AwkwardMD and Omenainen Review Thread

DrHappy said:

On the positive, it looks like I actually executed the story in my head reasonably well, which I’m happy about. This story grew much bigger than I expected, and it looked like it could have been improved by setting my sights even higher. This is my third story here, and I’m pleased with my progress as a writer in that regard. It was also my longest story at +35K words, which was new territory for me. It started as a fairly simple premise but grew in complexity as I fleshed out the details. It easily could have been much longer with more character development. I’ve read stories that seemed needlessly long with too many details, and maybe I erred on the side of brevity.

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Hi DrHappy!

I read your story as well, because I follow this thread and like to read the stories and reviews and see if I agree. I would like to comment that I don’t think this was a 35K word story, I think this was maybe 15K word story told in 35K words.

You are very verbose, which to a point is a stylistic choice, but I think you would benefit from compressing your output. Your text is easy to read, and thus doesn’t feel quite as long as it is, but I think you would have more readers if you told the same stories in a more concise way. I thought about checking your other stories to see if they have the same issue, but because they were also 30K words, I skipped it. See what I mean by losing readers over word count?

If you like, I can give you some examples of what I mean. Or maybe if you have another story on the works, I could take a look at it. I’m not native in English, so I don’t do actual editing, but maybe I could help you on this level. Contact me if you’re interested.

Omenainen,

Thank you for reading and especially for providing your feedback.

If you have some examples of where I was too verbose, I'd certainly be interested in taking a look. I was thinking of a shorter story anyway for my next one, mostly because I get very few readers compared to others. I've assumed that it's because of the length of my stories. I've considered submitting a story as multiple chapters, but I'll consider that maybe the best remedy would be to shorten them instead.

If you do decide to read another one of mine, I'd recommend Untrusted over my other story. It's less weird, but still has elements of unpredictability. "Untrusted" could possibly have been broken into a multi-chapter story and maybe gotten more readers. It's been my highest rated story so far.

DrHappy said:

Omenainen,

Thank you for reading and especially for providing your feedback.

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FWIW, Omenainen has beta-read two of my last three stories, and I give him two thumbs up as a reader.

DrHappy said:

Omenainen,

Thank you for reading and especially for providing your feedback.

If you have some examples of where I was too verbose, I'd certainly be interested in taking a look. I was thinking of a shorter story anyway for my next one, mostly because I get very few readers compared to others. I've assumed that it's because of the length of my stories. I've considered submitting a story as multiple chapters, but I'll consider that maybe the best remedy would be to shorten them instead.

If you do decide to read another one of mine, I'd recommend Untrusted over my other story. It's less weird, but still has elements of unpredictability. "Untrusted" could possibly have been broken into a multi-chapter story and maybe gotten more readers. It's been my highest rated story so far.

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Essayer:

"Formally...regret ... sincerely," he thought to himself as he attempted to organize his thoughts for a letter that he planned to finish composing after he returned home from this trip. His immediate circumstances didn't accommodate any written record of such a letter, so he'd need to keep it in his head for now. He discretely looked around the Moscow suburb coffee shop once again as he gripped his cup and brought it to his lips. He glanced down disapprovingly at the black drink and analyzed the shop and the individuals within it. The drink wasn't terribly good, but the warmth was welcome on this cold Moscow afternoon, and he had already downed most of it. In his opinion, this location wasn't the wisest choice. It's small, and everyone is aware of everyone else in the room. He didn't get up for cream or sugar, lest he draw yet more attention to himself. Dusk was approaching, and temperatures outside were falling further. His schedule was tight, and he hoped that his contact would arrive on time.

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->

"Formally ... regret ... sincerely," he thought. Circumstances wouldn't accommodate a written record, so he could only keep it in his head. He discreetly looked around yet again, glancing at his mostly-downed coffee. It wasn't good but its fading warmth had been welcome on a cold Moscow afternoon. The location might not have been wise: small enough that everyone was aware of everyone else. He didn't get up for cream or sugar lest he draw attention. Dusk approached and temperatures outside were falling. His schedule was tight and he hoped his contact would be on time.

