AwkwardMD and Omenainen Review Thread

[AwkwardMD]

If it helps, I didn't find her lacking in plausibility. I was more pointing out opportunities to cue the reader as to what drives her. I definitely like the contrast in character btw Avilia and Sligh, and the idea that she's going to do the unexpected. But I think you can surprise the reader in such a way that they look back in and realize, "of course, I can totally see why she did that!"... if that makes sense.

It's the opening chapter of a multi-chapter story. It's enough early on to just have her be consistent with some mystery, and let the gaps get filled in later.

 

[Omenainen]

Mom Unlocks the Shyness Enigma
@dmallord

I know you addressed your question to AwkwardMD, but I’m what you’ll get this time over and that’s just how it goes . We do these reviews together. We post them alternately, but both of us read all the stories and the reviews are based on our common conceptions. It sounds awfully pompous to write “we think that…” and also like we’re some kind of a grand jury, so that’s why we post them seemingly from either one. And now it’s my turn.

Good things first: you write pretty well. Your grammar and dialogue, punctuation, etc, is good enough that you can write text that is easy to follow. Some mishaps, like how is a mother part of a fraternal anything? But mostly technicalities of writing do not stop you from expressing yourself.

The bad thing? I have no idea what it was that you tried to express.

This looks like a stroke story with aspirations. Were you trying to write a stroker or a story with a plot? We’re not the best to comment on strokers; our reviews tend to center around plotting, characterization, storytelling and such. With strokers, you don’t need any of those. You need a paper thin premise, kind of like the plots in porn flicks. Oh, the pizza delivery guy is here? Oh my, and I don’t have any clothes on! Well, he looks kind of hot… cue an hour of fucking in every position. You just need to get two bodies in the same room, and they will do the rest.

This story could have been a stroker about the hot girl that moved next door and took this guy’s virginity. I’ve understood the I/T crowd don’t really want strokers but more slow burn stories focusing on the taboo, but this could also have been a mom-son stroker. For strokers, it’s better not to mix and match, because what the wankers seek varies by category, so it makes no sense to put both first time (with a non-relative) and an incestuous sex in the same story, but this could have been either one of those strokers. Not both.

Put differently, you have the basis of a free use sex story and you have the basis for a mom/son sex story, but putting them together nets you less than the sum of the parts.

That being said, you broke maybe the only rule for strokers: do not skip over the sex. Your readers are waiting, dick in hand, they don’t want you to say “anyways, two hours later…”. That’s why you’re getting angry comments about "Show don’t tell."

There’s places that don’t logistically make sense. Smearing your pussy on the patio door: how do you do that standing up? Generally speaking, the labia are recessed behind the thigh. James opens the door for Mom and later Theresa Ann says “I enjoyed watching you grab your mom’s tits” but how would the mom not notice if he held the phone up so that Theresa Ann would see? James “watched his mom’s tits sway as he pistoned into her ass”, but you know, if he has bent her over the sink he’s behind her and not really in a position to see that. Not sticking to the point of view you’re supposedly writing from prompt comments like that last one you shared, about describing the sex outside of the voice.

You break the fourth wall a few times. I can’t see any reason for this. I found it jarring, and you don’t utilize it in any sensible way. Fourth wall breaks imply an audience, or a retelling of the story to someone. That’s a style choice; lean into it or don’t. Who is James telling this to and why? To brag? The protagonist comes off as both greedy and stupid, which is not a very attractive combination. I get that, from your perspective, James isn’t the character the reader is supposed to be attracted to, but that assumes that your readership is entirely men and lesbians. Who is the hetero woman supposed to be liking in this scenario? What would they find hot about his entitled preening?

Now, for having a more plotty story… oh, man. Let’s look at your plot with my favorite tool for examining character motivations; “why would she, though?”

Contains spoilers.

There’s this shy, clueless 18 yo guy, a virgin. He goes to mow his neighbor’s lawn. The neighbor turns out to be a hot girl who throws herself at him (why would she, though?). It turns out she has this magical slut tattoo (why would she, though?) and upon finding out he immediately turns into some kind of frenzied sex machine (why would he, though?) and fucks her for two hours. Except that you skip over the entirety of the sex (why would you, though? This is supposed to be an erotic story!). He returns home, and upon finding out her mom has the same tattoo (why would she, though?) he fucks her up the ass (why would he, though?). Except that you skip over the sex (why would you, though?).

He has phone sex with the girl, and the girl asks him to help with her research. This makes no sense, because you’ve already established that he has free use of her every fuckable hole whenever he pleases. Why would he need to give her anything she asks? Then you jump over to her point of view in order to piss all over the traditions of scientific research. If this is a one off, all of that is unnecessary, and it fits really poorly with how the story started with James bragging about this later. Anyway, then you confirm that yes, mom is a mindless slut (because all women are?) because a little cum on the lips sets her off for hours? Then the guy has breakfast his mom cooks for him (because of course she does, what are women for except for fucking and household chores?) and then they fuck (why would they, though?) and now, finally, you flash back to some of the earlier sex for details.

This story reads like a Beavis and Butt-Head joke. (Yes, I’m that old.)

B: Hey Butt-Head, what if women had this, like, sex-button?

BH: Hehe, hehehe, yeah?

B: Yeah, like, you just pressed that and, like, man, you could just fuck them and they would totally let you!

BH: Oh yeah! hehehe, hehe

B: Hey Butt-Head, what if I could press that on your mom and fuck her!

BH: Ah! Dude! No way!

B: Yeah, but maybe you could press your mom’s button too!

