AwkwardMD and Omenainen Review Thread

[AwkwardMD]

Joyce wrote the last 50 pages of Ulysses with no punctuation, none. He describes only the stream of thought of Molly Bloom.

Every rule has exceptions. Every stricture has leniency. Every guide has caveats. This is no different. With regards to big grammar breaks like this, though, I would say that you want to  master the fundamentals first. Knowing how and why to use a tool is an important part in knowing when to discard it.

The written word is almost the least important part of writing a story, but it's not unimportant. It is the delivery vehicle for your story, not a means unto itself. Its purpose is to be clear so that the image in your head is relayed, as correctly and deliberately as you intend, into the mind of the reader. A delivery vehicle is important in the chain of events that gets your story pizza to the customer, but the delivery is the purpose.

The example @MediocreAuthor is quoting is one of those exceptions to good, strong, fundamental writing. It has a purpose, and there is a place and time for it, and experience was what taught me when to break the rule.

You'll get there too. Welcome to Lit.

 

[Bramblethorn]

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.

Using sentence structure to communicate state of mind can be very effective as a device, especially in showing changes in that state of mind.

But your story is dominated by run-on sentences even before the sexual content starts, e.g.:

And at length I dressed and continued on my walk, staying close to the lake along the path becoming less and less well-worn as I proceeded, and yet I continued knowing I was now in parts not well traveled, but nevertheless exceedingly beautiful and after another hour I stopped and sat a while and after a time considered that it was time now to turn back, so I would reach my car before it turned dark.

Using this handy readability calculator, and pasting in a page or so from the first chapter of Joyce's "Ulysses", he averages about nine words per sentence. When he changes gears late in the book, to that famous 50-page "sentence", there's a big contrast.

I consider myself fairly verbose. Testing one of the wordier passages from one of my wordier stories here, I get about 17 words per sentence.

The first three paragraphs of your story (cutting off just before she sees the strange man) average 35 words per sentence. That's a LOT, and it doesn't leave you much room to create a contrast by turning it up even more later in the story.

 

[dara1833]

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:

I too will quote AwkwardMD.: OK.

 

[dara1833]

Every rule has exceptions. Every stricture has leniency. Every guide has caveats. This is no different. With regards to big grammar breaks like this, though, I would say that you want to  master the fundamentals first. Knowing how and why to use a tool is an important part in knowing when to discard it.

The written word is almost the least important part of writing a story, but it's not unimportant. It is the delivery vehicle for your story, not a means unto itself. Its purpose is to be clear so that the image in your head is relayed, as correctly and deliberately as you intend, into the mind of the reader. A delivery vehicle is important in the chain of events that gets your story pizza to the customer, but the delivery is the purpose.

The example @MediocreAuthor is quoting is one of those exceptions to good, strong, fundamental writing. It has a purpose, and there is a place and time for it, and experience was what taught me when to break the rule.

You'll get there too. Welcome to Lit.

Thank you for responding. Certainly you are correct, one wants to relay what's in one's head. How best to get it done is what I struggle with. I'll try your method. In another forum older men seemed to respond well to my expressing what was in my head while getting myself laid, but it was reading the thoughts that they enjoyed. Nobody ever said they particularly liked my method of getting them across.

 

[dara1833]

Using sentence structure to communicate state of mind can be very effective as a device, especially in showing changes in that state of mind.

But your story is dominated by run-on sentences even before the sexual content starts, e.g.:



Using this handy readability calculator, and pasting in a page or so from the first chapter of Joyce's "Ulysses", he averages about nine words per sentence. When he changes gears late in the book, to that famous 50-page "sentence", there's a big contrast.

I consider myself fairly verbose. Testing one of the wordier passages from one of my wordier stories here, I get about 17 words per sentence.

The first three paragraphs of your story (cutting off just before she sees the strange man) average 35 words per sentence. That's a LOT, and it doesn't leave you much room to create a contrast by turning it up even more later in the story.

Good point. Thank you. Editted to add the point about the lack of contrast in length makes the sex stuff less effective or even noticeable.

 

[AwkwardMD]

@seraph_nocturne
Link

We’re gonna focus on this part here first:

I’m big on never ending series stories and writing for fun so I haven’t published much here on Literotica.

Now, if this is true, and this is what you want, duck out now. You should always follow your passion and do what makes you happy. There’s no point in working on a story for months if it doesn’t make you happy…

…but never ending stories are badly written by default. They have to be. They, invariably, lack elements that a good story needs. It’s the difference between a movie and a documentary. Lots of people like documentaries, prefer documentaries, but they never have dramatic arcs, or growth. There’s no foreshadowing. There’s no climax, no payoff. Documentaries follow real life, and that’s not how real life works.

