advice/criticism please!!!

[thoros]

Im starting a new story, but am not sure if it is a viable storyline.
ive posted two excerpts from the beginning of this story below (thought i would get some feedback/crit before i submitted to lit)
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Her wrists were bound and her mouth gagged as two burly guards in silver and red led her down the richly decorated halls of Dralnor Castle.
This castle had been her home for 21 years, and yet now she was led through it as if a criminal. A fierce anger and resentment burned inside of her. Her sea-green eyes flashed, darting about, challenging anyone and everyone that met her gaze.
The people she passed in the hallways were unable to face her.
They had been her former servants and companions. Advisors to her father. Officers in her father's royal army.
Now, they pitied her. She hated their pity, just as she hated each and every one of them.
The hatred and anger boiled to a fury within her, but her gag kept her forcibly silent.

When she entered the throneroom, she was not entirely surprised to see the standard of a silver hawk on a red field hanging above the dais. Even still, her skin flushed red with her fury at its sight.
She was brought before the throne and made to kneel by one of the guards.

She did not notice the rough treatment of the guards. Her whole being was focused on a single man in the room. He was young, no more than five years her senior.
He did not seem to notice the obvious anger in her eyes as he sat calmly upon her father's throne, wearing her father's crown.
He met her gaze, and held it. Deep, placid grey met stormy green, and for a moment, she lost all thought.
He was handsome and exuded a magnetism that drew her inexorably to him, and this made her hate him even moreso.
Tightly packed muscles on a lean, tall frame. A strong aquiline nose, a sharp widow's peak. The dense, somewhat long and curly raven black hair atop his head.
But his eyes were by far the most profound feature of his appearance. They were silver in the light, and gleamed with knowledge and experience that defied his age.

Her reverie was interrupted when he spoke. His voice was deep and carried across the cavernous chamber with authority.
"Remove them." He gestured to the gag and manacles. Immediately, one of her escorts stepped forward and untied the cloth that had bound her wrists. She removed the gag herself, and flung it to the ground.


He smiled as she began to rub her sore jaw muscles.
He could not deny that the mere sight of her, bound and vulnerable before him did not rouse his loins. She was breathtaking, to say the least. Tall for a woman and slender. He found himself staring at the tantalizing swell of her young, firm breasts and the flare of her hips. Strong, resilient, but purely female. He could feel his salute of approval rising just below his waist.

He gestured to his attendants and guards. "Leave us."
Immediately, she found herself alone with him. Her eyes found his, accusing and angry.
A single word formed in her mind and upon her lips. "Usurper."
His smile was bitter, and his eyes showed a sudden pain. "I never wanted to be king. If I could change the past, then I would."
"Relinquish the throne! If you do not desire it, then give it to my brother. He is rightful heir, not you." The words burst from her in a rush.
He stepped down slowly from the dais. His words were icy cold and barely contained the violence in his eyes.
"I will never allow another of your kind to rule this land. The Dunmores are dogs and I will die before I allow another to take this throne or kingdom. Your father--"
Her voice cracked with emotion. "You murdered my father."
He stopped and stood motionless for a moment. "Your father," he spat the words as if they were a curse, "deserved to die. I would have killed him, given the chance."
His tone and voice softened. "No, little one. As it is, your father ended his own life, and would have killed you had you been in his grasp at the time. He was a rabid animal."
His words ignited a burning hot fury in the pit of her stomach. She lashed out at him, using her nails and teeth to mar his flesh.
She dug her nails deeply into his forearm, then clawed frantically at his elegant, patrician face, drawing a hiss of surprise from his mouth.
Quick as lightening, however, he reacted. He caught her wrists in a vise-like grip, and pinned them to her sides.
He was pressed up to her now, and she could feel every chiseled feature of his hardened physique. Her skin burned where he held her. She swooned, and cursed herself for being unable to control her traitorous body. She still reacted to him with the same intensity, despite not having seen him for a year.
He, likewise, had difficulty containing his body.
He spun her around so that her back was to him. Keeping her arms firmly down at her side, he lowered his head to her ear.
Her skin smelled faintly of roses and honey. He admired the silky-smooth skin of her fine, elegant neck. Unable to resist the urge he bent down, and kissed her neck, inhaling her scent.
Her eyes widened. Tearing her arms from his grasp, she hastily stepped back away from him.

"What is this all about? Why have you kept me alive?" Her words were whispered, and she could barely contain the tears as she lowered her eyes, unable to meet his gaze. Facing him again after so long was proving to be difficult. Her emotions were a mixture of anger, humiliation, and hatred.
"My sweet, precious Lia. This is about bringing peace to a land that has suffered too long underneath your father's tyranny. To accomplish this, I need," he paused then, and looked at her pointedly, "a measure of legitimacy to my reign."
The words took her breath away, and for a single moment she refused to believe what she heard.
But Lia Dunmore was not foolish, and did not enjoy deceiving herself.

