AlinaX
Asymmetric Snowflake
- Joined
- Feb 1, 2014
- Posts
- 4,934
I'm very bad at that. I publish the damn thing so I can stop obsessing.
AwkwardMD and Omenainen Review Thread
- Thread starter AwkwardMD
- Start date
AwkwardMD
Belzebutts
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2014
- Posts
- 2,227
@cally420
link
In other reviews you might find sprinkled around this thread, you’ll see that we usually take a kid-gloves approach to an author’s first story. We like to be supportive. We like the process of writing, and we like the idea of it as a hobby, and we try to encourage. Everyone should be so lucky as to have a good, healthy creative outlet.
In those reviews, those “It’s your first story!” reviews, we usually spend more time talking about how it’s really up to you to choose what you want to get out of writing. Feel free to go track one of those reviews down, because it applies here. What we can teach you tends more toward “How to be a strong writer” and not necessarily “How to win Literotica”.
That being said, given the way you worded your request (and the follow up comment) I think we can go a little deeper without hitting too hard, so here goes.
We’re gonna talk about restraint. You don’t have any.
Nearly every author on this site does the same thing with their first story; they throw the kitchen sink at it. I know I did. My first story (15 parts) is me throwing every single sexy, stupid idea at a premise that did not warrant it. I went bonkers. We all go through this, and it’s one of the biggest areas of improvement for you.
You said you wanted to give us both characters’ perspectives, both characters’ headspaces, and on the one hand this story does not warrant that because these two are not full-fledged characters. These are sex dolls. I’m sure that in your head, there’s backstory and exes and oh, the professor has chemistry with some of the other teachers, and every afternoon when they get coffee together there’s a little spark, and what are they gonna say when they find out, but…
None of that is on the page. On the page, these are two characters who, at their first face-to-face meeting, were fucking within five minutes. And then did nothing else for the entire length of the story. This is porn behavior and not human behavior, just sex stuff for 4 Lit pages. There’s no headspace to get into, because realistically these are just life support systems for two full sets of compatible, highly motivated sex organs.
To be clear, that’s fine. That’s half the stories on Lit. There is an audience for that. If that’s what you want to write, then you can write that and be successful, but you have failed at the thing you said you were trying to do on a technicality.
On the other hand, you did technically give us two perspectives, but it did not help. It’s too much too quickly. The human brain does not have a media mode it can enable when consuming any kind of content. We process media in front of us as if it is happening to us. First person footage of a rollercoaster can make your stomach drop. Footage of a bear attack makes the heart race. If you show men video footage of a man being kicked in the balls, male viewers will cringe and curl a protective hand over their groin. The viewer is not in danger of being kicked, but we can’t help ourselves. We’re not wired for fiction or fantasy.
We also can’t be two people. It doesn’t help to know what everyone is thinking all the time. Humans would go insane with omniscience. We can barely manage our own thoughts. POV switches at scene breaks are fairly common, but I can’t think of a story that hops heads multiple times within a scene, within a few paragraphs even, that pulls it off successfully. In other words, if there’s a way to do this correctly I haven’t found it.
That being said, not being wired for fiction or fantasy means that people can engage with media as if it was real. That’s incredibly powerful, if you know how to use it.
Now, a number of readers will look at this moment and identify, correctly, that this woman is a sex worker, but the story hasn’t told you that and John clearly has no idea. John is hammered, lonely, and sad, and he is much less observant than the reader. So now, from here, we can all probably guess where this is going to, but how many of us are holding out hope that she doesn’t charge him. That she takes a shine to him, and maybe just gives him a freebie. Does she even tell him that’s her job? A significant portion of sex workers have a high libido to start with.
Now, we want her to have a heart of gold. Now, we’re rooting for John. We feel for John, but that works because we’ve revealed less, not more. Readers like to be involved in putting the pieces together, and that means giving clues without the solution. Never the whole puzzle.
Learning how to string readers along with hints is an art form unto itself. Have the woman in red be coy about how many lovers she’s had (two or three) when the actual question was how many people she’s had sex with (less than a hundred?), and neither of those numbers are anywhere near the number of handjobs or blowjobs she’s given (numbers don’t go that high). There’s a huge difference between what is said and what is heard, and you have the ability to play with that if you avoid telling everyone everything immediately. Restraint.
In the face of what you can do with a 3rd person limited perspective, 3rd person omniscient is unsophisticated and blunt. Crude. It’s certainly possible to tell a 3rd person omniscient story well, but that still relies on restraint and you can’t learn restraint in an omniscient perspective. You have to learn it by writing limited perspectives.
Start with the fundamentals.