DrHappy said:

If you have some examples of where I was too verbose, I'd certainly be interested in taking a look.

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Sent you a PM. I will gladly provide you with that, but we'd better not clog up this thread.

NotWise said:

FWIW, Omenainen has beta-read two of my last three stories, and I give him two thumbs up as a reader.

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Thank you it was my pleasure.

Metabob,

Thanks for taking the time to write an example of how it could be shortened. 45% fewer words I'm going through each sentence. This is going to take some effort on my part to minimize wordiness.

I started a thread a while back here for anyone who would to continue more back-and-forth discussions. I don't want to highjack AwkwardMD's thread.

Thank you everyone so far who has commented constructively.

Daniella and Lions Redux

Hi AwkwardMD,

Based on the earlier feedback, earlier you said that you would take a look at my resubmitted version of Daniella and the Lions. I was wondering if you had had the chance.

Here is the link to the story again.

https://www.literotica.com/s/daniella-and-the-lions

I would love to hear what you think of this version.

Tutor pt 1, by Erodick

Link

I have a personal writing theory, and it has two parts. The first part says that “Everything is a tool,” and that includes writing in the Second Person. Second Person narrative style has a place. It has value. It’s not universal (nothing is), but it’s a tool that writers can use to achieve a specific end within the mind of the reader. Learning how to use different narrative voices for different purposes is part of the learning experience.

When I hear people say “I hate second person because I didn’t do those things and I don’t like being told what I didn’t do”, all I hear is “I don’t have an imagination.” Now, it may not be to everyone’s tastes, but the vitriol it gets is unwarranted.

That being said, the second part of my personal writing theory says that “Tools are used to build things, and the thing you are building, as an author/storyteller/writer, is a memory.” People are going to read your story, and you control what they remember. It’s within your power to craft their interpretations, and the message, and the themes. Et cetera.

According to your note, you wrote this story more or less with your wife in mind as the audience, and that’s noble. The ~3.7 score it has now is pretty solid, so clearly some readers were able to put themselves in the mom’s shoes and enjoy getting fucked by the art teacher. That’s not nothing.

It will probably never be the most popular style of storytelling, but there is room for someone to be the king of second person narrative on Lit. You could find a fanbase. You could find your readers. They might not be many, but they might be fervid, and at that point you just have to ask yourself what you want.

Do you want the biggest readership?
Do you want the highest scores?
Do you want readers that appreciate what you do?

In general, these are mutually exclusive goals for a writer. None of them are wrong, but it would be impossible to balance all three.

***

I do feel like this story suffers from a male gaze. It’s clearly following a female character, she is the point of view, but her eyes see things like a man does with the bits all switched around. She’s looking at his muscles. She’s looking at his package. She’s hyperaware of her own tits. The art teacher is conveniently present on the night when she is most lonely despite, as near as I can tell, no real tension between them beforehand.

Yes, some women do think and go through life like this, but as a rule this is more of a man’s outlook than a woman’s. A lonely woman wants to be appreciated and desired, and while, technically, walking up to her and shoving your tongue down her throat might convey both appreciation and desire I wouldn’t count on it working with basically any actual women.

It can be hard to really get outside of ourselves and write someone else’s experience. I recommend trying, and I applaud anyone making that effort for the right reasons, but it definitely should involve some thought. Why would a wife do this? Why would a woman do this? What about her, aside from her youthful tits, is the art teachers interested in?

***

“Dialog should stand apart,” he said.

“But what if the speaker is performing some kind of action simultaneously?” she asked, as she leaned against the table. The way she looked at him, with her legs slightly spread, was an unspoken invitation.

“Well,” he replied, moving closer, “as long as each person is getting their own paragraph, and you’re keeping everyone’s actions apart, and clearly defined, then I think that’s okay.” His hands settled on her hips, and the way she stared up at him made his blood boil.

