel uncomfortable with real non-consensual stuff, although role play is a different thing, and I suspect that comes through in my description of the quarry and the lift. I agree with everything you and the anonymous commentator said about the first sexual scene. I hope the scene with the man who treats her kindly, even though he assumes with good reason that she is on the game, worked better, but it is a small part of the story.
Eliminating the first 4000 words would have allowed me to write in the present tense or at least use the tenses consistently
The other big takeaway for me is that if I am going to write interconnected stories, I need to reduce the cross-referencing to a minimum and ensure that they are more stand-alone. I should ensure that the connections are more cookies for those who have read the others and do not take over the story.

 

[MediocreAuthor]

My first post. Apologies if I do it wrong. I submitted my first story to this forum a few days back. Here:

https://literotica.com/s/alana-pt-01

I would be very happy if either of the principles would look at it with a critical eye but I really have the following question. The story involves a girl who is kidnapped, tied to a post and diddled a little but there is no PIV intercourse. I asked to have the story entered in BDSM and the moderators put it in Nonconsent/Reluctance. Looking at my feedback I have 25 votes, a 4.05 rating, three hearts and two comments saying Great start and Wow. I like the hearts and the comments but am disappointed in the 4.02 though I realize I'm writing to write and not to entertain. I wonder if the people in Nonconsent want real rape type stories, which mine isn't and if I should ask in the future to specifically have the moderators put the continuing parts in BDSM to better target the intended audience.

Any comments from the principles will be well received. Enjoy this thread and have learned from it.

Alright, so I read the story, and I definitely feel that this does belong in NC/R. The mods made the correct choice placing it in NC/R.

All of her outward responses were negative. Regardless of how much she silently wanted more, if she outwardly says "No" and is ignored, that's non-con.

Alright, so I'm not the host of this thread, but I'll still give a few helpful tips, which will hopefully be of some use.

First off, your story needs tags. This is huge. Tags do two very important things:
1) They warn away the wrong crowd. Many readers hate particular tropes, elements, and themes; adding the appropriate tags can be a huge help keeping those people from reading your story, feeling tricked, and down-voting your story as revenge.
2) Tags help fans find your story. After your story loses its "New" tag, it gets shuffled in amongst the other stories, filed alphabetical with thousands of others. How can you hope that anyone will see it? Tags. Users can search for relevant tags, and stumble upon your story long after it's posted.
Ideal tags for this story might include:

BDSM, kidnapping, binding, shibari, forced female orgasm, Female POV, gag, 18

I'm sure there's many others, but you get the point.
Beyond that, this story is not what I look for in NC/R, so I'm certainly not the target audience. I might suggest more dialogue from your male characters (since the female was gagged). Even muffled words from your FMC would probably be appreciated.

I agree with @AlinaX that your FMC lacks any sense of panic. That said, I don't like kidnapping stories much, so increased panic would have been more exciting -- while simultaneously making me less comfortable reading it.

Otherwise, all I could do would be to tell you how to make it better for me personally... and I doubt that would be very helpful.
Good luck with your future writing

(Btw, I did not rate this story, because it was not intended for me. But if I were forced to give it a rating, it would not be high, considering the fact that I did not enjoy it much... But again, I'm not the target audience).

 

[Louetta]

It does not appear that these conversations are based on having read the story in question. Let's let that be a prerequisite for further discussion.

Ms. AwkwardMD, please consider asking random people NOT to respond to other random people's postings. As you point out, they sometimes don't even read the material. What used to be the best thread (with YOU posting the reviews and others commenting perhaps on what YOU said, along with Omenainen) is now littered with detritus. The person asking for feedback asked specifically (twice) for feedback from the principles, i.e. you and Omenainen. I bet I know why he/she did that. In any case please keep on keeping on.

 

[AlinaX]

I have commented here a few times, and always feel a little guilty for doing so. I'm very impressed with the time willingly spent on reviews by @AwkwardMD & @Omenainen. I'm sure I'm not the only author who gets excited to see new requests and responses here.

Will happily shut up if told to do so.

 

[AwkwardMD]

Ms. AwkwardMD, please consider asking random people NOT to respond to other random people's postings. As you point out, they sometimes don't even read the material. What used to be the best thread (with YOU posting the reviews and others commenting perhaps on what YOU said, along with Omenainen) is now littered with detritus. The person asking for feedback asked specifically (twice) for feedback from the principles, i.e. you and Omenainen. I bet I know why he/she did that. In any case please keep on keeping on.