Take the male characters. Putting Seth aside they come in one flavor with one variant: rapist and potential rapist (not a judgement, just an observation). They all speak in the same voice, have roughly the same build, have the same affect, all look at Fox with desire, and that’s because a story that goes forever always needs new villains. New twists for you to pull out of nowhere. She gets raped by the jailer in chapter 10. She escapes, and the tracker they send after her ties her up and rapes her in chapter 11. You can’t just have the same character doing the villain stuff forever, so you need every single other character at your disposal to be able to turn on her later.

The mercs are the perfect example of this. In this world that you’ve set up, the mercs that Fox’s people hired would probably have a good idea who owns and runs a train, and yet when the name gets dropped the mercs immediately switch sides. Their surprise at the reveal of the Baron is puzzling, but that’s the choice the story needs them to make. They don’t even need to be good mercs who do their homework to be able to put together that they’re about to rob a vehicle, that is prohibitively expensive to run, in lawless territory. That should have set off red flags, but we need them for the story so we have someone to betray Fox in a crucial moment.

The opening of the story, before Fox arrives at the campsite, is largely just frontloaded backstory. Really, everything before the actual train job could be jettisoned and filled in through conversation if the whole thing was structured differently, but a story that’s going to go on forever needs padding. It can’t just get to the point and move on because the point is more and not compact storytelling.

Lots of choices are being made in the name of giving this opening entry as much length as possible. There’s an abundance of adverb and adjective use that my editor brain says get rid of. “She placed it over her shoulder and nodded to the horse who watched her intuitively as she started toward the fire.” Intuitively. A horse. Egregious word count padding. The boy child who I deeply suspect is only here to show up 30 chapters from now because you’re stockpiling characters? The boy who is eleven but gets carried around by the adults to give them something to do and talk about? The way the POV head hops to tell us what everyone is thinking?

A forever story can’t cut these things. These choices are assets to a story that needs filler, but they’re a liability in dense, strong writing.

***

There’s so many characters, and they’re all identical. I couldn’t keep them straight. This did not surprise me, because, for unrelated reasons I read the first chapter of The Dead World a month ago or so and found the same thing there. Your FMC was stalked and captured by a group of men numbering somewhere between 5 and 15. Everyone goes by one name. Everyone has the same mode of speech. Depending on which way she ran out of her camp, she could feasibly have been caught and raped by any of them. They were interchangeable in every way that matters excepting their favored manner of violating her.

It’s lacking in contrast.

***

On a related note, I don’t love the way the story relies on evolutionary psychology. I’m not sure this is something you’re doing consciously, but the “Men were hunters, women were gatherers, and these will be the only acceptable roles once society isn’t here to enable women doing more” is kind of everywhere. Fox seems capable, but the story takes every opportunity to remind us that literally nobody else alive thinks the same. The people on the train have no respect for her, and nothing she does in the heist, that I saw, was changing hearts or minds. Even her own people dismiss her out of hand. You wrote her to be crafty and suspicious, a light sleeper, but then she wakes up next to someone she didn’t hear coming, gets snuck up on while bathing, and gets disarmed on the train without a whole lot of fuss.

I can easily, easily see that you are a good enough writer to avoid the plethora of stereotypes you’ve leaned on to move this story forward, but I think you haven’t reckoned with the things you are just putting in place because that’s what’s expected. It’s a western, so they have whiskey. It’s a western, so there’s a train robbery. It’s a western, so they didn’t eat the horses 15 years ago when the zombies showed up because a western needs horses.. Fox is a redhead, so she’s fiery and disagreeable. Good twin/bad twin. I could see the general path this chapter was going to take by paragraph five, and I am not a gifted soothsayer.

Westerns can be surprising. Zombie apocalypse stories can be surprising (we are writing one now). You are not bound by the strictures of these categories, but avoiding them would require more cohesive, end-to-end planning which presumes the existence of an end.

Again, can’t stress this enough; much like stroke stories, a story series that goes on forever and does all the things I’ve pointed out in this thread can be entirely successful on Lit because the readership is ravenous for “new” and “more”. There will always be readers that will happily forgive what I would consider mistakes because that’s what they want. My opinions are exactly that, and more importantly my way of writing is not correct, perfect, or universally applicable.

Check out my story The Incident At Last Home (link to my stories is in my sig). It’s a western I wrote several years ago with my friend AmoryParks for a previous Lit story event. That story is a great example of what my system, and my tool set, is capable of producing, and if that isn’t what you want (setting aside the fact that it’s a lesbian story and you seem to write hetero stuff) then you can rest easy that nothing I’ve said here matters.

 

[SeraphNocturne]

Thank you ever so kindly for giving me a bit of your time! I’ll be sure to check out your recommendation, The Incident At Last Home, and I’ll go on as well to say that my own orientation aside (Demisexual btw) I’ll read and write anything. Very literally, just about anything.