“Yes,” she moaned, as she reached for his belt. “Dividing up the actions and dialog so that each actor has the space to move within your world is a very clear and effective way to communicate who is doing what and to whom.”

Writing is very linear. You have to express things in a certain order, and you can only write about one thing at a time. If you’re clever, you can go out of your way to express some things as happening at the same time, but the medium of writing is more limited than, say, television or movies in its ability to show things happening at the same time.

The Tutor suffers from some readability issues. The dialog is crammed into the paragraphs. It’s not clear who is talking. It’s very… dense, and it was hard to make my eyes focus on the bigger blocks of text. I wanted to skim it. I think you were trying to show the pacing, and how the events were kind of tied together or triggered by each other in sequence, but the way you executed that just made my eyes tired.

***

I don’t think that your stated goal, of writing this fantasy of yours where you meet your wife and she cheats on her husband to be with you, doesn’t really come across. Maybe I just have rigid, preconceived ideas about Loving Wives and the stories that appear there, but I didn’t get that kind of depth.

What I got was ‘woman cheats on husband and it isn’t really clear why’. Yes, you hinted that the husband works a lot, but that’s not very strong motivation. With some stories, where boy meets girl, you can get away with putting your love interests in the same room for basically no reason and there’s a strong chance it’ll lead to sex. The more complicated you make the setup, though, the harder you need to work to justify the sex.

Obviously if you want to work on spending more time with paying off a setup, that’s good and will serve you well as a writer, but I think the more sensible starting place is to pick a setup that lends itself to easy sex and gradually build up to writing more complicated things as you grow.

irvingsmusings said:

It’s useful to know that Amanda comes across as incapable and incompetent. My intention was the opposite. She is meant to be intelligent, ambitious, and bent on retribution. Her failures were intended to motivate her increased effort and determination. I’ll need to rewrite that part.

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I read the first couple of pages of Chapter 1, and based on that, it might be worth your while reading some of the discussion earlier in this thread about the original version of "Daniella and the Lions". I think some of the same issues apply here. In particular, as with that story, this one starts by telling us that the protagonist is a smart and capable woman but then doesn't demonstrate it in her behaviour.

She knows enough about the CIA to want to join the NCS, but not only is she unaware that (in this story) their main use for female agents is as sexual bait, she's never even considered the possibility that this might be part of the job. When asked to grant carte blanche for the Agency to surveil her at any time, she "concluded this monitoring was hypothetical, and probably would never take place". And so on..

Of course, it's possible to be book-smart and street-stupid, and that can make for interesting characters. But, leaving aside the question of why on earth CIA would recruit somebody that naïve and gullible as a field operative whose main job is social, it didn't feel like you were intentionally characterising her that way. It just felt like she was doing stupid, gullible things because the story needed her to be carrying the Idiot Ball in order to set up the predicament.

And, as we discussed with Daniella previously, when a story starts out by talking a woman up and then goes on to show just how little use her intelligence or her black belt are in preventing her from becoming prey for a horny guy, it's very easy for that to come across as a misogynistic power fantasy. I'd say more, but I already said it back then.

And now for something completely different

This unprompted feedback is not aimed at any one story, but it was sorta kinda prompted by a few of them. Much like I did very early in the thread when I mentioned that all of the main characters in my stories have been white, I have something else I want to get into.

With only a couple exceptions (Notwise’s most recent and EnchantmentOfNyx, off the top of my head), the non-con stories (or stories that veer toward non-consensual content) I’ve been given feature women that are, put bluntly, inept. In response to some of them, I’ve gotten angry. In response to others, I’ve tried to temper my responses and go deeper into the reasons that, for example, you would want to have competent characters, or how empathy works and how that colors the reader’s interpretation.

In each case, though, the giving of the feedback has been fraught for me. I agonize over the tone of these. I’m trying to be helpful. I’m not trying to antagonize anyone, but there is a trend. There are a lot of stories at the intersection of non-con and dumb women.