BH: Oh yeah, hmm, hehehe

“Mom unlocks the shyness enigma.” What enigma is that? Were you trying to say that all women are human fleshlights just waiting to be degraded, and that all men are just horny bastards who fuck any hole given any opportunity? That’s what’s on the page, so if that wasn’t what you intended then something went awry.

Lit (and the I/T crowd especially) reward stories that veer into motivations. Longer stories that explore the why (and with I/T, the how it started. They looooove the how it started). I understand wanting to dig into this, but now you’ve triggered the trap of trying and we can explore if any of it makes sense.

All it took for Mom to put aside societal and internal pressure to avoid a taboo was to talk to Theresa Ann for a little bit, a conversation you did not show us. For all we know, this was a 10 minute conversation. All it took for Jimmy to put aside his shyness was for someone to show interest, and the step from losing his virginity to butt-fucking his mom is so small it’s almost no step at all. He doesn’t give the taboo aspect one single thought, he just steps up and puts it up her ass. That thought process is the point, for most I/T readers. The way they interact is more like these are two strangers wearing "Hello my name is Son" and "Hello my name is Mom" tags. In (most) all creative storytelling, there is a direct relationship between difficulty and importance. If it wasn’t hard to do, it wasn’t important. Jimmy must not have been all that shy and Mom was always a whore. It’s fine for things to be easy, but Jimmy’s titular shyness shows up nowhere except in backstory.

What does that really leave us with, story-wise? If Jimmy was always a raging sex machine and Mom was always a whore, then this story was an inevitability. But then what? Jimmy doesn’t strike me as someone cool and level-headed, who will handle it well the first time he sees his mom sneaking out of a men’s bathroom because some other guy in town noticed her very permanent and visible tattoo.

It doesn’t feel like there was a lot of thought put into the why, or the how, or the ‘what this will mean’. This story doesn’t think past the next orgasm. The women are literal props, sex toys for Jimmy to play with. We point this out in a fair number of stories not because we’re trying to give you crap but because you probably didn’t think about it, and because there is an epidemic of male writers who don’t think about it. The point I made earlier, about who is the female hetero reader supposed to be attracted to in this story, connects with this as well. There’s an assumption of interest, of putting out, of being into it. That’s all fine for a stroker: it’s not fine for a story.

 

[Omenainen]

For anyone interested in writing women-centric erotica, I am hosting my annual Pink Orchid event again next year. Here is the support thread. I invite everyone to participate! As usually, I have offered to beta read any event stories presented to me, so if you're interested in my opinions before publishing, here's your opportunity.

Also, we will be busy doing that so between now and March the reviews might take longer than usual. We're not closing up the thread, but we're not making any promises on delivery times. Not that we ever do anyway

 

[StillStunned]

I miss Beavis and Butt-Head. "Whoa! If I could move my arm that fast, I'd never leave the house!"

 

[dmallord]

Mom Unlocks the Shyness Enigma
@dmallord

I know you addressed your question to AwkwardMD, but I’m what you’ll get this time over and that’s just how it goes . We do these reviews together. We post them alternately, but both of us read all the stories and the reviews are based on our common conceptions. It sounds awfully pompous to write “we think that…” and also like we’re some kind of a grand jury, so that’s why we post them seemingly from either one. And now it’s my turn.

Good things first: you write pretty well. Your grammar and dialogue, punctuation, etc, is good enough that you can write text that is easy to follow. Some mishaps, like how is a mother part of a fraternal anything? But mostly technicalities of writing do not stop you from expressing yourself.

The bad thing? I have no idea what it was that you tried to express.

This looks like a stroke story with aspirations. Were you trying to write a stroker or a story with a plot? We’re not the best to comment on strokers; our reviews tend to center around plotting, characterization, storytelling and such. With strokers, you don’t need any of those. You need a paper thin premise, kind of like the plots in porn flicks. Oh, the pizza delivery guy is here? Oh my, and I don’t have any clothes on! Well, he looks kind of hot… cue an hour of fucking in every position. You just need to get two bodies in the same room, and they will do the rest.

This story could have been a stroker about the hot girl that moved next door and took this guy’s virginity. I’ve understood the I/T crowd don’t really want strokers but more slow burn stories focusing on the taboo, but this could also have been a mom-son stroker. For strokers, it’s better not to mix and match, because what the wankers seek varies by category, so it makes no sense to put both first time (with a non-relative) and an incestuous sex in the same story, but this could have been either one of those strokers. Not both.

Put differently, you have the basis of a free use sex story and you have the basis for a mom/son sex story, but putting them together nets you less than the sum of the parts.

That being said, you broke maybe the only rule for strokers: do not skip over the sex. Your readers are waiting, dick in hand, they don’t want you to say “anyways, two hours later…”. That’s why you’re getting angry comments about "Show don’t tell."

There’s places that don’t logistically make sense. Smearing your pussy on the patio door: how do you do that standing up? Generally speaking, the labia are recessed behind the thigh. James opens the door for Mom and later Theresa Ann says “I enjoyed watching you grab your mom’s tits” but how would the mom not notice if he held the phone up so that Theresa Ann would see? James “watched his mom’s tits sway as he pistoned into her ass”, but you know, if he has bent her over the sink he’s behind her and not really in a position to see that. Not sticking to the point of view you’re supposedly writing from prompt comments like that last one you shared, about describing the sex outside of the voice.

You break the fourth wall a few times. I can’t see any reason for this. I found it jarring, and you don’t utilize it in any sensible way. Fourth wall breaks imply an audience, or a retelling of the story to someone. That’s a style choice; lean into it or don’t. Who is James telling this to and why? To brag? The protagonist comes off as both greedy and stupid, which is not a very attractive combination. I get that, from your perspective, James isn’t the character the reader is supposed to be attracted to, but that assumes that your readership is entirely men and lesbians. Who is the hetero woman supposed to be liking in this scenario? What would they find hot about his entitled preening?