Not all of it is here on Literotica, because Lit does have its flavors and picks, and sometimes writing to adhere to what readers want and what I like to write just don’t sync up. I’ve got other places where my creativity can flourish across my interests.

That said, I’ll take into account your thoughts on this story as I move forward with it.

A large portion of my difficulty with writing in this universe is juggling the cast of survivors. The necessity stems from, well, the basic elements that drive the world. It’s unsafe, survival is difficult, and people who are alone are people who die quickly. Even in fifteen years no one can honestly build a skill set for survival that touches all bases. Almost everyone has lost someone, and human nature is camaraderie and community. Therein lies the most obnoxious problem when writing in this universe; character juggling.

Short of killing them off (and that’s vastly the route I’m taking things, because Christ does it get hard to juggle them) being able to find places and pacing for them all without pushing toward a 40K word count has been a challenge in itself.

I tried to focus very much on Fox, Sidewinder and Bandit, because there’s no way to cover the group all at once that wouldn’t take a large introduction from difficult to absolutely confusing. Going forward, my thoughts are breaking them up, and writing on the actions of smaller casts before they come to the head at the end. I pray I never have something possess me to write such a large cast again, it’s been a hell of a chore!

With the original series I felt I wrote myself into a dead end somewhere around Chapter 6-7, before I took hiatus from Literotica, and upon resuming the series I couldn’t help but to feel like it was dragging on for eternity.

Given the nature and detail I’ve put into this world, I’ve been dishing out snippets of explanation for behavioral habits and the world environment as I go as opposed to just dumping the information in all at once. But it’s been noticeable to me that by doing so, it’s taking forever to get the original story to some semblance of an end, and ideally having an end is what I would like to find. I’m invested now so there’s no going back, but I very much intend to lean on your thoughts as I move forward.

So starting off with Feather, it’s tropey as hell, and that was by design. I didn’t enter into this story looking to make it original. Not on the opener at least. Shock and surprise comes further down the line. In the spirit of the Event it’s been placed into I wanted it to be easily read and almost predictable. I don’t expect any feedback saying “Oh man, never saw the double cross coming!” Because the reader should have.

Honestly a good bit of my fun with writing Feather and a Knife was not struggling to find something original out of it as opposed to its parent series where finding originality has haunted me every chapter. When I go original, I go hard on it, and that wasn’t my angle here.

I’ll get into why not eat the horses… I did a ton of research on the area it begins in, Caliente, Nevada. It’s isolated. Basically one town among ghost towns, and that was before the world ended. Essentially after ten years cars are obsolete, and the community is largely ranchers and farmers, so they’ll have and value horses. Horses are incredibly intelligent beings. They form families, they have personalities, they won’t drink from bad water.

Why the boy? At eleven, he was born into this mess of a world. Humanity is facing extinction. He has purpose down the line. I never put characters into any story without purpose, with the exception of villains and that’s obvious… terrorize then probably die. Of course given the world I’m writing in and the fact that people prefer smut, the boy won’t have too many appearances, but the ones he does have will be meaningful.

You haven’t mentioned much about technical delivery, but I suppose that should make me happy! Aside from the obvious (adverb/adjective abuser extraordinaire, I swept this document on my millionth proof read or so to cut out close to 600 words). Flowery prose is my preferred writing style. I can write bare bones and to the point, but I’ve fallen into the style that I enjoy reading over the years. For the sake of shorter word count I’ve been making a habit of trying to cut it back without deviating too much from my voice, and I’ve also been compiling a list of work to write from sparse prose, just because. But when it comes to poetic writing style, that’s just me. Some people are gonna hate it and that’s quite alright.

Overall, I intend to wrap this series up under 10 Chapters, that’s my vision here. Under eight would be ideal. I think you’ve offered some fantastic advice regarding that, and how to handle the group of characters. Again, I can’t thank you enough for taking the time to review for me!

 

[MediocreAuthor]

On a related note, I don’t love the way the story relies on evolutionary psychology. I’m not sure this is something you’re doing consciously, but the “Men were hunters, women were gatherers, and these will be the only acceptable roles once society isn’t here to enable women doing more” is kind of everywhere. Fox seems capable, but the story takes every opportunity to remind us that literally nobody else alive thinks the same. The people on the train have no respect for her, and nothing she does in the heist, that I saw, was changing hearts or minds. Even her own people dismiss her out of hand. You wrote her to be crafty and suspicious, a light sleeper, but then she wakes up next to someone she didn’t hear coming, gets snuck up on while bathing, and gets disarmed on the train without a whole lot of fuss.

I can't express how much I appreciate this review service that you and @Omenainen offer. You provide an amazing resource for both new and experienced authors alike, and we can't thank you enough

---

There is only point which I would like to address from your review (both as a beta-reader and a fan), and it revolves around the idea that her stories rely on "evolutionary psychology" of male hunters/female gatherers.