It’s really important to be able to start a conversation around “This handful of stories represents a trend.” That’s how you get people thinking about it.

It’s never as simple as one thing. There’s always a mixture of motivations. The obvious ones are, like, laziness and misogyny. 1) “I don’t know how to plot or do motivations, so I’ll just make my FMC walk down this dark alley and give her no sense of self preservation, effectively turning her into a toddler with tits.” It is, as Bramblethorn aptly put it, having her hold the Idiot Ball for a while because that’s what the plot requires. 2) Walking down a dark alley is exactly the kind of thing a normal woman considers because she dumb.

There’s also more complicated motivations like sadism (and I mean this as a personality trait that the author may possess and not in any way attaching this conversation to any kind of BDSM context). A sadist is perfectly capable of loving someone and wanting to hurt them, but this is something that one should know about themselves and approach with intention. Sadists aren’t bad people, but they can if they’re not aware of themselves. With that awareness comes some responsibility. #ethicalsadism

It’s also worth pointing out that I have never been asked to read a story where the man was incompetent. I personally have written some incompetent male characters, but I did it for comedic purposes and not to put them in a position to be taken advantage of (and before anyone gets all up in arms, everyone in Terrible Company is pretty incompetent - I am all about the equal opportunity).

I can’t say that this is something I’ve spent a ton of time thinking about. I usually try to handle the stories in front of me in a vacuum, but this thought has been rolling around in my head for a while now, gathering momentum like a deranged katamari. I don’t have all the motivations sorted out, but I think that no matter where the problem starts, the answer comes from shining a light on it.

I once did a screenplay with a major non-white character. I may yet try to turn it into a series on Lit But I haven't really used a non-white character since then, even though I live in a neighborhood that is ninety-five percent Black, Latino, and Arab Muslims. (I think that's what they are, anyway. Maybe some are Kurds or Afghanis.)

So why not? I don't know, so far I have been unable to get into their mindsets. It's a sad fact, but in the United States, people pretend to be "woke" or "tolerant" or whatever. Most whites actually live in white neighborhoods; the segregation in this country has been intense for over four hundred years. I've seen that for over fifty years myself and I don't expect it to change.

AwkwardMD said:

It's okay to have stories where bad characters do and say bad things. Villains can be mean and hurtful, and a good storyteller can use that as motivation to push an injured protagonist further than they ever thought they could go.

The difference here is that the story reinforced that Amanda really was bad. Everyone on her team was rightly frustrated with her during that memory stick exercise. All the men did their parts, but the one woman didn't. She could have been partially successful, or done some things that really saved the day for the time while still ultimately getting tossed in the drink by Percy, but the story paints her as incompetent.

I've talked before about the concept of authorial endorsement, and it's important to note that this can be unintentional. Not everyone goes about writing non-con fantasies with the intention of alienating their female readers. Amanda, CIA Agent repeatedly puts Amanda in situations where she has little agency. When she does have agency, she doesn't seem to do very much with it.

Maybe that's all part of the plan, and it's all going to be turned around in the last act, but I personally wouldn't have stuck with it to find out.

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JMTCW, but I believe things in non-con and humiliation stories go off the rails when the sadistic actions of the antagonist(s) becomes gratuitous. The narrative takes on a juvenile quality when that happens IMHO. Kinda like: and then - (bad things)..... and then - (worse things) ..... and then - (even worse things) ..... and then - well, you get the idea. The writer gets caught in the position of having to one up their last outrageous and implausible (dumb) scenario to achieve the same sexually satisfying "high". There is definitely a risk of becoming a sexually twisted addict who can only be satisfied by ever increasing levels of sadism and sexual violence in their erotica. This applies to the author and the reader of such stories. Worryingly, there seems to be a significant and dedicated audience for that kind of erotica. With reports in the news about sick fucks commitimg horrific sexual assaults, one has to wonder if life is imitating art or vice versa.