I do try to curb the offtopic stuff, but I always encourage other voices to chime in on story-specific feedback. Omen and I do not have all the answers, and I am not trying to encourage a space where "our thoughts are the only thoughts allowed".

It's important to me, with as much attention as this thread gets, to avoid the idea that my/our way is right, and this is the current best practice for that.

 

[Louetta]

I do try to curb the offtopic stuff, but I always encourage other voices to chime in on story-specific feedback. Omen and I do not have all the answers, and I am not trying to encourage a space where "our thoughts are the only thoughts allowed".

It's important to me, with as much attention as this thread gets, to avoid the idea that my/our way is right, and this is the current best practice for that.

I will "chime in" here, and then again become silent.

The idea expressed here by two people (who appear to be women???) that the heroine should show fear is bleep, bleep, silly and sexist. And probably dangerous. Police officers have told me that. Back to my cave.

 

[AlinaX]

Show fear? Maybe not. But surely *anyone* waking up bound and gagged in a boat would be terrified. Even if they fought to conceal that terror, it would still be there. Perhaps, if drugged, there would be a disconnected calm, an awareness of danger without panic, but there is no sense of that here.

 

[AwkwardMD]

I will "chime in" here, and then again become silent.

The idea expressed here by two people (who appear to be women???) that the heroine should show fear is bleep, bleep, silly and sexist. And probably dangerous. Police officers have told me that. Back to my cave.

We have not yet read that story. We're a couple behind, though we will get to it.

I will say that it sounds like there's a disconnect happening in the conversation. It's one thing to "show fear" or hide it while in a stressful situation. It's quite another to advise an author that they should "show fear" in their character as a means of humanizing them, or establishing the actual danger. Often in stories, especially super hero stories, it is through the villain that you establish hurdles. Your villain sets the bar which the hero must surpass, but it's through the hero that we understand how dangerous the villain is. It can be a complex needle to thread, and not so simple as it might seem at first.

 

[eefje18]

I do try to curb the offtopic stuff, but I always encourage other voices to chime in on story-specific feedback. Omen and I do not have all the answers, and I am not trying to encourage a space where "our thoughts are the only thoughts allowed".

It's important to me, with as much attention as this thread gets, to avoid the idea that my/our way is right, and this is the current best practice for that.

It's too bad you are doing this but at least you told them to read the stories first.

 

[AwkwardMD]

It's too bad you are doing this but at least you told them to read the stories first.

Okay

 

[AwkwardMD]

Please no more unrelated chatter. I don't like asking the mod to come through and clean up.

 

[MediocreAuthor]

The idea expressed here by two people (who appear to be women???) that the heroine should show fear is bleep, bleep, silly and sexist. And probably dangerous. Police officers have told me that. Back to my cave.

Perhaps you didn't notice the part where I said,

I don't like kidnapping stories much, so increased panic would have been more exciting -- while simultaneously making me less comfortable reading it.

I was highlighting that the FMC's behavior seemed unrealistic. However, I also said that if it were more realistic I would be uncomfortable reading it. (Exciting, in this context, does not mean sexually titillating... at least not to me)

Lastly, you called the idea sexist? How does that work?
A while back, I read a story about a man who got kidnapped for ransom, and he slept with the woman who helped capture him. My complaint? The man seemed too composed for a captive.

How is it sexist to expect characters to act believably?

[EDIT]

Please no more unrelated chatter. I don't like asking the mod to come through and clean up.

My apologies, I posted this comment, before I saw yours.

 

[AwkwardMD]

Perhaps you didn't notice the part where I said,

I was highlighting that the FMC's behavior seemed unrealistic. However, I also said that if it were more realistic I would be uncomfortable reading it. (Exciting, in this context, does not mean sexually titillating... at least not to me)

Lastly, you called the idea sexist? How does that work?
A while back, I read a story about a man who got kidnapped for ransom, and he slept with the woman who helped capture him. My complaint? The man seemed too composed for a captive.

How is it sexist to expect characters to act believably?

[EDIT]

My apologies, I posted this comment, before I saw yours.

This is fine.


It has taken me years to find the line of acceptable defensiveness when it comes to my feedback, reviews, and opinions. I used to argue much, much more with people, and that got me in more drawn out arguments, and used up my time and mental capacity. It also netted me a few enemies (I see you lurking, Avery), who now hate read my thread. It is somewhat gratifying that I live rent free in their heads, but that's still not a good trade.

Now I only engage up to a point, and only if it seems like all parties involved are arguing in good faith.

 

[dara1833]

We have not yet read that story. We're a couple behind, though we will get to it.