Now, for having a more plotty story… oh, man. Let’s look at your plot with my favorite tool for examining character motivations; “why would she, though?”

Contains spoilers.
...
There’s this shy, clueless 18 yo guy, a virgin. He goes to mow his neighbor’s lawn. The neighbor turns out to be a hot girl who throws herself at him (why would she, though?). ...Then the guy has breakfast his mom cooks for him (because of course she does, what are women for except for fucking and household chores?) and then they fuck (why would they, though?) and now, finally, you flash back to some of the earlier sex for details.

This story reads like a Beavis and Butt-Head joke. (Yes, I’m that old.)

“Mom unlocks the shyness enigma.” What enigma is that? Were you trying to say that all women are human fleshlights just waiting to be degraded, and that all men are just horny bastards who fuck any hole given any opportunity? That’s what’s on the page, so if that wasn’t what you intended then something went awry.

Lit (and the I/T crowd especially) reward stories that veer into motivations. Longer stories that explore the why (and with I/T, the how it started. They looooove the how it started). I understand wanting to dig into this, but now you’ve triggered the trap of trying and we can explore if any of it makes sense.

All it took for Mom to put aside societal and internal pressure to avoid a taboo was to talk to Theresa Ann for a little bit, a conversation you did not show us. For all we know, this was a 10 minute conversation. All it took for Jimmy to put aside his shyness was for someone to show interest, and the step from losing his virginity to butt-fucking his mom is so small it’s almost no step at all. ... If it wasn’t hard to do, it wasn’t important. Jimmy must not have been all that shy and Mom was always a whore. It’s fine for things to be easy, but Jimmy’s titular shyness shows up nowhere except in backstory.

What does that really leave us with, story-wise? If Jimmy was always a raging sex machine and Mom was always a whore, then this story was an inevitability. But then what? Jimmy doesn’t strike me as someone cool and level-headed, who will handle it well the first time he sees his mom sneaking out of a men’s bathroom because some other guy in town noticed her very permanent and visible tattoo.

It doesn’t feel like there was a lot of thought put into the why, or the how, or the ‘what this will mean’. This story doesn’t think past the next orgasm. The women are literal props, sex toys for Jimmy to play with. We point this out in a fair number of stories not because we’re trying to give you crap but because you probably didn’t think about it, and because there is an epidemic of male writers who don’t think about it. The point I made earlier, about who is the female hetero reader supposed to be attracted to in this story, connects with this as well. There’s an assumption of interest, of putting out, of being into it. That’s all fine for a stroker: it’s not fine for a story.

I am thankful for your time and analysis @Omenainen. And I appreciate your noting I have some writing abilities, although the analysis points to them as being products of a tornadic nature - scattered to the four winds, so to speak. Being so close to the story and without a second pair of eyes, I was comfortable with how it evolved from my outline. I didn't observe it from your perception – that this was a story of not thinking beyond the next orgasm.

Being well past 80 years of age, Beavis and friends were not on my TV watch list - not my kind of humor.

You provide some astute insight as to why the commenters have responded with praise and slaughter comments. I couldn't for the life of me figure that out. Nor do I, at this first read of your comments, understand its depth, nor at this point do I have a handle on how to rectify that in future works. I will spend some time ruminating on your review and see if I can put this into a better perspective.

This story was not meant to be a stroker event; I added a bit of that to appease prior criticism that my stories lacked sex. It started with this premise:

• A loving mom sets out to overcome her son's shyness.
• She encounters a devious sexologist via a business card. [It's Lit, so of course there is sex, not just a pissing on a sexologist's professional relationship.]
• The sexologist needs subjects for her Ph.D. thesis on Mother and Son Incest.
• Sexologist ropes a reluctant mom and sexually shy son into participating in the study. [not well done, as noted in your review.]
• Quite quickly, the lawnmowing scene overcomes the son's shyness. [A pussy smeared across a window is a visual image - don't over think where the secret sauce is kept.]
• The keyhole connection overrides his inhibitions with Mom.[Part of the sexologist's acquisition of incestual subjects. She had to get the two of them together and she used it as a ploy - don' over think this.]
• Son agonizes over what transpired. [Somewhat remorsefully, I thought.]
• Mother and son, over the loving breakfast she prepares, find that they have a sexual bond beyond butt-fucking. [Probably not well indicated on my part since you didn't pick up my thoughts on that.]
• Leaving an open ending in which the son ponders the motivation behind the sexologist's action.

Thank you for this insightful feedback!
Dmallord

 

[AwkwardMD]

@dmallord

If I was going to lay blame in any one area, I would say the biggest hurdle for this story is that the outline is about the mom. The story you delineated above is her journey, even if the son is central to her motivations. The son doesn't show up until halfway through this outline, so switching it over to his point of view meant that to tell the whole thing you had to cram that first half into the second half as exposition. That made it all feel very rushed in the retelling, which we interpretted as shortcut justifications.

Had you told this story from the mother's perspective, I think the pacing would have better reflected your vision.

 

[dmallord]

@dmallord

If I was going to lay blame in any one area, I would say the biggest hurdle for this story is that the outline is about the mom. The story you delineated above is her journey, even if the son is central to her motivations. The son doesn't show up until halfway through this outline, so switching it over to his point of view meant that to tell the whole thing you had to cram that first half into the second half as exposition. That made it all feel very rushed in the retelling, which we interpretted as shortcut justifications.