I wrote "Quarter to Midnight" with zero knowledge of the noncon category. I suspect that "inept victim" is a common trope in noncon. That doesn't keep it from being trite, shallow, or believable only to the anointed, but it would make it easier for the regular readers to follow.

If something like "inept victim" becomes a common crutch, then the authors using it may not have any motivation for using it other than that it's common and easily employed. They may not even realize they're using it, so it's good to point it out.

There are also common crutches in I/T.

AwkwardMD said:

This unprompted feedback is not aimed at any one story, but it was sorta kinda prompted by a few of them. Much like I did very early in the thread when I mentioned that all of the main characters in my stories have been white, I have something else I want to get into.

With only a couple exceptions (Notwise’s most recent and EnchantmentOfNyx, off the top of my head), the non-con stories (or stories that veer toward non-consensual content) I’ve been given feature women that are, put bluntly, inept. In response to some of them, I’ve gotten angry. In response to others, I’ve tried to temper my responses and go deeper into the reasons that, for example, you would want to have competent characters, or how empathy works and how that colors the reader’s interpretation.

In each case, though, the giving of the feedback has been fraught for me. I agonize over the tone of these. I’m trying to be helpful. I’m not trying to antagonize anyone, but there is a trend. There are a lot of stories at the intersection of non-con and dumb women.

It’s really important to be able to start a conversation around “This handful of stories represents a trend.” That’s how you get people thinking about it.

It’s never as simple as one thing. There’s always a mixture of motivations. The obvious ones are, like, laziness and misogyny. 1) “I don’t know how to plot or do motivations, so I’ll just make my FMC walk down this dark alley and give her no sense of self preservation, effectively turning her into a toddler with tits.” It is, as Bramblethorn aptly put it, having her hold the Idiot Ball for a while because that’s what the plot requires. 2) Walking down a dark alley is exactly the kind of thing a normal woman considers because she dumb.

There’s also more complicated motivations like sadism (and I mean this as a personality trait that the author may possess and not in any way attaching this conversation to any kind of BDSM context). A sadist is perfectly capable of loving someone and wanting to hurt them, but this is something that one should know about themselves and approach with intention. Sadists aren’t bad people, but they can if they’re not aware of themselves. With that awareness comes some responsibility. #ethicalsadism

It’s also worth pointing out that I have never been asked to read a story where the man was incompetent. I personally have written some incompetent male characters, but I did it for comedic purposes and not to put them in a position to be taken advantage of (and before anyone gets all up in arms, everyone in Terrible Company is pretty incompetent - I am all about the equal opportunity).

I can’t say that this is something I’ve spent a ton of time thinking about. I usually try to handle the stories in front of me in a vacuum, but this thought has been rolling around in my head for a while now, gathering momentum like a deranged katamari. I don’t have all the motivations sorted out, but I think that no matter where the problem starts, the answer comes from shining a light on it.

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Excellent point. Like I said, I'm sure I don’t have all the reasons it could happen, but being aware of it as "a thing" is the best antiseptic.

gunhilltrain said:

I once did a screenplay with a major non-white character. I may yet try to turn it into a series on Lit But I haven't really used a non-white character since then, even though I live in a neighborhood that is ninety-five percent Black, Latino, and Arab Muslims. (I think that's what they are, anyway. Maybe some are Kurds or Afghanis.)

So why not? I don't know, so far I have been unable to get into their mindsets. It's a sad fact, but in the United States, people pretend to be "woke" or "tolerant" or whatever. Most whites actually live in white neighborhoods; the segregation in this country has been intense for over four hundred years. I've seen that for over fifty years myself and I don't expect it to change.

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Physical segregation along racial lines definitely is a thing, but the internet has opened up a lot of options for becoming familiar with different viewpoints - at least, from people who share a language.

Bramblethorn said:

Physical segregation along racial lines definitely is a thing, but the internet has opened up a lot of options for becoming familiar with different viewpoints - at least, from people who share a language.