I will say that it sounds like there's a disconnect happening in the conversation. It's one thing to "show fear" or hide it while in a stressful situation. It's quite another to advise an author that they should "show fear" in their character as a means of humanizing them, or establishing the actual danger. Often in stories, especially super hero stories, it is through the villain that you establish hurdles. Your villain sets the bar which the hero must surpass, but it's through the hero that we understand how dangerous the villain is. It can be a complex needle to thread, and not so simple as it might seem at first.

I'm the author, the OP, whatever is appropriate here. Very pleased the two of you will try to make time. I will wait patiently. As I said in my posting, I wanted to hear from you two. Here, you politely discuss how fear could be used in different ways. That's what I came for.

 

[AwkwardMD]

@ThatNewGuy
Link

First, I want to say that Art of Deception is a very good short story. So fucking good. Exceptionally good. Some of the best writing I’ve seen on this site.

Let’s start with directly answering asked questions with one caveat. We’re reviewing the story as is, so there will be some advice given toward that, but you also asked about how it could be improved for a single story rewrite. I’ll try to handle both, but not everything applies everywhere.

How to flesh this out into a longer work:
I think the key to adding length for this would be for there to be some kind of backstory that provides Adam’s motivation. In the story as-is the motivations at every turn seem to be his pride. Other people are doing bad things™, and Adam pits himself against these people in order to stop bad things™ from happening.

This is bland. Good guy does right thing™ because obviously. In a short story, it’s fine to leave a lot of things like this where the reader can easily insert “He’s a good guy, and he sees some injustice, so he does the right thing™.” On the other hand, in the world of high price art like this, the victims do not often turn out to be people one would want to defend. I can understand, in context, where Adam is invested in solving the original forgery because he’s met Carina, and Carina paid him, and he’s developing feelings for her. Nora, the guy that owns the other shop in town, the mysterious buyer in the third chapter, these are very rich people, and our hero is really sticking his neck out in some situations to protect their multi-million dollar investments with no promise of recompense. All he needs is a pat on the head to justify his expenditures and risk?

There are a number of life paths you could give Adam that make him exactly the kind of guy who does this kind of thing, and all of them have some nice storytelling opportunities. You could explore them in flashbacks, or you could simply stay in the present and have him retell the pertinent events in the course of a conversation. Adam needs more, though. The more you expand the story, the more he’ll be exposed as thin.

Thoughts on the sex scene:
I didn’t hate it. I felt like Carina was under-described, excepting for pert tits and a firm ass. These are, again, bland and obvious choices. I would have wanted more flavor, but it wasn’t a bad sex scene. Put a pin in this until you get to the very end, though. The last section of this review will, hopefully, fill in this part a bit (if indirectly).

Basic review:
Really good. Really, really, really fucking good. A lot of the complaints we’re listing here, before and after this, are largely problems that aren’t really problems until you try to expand it. Right now, you have short stories, and there are different expectations in short stories than there are with novels. As a short story Art of Deception, especially that first chapter, is fucking stellar.

If I start to pick this apart I can come up with things I would’ve done differently, but nothing that would be different enough to actually be a critique. I personally don’t like this kind of overly self confident character who seems to read everyone’s minds and execute all deceptions effortlessly, but in this kind of cinematic approach I can see how that would be appropriate. He’s Bond-ish. Bond is an awful example of a human being, I certainly wouldn’t want to read about one of his days off when he’s doing anything less than saving the entire world from Sean Bean, but he’s also popular for some of the same reasons.

Realistically, I think the criminal organization wouldn’t let their prized forger get involved in any kind of in-person operations. Her canon skill set is artistic, not subterfuge. Why such an artistic girl would also be this sociopath level liar and yet make a perfect sweet wife later? The more I think about it, the more it falls apart. I can think of a fix for this, but it’s involved. Again, at the end.

The handling of emotions is one sided. It’s narrated from the guy’s perspective, and he seems to read everyone else’s mind (almost). There’s a lot of things like “I could see the panic and then relief in her eyes” and such, but then he doesn’t express his own emotions at all, and definitely doesn’t have any self-doubt. I would if I was him, but then that’s just me.

There’s a distinction between plot-driven and character-driven stories, and this is very much a plot-driven story, so much so that especially moving from chapter to chapter the characters start to lose their believability. Why would an artistic girl be also a femme fatale? Why would the crime organization employing her let her risk herself like that? Why would a nerdy science geek be such a badass secret agent? Why would he put so much weight onto Carina’s sister whom neither of them really knows? The plot here seems largely set and the characters are convenient stereotypes who fit into their places, but not perfectly. It doesn’t feel like the plot is tailored to the fine details of their makeup, which is the deciding factor in a story being plot-driven or character-driven. If you can Ship of Theseus your main character into a completely different person but the plot still happens the same way, it’s plot-driven.