"No. I will not...I cannot do this." She meant to sound more forceful, but her voice sounded weak and wavered audibly. "No...this is not possible."
"I am afraid that no choice will be given. You are mine, and the child you will give me shall end this bloody civil war, once and for all." His voice was soft and had a dangerous edge to it. She looked up to him, tears spilling freely from her wet, green eyes. He was looking down on her intently, not a shred of pity in his countenance.
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(this scene would follow after the above one...but is not necessarily immediately subsequent. my apologies for the staggered presentation, but both of these just kinda came to me)


The dress she wore was virginal white and clung to her skin perfectly. Her breast heaved slightly in pace with her quickened breath.
She was a tantalizing woman: round, firm breasts, a gentle swelling at the hips and long legs. Her luxuriant auburn hair had been done up and then artfully encased in a sheer white veil.
She was everything he had ever envisioned the perfect woman being.
The image, however, was ruined by the continuous stream of tears that were running down her face. Even still, despite her red nose and puffy eyes, she caused him to be uncontrollably excited and aroused.
He clasped her chin gently and brought her eyes up to look at him. He gave her his best smile as he gently patted the tears dry. The white lace veil she wore was drawn back and rested haphazardly on her long, cream-colored neck.

"There are worst fates than marrying me, you know."
She tensed slightly and some of the fight seemed to return to her eyes. Her voice was scathing. "Really? Name one and I will gladly take that over this charade."
His eyes darkened and his voice was husky with promise as he leaned in to whisper into her ear.
"I promise you, Lia. This marriage is no farce. From this day forward, you will be my woman and you will belong to me only. Over time, you will accept and possibly even enjoy this." His heated words made her shiver. He smiled at her vulnerability and unexpectedly, he began to suckle on the lobe of her ear, laving the small nub of flesh with his warm tongue. She gasped in surprise and began to shake visibly.
He drew her into a crushing embrace as he brought his mouth from her ear to bear upon her mouth. Her anger was momentarily forgotten as he heatedly kissed her. Her lips melted under his onslaught and she clutched his neck, almost as if afraid she would lose her footing. Her skin flushed with excitement, and she could feel heat building within her. It was unbearable, and she felt as is she were falling into the sun. He broke the kiss and was surprised to see a glimmer of disappointment in her eyes at his withdrawal.
He could see the lust and confusion in her eyes and felt a thrill at just how sweetly responsive she was to him.

Her stomach fluttered with an unknown sensation.
Wrenching herself away from him, she snarled and spat in his face. He smiled as he dabbed the spittle off with a handkerchief he had retrieved from his back pocket. Her tears had stopped, replaced now by an angry resentment.

"Come. We must not keep the chaplain waiting." He drew the veil over her face, pausing briefly to admire her beautiful, though angry, face.
She did not resist him as he led her into the Chaplain's hall. Nor did she resist him when he placed the marriage band about her right wrist and removed her veil to kiss her.
She knew that any refusal would be ultimately futile. She did not, however, resign herself completely to his will. When the moment arose, she would find escape...at whatever cost.

 

[Rainbow Skin]

That's fine as a storyline, if it's going to be short; whereas if it's going to be long, you've only got an introduction and we don't yet know what the story will be. That is, that might be 25% of a Literotica story, which will end with him overpowering her in the bedroom and her finally accepting her lot and swooning into his arms. Here the point of stories is usually the sex scene.

However, if it was to stand elsewhere, it looks like the beginning of a story of resistance and intrigue and adventure, of which their sexual conflict is only a part. In that case you've set up how the story starts, and given logic to what will later happen in the story.

It's a little, well... cliched might be too strong a word. It is similar to much historical-romantic fiction in that the hero is stormy and handsome, the heroine is fiery and tall, they loathe each other, etc. Much of the description serves to point this conflict and these characters up. But it certainly has potential, and there's nothing much wrong with the writing: don't let me put you off.

 

[thoros]

only too true
i am HORRIBLE at character descriptions, and am told by some that i have very choppy prose with awkward phrasing

i think, all things considered, this story might just be a waste of time
like you mentioned, this type of thing has already been done to the point of exhaustion.

 

[cantdog]

The writing could use a good combing out, I think. I was letting Rainbow's answer stand because the question in your post was about the storyline. I believe Rainbow on the storyline.

Choppy is the wrong word; I don't see choppiness, if there is such a word, and WordPerfect says it doesn't think so, so I guess I just made a word up-- yay for me!-- but there are things that need doing. For instance:

She removed the gag herself, and flung it to the ground.


He smiled as she began to rub her sore jaw muscles.
He could not deny that the mere sight of her, bound and vulnerable before him did not rouse his loins.

"He could not deny that the sight did not rouse..." means that it did not rouse. It did not rouse his loins; and furthermore, he could not deny that it did not rouse his loins. Yet the next sentence tells us it really did rouse them.