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The way I've seen it in over fifty years in and around New York: yes, people share stores, libraries, buses. They may share schools and workplaces. They are mostly polite to each other. A few of them are truly friends. But - I used to think that we are all the same underneath. And, yes, we share a common humanity. But the cultural differences are wider than I used to think.

Even among the white ethnic groups, after many decades, differences remain. There is a lot of intermarriage among them of course. And time does level out some things. I don't know the Italian that my great-grandfather knew (even my grandfather was weak in speaking it) or the German my great-great grandfather knew.

Yet I'm aware of differences from the WASPs of America, even if my ex-wife was one.

Lazaran said:

JMTCW, but I believe things in non-con and humiliation stories go off the rails when the sadistic actions of the antagonist(s) becomes gratuitous. The narrative takes on a juvenile quality when that happens IMHO. Kinda like: and then - (bad things)..... and then - (worse things) ..... and then - (even worse things) ..... and then - well, you get the idea. The writer gets caught in the position of having to one up their last outrageous and implausible (dumb) scenario to achieve the same sexually satisfying "high". There is definitely a risk of becoming a sexually twisted addict who can only be satisfied by ever increasing levels of sadism and sexual violence in their erotica. This applies to the author and the reader of such stories. Worryingly, there seems to be a significant and dedicated audience for that kind of erotica. With reports in the news about sick fucks commitimg horrific sexual assaults, one has to wonder if life is imitating art or vice versa.

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Usually I have my female characters being really good at "maneuvering" around the men in their lives. And the guys usually eat it up; they like it that way, even if sometimes they get hurt by being dumped unexpectedly.

Yet I wonder if I'm being unrealistic in the opposite direction, by having the women being stronger would be plausible in their situations. Well, they certainly have verve, that's for sure.

AwkwardMD said:

With only a couple exceptions (Notwise’s most recent and EnchantmentOfNyx, off the top of my head), the non-con stories (or stories that veer toward non-consensual content) I’ve been given feature women that are, put bluntly, inept. In response to some of them, I’ve gotten angry. In response to others, I’ve tried to temper my responses and go deeper into the reasons that, for example, you would want to have competent characters, or how empathy works and how that colors the reader’s interpretation.

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This is an interesting and vexing issue. I'm working on a non-con story -- my first -- about an intelligent and professional woman who becomes a man's sex slave. The specific premise of the story, which I won't get into, is far-fetched, but I'm OK with far-fetched premises. The challenge is to narrate (a) how a capable, intelligent woman would get in her predicament, and (b) how she would act once she's in the predicament, in a way that is both erotically satisfying but at least, to some small degree, plausible and does not contradict the description of her as intelligent. It's a huge creative challenge. The easy thing is to describe her as an educated, intelligent, capable person, but then have her act like a foolish bimbo. Many stories follow that pattern. One of mine was faulted by several commenters for being too much that way, and they had a valid point.

It's not an easy thing to do if, like me, you like stories where people get into outrageous erotic situations.

I don't have an easy solution, but as you suggested in a subsequent post, "mindfulness" is a good first step. Be aware of what your characters are doing and whether what they are doing is consistent with the traits you claim they have. I never thought about this issue at all when I started writing, but I think about it now. It's one of the reasons I write more slowly than I used to.

AwkwardMD said:

This unprompted feedback is not aimed at any one story, but it was sorta kinda prompted by a few of them. Much like I did very early in the thread when I mentioned that all of the main characters in my stories have been white, I have something else I want to get into.

With only a couple exceptions (Notwise’s most recent and EnchantmentOfNyx, off the top of my head), the non-con stories (or stories that veer toward non-consensual content) I’ve been given feature women that are, put bluntly, inept. In response to some of them, I’ve gotten angry. In response to others, I’ve tried to temper my responses and go deeper into the reasons that, for example, you would want to have competent characters, or how empathy works and how that colors the reader’s interpretation.