On the other other hand, you said you wanted to give us both perspectives, and on a textual level I think this story only understands one of them. The Professor is into the student for obvious reasons: she’s young and hot. What’s not clear is why the student is into the professor. In theory, there’s two immediate reasons I could imagine. 1) He is her teacher, and it’s a taboo thing. This is ruled out because the first thing the professor does is kick her out of his class. What would be the point then? 2) She wants someone older with a steady hand, someone who takes his time and knows what he wants. This is ruled out because this professor is horny as hell and can go all night, orgasm after orgasm, like a 20 year old captain of the Varsity Football team. The story is more interested in showing that he still has it, he’s still a stud, than it is in exploring what maturity might have given him. Displaying any kind of wisdom.
In that sense, it’s really giving us the same POV twice. This professor is a literal fucking machine. Men want to be him and women want to be with him. That’s fine, if that’s what you want to write, but it’s definitely not “I want to show both perspectives.”
We sometimes get requests for reviews where an author will say “Read anything of mine please”, and we don’t usually do that. We want the author to pick the story and say why, and part of the reason is because it’s not easy to judge the success of a story blind because we can’t know what you were going for. We need that piece of info to be able to put the whole thing in context. A lot of this review hinges on the line “I was very much trying to get into the heads of both MCs and give the reader the back-and-forth between them.”
In our view you failed at this, and the topics we’ve discussed expand on that. That being said, there’s definitely an audience for this story exactly the way you’ve written it, as a cheeky, silly, sex-at-the-office romp that isn’t taking itself seriously. Wish fulfillment where an older man is seduced by a younger woman for no apparent reason definitely has appreciative readers, as a large portion of Lit readers are that guy. There’s plenty of authors around here doing the same thing.
link
In other reviews you might find sprinkled around this thread, you’ll see that we usually take a kid-gloves approach to an author’s first story. We like to be supportive. We like the process of writing, and we like the idea of it as a hobby, and we try to encourage. Everyone should be so lucky as to have a good, healthy creative outlet.
In those reviews, those “It’s your first story!” reviews, we usually spend more time talking about how it’s really up to you to choose what you want to get out of writing. Feel free to go track one of those reviews down, because it applies here. What we can teach you tends more toward “How to be a strong writer” and not necessarily “How to win Literotica”.
That being said, given the way you worded your request (and the follow up comment) I think we can go a little deeper without hitting too hard, so here goes.
We’re gonna talk about restraint. You don’t have any.
Nearly every author on this site does the same thing with their first story; they throw the kitchen sink at it. I know I did. My first story (15 parts) is me throwing every single sexy, stupid idea at a premise that did not warrant it. I went bonkers. We all go through this, and it’s one of the biggest areas of improvement for you.
You said you wanted to give us both characters’ perspectives, both characters’ headspaces, and on the one hand this story does not warrant that because these two are not full-fledged characters. These are sex dolls. I’m sure that in your head, there’s backstory and exes and oh, the professor has chemistry with some of the other teachers, and every afternoon when they get coffee together there’s a little spark, and what are they gonna say when they find out, but…
None of that is on the page. On the page, these are two characters who, at their first face-to-face meeting, were fucking within five minutes. And then did nothing else for the entire length of the story. This is porn behavior and not human behavior, just sex stuff for 4 Lit pages. There’s no headspace to get into, because realistically these are just life support systems for two full sets of compatible, highly motivated sex organs.
To be clear, that’s fine. That’s half the stories on Lit. There is an audience for that. If that’s what you want to write, then you can write that and be successful, but you have failed at the thing you said you were trying to do on a technicality.
On the other hand, you did technically give us two perspectives, but it did not help. It’s too much too quickly. The human brain does not have a media mode it can enable when consuming any kind of content. We process media in front of us as if it is happening to us. First person footage of a rollercoaster can make your stomach drop. Footage of a bear attack makes the heart race. If you show men video footage of a man being kicked in the balls, male viewers will cringe and curl a protective hand over their groin. The viewer is not in danger of being kicked, but we can’t help ourselves. We’re not wired for fiction or fantasy.
We also can’t be two people. It doesn’t help to know what everyone is thinking all the time. Humans would go insane with omniscience. We can barely manage our own thoughts. POV switches at scene breaks are fairly common, but I can’t think of a story that hops heads multiple times within a scene, within a few paragraphs even, that pulls it off successfully. In other words, if there’s a way to do this correctly I haven’t found it.
That being said, not being wired for fiction or fantasy means that people can engage with media as if it was real. That’s incredibly powerful, if you know how to use it.
Now, a number of readers will look at this moment and identify, correctly, that this woman is a sex worker, but the story hasn’t told you that and John clearly has no idea. John is hammered, lonely, and sad, and he is much less observant than the reader. So now, from here, we can all probably guess where this is going to, but how many of us are holding out hope that she doesn’t charge him. That she takes a shine to him, and maybe just gives him a freebie. Does she even tell him that’s her job? A significant portion of sex workers have a high libido to start with.
