Appreciate Some Feedback

[Tarakan]

Dear All,

I posted an exerpt from a novel I am (struggling) to write. I would appreciate an honest critique of the style, and feel of the piece. Many thanks,

Tarakan

http://english.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=191429

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Well, you’ve got to love a story that has “thanatophobic” in the first line. I’ve got to wonder is that’s the right word though. The Baron’s a vampire, I take it? And yet he’s afraid of death?

It’s always hard critiquing excerpts from novels, because obviously there’s a lot going on here that would be explained in other chapters we don’t have access to. But I’ll tell you what I thought of the piece anyhow, for what it’s worth.

You have a terrific imagination, but I think sometimes your imagination outsrtips your story-telling powers. I had a hard time picturing where we were, and, at times, what was actually going on. I suppose the setting is more fully described in some earlier chapter: some sort of transparent sphere on a stage in a vast, multimedia vampire sex theater? Or is she on a stage in the Baron’s club? There’s a lot going on: sex, costumes, the twins, music and lights, the audience, messages through earphones, cameras zooming around, audience reactions, and the people in the control room. That’s a lot to keep track of, and for me, it seemed like what was happening to Jessica often got lost in a whirlwind of distractions. For instance, a door hissed and the twins entered. Entered what? The stage? The sphere?

I’d also watch out for being carried away by adjectives. Get rid of them when there’s something you really want us to see, because they clutter up the picture. Believe me on this. You think you're painting a vivid picture, but you're actually just obscuring things with adjectives and adverbs.

One more minor suggestion: When you’ve got two or three characters in a scene and you want the reader to be able to tell them apart, try to make their names as different as possible. There’s no way to tell Yana and Yeva apart, and so we stop trying and take a kind of “whatever” attitude to who’s doing what. It blurs the scene.

But overall, your imagination more than makes up for these faults. There’s a lot that’s original in here and it seems to come easy to you. Good luck with the novel.

Bets,

---dr.M.

 

[Tarakan]

Very helpful - thanks

Dear Doctor,

Thanks for the feedback. I was reading thanataphobic as obsessive, rather than fear, but agree with you. I think cadaverous is more appropriate. I see a rewrite coming on!

Here is a little background (exerpt setting the characters from earlier in the novel) on the Baron and his onterage.....

She expected an afternoon of coitus delicatus, so she dressed accordingly. Her underwear comprised of a lightly padded lace bra, matching ‘g’ string, and sheer hold ups, all in a pastel cream silk. The Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries had been the worst period for casual liaisons; all those buttons, stays, and layers of lace to work through. Thank goodness for elastic, the zipper, latex, and female emancipation!

Cars came and went leaving an eclectic mix of humans and vampyres at the church gate. Eventually, the Countess recognized someone interesting; Baron Wolfgang Erasmus Turlemaine. Turlemaine was an ageing vampyre, taken in his seventies as a bet, sometime in the 18th Century. Drunk and full of blood lust, five vampyres drew lots during a card game, a sort of dare to see what they could do. The young vampyres found the unassuming Baron walking his dog late one evening, and doomed the man to remain a shell for the rest of his existence. The baron was well educated and a man of considerable wealth. His new life left him bitter and vengeful. He pursued his ‘takers' across Europe. Legend had it that he first impaled them on steel spikes, and then roasted each one, keeping them alive long enough to apologize for their stupidity. Over time, his madness increased, driving him into a sordid underworld of crime and debauchery. This sophisticated, intelligent man had become a ‘Provider’; a beast; a bete noire for humans and vampyres alike. Etiquette demanded, and your family’s subsequent well being, that he came first on your wedding list. Though you wished that he never existed, he always turned up to greet the bride. In the 21st Century, he was running a business empire both in the human world and vampyre world, infesting most of Europe.

Emerging from the limousine, he squinted at the hot sun. He clawed his gray coat closely across his chest, and pulled the brim of a large fedora tight against his shrunken head. He walked, hunched towards the church gates, flanked on either side by his two Ukrainian mistresses, two identical twins Yeva and Yana. Both girls were natural blondes, big breasted, with legs to their armpits. Under normal circumstances, they would not be seen dead with this man. But this was not normal, and the two amorous concubines were long dead. Since taken, the girls relied on him and his male coterie for food. Denied access to ‘bloodies’ by the Baron, they were made to take their food ‘on the hoof’. His old human body deprived him of performing sex, so his predilection was to encourage ‘his beloved’ girls to ensnare, seduce and feed off both male and female humans while he watched. His four retarded bodyguards, hand picked for their large endowments, and small unquestioning brains, provided a regular supply of human meat for the girls, and correspondingly, a never ending supply of entertainment for the Baron. It was a symbiotic relationship forged in hell.