750 words once more - Lesbian

[LaRascasse]

As part of the 750 story contest, I put up a lesbian story earlier this year. As expected, readers were left wondering where the rest of the story went.

Let me know what you think of it

https://www.literotica.com/beta/s/charity-1

From what I could gauge, it's not a short story, but a long story ungainly cut down to size.

I look forward to your views and opinions. Thanks in advance

 

[WinsomeWeb]

So, obviously you can write well, so this just looks like a story that didn’t land. You obviously don’t need any advice on sentence-level writing, so I’ll just focus on the big picture.

I guess as a post-mortem, I would try to determine what your intention was with the story. If it was to write a story about a look at a moment in time between two people who missed their moment, then it’s a decent, if slightly unfocused, piece of flash fiction. But as far as erotica goes, it misses for me because of a lack of tension. Despite 750 words of mostly dialogue, the characters spend most of their time only giving exposition. And that’s really the biggest problem: no one is doing anything, so there’s no conflict, and thus no tension, sexual or otherwise. It’s not until almost the very end that Yasmin pushes the story forward, but by that point it’s over.

If this were a 50,000-word piece, the exposition delivered through dialogue would perhaps be heavy-handed, but in 750-word flash fiction delivering exposition through dialogue is just uneconomical.

You’re a good writer, so I’m sure you’ve heard people say “show, don’t tell,” but telling is still a vital part of writing a story too. And, in flash fiction, telling is absolutely crucial to developing a story in a short amount of time. What you’re doing right now with your characters talking about their history is essentially already telling, but because it’s spread out through dialogue, you’re wasting a bunch of words on what could be condensed into a short amount of expository text.

If I were writing it, I would start with (or near) “I loved you and you chose starving children in Africa over me.” It doesn’t have to be that exact line of dialogue—I would probably want to set the stage with just enough exposition to establish the scene—but that sentiment is where the story starts. I would then focus the story on the sense of resentment or longing that each has after that. Maybe there’s a sex scene, maybe there’s not; maybe I end it on the same ambiguous ending, maybe not. But either way, you can spend more time exploring their current relationship, with Yasmin pressing for more, and Priya fighting her conflicted feelings, which is where the conflict and sexual tension will come from.

Anyway, 750-words is a real challenge, especially when trying to elicit an emotional reaction from readers. I am the type of person who never met a word he didn’t like, so I have lots of problems writing short stories myself. As you said though, you tried to make a long story a short story, which didn’t work, and I think that’s really the thing to take away here: in flash fiction, focus on economy first.

 

[LaRascasse]

So, obviously you can write well, so this just looks like a story that didn’t land. You obviously don’t need any advice on sentence-level writing, so I’ll just focus on the big picture.

I guess as a post-mortem, I would try to determine what your intention was with the story. If it was to write a story about a look at a moment in time between two people who missed their moment, then it’s a decent, if slightly unfocused, piece of flash fiction. But as far as erotica goes, it misses for me because of a lack of tension. Despite 750 words of mostly dialogue, the characters spend most of their time only giving exposition. And that’s really the biggest problem: no one is doing anything, so there’s no conflict, and thus no tension, sexual or otherwise. It’s not until almost the very end that Yasmin pushes the story forward, but by that point it’s over.

If this were a 50,000-word piece, the exposition delivered through dialogue would perhaps be heavy-handed, but in 750-word flash fiction delivering exposition through dialogue is just uneconomical.

You’re a good writer, so I’m sure you’ve heard people say “show, don’t tell,” but telling is still a vital part of writing a story too. And, in flash fiction, telling is absolutely crucial to developing a story in a short amount of time. What you’re doing right now with your characters talking about their history is essentially already telling, but because it’s spread out through dialogue, you’re wasting a bunch of words on what could be condensed into a short amount of expository text.

If I were writing it, I would start with (or near) “I loved you and you chose starving children in Africa over me.” It doesn’t have to be that exact line of dialogue—I would probably want to set the stage with just enough exposition to establish the scene—but that sentiment is where the story starts. I would then focus the story on the sense of resentment or longing that each has after that. Maybe there’s a sex scene, maybe there’s not; maybe I end it on the same ambiguous ending, maybe not. But either way, you can spend more time exploring their current relationship, with Yasmin pressing for more, and Priya fighting her conflicted feelings, which is where the conflict and sexual tension will come from.

Anyway, 750-words is a real challenge, especially when trying to elicit an emotional reaction from readers. I am the type of person who never met a word he didn’t like, so I have lots of problems writing short stories myself. As you said though, you tried to make a long story a short story, which didn’t work, and I think that’s really the thing to take away here: in flash fiction, focus on economy first.

Thanks for your detailed analysis. It's almost as long as the story itself

It was intended to be an interlude story. A conversation meant to serve as a glimpse into the complex history, backstory and lives of the main characters. If the contest didn't stipulate a word limit, I'd write a full 20K word story about them finding their way back to each other (or not).