I can't blame you for having that opinion, based on what you've read, but as a long time reader of this zombie apocalypse world, I just want to say that I feel that this is a false impression (sort of).

Within this entire narrative universe, I would agree that women and men do tend to take more traditional roles as gatherers/hunters as you pointed out.

That said, I feel that this world has two primary defenses against that critique.

1) It is not a hard rule. The leader of the largest city of survivors depicted so far is a woman of color (Viper)... Although to be perfectly fair, I know that you haven't read that far into the original TDW series, so I don't blame you for your impression.

2) Since characters like Fox and Viper prove that within this world one is not required to confirm to traditional gender-roles, I personally see no problem with depicting those roles as average.

Fox's actions in particular show that women can be hunters in this world if they choose... beyond that, I personally see nothing wrong with creating a traditional society of hunters and gatherers. That's both a popular trope and also the directions real life societies tend to lean.

More to the point, having a fantasy which includes wanting a strong man to hunt for me while I garden doesn't make me a weak willed woman.

As long as the author acknowledges that women CAN be hunters (which she does) then I see no shame in making male-hunters/female-gatherers a more typical occurrence.

---

Regardless, I hope this doesn't come across as argumentative; I just love these stories, and I could talk about them all day. Lol

 

[AwkwardMD]

All I can do is call these things out as they are put in front of me, like I did early on in the thread for an overly white cast of characters, and a slew of stories failing the Bechdel-Wallace test, and Authorial Intent. I think it's worth putting the idea out there for others to chew on. Fantasy and post apocalyptic stories often fall into these same ruts, and make token exceptions to gender roles rather than bucking them by design, or, like Fox, exceptions on paper that don't hold up when the going gets tough. That doesn't come from a conscious decision to reinforce the patriarchy or a conformist mindset, but rather an unconscious acceptance of a status quo that doesn't need to be.

I'm glad to hear about Viper, and I'm happy to be wrong. Thrilled, even, but I still think it's a conversation worth having and the story in front of me gives me the platform for that.

 

[AwkwardMD]

For example, in an alternate universe this story could have been about Fox, the extremely capable hunter and tracker, taught everything she knows by her father. A lifetime of experience that she is passing on to others, but all that doesn't help her because she's vulnerable to the cook; a man with an extensive knowledge of herbs and mushrooms who drugs his victims through the food. Her fear and paranoia is heightened by the chemicals in her system, and her experience is harrowing. When she wakes up in the morning she can't help but feel like some part of her nightmare was real.

And that it's happened before.

EDIT: I hope this short idea conveys that there's no judgement happening about the content, just the circumstances happening around it.

 

[SeraphNocturne]

Within this entire narrative universe, I would agree that women and men do tend to take more traditional roles as gatherers/hunters as you pointed out.

:3 Kind of you to chime in M.

Given that society has crumbled in the original series, and is even worse father down that timeline in Feather and a Knife, it's not a wrong assumption. I've written it this way purposefully, because that's what I think our world environment would descend into on a realistic scale after a global pandemic decimated the population and reanimates the dead as cannibalistic monsters. It's not a one size fits all for apocalypse clichés. My way isn't the only way, but popular media suggests that it's not the wrong way to go about it either. It just happens that's my vision for this particular story, and I do make a point to let it evolve as it progresses.

I very much enjoy writing plucky bad-asses who prove the men wrong at every turn. I do it with Fox and Superior Elect Viper, a woman who's essentially paved way for a lot of the world here to rebuild itself under her leadership. Viper is a black woman who's risen above the norms and defied impossible odds, she has a female lover, and has several women of color on her council. Fox was designed to be opposite to the FMC of The Dead World who is a mixed Laotian woman who's been sheltered from it all with a much more sweet natured personality.

But yes, not having read 150K words of content (and I don't expect you to) there's no way to know these things. I appreciated the critiques and your thoughts toward that assumption, because from the point of view of the progressive world we live in, a post-apocalyptic world where women are being subjugated and thought of as second class citizens is archaic and akin to horror. But that's the vibe I'm going for.

I appreciated the critiques toward the cast too, though I don't feel much need to flesh out the villains when I just mean to kill them in interesting ways later on. The women I write are strong, independent, and above all they are enduring. I think that they're so quickly dismissed or looked down on by what would otherwise be 'men in power' give them an advantage and opportunity to make their enemies eat those assumptions. Fox makes a point to not only show this, but to hold her ground when faced with adversary. She demonstrates it especially when she toes off with one of the unsavory fellows toward the end.