In each case, though, the giving of the feedback has been fraught for me. I agonize over the tone of these. I’m trying to be helpful. I’m not trying to antagonize anyone, but there is a trend. There are a lot of stories at the intersection of non-con and dumb women.

It’s really important to be able to start a conversation around “This handful of stories represents a trend.” That’s how you get people thinking about it.

It’s never as simple as one thing. There’s always a mixture of motivations. The obvious ones are, like, laziness and misogyny. 1) “I don’t know how to plot or do motivations, so I’ll just make my FMC walk down this dark alley and give her no sense of self preservation, effectively turning her into a toddler with tits.” It is, as Bramblethorn aptly put it, having her hold the Idiot Ball for a while because that’s what the plot requires. 2) Walking down a dark alley is exactly the kind of thing a normal woman considers because she dumb.

There’s also more complicated motivations like sadism (and I mean this as a personality trait that the author may possess and not in any way attaching this conversation to any kind of BDSM context). A sadist is perfectly capable of loving someone and wanting to hurt them, but this is something that one should know about themselves and approach with intention. Sadists aren’t bad people, but they can if they’re not aware of themselves. With that awareness comes some responsibility. #ethicalsadism

It’s also worth pointing out that I have never been asked to read a story where the man was incompetent. I personally have written some incompetent male characters, but I did it for comedic purposes and not to put them in a position to be taken advantage of (and before anyone gets all up in arms, everyone in Terrible Company is pretty incompetent - I am all about the equal opportunity).

I can’t say that this is something I’ve spent a ton of time thinking about. I usually try to handle the stories in front of me in a vacuum, but this thought has been rolling around in my head for a while now, gathering momentum like a deranged katamari. I don’t have all the motivations sorted out, but I think that no matter where the problem starts, the answer comes from shining a light on it.

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For some reason I decided to drift into the last page of the thread and saw Simon quote this.

Your issue is you're not being unbiased, you're pushing your personal views into everything. You think no strong woman can want sex in a way you don't agree with. You call them inept, when actually they're empowered by doing what they want and not conforming to views like yours.

You don't truly understand the Non con or rough sex dynamic, you understand how you feel, and stop there. I abhor true non con on a deep level, but understand there are women who have desires in that direction and as long as they're controlling the situation, then that's fine, its their game, not his.

Simple as the test question for BDSM, who is in charge? The Top or the Bottom. We know how the posers answer. Top only tops within limits of the bottom. I know you know this.

You should stop preaching your beliefs as 'the way it is'

I also smell projection from you. Perhaps not comfortable with how material you want to dislike affects you. I speak from experience in that area, falls under "I hate myself for loving you" syndrome

For someone who keep[s touting their "darkness" you're trying to force everything into somewhat vanilla constraints. Something I attempted back in my twenties, I unleashed that beast a long time ago. One always needs a mental leash and some restraint, but denial leads to self loathing and turmoil.

Dear Lovecraft

You didn’t read any of the stories mentioned here. You've never read anything of mine. You aren't even talking about the subject at hand. I get that you hateread my thread like a rabid LW fan, but, like, why?

If you want to contribute to the conversation, you're welcome to, but doing so without a basic understanding of the topic or the story subjects turns whatever point you were trying to make into an ugly, personal attack. "I didn't read your story, but..."
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a6/26/48/a626482c8e4e828bd3232578952dd6aa.jpg

lovecraft68 said:

For some reason I decided to drift into the last page of the thread and saw Simon quote this.

Your issue is you're not being unbiased, you're pushing your personal views into everything. You think no strong woman can want sex in a way you don't agree with. You call them inept, when actually they're empowered by doing what they want and not conforming to views like yours.

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Which of the review stories are you talking about here?

NC certainly can be about strong women empowered by embracing their unconventional desires, but I'd find it hard to describe Amanda or Daniella that way. (The original version of Daniella, anyway. I haven't checked the rewrite.) They're certainly not "doing what they want".