The next bit is more subtle. There's a tipoff here that you need to relax on the one hand, and choose judiciously on the other.

When you start in writing, you want to explain too much. Nearly all of us do it, and there are too many examples. You want every movement, every glance, each hand placement and flick of hip to be visible. Especially at moments like this, a watershed confrontation when the two personalities meet for the first time-- and also, later, in the first sex scene, doubtlessly; I know I've been guilty of it.

The tipoff that a writer is doing this is sentences in "He did this as she did that" and an unnecessary anxiety that we readers know when actions "began."

It's probably cool to write that way in a rough, as notes to yourself about the sequence of events, or for whatever other reason, but a lot of the extra detail needs to go. It tightens the writing to pare that extra stuff away.

She doesn't need to rub the muscles at all, and it actually betrays a lack of control-- to give in to the temptation right there in a throne room where her fate is decided. She wouldn't scratch an itch, right? Even though, if you've ever been bound, you know you get them.

So let's play with the transition between paragraphs here. If you want the smile, and I like it, myself, then let's not have it in the paragraph with the inner landscape of his arousal. Let's end the other paragraph with it.

...and flung it to the ground.
It made him smile.

Undeniably she was spirited. She was also beautiful, bound and vulnerable.. and now you can point to his loins.

If you decide you want to. Too much loving detail slows your pace. Moving the story forward keeps your audience with you.

The reason I mention the "as" bit and the "began" bit is that you can use them as signposts to places where you've gotten too involved in the minutiae. When you see those constructions in your writing, as you rewrite or edit, let it be a warning that there may be a bit here that could be tightened or cut.

cantdog

 

[Rainbow Skin]

I think you took my criticism more strongly than I meant: you do the historical-romantic style well. It is a familiar trope, this meeting of two stormy souls, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. I was interested in them and kept on reading for the people, as I do with the better examples of this sort of thing.

Choppiness. I would say choppy, yes, and didn't mention it because I was looking at the storyline. Advisors to her father. Officers in her father's royal army. Now, they pitied her. You have a number of short sentences in groups like this. Here's another group: She did not notice the rough treatment of the guards. Her whole being was focused on a single man in the room. He was young, no more than five years her senior. And another: Tightly packed muscles on a lean, tall frame. A strong aquiline nose, a sharp widow's peak. The dense, somewhat long and curly raven black hair atop his head.

Individually each of these sentences is good. And there's nothing wrong with repetition for effect. But it must be balanced. If you have repeated short sentences, you need long and involved ones to allow us to breathe. If you use verbless sentences it has to be for a particular focusing effect, and it becomes too noticeable if you do it again a few paragraphs later. And finally, there are many sentences beginning 'He...', often in succession. There's no one thing stylistically wrong with any of this, it's just that the effects overlap too much. It starts to feel like too many sentences of the same type.

I noticed the 'deny... not'. It's an interesting idiom in English, where 'he couldn't deny that she didn't arouse him' usually means the same as 'he couldn't deny that she aroused him', but it's liable to be read wrongly, and unless you're sure you haven't just made a mistake, it's probably better to use the unidiomatic and logical form without the second negative.

(By the way, the reason the double negative doesn't cancel out is that it's really a triple negative: 'deny' is also a negative word, and our brains can't process genuine triple negation in language, so this sentence's grammar works differently from an ordinary double negation, such as 'he couldn't explain that she didn't arouse him'.)

 

[vargas111]

I found it ploding.

Try shorter exchanges, not long paragraphs of explanation.

 

[Tanuki]

I like this kind of story, so please don't give up on it. The others have given some wonderful criticism.

Do you read a lot? I find that my writing improves in direct proportion to how much I read. Find a good book, or a story from a talented Lit author, and make note of what works for you when you read it. You'll learn a lot that way.

 

[the brothers cum]

Style and status

You asked whether the story you are writing could be viable. I don't see why not. The only things I think I would suggest need some attention are style and status transactions.

On style, my main point is that the story might benefit from a paring down of exposition. In the first 3 paragraphs you explain soo much of the character's history, her captor's history and so on. This bogs the story down in detail. It often is more effective to merely tell the story sensually: what does she see, feel and hear. Gradually, the details of how she got there...etc can be revealed and that way suspense is maintained. You as the writer need to know everything about the situation, but showing just the tip of the iceberg is often enough to fascinate readers.

The second point I might suggest needs honing is the status transactions. In all scenes in stories/plays...etc each character has a status that is continually changing. E.g. A person's boss is higher status than them, but if at the beginning of the story the employee witnesses the boss commiting a crime, the status has shifted, now the employee has a higher status. The boss kidnaps the employees daughter, the status has shifted again.

In the snippets of your narrative you have posted the status stays pretty much on the same level. She is captured...etc but what does she have that gives her power in the situation. How can she gain power, then lose it, then gain it?

Just things to think about. Good luck.