You asked about the story starting as Adam’s story and ending as Carina’s, and I disagree because I think this is a fundamentally plot-driven story. The twists and arcs exist without requiring much in the way of individual character texture. In other words, nothing about the specific quirks you instilled in these characters contributes to them excelling and surviving. I do think that, as you put it, there are more interesting questions about Carina at the end, but that’s not the same thing.

The romance aspect is dubious. The only thing that’s consistent about her is that she lies, and lies, and doesn’t reveal the whole truth, and yet he’s supposedly so in love with her that he risks his life, and hers, and alters both their futures on a whim. What is love if you don’t know a single thing about the other person, and can’t trust them? There’s often quips and complaints about magic cocks, but that’s one mighty magic pussy she has there.

***

As I was thinking about how you’d rewrite this, the main thing I came back to over and over again was the criminal organization at the end. For one thing, their existence undermines how dangerous and complex Carina was in the beginning. For another, as mentioned before, it makes her two-pronged skillset (the artistic femme fatale) even more incongruous. It shouldn’t make sense, but we get around it here because the story is so short. The more you expanded that, with Carina starting off independent and crafty but ending up the whimpering puppet of a common criminal, the more she would be exposed as not-quite-fitting her role.

I come to you with a partial solution. This will require significant rewriting and plot retooling (after the first chapter, anyway*), but I think that making this one choice, committing to it, and fleshing it out, will fix a lot of your problems.

If you’ve never seen it, watch the first season (it’s six episodes) of the BBC television show Luther, and pay particular attention to the character of Alice Morgan. This is your prototype. Mold Carina after her. Make her your own, but start there. I don’t want to say too much about it here. If you’ve seen Luther, I’ll be happy to reply with a little bit more, but I think you should watch it first.

I would ask other people who might chime in here to hold their tongue about what they think of this suggestion until TNG has reported back.

***

Footnotes! Yay! Footnotes! One footnote, anyway. I said “rewriting and retooling (after the first chapter anyway)”, because the first chapter is fucking exceptional. A nearly perfect short story, executed with confidence in your twists and dialog that had grit. I can’t say this strongly enough. The emotions and reactions were amazing, and my big suggestion here feeds into keeping that same energy. Chapter 1 is a barn burner, and anything you can do to keep that going while expanding the scope is a win.

 

[ThatNewGuy]

Thank you both for the review. I realize doing these reviews is a substantial time commitment and I sincerely appreciate it. I agree with much of the constructive criticism you offered. More on some specific points below.

I’m also looking forward to checking out Alice Morgan in the first season of Luther. The only thing I know about Luther is that it stars Idris Elba. Based on your review, I have an idea what direction you might have in mind for Carina, so I’m interested to see how Alice is written and developed. I’ll post to the thread after I’ve watched it. Thanks for suggesting a specific character study. What great feedback!

In the spirit of learning together, and because I enjoy talking about the process of writing, I’m going to comment on a few of the specific points you raised below.

I think the key to adding length for this would be for there to be some kind of backstory that provides Adam’s motivation ... The more you expand the story, the more he’ll be exposed as thin.

Spot on. We know about Carina’s parents. We meet her sister in chapter three. We learn what led her to a life of crime. But we know very little about Adam and his background. Carina tells him that she likes that he’s passionate about his craft. But the reader doesn’t really understand why he’s so passionate. This is a gap.

The romance aspect is dubious. The only thing that’s consistent about her is that she lies, and lies, and doesn’t reveal the whole truth, and yet he’s supposedly so in love with her that he risks his life, and hers, and alters both their futures on a whim.

This is one of the things I agonized over most when writing Art of Deception: Light and Shadow. I asked one of my beta readers point blank whether he found it believable that Adam would admit his love for Carina in the flashback scene after she has just admitted to participating in Monica’s plot to frame him. I hoped that Carina’s attempt to destroy the forged Renoir (thereby putting herself and her sister in jeopardy to save Adam) would be enough of a sacrifice to justify earning Adam’s trust and his love. It helps, but I think you’re right that more work needs to be done to convince the reader why Adam is so in love with Carina.

I think this is a fundamentally plot-driven story. The twists and arcs exist without requiring much in the way of individual character texture.

I agree that these are plot-driven stories. That can be a strength and a weakness. A good plot-driven story can create focus and momentum. However, it also carries risks.