Had you told this story from the mother's perspective, I think the pacing would have better reflected your vision.

Thank you ... I think. Sorry, I just started my first cup of caffeine, so it hasn't kicked in yet. I'm still ruminating about the commentary by your co-partner, @Omenainen.

I think your point is that the story would be better told from his mother's perspective and in a linear order, points A through Z, with James as a minor character. What does 'by cramming the first half into the second half as exposition' mean? [Pausing to look up the term: exposition – The exposition of a story is the introduction or beginning of a story that reveals important background information. This can include setting and details about characters.] Remember, I have no background in writing.

So, exposition isn't good and leads to a rushed feeling - a shortcut?

Stepping into a woman's mindset, at over eighty years of age, and telling this story from her point of view would require a lot more coffee and mental dexterity than I have left. [I have attempted that in some other stories – makes me wonder how you would have judged those.] James' mindset was what I wanted to explore more so than his mom's motivations.

So, dismiss the flawed story, go forward with your team's input, write anew, or attempt to revisit and fix 'the draft?' So far, the readership is okay with the premise, basing it on the score at the moment. I'm always up for improvements.

 

[AwkwardMD]

Thank you ... I think. Sorry, I just started my first cup of caffeine, so it hasn't kicked in yet. I'm still ruminating about the commentary by your co-partner, @Omenainen.

I think your point is that the story would be better told from his mother's perspective and in a linear order, points A through Z, with James as a minor character. What does 'by cramming the first half into the second half as exposition' mean? [Pausing to look up the term: exposition – The exposition of a story is the introduction or beginning of a story that reveals important background information. This can include setting and details about characters.] Remember, I have no background in writing.

So, exposition isn't good and leads to a rushed feeling - a shortcut?

Stepping into a woman's mindset, at over eighty years of age, and telling this story from her point of view would require a lot more coffee and mental dexterity than I have left. [I have attempted that in some other stories – makes me wonder how you would have judged those.] James' mindset was what I wanted to explore more so than his mom's motivations.

So, dismiss the flawed story, go forward with your team's input, write anew, or attempt to revisit and fix 'the draft?' So far, the readership is okay with the premise, basing it on the score at the moment. I'm always up for improvements.

Exposition is impossible to avoid, and is entirely useful in measures. Sometimes, though, there's a disconnect between the scope of the total story and the story as it exists on paper, and the only way to get the reader caught up is to simply tell them a bunch of stuff (either through dialog or a narrative infodump).

This is (also) what people mean with Show Don't Tell. Rather than having this whole section of story happen off screen only to be told about it later, secondhand, show us that part.

Again, exposition is not a bad thing on its own. It is okay to tell the reader some things. In movies when you see a flash of text on screen that says "Omaha Beach, 1944", that's just exposition telling you the where and the when. It's a balancing act.

 

[Stimtheone]

Since I feel more confident with my work, I was hoping you might provide a review of chapter one of this long story I've got in the works. I am still aware that I've got flaws to polish and I am addicted to using elipses, but looking for a review. Give all the good, the bad and the ugly.

Link to chapter 1

 

[AwkwardMD]

Since I feel more confident with my work, I was hoping you might provide a review of chapter one of this long story I've got in the works. I am still aware that I've got flaws to polish and I am addicted to using elipses, but looking for a review. Give all the good, the bad and the ugly.

Link to chapter 1

Just in case it was missed, our response time might be a little longer than usual. We've got a couple personal and combined projects we're working on, but we will get to this as soon as we can.

 

[Stimtheone]

Take your time. I wasn't expecting it for a few days. Heck, to be on the safe side, I wasn't expecting it at all. Stuff can be missed.

 

[EroticCupcake]

Mom Unlocks the Shyness Enigma
@dmallord

I know you addressed your question to AwkwardMD, but I’m what you’ll get this time over and that’s just how it goes . We do these reviews together. We post them alternately, but both of us read all the stories and the reviews are based on our common conceptions. It sounds awfully pompous to write “we think that…” and also like we’re some kind of a grand jury, so that’s why we post them seemingly from either one. And now it’s my turn.

Good things first: you write pretty well. Your grammar and dialogue, punctuation, etc, is good enough that you can write text that is easy to follow. Some mishaps, like how is a mother part of a fraternal anything? But mostly technicalities of writing do not stop you from expressing yourself.

The bad thing? I have no idea what it was that you tried to express.

This looks like a stroke story with aspirations. Were you trying to write a stroker or a story with a plot? We’re not the best to comment on strokers; our reviews tend to center around plotting, characterization, storytelling and such. With strokers, you don’t need any of those. You need a paper thin premise, kind of like the plots in porn flicks. Oh, the pizza delivery guy is here? Oh my, and I don’t have any clothes on! Well, he looks kind of hot… cue an hour of fucking in every position. You just need to get two bodies in the same room, and they will do the rest.

This story could have been a stroker about the hot girl that moved next door and took this guy’s virginity. I’ve understood the I/T crowd don’t really want strokers but more slow burn stories focusing on the taboo, but this could also have been a mom-son stroker. For strokers, it’s better not to mix and match, because what the wankers seek varies by category, so it makes no sense to put both first time (with a non-relative) and an incestuous sex in the same story, but this could have been either one of those strokers. Not both.

Put differently, you have the basis of a free use sex story and you have the basis for a mom/son sex story, but putting them together nets you less than the sum of the parts.

That being said, you broke maybe the only rule for strokers: do not skip over the sex. Your readers are waiting, dick in hand, they don’t want you to say “anyways, two hours later…”. That’s why you’re getting angry comments about "Show don’t tell."