At the end of the day, she's a little badass, but she's also still a nineteen year old woman who taught herself how to ride, to hunt, and to throw knives. Growing up with parents in this apocalyptic world is not a luxury many of my characters are afforded. Yet she's manipulated her way into making the rough and tough leader of a gang of survivors bend to her will, and a lot of her direction is based on ruthless passion--not survival. Ergo, some of her group (Envy) don't agree her decisions and are going to do what they think is best to survive. I could've had them all follow her with blind loyalty to no ends but that gives me 'the chosen one/Mary Sue' sort of vibes. And then I'd be lax a lot of opportunities for character development, and friction.

As I write in this universe, I don't lean into the cliché that all women are capable of being is property or demure assets. I went a good eight chapters of showing how resourceful the FMC is in The Dead World before it takes an inevitable turn for bad. Charlotte shows intelligence, a quickness to learn, initiative and resilience as she navigates a very dangerous situation faced against a group of invading men... I'm happy to say that the several escapes she tries do not end in getting jumped/gang raped. I've got a bit more imagination than that. Nor is the group of male survivors all bad, cookie-cutter rapists. That becomes apparent as well, but not in any short time frame.

My issue has been how best to handle writing a group of six characters at a time keeping both the story and the cast engaging while pushing toward a visual end. Writing such a large cast is not something I do often, and don't intend to make a habit of, because it's a lot of work. My future endeavors will be shorter series, with a shorter pen, and not nearly as much detail to focus on.

Awkward/Omenainen, you've offered some fine thoughts toward that, and I'm more than happy to apply it to future writing and seeing if I can condense West of the End to half of what it's parent series is or less!

Thank you, again, for your time here.

 

[SeraphNocturne]

EDIT: I hope this short idea conveys that there's no judgement happening about the content, just the circumstances happening around it.

No judgment or offense has been taken at all, I've really appreciated your input on things. And honestly, I agree with a lot of what you've said here, and have tried my best to break free from the stereotypical tropes that come with this kind of story. In some ways it's hard to do. The audience, especially here on Lit, have their expectations... but I'll keep writing varied casts with all different races and ladies who can and will kick ass 'til I drop!

 

[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.

Mea culpa. When you said "with as much attention as this thread gets" I thought this meant the thread got a lot of attention. Now I see I was wrong. There has not been a post since last Wednesday (today is Monday) and none from Sept. 6 thru 10. May I suggest your "current best practice" needs further work.

OK

 

[AwkwardMD]

Mea culpa. When you said "with as much attention as this thread gets" I thought this meant the thread got a lot of attention. Now I see I was wrong. There has not been a post since last Wednesday (today is Monday) and none from Sept. 6 thru 10. May I suggest your "current best practice" needs further work.

OK

Okay.

 

[Louetta]

Okay.

Ah. I see what you did. You started spelling it out! I'm living rent free in your head.

 

[AwkwardMD]

In the Story Feedback forum, no other non-pinned thread has even half as many views as ours, which makes sense. Most of them are “Look at my (one) story”, then a conversation happens, and then that conversation is over. The pinned threads get looked at, but are generally locked to responses.

If we look at the first page of the Author’s Hangout, we can find some threads with comparable views.


Ours 819 posts 102000 views
Post Office 8000 123000
6L Post Office 6000 178000
Word Chain 11000 87000
7L Post Office 6000 96000
Coffee Shop 7000 79000
Misquote 4000 335000
Alphabet Game 6000 279000

[EDIT: the table looked so pretty in the preview!]

If we divide views by posts, we can arrive at somewhat-arbitrary-but-helpful numbers. The Word Chain has 8 views per post, the coffee shop has 11, the Post Office has 15, the 7 letter post office has 16, 6 letter post office has 30, and the alphabet has 47. The Misquote The Person Above thread has a whopping 84 views per post.

Ours is 125. For every post in this thread, on average, it gets viewed 125 times. 102k views is nice, that’s more than the population of Vacaville, California, but those aren’t unique views; it’s some number of authors checking over and over. I think that’s awesome. Since the thread has been going for several years now, the number of actual unique visitors is much higher than 125, but even assuming that there were only ever 125 authors who checked this thread, over and over, for years now, that would still be a flattering amount of attention from a much larger group of people than I expected when I started the thread.

Even the garbage posts get eyeballs on them. Can you imagine being so petty as to try to ride our coattails?

***

If you use that little magnifying glass up in the corner, click on Advanced Search, and put the word “Okay” in the keyword search, put my username in the Posted By field, and sort by date, you will find that I have made 11 posts containing just the word “Okay” going back to February of 2018. There are no uses before that.

If you use that little magnifying glass up in the corner, click on Advanced Search, and put the word “Ok” in the keyword search, put my username in the Posted By field, and sort by date, you will find that I have made 1 post in 2020 that includes the word in a larger post, one post where I was quoting someone else, and then no other relevant uses of the word after July of 2017.