Elsewhere in this thread, AwkardMD links to a video about the writing in the first season of True Detective. If you’re reading this and haven’t watched it, it’s well worth your time. The video includes a clip of Gareth Edwards talking about his approach to directing Rogue One. He says: “You create visuals of things that would be great and then you find a way of linking them all in." The video says this approach is a mistake because you often end up forcing character actions and motivations to fit the visuals/plot milestones that you want to hit rather than letting them develop organically from the characters themselves.

I think Art of Deception: Renaissance struggles with this in spots. For example, Adam and Carina enter the UK’s version of Witness Protection program at the end of the story. Why would they need to do this if the criminal organization that posed a threat was decimated? Would Adam really walk away from his life, his family, and his friends to start a new life of anonymity with Carina? Maybe. They’ve been all over the press, they’re likely to be hounded for the rest of their lives, and there’s danger associated with those things. But a few readers commented that it felt a little forced. That’s fair. One reason it feels forced is because I really loved the idea of Adam turning the tables on Ratliff at the end and proposing to Carina in his office. I wrote that scene somewhat early on, liked it, and wanted to keep it. But liking an individual scene is not necessarily reason enough to keep it. Kill your darlings and all.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the relationship between Adam and Max in Art of Deception: Renaissance did develop organically, and it became one of my favorite aspects of that third chapter. The animosity between them stems from the fact that they both love Carina (Max as a father figure and Adam as a partner) and want to protect her (Adam by freeing her from her current life and Max by keeping her safe in her current life). Their snarky dialogue, the way they butt heads, even Max’s decision to take Adam to see the crime boss all grew naturally from their intrinsic motivations. Very little of it was planned, which is a departure from the way I normally work.

As I was thinking about how you’d rewrite this, the main thing I came back to over and over again was the criminal organization at the end. For one thing, their existence undermines how dangerous and complex Carina was in the beginning.

This is absolutely fair. I might quibble a bit with your description of Carina as complex in the first chapter, though. I felt she lacked depth. Why was she selling forgeries and duping galleries? Just for the money? Just because she was a sociopath and skillful enough to get away with it? We don’t know (and, as you said, that’s okay in a short story). When I decided to write a sequel, I wanted to give her what I thought was a more interesting set of motivations. I’ll concede that that choice does somewhat undermine the way that she’s portrayed in the first chapter, and it sounds like you think a different choice (maybe using Alice Morgan’s character as a starting point) would be more effective in a longer piece.

I’ll close by stating a general concern I have about trying to expand this into a longer piece. This isn’t a problem to solve or something I’m necessarily looking for advice on (though I’m certainly open to it). I’m just sharing.

My natural writing style is pretty spare. I like short descriptions and lots of dialogue. I try to keep scenes tightly focused like one would do in a play or film. Jane wants X. John wants Y. How is that conflict resolved in the scene? How does that scene move the larger story forward?

You used the word “cinematic” in your review, and that’s how I think of this style of writing. It’s a good style for short stories because it’s tight and keeps the action driving forward.

However, most novels have more description and more in-depth interior monologues that help fill out the story. That type of writing is much harder for me. When I come across another writer on Lit or elsewhere who does these things well, I always marvel at their skill. I happen to be reading Gone Girl right now, and the first several chapters are almost all interior monologues and descriptive writing with very little dialogue―wonderful descriptive passages that meander and digress while also building character and moving things forward. It’s very well done and, in some ways, completely alien to me. One reason I want to try a longer piece is to improve and strengthen those writing muscles that I don’t typically use.

I think I’ve rambled long enough. Thanks again so much for reading these stories and sharing your perspective with me. I may disagree here and there with elements of the review, but in each case I understand where you’re coming from. I’m on board with almost all your big-picture critiques. I’ll check in with you again once I’ve finished the first season of Luther. Looking forward to it.

 

[Omenainen]

Hooo boy. Here we go.

https://www.literotica.com/s/the-dotted-line-ch-01

I'd love a review of the first Chapter of my new series. This is my first foray into true non-consensual mind control and I'm interested in knowing if I've written a story that, while certainly on the darker side, is still palatable and engaging.

I'm especially curious to know what you think of the relationship established between the protagonist and his owner. If I do enough personality wise to make their dynamic work. I really aimed for balance on this one.

Hi @DarkCosmos! We read the story, but now that I was going to check details for the review it seems to have disappeared along with the whole rest of the series?

I don’t know what happened, but get back to us if you get it re-established and we’ll do the review then.