There’s places that don’t logistically make sense. Smearing your pussy on the patio door: how do you do that standing up? Generally speaking, the labia are recessed behind the thigh. James opens the door for Mom and later Theresa Ann says “I enjoyed watching you grab your mom’s tits” but how would the mom not notice if he held the phone up so that Theresa Ann would see? James “watched his mom’s tits sway as he pistoned into her ass”, but you know, if he has bent her over the sink he’s behind her and not really in a position to see that. Not sticking to the point of view you’re supposedly writing from prompt comments like that last one you shared, about describing the sex outside of the voice.

You break the fourth wall a few times. I can’t see any reason for this. I found it jarring, and you don’t utilize it in any sensible way. Fourth wall breaks imply an audience, or a retelling of the story to someone. That’s a style choice; lean into it or don’t. Who is James telling this to and why? To brag? The protagonist comes off as both greedy and stupid, which is not a very attractive combination. I get that, from your perspective, James isn’t the character the reader is supposed to be attracted to, but that assumes that your readership is entirely men and lesbians. Who is the hetero woman supposed to be liking in this scenario? What would they find hot about his entitled preening?

Now, for having a more plotty story… oh, man. Let’s look at your plot with my favorite tool for examining character motivations; “why would she, though?”

Contains spoilers.

There’s this shy, clueless 18 yo guy, a virgin. He goes to mow his neighbor’s lawn. The neighbor turns out to be a hot girl who throws herself at him (why would she, though?). It turns out she has this magical slut tattoo (why would she, though?) and upon finding out he immediately turns into some kind of frenzied sex machine (why would he, though?) and fucks her for two hours. Except that you skip over the entirety of the sex (why would you, though? This is supposed to be an erotic story!). He returns home, and upon finding out her mom has the same tattoo (why would she, though?) he fucks her up the ass (why would he, though?). Except that you skip over the sex (why would you, though?).

He has phone sex with the girl, and the girl asks him to help with her research. This makes no sense, because you’ve already established that he has free use of her every fuckable hole whenever he pleases. Why would he need to give her anything she asks? Then you jump over to her point of view in order to piss all over the traditions of scientific research. If this is a one off, all of that is unnecessary, and it fits really poorly with how the story started with James bragging about this later. Anyway, then you confirm that yes, mom is a mindless slut (because all women are?) because a little cum on the lips sets her off for hours? Then the guy has breakfast his mom cooks for him (because of course she does, what are women for except for fucking and household chores?) and then they fuck (why would they, though?) and now, finally, you flash back to some of the earlier sex for details.

This story reads like a Beavis and Butt-Head joke. (Yes, I’m that old.)

B: Hey Butt-Head, what if women had this, like, sex-button?

BH: Hehe, hehehe, yeah?

B: Yeah, like, you just pressed that and, like, man, you could just fuck them and they would totally let you!

BH: Oh yeah! hehehe, hehe

B: Hey Butt-Head, what if I could press that on your mom and fuck her!

BH: Ah! Dude! No way!

B: Yeah, but maybe you could press your mom’s button too!

BH: Oh yeah, hmm, hehehe

“Mom unlocks the shyness enigma.” What enigma is that? Were you trying to say that all women are human fleshlights just waiting to be degraded, and that all men are just horny bastards who fuck any hole given any opportunity? That’s what’s on the page, so if that wasn’t what you intended then something went awry.

Lit (and the I/T crowd especially) reward stories that veer into motivations. Longer stories that explore the why (and with I/T, the how it started. They looooove the how it started). I understand wanting to dig into this, but now you’ve triggered the trap of trying and we can explore if any of it makes sense.

All it took for Mom to put aside societal and internal pressure to avoid a taboo was to talk to Theresa Ann for a little bit, a conversation you did not show us. For all we know, this was a 10 minute conversation. All it took for Jimmy to put aside his shyness was for someone to show interest, and the step from losing his virginity to butt-fucking his mom is so small it’s almost no step at all. He doesn’t give the taboo aspect one single thought, he just steps up and puts it up her ass. That thought process is the point, for most I/T readers. The way they interact is more like these are two strangers wearing "Hello my name is Son" and "Hello my name is Mom" tags. In (most) all creative storytelling, there is a direct relationship between difficulty and importance. If it wasn’t hard to do, it wasn’t important. Jimmy must not have been all that shy and Mom was always a whore. It’s fine for things to be easy, but Jimmy’s titular shyness shows up nowhere except in backstory.

What does that really leave us with, story-wise? If Jimmy was always a raging sex machine and Mom was always a whore, then this story was an inevitability. But then what? Jimmy doesn’t strike me as someone cool and level-headed, who will handle it well the first time he sees his mom sneaking out of a men’s bathroom because some other guy in town noticed her very permanent and visible tattoo.

It doesn’t feel like there was a lot of thought put into the why, or the how, or the ‘what this will mean’. This story doesn’t think past the next orgasm. The women are literal props, sex toys for Jimmy to play with. We point this out in a fair number of stories not because we’re trying to give you crap but because you probably didn’t think about it, and because there is an epidemic of male writers who don’t think about it. The point I made earlier, about who is the female hetero reader supposed to be attracted to in this story, connects with this as well. There’s an assumption of interest, of putting out, of being into it. That’s all fine for a stroker: it’s not fine for a story.

This review had me cackling and there was absolutely no way to explain this to my wife.

 

[dmallord]

This review had me cackling and there was absolutely no way to explain this to my wife.

Hey, @EroticCupcake – Not me so much. It was my story, and much of the commentary is spot on. Yet, it is scoring well now, and readers seem to enjoy it. They are not as analytical as this team of hard-hitting Lit critics. Their stuff is fun to read - if you have done well - more sour if not so well done. Valuable - I found it.