In October of 2017, I co-authored a story called The Incident At Last Home with AmoryParks for a Lit event called Lit Writers Go West (or something). I’ve always edited my own stories, but that event gave us the option to have it looked at by BlackRandl1958, who is a much better editor than me. I still remember the note they gave me, saying “It’s not okay to write ok.” I’m not perfect, but I’ve tried to stick with that advice.

***

There’s this thing where people project their own insecurities and fears onto others. Someone who is a serial cheater in relationships will always be the first one to accuse their partner of having an affair. It’s sad, and everyone else can see it. Once enough time passes, the pattern is pretty clear and nobody watching is fooled.

I am not in your thread, pestering you; you are in ours. You do not live in my head. I don’t even know who you are. Every time you post, I go “Wait, didn’t they say something one time like two years ago?”

This’ll be the last time that happens, though. Fun fact: Getting the “Okay” response from me is the last stop before I put people on my ignore list. Have a nice life.

 

[AlinaX]

I still remember the note they gave me, saying “It’s not okay to write ok.” I’m not perfect, but I’ve tried to stick with that advice.

'Ok' is one of my pet hates. Glad I'm not the only one strict about it.

 

[yibala]

You haven’t mentioned much about technical delivery, but I suppose that should make me happy! Aside from the obvious (adverb/adjective abuser extraordinaire, I swept this document on my millionth proof read or so to cut out close to 600 words). Flowery prose is my preferred writing style. I can write bare bones and to the point, but I’ve fallen into the style that I enjoy reading over the years. For the sake of shorter word count I’ve been making a habit of trying to cut it back without deviating too much from my voice, and I’ve also been compiling a list of work to write from sparse prose, just because. But when it comes to poetic writing style, that’s just me. Some people are gonna hate it and that’s quite alright.

I just wanted to add - because I started this story but didn't finish in time for the discussion - a couple aspects of the first scenes that I found disorienting. In the opening, it wasn't clear who's POV I was reading and what the setting was until several paragraphs in. The first paragraph starts with "Her" and the first name that's mentioned, in the second paragraph, is Rose. Fox isn't introduced until the third paragraph, and even then I didn't have a sense of scene or setting or who else is in it. Personally, I find it so much easier to start a story (having read nothing else in your world) knowing where I am and from what perspective I'm reading, and I feel like if I had been introduced to Fox first, her memories about her sister would have been much more meaningful to me.

I'd also agree that there are a lot of characters introduced very early in the story. As a writer, I try very hard not to introduce characters with names until I have to, not a lot at once, and only in ways that I hope will distinguish them and be memorable to the reader. I liked and felt connected with the the interaction with Pup, and then Smiles, but then there are like four other characters present who are all named, so I feel like they are important, but I have little to no way to visualize them or distinguish them from one another.

Just my two cents. I think of openings as my chance to grab the reader, and try to avoid putting obstacles to engagement in their way if at all possible. Hope this is helpful.

-Yib

 

[SeraphNocturne]

I just wanted to add - because I started this story but didn't finish in time for the discussion - a couple aspects of the first scenes that I found disorienting. In the opening, it wasn't clear who's POV I was reading and what the setting was until several paragraphs in. The first paragraph starts with "Her" and the first name that's mentioned, in the second paragraph, is Rose. Fox isn't introduced until the third paragraph, and even then I didn't have a sense of scene or setting or who else is in it. Personally, I find it so much easier to start a story (having read nothing else in your world) knowing where I am and from what perspective I'm reading, and I feel like if I had been introduced to Fox first, her memories about her sister would have been much more meaningful to me.

I'd also agree that there are a lot of characters introduced very early in the story. As a writer, I try very hard not to introduce characters with names until I have to, not a lot at once, and only in ways that I hope will distinguish them and be memorable to the reader. I liked and felt connected with the the interaction with Pup, and then Smiles, but then there are like four other characters present who are all named, so I feel like they are important, but I have little to no way to visualize them or distinguish them from one another.

Just my two cents. I think of openings as my chance to grab the reader, and try to avoid putting obstacles to engagement in their way if at all possible. Hope this is helpful.

-Yib

Very helpful feedback, thank you kindly, and thanks for taking the time to read it. I’ll keep your observations in mind as I move forward with it. Hopefully how I’m plotting this one out will make it easier to engage and familiarize with the cast…

My apologies on the early confusion. When writing same-sex character involvement, I do often forget the importance of names because more than one “she” can get confusing so quickly.

I tried to set focus on the core of the group for this opening chapter, so the only in depth descriptions are really Fox, Sidewinder, and Bandit, with only snippets of personality and position offered for the other named characters (Pup, Mara, Envy, Bones, Gunner). There’s no promise all of these characters will even make it to the climax or closing chapter, given the world and the fact that I’m never against killing off characters when writing horror stories.