 

[SeraphNocturne]

Woo, okay… so I’ve been watching you guys for a while, and I think I’ve finally written something worthy of your attention. I’m big on never ending series stories and writing for fun so I haven’t published much here on Literotica. That said, this story will eventually be a short series itself, and I’ve published it for the Crime & Punishment Event underway at the moment!

I’m just looking for general feedback and would love to hear your thoughts on things like pacing and story flow, character design, and any other helpful critiques you might have for me. I’ve got a ton of details about this piece in the Author’s Note forward but I’ll mention the category is NC/R (light work by my standards), and I would place the genre as Post-Apocalyptic/Dystopian Western.

Thank you ever so kindly for your consideration!

West of the End: Chapter One - Feather and a Knife

 

[Omenainen]

Alana Pt. 01
@dara1833

This time I’m not going to go into specifics about this story. It’s your first, and what you really wanted to know is how categories work, and maybe more broadly how Lit works, so I’ll just list a few nuggets of accumulated tribal knowledge.

Categories
There’s a good how-to on categorization and which categories are so called trump categories: Love Your Readers: Categories by Tx Tall Tales. Basically, since your story can only be in one category, you need to pick one where the reader’s expectations are closest to what you’re offering. You can, of course, write whatever you want, but keeping the site mechanics in mind doesn’t hurt. A trump category means that whatever else you have in your story, if you have this thing, it will get pushed to this category. For example, if you’re set out to write an exhibitionist story and that is your main erotic focus, don’t make the participants be blood relatives, because that will cause the story to be pushed into Incest/Taboo instead and the readers there may or may not be favorable to what you have.

That being said, I am a little bemused on how you would consider “kidnapping a girl and tying them to a post (painfully, I might add) and then groping them” anything but non-consensual. Kidnapping is, by definition, non-consensual. Which brings us to the second point.

Story scope, story length, series
Readers on Lit seem to prefer longer stories. This might be an illusion brought on by how it’s easier to rate a one-page story unfavorably compared to just not finishing and scoring a longer one, but the point is that it’s perfectly okay to post longer works. A good rule of thumb for a standalone story is 10 000 - 15 000 words, or 2-3 Lit pages. (One Lit page is approximately 3750 words.) That’s enough to get in some kind of a plot and characterization and a dramatic arc, though of course strokers can be shorter and there are stories that are much, much longer.

Series on Lit suffer from attrition, which means that the first chapter will have some amount of views, but the second will typically have only half that amount, and any subsequent chapters will get less and less. Scores will go up, because only the ones who like the story will stick with it, but the view count will only get worse. First chapter of a series should work as a hook to get people interested, and one good selling point would be to in some way demonstrate what the series is going to be about, and/or what kind of sex it’s going to include. When you post your first chapter, neither the site admin or the reader can have any idea where you’re going with a story. This first short snippet you posted has non-con content, and nothing else, so why would it be categorized anything but non-con? One way around this would have been to write a longer first chapter, which surpasses the premise and gets into the content you seem to think is the beef of the story. That being said, I’ve understood that the readers in BDSM are pretty particular about consent and safewords and all that, so I’m not at all convinced that kidnapping and non-consensual torture would go over well in that category.

Lit is riddled with series that have started and then fizzled out, or where the author has written themselves into a corner and given up. There are readers who avoid all series altogether because of this. A good practice would be to write the whole series before publishing a single chapter, and let readers know it is a complete series in your author’s notes. Completing the whole series before publishing anything lets you go back and tweak the story, or add foreshadowing, if the later parts demand it. As an author you should have a grasp of your story, so publishing early “to see what readers say and if they want something particular” is an especially bad idea in my opinion.

Editing
It pays to learn how to write correctly, for example how to punctuate dialogue. I have a personal theory that a new author’s first submission gets more leeway in this sense than any subsequent one, at least that was true to me, so you’re going to have to learn it anyway if you keep posting. There’s no reason to make reading more difficult by bad grammar, even if you could counter some of the effects with a good story. Your story for example had an issue with run-on sentences. Self-editing is a good skill and even if you managed to get beta readers, you should still edit your text yourself first. It’s beneficial to let the story sit for a few days or a week and read it with fresh eyes. Other tricks, like using different font or color, or having a text to speech app read it for you, or reading it aloud, can help too.