I invite you to read some of my story and let me know your thoughts.

Mom Unlocks the Shyness Enigma
dmallord

 

[EroticCupcake]

Not me so much. It was my story, and much of the commentary is spot on. Yet, it is scoring well now, and readers seem to enjoy it. They are not as analytical as this team of hard-hitting Lit critics. Their stuff is fun to read - if you have done well - more sour if not so well done. Valuable - I found it.

I invite you to read some of my story and let me know your thoughts.

Mom Unlocks the Shyness Enigma
dmallord

Can't do incest. For whatever reasons, I'm in to some darker stuff, but that one I don't get.

 

[dmallord]

Can't do incest. For whatever reasons, I'm in to some darker stuff, but that one I don't get.

Understandable viewpoint. Although it is not my cup of 'real' tea, I write about it. Something different from my other stories would give you a sense of how my writing style flows. I have a little over fifty stories at this point, about 30 or so score H-hot in a number of categories. My latest isn't there yet. It has a different category and some hint at dark stuff, not graphic, yet ends up in a good place for the characters. I'm not offering it to the threadkeepers here - but it would not raise hackles like the last review.

Finding Love on the Interstate
‘Traveling on a Dime’ – A Romance Journey with a Trucker.
today in Erotic Couplings Stories

1,666 views 4.2 / 10 score

 

[Usually_Lurking]

Alright. I think I'm ready to submit to the judgment of the council. I published my first story earlier this year, and that went better than I could have expected: well-reviewed, lots of views and comments, etc. However, I recently released the second chapter, and the initial reception has been good but not as great. This is my own fault for setting such high expectations for myself, but I really thought the second chapter was better than the first: I felt there were better twists and turns in the plot, better characterization, a few relatively novel scenes, etc.

I have a few theories about why the reactions to these stories have been different, but an outside perspective would be helpful as well. I would appreciate any and all feedback you may have, but I especially would be curious to see your thoughts comparing the first and second chapters. I know it's an imposition to read more than one story, but they're fairly short.

Themes are incest/taboo, dubcon, femdom, and forceful seduction. The stories are available here:
https://literotica.com/s/breaking-in-her-naive-nephew
https://literotica.com/s/breaking-in-her-naive-nephew-ch-02

Please let me know if you have any questions or if there's anything I can do to assist in the process. I'm new to this, and very much appreciate your time.

 

[alohadave]

However, I recently released the second chapter, and the initial reception has been good but not as great. This is my own fault for setting such high expectations for myself, but I really thought the second chapter was better than the first: I felt there were better twists and turns in the plot, better characterization, a few relatively novel scenes, etc.

I have a few theories about why the reactions to these stories have been different, but an outside perspective would be helpful as well.

The first story has been up for 5 months and the second one for two days. Given that you waited that long to post chapter 2, anyone who liked the first chapter are long gone unless they follow you or happen to remember chapter 1 and stumble across chapter 2.

Your views on the second chapter will go up in time.

The scores are not that far off from each other.

Chapters will typically have a decay curve as each new chapter is posted. The first generally gets the highest view counts. The second will be half to a third of the first. The third will be another half to third of the views. This is normal and to be expected.

 

[Usually_Lurking]

The first story has been up for 5 months and the second one for two days. Given that you waited that long to post chapter 2, anyone who liked the first chapter are long gone unless they follow you or happen to remember chapter 1 and stumble across chapter 2.

Your views on the second chapter will go up in time.

The scores are not that far off from each other.

Chapters will typically have a decay curve as each new chapter is posted. The first generally gets the highest view counts. The second will be half to a third of the first. The third will be another half to third of the views. This is normal and to be expected.

That... actually makes a ton of sense. And not that I didn't believe you at first, but I went to check several of my favorite authors' series, and sure enough many displayed a similar relationship to what you described. However, it was interesting to see that not ALL of them displayed that relationship. I wonder what other factors are at play there.

Makes me a little nervous for the future though. I think I have something like 8 or 9 chapters planned out, and by the end there won't be any readers left at all!

And I would still like to hear whatever sage advice @AwkwardMD and @Omenainen might have for me, if they have time. I firmly believe that there is always room to improve as a writer, and I'd like to.

 

[danilonglegs]

This is the answer the rhetorical question was assuming, and I want to underline here that story choices that are being made to serve the plot, rather than the characters, always stand out like a sore thumb.

From TV Tropes - 'The Idiot Ball':


An author that does not understand their characters is going to be prone to this kind of self-serving choice. Readers notice these kinds of things. They may not have the TV Tropes link handy like I do, but they pick up on it when an author isn't doing the work.

As we've talked about in numerous reviews, our way of doing things isn't the only way to success. I would encourage you to look into one of the most successful authors on Lit in silkstockingslover, or the much newer-but-destined-to-be-popular danilonglegs. They engage their readers on a different level, and at least in SSL's case her readership is rabid and loyal.

Good luck with your future writing.

Thanks for the kind mention! Maybe we’ll see one of my stories reviewed on here one day? Lol cheers!

 

[AwkwardMD]

@Stimtheone
Link

We’re going to talk about two things here that I think are holding you back; the world building, and the characters.

***

The world building.

It’s important to get out here, at the outset, that we love the creativity and ambition you’re working with. There’s a lot of ideas here that work great in theory, or from 10,000 ft. In other words, from high up, the big pieces that you’ve used to construct this story could make for a compelling read, but the execution of them, the fine details, don’t line up. It makes the whole thing fit together rather jaggedly.