I started this chapter hoping to catch a reader’s attention based on its content, the backstory presented, and the appeal of action with Crime and Punishment’s theme in mind. But I can easily see how confusing such a large group can be out the gate, and that you cared enough about the cast to comment on not being able to have a clear visual of them makes me feel bad for not stretching this starter out a bit longer to give readers a chance to get to know the group better!

I feel like a crazy person sometimes for taking on such large projects, but eh, I could coast in my comfort zone and write repetitive 1st POV stroke stories like the vast majority of Lit, or strive to be the best writer I can be. Thus far, I’m enjoying the challenge. And thank you, again, your comment has been so helpful!

 

[yibala]

The female-centered story and post-apocalyptic setting really appeal to me. So I will plan to finish at least this chapter and send you more complete reflections offline, if you think it would be useful.

-Yib

 

[SeraphNocturne]

The female-centered story and post-apocalyptic setting really appeal to me. So I will plan to finish at least this chapter and send you more complete reflections offline, if you think it would be useful.

-Yib

Oh, I’d love that. I’ll refrain from any further mentions so I don’t spoil anything. I’m aiming to wrap this one up in 8-10 Chapters, so I’ll advise that Feather and a Knife isn’t a complete piece, nor does it have any relation to The Dead World aside from existing in the same post apocalyptic universe.

I realize this genre and sort of story isn’t for everyone, but I’ve offered it up here with hope for helpful critiques, so if it’s your cup of tea and you’d like to review it go right ahead! I consider myself a solid writer, but I know I have room to improve.

 

[AG31]

Oh, wow! Are you still reviewing after several years? I'd LOVE to have you review my stories. I'm telling the truth when I say I don't mind negative observations. Usually they're helpful. If they're not I don't feel bad, I just discard them in my mind. All I ask is that you accept the premises which underly my stories and which are explained in my signature. Actually, the first story I'd like you to review is in my signature, the "example." I also think its my best. So it'll be downhill for the next half dozen.

I should add that even though I published this a while ago, I'm now on version 9. Just last night I was thinking about ways to fine tune it.

Also, it's very explicity BDSM with a male MC (recipient).

TIA!
ag

 

[AwkwardMD]

This one?

https://literotica.com/s/twelve-maxbridge-street

 

[AG31]

This one?

https://literotica.com/s/twelve-maxbridge-street

Yes, that one.

 

[Omenainen]

@AG31
Twelve Maxbridge Street

Before going into the story, I question your reason for asking for a review. You seem pretty self-assured with statements like “you just need to accept the premises which underlie my stories,” or “I’ll just ignore what you have to say if I don’t like it,” or “this is just my style and I purposefully don’t give characters backstories or personalities or feelings.” So, fair enough, you’ve set out to write insert tab A into slot B instruction manual-type erotica. How’s that working for you? If you’re so convinced it’s the way to go, why are you asking for a review? Following your muse and fulfilling your own artistic vision is absolutely the thing to do for personal satisfaction, but this kind of defiant “I’m doing what I’m doing so take it or leave it” approach doesn’t really sound like you’re open for suggestions, which is all we do.

Good things first: your technical writing skill is very good. Based on what you said you set out to do, you did achieve your goals. As is, you are well equipped to write the stories you want to write. This is a very rewarding hobby, and I hope you continue with it and keep honing your skill and finding your readership.

As a disclaimer, neither of us have read Story of O, and based on the Wikipedia article we’re not inspired to. You refer to it as an “important classic of erotica”, but from the description that seems based more on “nothing better was available at the time” than “this is the pinnacle of all things sexy in a written word.” A lot of classics that were interesting or scandalous or ahead of their time, at their time, would not be considered very highly today. I can’t fathom what would be erotic in that, but then it’s not my kink.

What makes erotica erotic? I think erotica’s main point is to delve into the emotions and feelings of the characters, the personalities and stories of the characters, as opposed to just the mechanics of a fuck. This is what the medium of the written word does well. It can play with pacing, and perspective, and narrative much more easily than other mediums.

You say

I was introduced to erotica in the late 60's. At that time The Story of O was being talked about in the mainstream media. I was very surprised to find that there are almost no stories like that in modern day erotica.

and my guess is that no stories like that exist today because abundant visual porn has rendered them obsolete. It meets the same need but in a way that works even better for the type of lizard brain that goes “pretty boobs wanna breed bend over”.

You claim you’re not interested in describing characters or their backstories or feelings, but you seem to be deceiving yourself. You say that

I've long thought "pure" should be an adjective that applies to erotica. By pure I mean a story that has nothing in it that doesn't contribute to arousal. There's no unnecessary back story. No scene setting except the current physical place. In the case of my stories it doesn't include distracting human relationships

but by the end of the story you’re so enamored with your main character that you spin out of thin air this whole relationship for him to have. It seems like describing only the sexual act itself and only the setting it happens in is not enough for you either, and that you do, in fact, have a mental image of who this man is, why he is seeking this kind of sexual treatment, what he wants in life, what makes him tick. You just haven’t shared any of that with the readers, so we’re not following you at this point. You go into lengths of telling us where they’re dining and when, but why would we care when we don’t have a clue who either of these characters are? You need to make us care. You need to relay to us what it is that makes you care. You do that by writing the characters so that there’s something identifiable, something to relate to.