Tags
Always use all ten tags. It’s the only way readers will find your story once it’s off the new lists, if we assume it won’t get on all time top lists. Stories also appear on “random stories” and “similar stories” lists, but I have no knowledge of how these work and it’s haphazard at best. Your best bet is to choose ten juiciest tags that apply to your story, and possibly act as a deterrent to those who don’t like the content. You can use category tag clouds to see most used tags and then just try to guess what people would search for to find your story. (tags.literotica.com, you can filter by categories)

Story name and blurb
Story name and blurb, and category, are the only things readers will know about your story before clicking on it. This is all the advertising potential you have to lure a reader into your story as opposed to other new stories. You have used the name “Alana”, which by itself tells us very little and is not very striking or interesting. There’s a lot of discussion on how to name stories, and there are no simple tricks to a catchy title. In series especially, the blurb should have some indication on what happens in that particular chapter. I’ve seen series where every part has the same description, which in my opinion is not interesting, and doesn’t help readers to later navigate to the particular part they liked.

Scores and other numbers
Scores vary by category. There are categories with notoriously low medium scores, and there are categories where there’s a lot of readers but not necessarily a lot of commentators, and there are categories with lower readership but a very active one. You’ll learn to know yours when you publish more. Scores also fluctuate wildly before you have about 100 votes, and even then they move downward way more easily than up. Paying a lot of attention to scores is not a productive way to spend your time, but we’ve all been there, relentlessly refreshing our first story, so this is more for future reference

Also view counts etc fluctuate based on where your story happens to be on the all new and category new lists on the day it comes out. In some categories it can stay up on the category new page for days, in some it’s buried somewhere below the “view more” button already on day one. It’s a gamble, and not worth agonizing over. Writing a series is a way around this in a way, since each chapter has its day in the limelight, but whether it’s enough to counter the attrition of diminishing views is debatable. The best way to draw more readers to your previous stories is to write more and publish often.

Welcome to Lit! This can be an excellent hobby once you learn the ropes.

 

[dara1833]

Alana Pt. 01
@dara1833

This time I’m not going to go into specifics about this story. It’s your first, and what you really wanted to know is how categories work, and maybe more broadly how Lit works, so I’ll just list a few nuggets of accumulated tribal knowledge.

Categories
There’s a good how-to on categorization and which categories are so called trump categories: Love Your Readers: Categories by Tx Tall Tales. Basically, since your story can only be in one category, you need to pick one where the reader’s expectations are closest to what you’re offering. You can, of course, write whatever you want, but keeping the site mechanics in mind doesn’t hurt. A trump category means that whatever else you have in your story, if you have this thing, it will get pushed to this category. For example, if you’re set out to write an exhibitionist story and that is your main erotic focus, don’t make the participants be blood relatives, because that will cause the story to be pushed into Incest/Taboo instead and the readers there may or may not be favorable to what you have.

That being said, I am a little bemused on how you would consider “kidnapping a girl and tying them to a post (painfully, I might add) and then groping them” anything but non-consensual. Kidnapping is, by definition, non-consensual. Which brings us to the second point.

Story scope, story length, series
Readers on Lit seem to prefer longer stories. This might be an illusion brought on by how it’s easier to rate a one-page story unfavorably compared to just not finishing and scoring a longer one, but the point is that it’s perfectly okay to post longer works. A good rule of thumb for a standalone story is 10 000 - 15 000 words, or 2-3 Lit pages. (One Lit page is approximately 3750 words.) That’s enough to get in some kind of a plot and characterization and a dramatic arc, though of course strokers can be shorter and there are stories that are much, much longer.

Series on Lit suffer from attrition, which means that the first chapter will have some amount of views, but the second will typically have only half that amount, and any subsequent chapters will get less and less. Scores will go up, because only the ones who like the story will stick with it, but the view count will only get worse. First chapter of a series should work as a hook to get people interested, and one good selling point would be to in some way demonstrate what the series is going to be about, and/or what kind of sex it’s going to include. When you post your first chapter, neither the site admin or the reader can have any idea where you’re going with a story. This first short snippet you posted has non-con content, and nothing else, so why would it be categorized anything but non-con? One way around this would have been to write a longer first chapter, which surpasses the premise and gets into the content you seem to think is the beef of the story. That being said, I’ve understood that the readers in BDSM are pretty particular about consent and safewords and all that, so I’m not at all convinced that kidnapping and non-consensual torture would go over well in that category.

Lit is riddled with series that have started and then fizzled out, or where the author has written themselves into a corner and given up. There are readers who avoid all series altogether because of this. A good practice would be to write the whole series before publishing a single chapter, and let readers know it is a complete series in your author’s notes. Completing the whole series before publishing anything lets you go back and tweak the story, or add foreshadowing, if the later parts demand it. As an author you should have a grasp of your story, so publishing early “to see what readers say and if they want something particular” is an especially bad idea in my opinion.