Castaways. Great. Deserted planet. Awesome. A family unit, alone and isolated, who have only each other to seek comfort and companionship through. Sign me up.

The religious stuff doesn’t make sense, and that’s largely by omission. You talk around it, providing too few details. I can’t tell if you were wanting the reader to assume some non-specific blend of Christianity as the default old religion, but it doesn’t come off that way. It doesn’t land at all.

There’s a writing technique called in media res that means starting in the middle. A story where a guy wakes up in a bathtub of ice, only to find incisions in his side indicating that someone stole one of his kidneys, and he has to work backwards to figure out how it happened and where he goes next, is an example of a story that starts in media res. This works great when a large number of things can be assumed. We all know that waking up confused in a bathtub of ice means that a lot of things have gone very, very wrong. There are far more examples of this sort of technique being used in contemporary, non-magical, largely realistic stories, and much fewer that do this in settings that are made up whole cloth.

Star Wars is a solid example here. In A New Hope, although we start of with some action (Vader is boarding Princess Leia’s ship), we’re down on Tatooine within minutes, and we spend the next 30-ish minutes after that following Luke around, getting the lay of the land in political terms, grappling with new (to the reader/audience) concepts like the Force and Jedi and Lightsabers. Luke’s ignorance is a stand-in for our ignorance, and we learn while Luke learns.

Here, though, there’s religious context (two religions) and political context (on the planet they came from) and social context (class disparity and slavery) that you are glossing over completely. I get that, from your perspective, those are all things that are of the past, things these characters have left behind, but they cast long shadows on the formative years for these characters. It should matter. If the characters can discard these things easily, then they didn’t matter, except that they keep talking about it. For storytelling purposes, it would have been stronger to start off on the planet they were on, show us a little of their life as it was, and then move to this new, barren planet.

Instead, because none of these things get any specifics, we the audience are grappling with vast swaths of ambiguity. We certainly don’t need to have everything spelled out for us, but this story as is does not give us enough.

***

The characters

I’ve been toying with a metaphor for this for years, and I think I’ve finally found the right way to express it.

All characters exist on a scale. At one end of the scale (assigned as 100) is non-fiction. Documentary characters. Pure, unadulterated people. Mannerisms, emotions, flaws, nature and nurture coming together to form a person. This polar end doesn’t make for great storytelling because people rarely learn lessons in the same way that fiction tries to present with arcs, plots, and growth. These characters don’t learn or grow so much as they go through/are present for a series of events. It’s bland, and fiction can do better than this.

At the other end of the scale (assigned as 0) is the fully non-human. Characters that are completely divorced from the human experience. Moreso than animals, most of which humans share common ancestry with. Did you know humans and dogs have 84% common DNA? When dogs have sex, we understand it. I’m talking non-human.

Imagine two rubber bands on a table. They are moving, and they are wiggling, and stretching, and sproinging. Oh, the sproinging. At one point, they got so tangled up in each other that they interlocked, one looping through the other. Both of them so wrapped up in each other’s bends and elasticity that the snap back, when it came, just about broke them.

I feel confident in asserting that the above paragraph is the single hottest example of rubber band on rubber band sex that has ever been committed to text. It’s groundbreaking, original, and absolutely devoid of heat for a human audience. These actions are unrecognizable to human beings. Even now, you, the reader, are trying to draw parallels in your head between what I’ve described and some kind of human action, because the human mind is a pattern recognition machine; it’s what we do. Let me put your mind at ease: sproinging is not at all what you think, and you cannot make a like-for-like connection that is meaningfully similar to what the rubber bands experience.

This is the opposite polar end, and in between non-fiction and non-human is a spectrum. Now, there’s a lot of room for subjective preference here. Personally, in my own writing, my characters are probably somewhere around 80-95% of the way toward non-fiction. Very realistic, but with some convenient allowances, preferences, and idiosyncrasies that are more plausible than likely given their age/background/profession/etc. Sci-fi and fantasy stories are probably closer to the 60-80% range, where there are simply too many caveats to the setting and the world for a non-fiction character to function and integrate. A good-fit character for sci fi and fantasy needs norms and mannerisms that are logical in context, but wholly different from our own in the present day.

Circling back around now, the characters in this story don’t resonate at all with me. We are 700 words into this before the mother character is saying things like “Let’s just be naked together.” This is convenient for the story, but how far do you have to bend civilized human behavior before this kind of sentiment is expressed this quickly? Using the above metaphor, I would say we’re down in the 30-50% range.

Again, there’s a lot of subjectivity in how you have your characters behave, but there’s some amount of filtering that needs to happen; this story is for a modern, contemporary audience. No other audience exists. No rubber bands will read this story. You didn’t write this story for a theoretical metahuman audience four hundred years from now. It’s for us, here, today, and so some amount of funneling the experiences into motivations we understand should occur, or else we’re just back to sproinging.

Every action, every line of dialog, every bit of narration, should all align with where you want to be on this spectrum.

***

One last note. Who is James? The male character’s name is Nathan. I thought, briefly, that the family’s last name was James, perhaps, but there’s a line early on about how James thinks it will be easy to do something or other. This says, to me, that at some point this main character was named James, possibly because your name is James and he is a self-insert, but then you changed his name to Nathan and missed one instance, and did not consider the title. Even if this isn’t the case, it reads like a mistake and not like you’re doing something clever that has yet to unfold; this is to be avoided.

It all feels kind of half-baked, not thought all the way through, which is understandable given the scope of it. Also, extremely common. Tons of first time writers end up with these massive, bloated, I-threw-the-kitchen-sink-at-it works with their first completed work. Mine certainly was. Omenainen’s was as well. Once you get rolling, it’s easy to just keep tacking on more and more ideas like this is the greatest story ever.