If I had to summarise those stories (in "Amanda"'s case, as far as I read):

- woman gets introduced as smart and kickass
- woman encounters a predatory guy
- guy makes woman do a heap of humiliating stuff. (In Amanda's case, assisted by extreme gullibility on her part.)
- story tells us over and over how much she hates it
- none of her supposed smarts or her black belt are any use in getting her out of that pickle.

SimonDoom said:

This is an interesting and vexing issue. I'm working on a non-con story -- my first -- about an intelligent and professional woman who becomes a man's sex slave. The specific premise of the story, which I won't get into, is far-fetched, but I'm OK with far-fetched premises. The challenge is to narrate (a) how a capable, intelligent woman would get in her predicament, and (b) how she would act once she's in the predicament, in a way that is both erotically satisfying but at least, to some small degree, plausible and does not contradict the description of her as intelligent. It's a huge creative challenge.

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IME, it's often helpful to set the intended plot aside for a moment and ask "if I was in this situation, what might I try?" Even when a character is in a predicament that they can't escape on their own, there's almost some way in which they can change it.

A couple of examples from mainstream fiction:

In Silence of the Lambs, Buffalo Bill kidnaps Catherine Martin and imprisons her down in a well. It's not within her power to get out of the well, but she does manage to capture his dog and take it hostage. From there, she doesn't manage to talk him into letting her go, but she drags things out long enough for Agent Starling to show up and kill BB. If she hadn't grabbed the dog, she'd probably have been dead before Starling got there.

In Die Hard, Holly is taken hostage along with her co-workers. She's not going to be able to talk Gruber into letting them go, but she's able to get him to bring out a sofa for a pregnant woman and to let the hostages use the bathroom. It's a small victory, but she's not just sitting there letting Gruber shape the story on his own.

Those moments do a lot to show that these women really are intelligent and capable. In a hard situation, even a small victory makes a lot of difference to characterisation.

Bramblethorn said:

IME, it's often helpful to set the intended plot aside for a moment and ask "if I was in this situation, what might I try?" Even when a character is in a predicament that they can't escape on their own, there's almost some way in which they can change it.

A couple of examples from mainstream fiction:

In Silence of the Lambs, Buffalo Bill kidnaps Catherine Martin and imprisons her down in a well. It's not within her power to get out of the well, but she does manage to capture his dog and take it hostage. From there, she doesn't manage to talk him into letting her go, but she drags things out long enough for Agent Starling to show up and kill BB. If she hadn't grabbed the dog, she'd probably have been dead before Starling got there.

In Die Hard, Holly is taken hostage along with her co-workers. She's not going to be able to talk Gruber into letting them go, but she's able to get him to bring out a sofa for a pregnant woman and to let the hostages use the bathroom. It's a small victory, but she's not just sitting there letting Gruber shape the story on his own.

Those moments do a lot to show that these women really are intelligent and capable. In a hard situation, even a small victory makes a lot of difference to characterisation.

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I like the idea of setting the plot aside once in a while. That never occurred to me when I started writing stories. I'm by nature a plotter. I plot everything ahead of time and as I write I shoe-horn everything into my plot idea. But when you do that the characters sometimes get short-shrift.

SimonDoom said:

I like the idea of setting the plot aside once in a while. That never occurred to me when I started writing stories. I'm by nature a plotter. I plot everything ahead of time and as I write I shoe-horn everything into my plot idea. But when you do that the characters sometimes get short-shrift.

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It's a juggling act, to be sure. I'll sometimes go back and forth between a plot-focussed and character-focussed viewpoint until I figure out something that works from both sides.

Bramblethorn said:

It's a juggling act, to be sure. I'll sometimes go back and forth between a plot-focussed and character-focussed viewpoint until I figure out something that works from both sides.

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It is a juggling act. If you focus just on the plot, then you will probably have unrealistic characters who are nothing but plot tools. If you focus just on the characters, then you get unfocused stories that wander without purpose. I'd like to be in between.

Then there's how you tell the story, and that's a whole different beast.