Editing
It pays to learn how to write correctly, for example how to punctuate dialogue. I have a personal theory that a new author’s first submission gets more leeway in this sense than any subsequent one, at least that was true to me, so you’re going to have to learn it anyway if you keep posting. There’s no reason to make reading more difficult by bad grammar, even if you could counter some of the effects with a good story. Your story for example had an issue with run-on sentences. Self-editing is a good skill and even if you managed to get beta readers, you should still edit your text yourself first. It’s beneficial to let the story sit for a few days or a week and read it with fresh eyes. Other tricks, like using different font or color, or having a text to speech app read it for you, or reading it aloud, can help too.

Tags
Always use all ten tags. It’s the only way readers will find your story once it’s off the new lists, if we assume it won’t get on all time top lists. Stories also appear on “random stories” and “similar stories” lists, but I have no knowledge of how these work and it’s haphazard at best. Your best bet is to choose ten juiciest tags that apply to your story, and possibly act as a deterrent to those who don’t like the content. You can use category tag clouds to see most used tags and then just try to guess what people would search for to find your story. (tags.literotica.com, you can filter by categories)

Story name and blurb
Story name and blurb, and category, are the only things readers will know about your story before clicking on it. This is all the advertising potential you have to lure a reader into your story as opposed to other new stories. You have used the name “Alana”, which by itself tells us very little and is not very striking or interesting. There’s a lot of discussion on how to name stories, and there are no simple tricks to a catchy title. In series especially, the blurb should have some indication on what happens in that particular chapter. I’ve seen series where every part has the same description, which in my opinion is not interesting, and doesn’t help readers to later navigate to the particular part they liked.

Scores and other numbers
Scores vary by category. There are categories with notoriously low medium scores, and there are categories where there’s a lot of readers but not necessarily a lot of commentators, and there are categories with lower readership but a very active one. You’ll learn to know yours when you publish more. Scores also fluctuate wildly before you have about 100 votes, and even then they move downward way more easily than up. Paying a lot of attention to scores is not a productive way to spend your time, but we’ve all been there, relentlessly refreshing our first story, so this is more for future reference

Also view counts etc fluctuate based on where your story happens to be on the all new and category new lists on the day it comes out. In some categories it can stay up on the category new page for days, in some it’s buried somewhere below the “view more” button already on day one. It’s a gamble, and not worth agonizing over. Writing a series is a way around this in a way, since each chapter has its day in the limelight, but whether it’s enough to counter the attrition of diminishing views is debatable. The best way to draw more readers to your previous stories is to write more and publish often.

Welcome to Lit! This can be an excellent hobby once you learn the ropes.

Thank you for your efforts in my behalf. They should make your response a FAQ. I will take all of it to heart. I have one quibble. You say there is an issue with run-on sentences. I would label them as a device. I am trying to mimic the thought process which occurs near the culmination of the sex act, where one begins to lose contact with this and that and the only thing one experiences is what's happening down there and it gets more and more overpowering and, and, and....well you know and slowly you start to come back. Joyce wrote the last 50 pages of Ulysses with no punctuation, none. He describes only the stream of thought of Molly Bloom. No doubt Joyce executes better than I but it might be worth a read. As you have been so nice here are the last 100 or so words:

and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes​

 

[MediocreAuthor]

Thank you for your efforts in my behalf. They should make your response a FAQ. I will take all of it to heart. I have one quibble. You say there is an issue with run-on sentences. I would label them as a device. I am trying to mimic the thought process which occurs near the culmination of the sex act, where one begins to lose contact with this and that and the only thing one experiences is what's happening down there and it gets more and more overpowering and, and, and....well you know and slowly you start to come back. Joyce wrote the last 50 pages of Ulysses with no punctuation, none. He describes only the stream of thought of Molly Bloom. No doubt Joyce executes better than I but it might be worth a read. As you have been so nice here are the last 100 or so words:

and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes​

I will quote @AwkwardMD here, because I actually think that run-on sentences can create the opposite mood, instead of what you are looking for.
I once heard someone say: "Reading a run-on sentence makes me feel like my brain is drowning."

I think with sex, the breaks should come faster, rather than slower. Anyway, here's that quote:

A simple example is the way I use short sentences and simpler word choices in my sex scenes to feed the animal brain that takes over. I want the reader to feel that breathless rush, and so when characters get naked my sentences get choppy. Bad grammar but who fucking cares. Simple. To the point. Tactile. All feeling, no thinking. Tongues, and panting, and nails scratching across my skin.