(Also, even if we would care, the ending is still out of tune with the rest of the story and it isn’t clear what point you are making with it. Does he now have someone to lovingly ass-rape him at home, so that he doesn’t need to go to get publicly ravaged by strangers anymore? Do they go to the club together? Is he now miraculously healed of these sinful urges by having a Good Woman on his side? What about her urges? Do they build their own dungeon at home? Is he a switch and can dominate her in turn, or is he purely a sub and she’s left unfulfilled with her submissive tendencies? It’s not so much an ending as it is “more”.)

I tried to think of ways to add "emotion," but was stumped for many months, but finally figured it out.

The kind of masochism that I'm describing is the kind which causes a person to experience only one emotion, surrender. The self is subsumed under that emotion, and the experience is only of it and pain and sexual arousal and release. There is no room for self reflection. No thoughts are present. No guilt, no resistance, no happiness, no smirking. So the reader brings their own experience to the narration.

What about humiliation? Isn't that an emotion? I think that what happens is the character is put in humiliating situations and goes immediately to surrender.

You couldn’t figure out how to describe the emotions so you just gave up? The thing about submission is that you need to have a before that is different from that submissive state, and then describe the transition. Contrast is important, and this cannot be understated. A submissive person, who is living a 24/7 submissive life, is doing the extremely expected thing when they do something submissive. That’s uninteresting. With humiliation, you need to have dignity before and shame after. If you don’t, this kind of bland is exactly what you end up with.

You don’t tell us anything about John. You say that he has a big office, he’s well-off financially, he’s tall and muscular, but that’s it. He’s signed up for this “new experience”, but you give us no reason why he is interested in this sort of stuff. He supposedly doesn’t have much of an idea what he’s signed up for, and yet, when you submit him to the handlers at the club, you say that he immediately just goes emotionally limp and surrenders? There’s no transition, no resistance, no self doubt, no regret, no nothing? You take off his clothes, and boom, he’s a mindless fuckdoll? That is both not believable and uninteresting. If you describe someone who’s already a well adjusted submissive, they could slip into that mindset with the ease that you show here, but for someone’s first time? You make it sound like there’s some kind of magic word you say to a person and then suddenly anyone is a sexual slave. That’s more fairytale mind control than BDSM.

Also, you need to choose one. There’s no humiliation in submission like you described. He either surrenders or he doesn’t. If he doesn’t, to the point of feeling humiliated, you should describe his other feelings too. He is also aware enough to fat-shame that one guy abusing him, which does not sound at all like "no thoughts are present."

I don’t know why you included the people he works with, either in the beginning of the story or at the club. Why would these random office workers be into this kind of sexual thing? Why would they be there exactly on the day he’s signed up? Why does this place not stress anonymity and privacy? It feels too artificial. You don’t want to present backstories but then you still wanted to have someone he knows, so you did this. If the club has brought them in specifically to humiliate him, you could’ve made that clearer. As a coincidence it’s too far fetched.

You say:

The absence of descriptions of O's sexual feelings is very certainly not a quality shared with Maxbridge, which is very explicit about the main character's physical responses.

but simply describing physical responses is not erotic. Saying that “his penis got engorged and then he ejaculated” is not erotic. Saying “he was very aroused” is not arousing. Simply describing the mechanics of sex is like narrating porn; it just doesn’t work. Now, if you insert some feeling: “he could feel his pulse in his throbbing cock, and the mounting pressure in his groin, making him desperate for release” is slightly more erotic. If we know who he is, and empathize with him, and want him to get there, it can be very arousing.

One technical aspect: please use lubricant when inserting things into the anus.

Basically, my main advice is the same you said you already got from elsewhere. Add the psychological aspect. Add the feelings. Dwell in the emotions. I don’t think omitting them works for you here, and I don’t think omitting them will work for you going forward.

As for you writing revision after revision, I encourage you to write something new instead. The stories here get most of their views when they’re newly published. Practically nobody is going to read your revisions. This is simply the nature of how stories get attention on Literotica. Think of what is the gist of the story, what in it really tickles you, and then try to recapture that in a slightly new way. New characters. New setting.

This is not a genre that appeals to me, so unfortunately I can’t present good stories of dignified male submission as an example. However, you could take a look at this AwkwardMD’s take on free use/submission/orgy kink and how to step inside the mental landscape of a character who struggles with embarrassment if not quite humiliation: Human Resource