16 July 2001: Vacation by Looking4YouToo

[Weird Harold]

This week's story is a random selection from all stories on the site.

Vacation
by Looking4YouToo
in the Loving Wives category.

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=16921

As always, please wait until 0800 GMT Monday to begin the discussion to give the author time to post an introduction or objection.

 

[Sonia_de_Beaumanoir]

I can't say I like this type of story very much, as there is almost zero character development. The use of first and second-person POV gets very monotonous after a while.

The best quality of the story comes at the end, where we understand why there would be a naked "stranger" in a couple's vacation hotel room. However, it seems very bizarre that the narrator could have arranged for this fantasy on the first night after arriving at 10:00pm after a long trip. It would be more credible if it occured either the second day or nearer to home. Assuming that it was arranged, the narrator would not have started to get out of bed to defend against an attacker. All and all a bit hard to comprehend.

There is inconsistency between the use of past and present tense. Also there are run-on sentences where some commas should be present.

I would have preferred to give the woman her own dialog more consistently:

For example, instead of

With your eyes closed you said yes. I then asked you would you want it to be a woman or a man. A smile crossed your lips and you said a man.

why not:

With your eyes closed you said, "Yes!"

"Would you want it to be a woman or a man?"

A smile crossed your lips, "A man."

One paragraph has the man "stroking his cock up and down" stated twice.

 

[KillerMuffin]

An old refrain. Take it out of second person and for the love of pizza, pick a tense! FYI, if one of the characters is "you" then it's considered second person because the narrator is speaking directly to this nebulous "you" person.

I see the point the author is trying to make and I am seeing the "proseness" that he attempted to inject into the writing. Simplicity generally seems to be better most of the time. Will Strunk was rather famous for saying "Cut out all unnecessary words."

I think, that in writing, we look at a sentence and wonder if it could be better. Maybe we see a word like "full" and think that it just looks so insignificant and not very authorly and change it to "fraught." Fraught has that nice neurotic/anxious feel to it. However, it looks funny when it's the only exotic word in a sentence. Simple sentences don't look very good either, so we combine them and think it's a poetic turn of phrase. I'm horrible about it, queen of the run-on.

Some people have two mental voices, their own natural mental voice that they use all the time and the voice they use to write with. Perhaps the voice they have in their head is too ordinary to them, or they don't think it's quite got the sound a good piece of writing should have, so they change their mental voice to sound what they think writing ought to sound like. It comes out very stiff and unweildy, not very natural at all. Primarily because it's alien to the person telling the story.

I don't think everyone is cut out to be a great writer, face it there's only one Anais Nin no matter how hard some of me tries. However, I do think that everyone has the capacity to be a good writer. I'm sure there are one or hopeless causes out there, but I think those are very few and very far between.

I didn't actually get past the bit where he took off his pants and put on his underwear or shorts or whatever they were. I detest second person and that has nothing to do with the author's writing whatsoever, only my preference for point of view. So, from the bit I did read, it appears that the author is trying too hard to make "good writing" when his natural voice would probably have made excellent writing. This is based entirely on the first couple of paragraphs, the exotic word tossed in here and there, and the extreme description of how he took off his pants and put his shorts on.

 

[KillerMuffin]

After reading this all with my eyes crossed and an "Oh my gawd, I'm such an arrogant bitch," thought in my head, it led me to ask a single question. Scratch that, several questions.

What is good writing? How does a reader tell if they are seeing good writing? What defines a good piece of writing to the reader? Or would it be easier to delineate what the reader thinks is bad writing? What is that "thing" that attracts a reader to a piece of writing and holds his or her attention?

 

[JUDO]

Mix Carefully

L4YT-

I like the premise. A loving couple finally goes on a well-deserved vacation and in the middle of some romantic sex, they are first watched and then joined by a stranger at their invite.

KM and SB above have already launched into the First persond/Second person thing, so I won't. It's really, really tough to pull off. Go for third person or stay with first, but don't combine first and second.

I will, however, talk about "set ups and payoffs."

In your third paragraph, you set up the stranger with a bunch of quick running around about "slits too small to see through", "I thought I saw a shadow" and "I guess I was imagining things."
This little setup is later paid off, when suddenly from nowhere, the husband sees the naked guy come in the room.

By the way, the only way the husband wouldn't get up and kill the guy is if he invited the guy in the first place, and yet, your husband's thought process seems to say that he didn't.

If you wanted the naked stranger to enter the room and not get killed, begin uninvited, then imagine this.

Use what you had in one paragraph to tease the reader over a much longer, more subtle period of time.

The room is on the beach. Lots of people walk by the windows and glass doors facing the beach. One guy sees them changing clothes are getting comfortable, but disappears when the couple sees him. They joke about being so daring with theselves in this unfamiliar place.

As they start to play with each other, the decide to take chances, leaving the door open, leaving the shades a little open. "Wouldn't it be exciting if someone saw us?"

And as they start this, then slowly, carefully let little things slip. A shadow is on the blinds as though someone is standing there. This excites the wife further, she tells the husband. Then as their excitement grows, they ignore the shadow.

Later, she sees the man, young, handsome, attractive and he's naked outside their room, watching the beach. The husband asks her if he should make him go away, she says no, maybe he'll see us. It makes her excited. Hubby goes along, liking the effect.

Keep the tease going as the sex esculates, then, of course, the payoff. Where the guy on the beach thinks he's getting away with something by jerking off to watching them as a voyuer, not realizing that his presence has succeded in raising their own sexual awareness and he's now welcome to watch.

And so on.

The setup for the man felt rushed and not fully realized. What is the man on the beach doing there? Has he been hanging out watching all the rooms? Was he a thief and stumbled onto this? Did he see them enter the hotel and was attracted, and so, followed them? What is he thinking? What is the husband thinking? What is the wife thinking? Have they discussed such a fantasy before?

Work on what has happened before the characters got there and what there relationships are. Is the wife subservient to the husband? Or vice versa? Or are they equals in bed?

This kind of character development will help your story feel much more real.

And when you get two ideas like this that you wish to combine. Remember to mix them carefully, being too blunt in a romantic story like this one will not work.

- Judo