Try to write something shorter. Smaller in scope. 15-20k words total. Figure out how to tell an entire story, front to back. Doable and manageable. Once you’ve accomplished that, build from there.

 

[Stimtheone]

@Stimtheone
Link

We’re going to talk about two things here that I think are holding you back; the world building, and the characters.

Ah, I appreciate to finally get such a wordy review. And I feel like you make some good points that I will need some time to internalize.

I do feel like some issues you put forward are either fixed afterwards or BEFORE. To give some context on "who is James", the prologue actually shows that those people exist in a game and James is the player. The bit about the characters might get fixed later or might not, but I will still take it into consideration. One easy in-world excuse that actually makes sense shows up later... what he wants the people do, even if he does not ask it. Perhaps the perils of reading just one chapter.

BUT, I do feel this is worth it. I am indeed juggling some rather BIG concepts here and might be a bit too big for me. Heck, I'm at the point where the cast is getting so big I have trouble working all their thoughts.

Still, thank you for the review. I will take from this one notion... if those are the only problems, it means the rest is quite pleasant. But they are still problems to fix and this could come in handy when I get to the empire part.

 

[Omenainen]

I do feel like some issues you put forward are either fixed afterwards or BEFORE. To give some context on "who is James", the prologue actually shows that those people exist in a game and James is the player.

Any particular reason you asked us to read chapter one if there is a prologue that should be read first?

One easy in-world excuse that actually makes sense shows up later... what he wants the people do, even if he does not ask it. Perhaps the perils of reading just one chapter.
…
I will take from this one notion... if those are the only problems, it means the rest is quite pleasant. But they are still problems to fix and this could come in handy when I get to the empire part.

The thing about starting a series is that you need to hook the readers, present them with something so strong and compelling that they will stick with you until “the empire part”. We have talked about this a lot lately so didn’t bring it up this time, but it stands for this story too.

It might be comforting for the author to have the leeway of “I’ll just fix it in a later chapter,” but chances are there aren’t many readers there to see it if the beginning is feeble.

 

[Stimtheone]

Any particular reason you asked us to read chapter one if there is a prologue that should be read first?

It might be comforting for the author to have the leeway of “I’ll just fix it in a later chapter,” but chances are there aren’t many readers there to see it if the beginning is feeble

I truly believed there was enough in there to gather that particular fact, but now that it was mentioned I am no longer so sure.

And I do not really see it as "fixing", rather seeing how things make sense once the audience has more facts. Not everything making sense all at once (or I'd need a huge infodump). I am also following some advice of showing things from the characters' perspective.

But I thank you for the feedbackI will consider it for future works, though I am not going back to rewrite that part or I'm gonna rewrite everything. And I just managed to finish chapter 6.

 

[Omenainen]

I truly believed there was enough in there to gather that particular fact, but now that it was mentioned I am no longer so sure.

In the first chapter there wasn't anything that I could see to give the impression that this was a game. There was the part where one of them looked at a tree and it easily folded into beds for them to fuck in, but I just thought that was clumsy worldbuilding, that you wanted them to start from scratch but that was too tedious so you took a shortcut to get them in bed already.

This made me think, though. For me, being presented with chapter 1, I didn't think for a second that there might be anything before that. The reader who's browsing the category new list is in the same position. How do you expect them to ever go and read the prologue? Now, if it's chapter 8, the reader is better informed that something has happened before they jump in. Even then, it's my understanding that most people read or at least start the newest chapter, and only if they like it will they bother to go in and start from the beginning, so basically you'd do well to start each chapter in a catchy and interesting way. There's also many readers who won't read chaptered stories at all, one reason being that Lit is littered with stories that someone started and never finished. Some people tackle this by finishing the whole story before publishing, and then adding author's notes to tell that this is a completed series. This might or might not help, but at least it helps keeping the story internally consistent because you aren't stuck with what you've published already. In Sci-Fi & Fantasy people are more accepting and appreciative of series, but even there the basic series mechanics applies, for example that each consecutive chapter gets less views until only the hard core fans remain. The same momentum makes the scores go up as the readership dwindles.

But I thank you for the feedbackI will consider it for future works, though I am not going back to rewrite that part or I'm gonna rewrite everything. And I just managed to finish chapter 6.

Yeah, no rewriting. Channel your energy toward future works. Publishing edits is slow and it's basically a waste of time, because people who will read the edited versions are very few. Some people like to keep their back catalog polished up for possible future followers who will dip into their past works, so you do you, but I personally think it's better to always look forward. The annoyance about missed typos etc. can be used to more diligently edit the next story.

 

[Usually_Lurking]

I truly believed there was enough in there to gather that particular fact, but now that it was mentioned I am no longer so sure.

I don't really have a horse in this race, but I will mention that surrealism of any kind, but especially subtle surrealism, is extremely difficult to write effectively. Not because you're lacking in skill or vision, but because the medium is already very prone to translation errors compared to other forms of communication. The inattentive reader will either miss it entirely, or catch it and become confused, while the attentive reader will often just think you've made an error.

Also, the whole meta level of this story occurring inside a game... Why? Either the characters are autonomous, in which case the extra meta layer is unnecessary, or the characters are not autonomous and it drains the meaning and importance out of the story and their actions. Or is this going to turn into The Matrix at some point and you're going to have an incest-themed jailbreak into the real world?

It just seems kinda like those stories and movies that end with a completely unnecessary scene about how "it was a dream all along!" It makes you feel like you've wasted your time with it, because even the author is telling you that none of it mattered.