Now, we want her to have a heart of gold. Now, we’re rooting for John. We feel for John, but that works because we’ve revealed less, not more. Readers like to be involved in putting the pieces together, and that means giving clues without the solution. Never the whole puzzle.
Learning how to string readers along with hints is an art form unto itself. Have the woman in red be coy about how many lovers she’s had (two or three) when the actual question was how many people she’s had sex with (less than a hundred?), and neither of those numbers are anywhere near the number of handjobs or blowjobs she’s given (numbers don’t go that high). There’s a huge difference between what is said and what is heard, and you have the ability to play with that if you avoid telling everyone everything immediately. Restraint.
In the face of what you can do with a 3rd person limited perspective, 3rd person omniscient is unsophisticated and blunt. Crude. It’s certainly possible to tell a 3rd person omniscient story well, but that still relies on restraint and you can’t learn restraint in an omniscient perspective. You have to learn it by writing limited perspectives.
Start with the fundamentals.
On the other other hand, you said you wanted to give us both perspectives, and on a textual level I think this story only understands one of them. The Professor is into the student for obvious reasons: she’s young and hot. What’s not clear is why the student is into the professor. In theory, there’s two immediate reasons I could imagine. 1) He is her teacher, and it’s a taboo thing. This is ruled out because the first thing the professor does is kick her out of his class. What would be the point then? 2) She wants someone older with a steady hand, someone who takes his time and knows what he wants. This is ruled out because this professor is horny as hell and can go all night, orgasm after orgasm, like a 20 year old captain of the Varsity Football team. The story is more interested in showing that he still has it, he’s still a stud, than it is in exploring what maturity might have given him. Displaying any kind of wisdom.
In that sense, it’s really giving us the same POV twice. This professor is a literal fucking machine. Men want to be him and women want to be with him. That’s fine, if that’s what you want to write, but it’s definitely not “I want to show both perspectives.”
We sometimes get requests for reviews where an author will say “Read anything of mine please”, and we don’t usually do that. We want the author to pick the story and say why, and part of the reason is because it’s not easy to judge the success of a story blind because we can’t know what you were going for. We need that piece of info to be able to put the whole thing in context. A lot of this review hinges on the line “I was very much trying to get into the heads of both MCs and give the reader the back-and-forth between them.”
In our view you failed at this, and the topics we’ve discussed expand on that. That being said, there’s definitely an audience for this story exactly the way you’ve written it, as a cheeky, silly, sex-at-the-office romp that isn’t taking itself seriously. Wish fulfillment where an older man is seduced by a younger woman for no apparent reason definitely has appreciative readers, as a large portion of Lit readers are that guy. There’s plenty of authors around here doing the same thing.
I really appreciate the salient and thoughtful feedback. I've been reading more widely across Literotica across the last few weeks and it has become more clear to me about the different broad approaches folks take to their stories.
Some of its word porn. Some of its literature that happens to be erotic. Lots of it is somewhere in between. As you note, there's clearly audiences for the whole gamut. I thought about writing more the latter, but wound up writing primarily the former.
3PO was definitely a miss here.
I also really like that you make the note "none of that is on the page". Classic blunder, on my part. Manuscript =/= story, but if it's not on the page, how does the reader know, eh?
I think I'm gonna experiment a little across the spectrum. See where I land. See what makes me happiest to write. Stay tuned; I'll be back.
-Cally420
Some of its word porn. Some of its literature that happens to be erotic. Lots of it is somewhere in between. As you note, there's clearly audiences for the whole gamut. I thought about writing more the latter, but wound up writing primarily the former.
3PO was definitely a miss here.
I also really like that you make the note "none of that is on the page". Classic blunder, on my part. Manuscript =/= story, but if it's not on the page, how does the reader know, eh?
I think I'm gonna experiment a little across the spectrum. See where I land. See what makes me happiest to write. Stay tuned; I'll be back.
-Cally420
Omenainen
Finnishing
- Joined
- May 5, 2020
- Posts
- 1,613
That’s a very good attitude!
One of my early experiments was to write the same story form both of their POVs, but I did it as separate stories. It’s a good experiment in a way that occasionally I see stories that are so completely from (usually the man’s) one perspective that they stop making sense from the other one. If you can’t reverse the scene and tell it from the other person so that every line of dialogue etc makes sense, then something is awry. I kind of like mine since I think they both make sense, and they tell a different story, ie. they both have their separate character arcs and motivations and so forth.
These are the stories:
Groupie (her)
Groupie (him)
Not that they’re the best example of anything, definitely not on spelling (angle/ankle) and that is probably my best reminder of being more dutiful when self editing
(I’m not English native so sometimes I just trip up, and I’ve not posted edits to remind myself to do better in the future.)They’re also an interesting example is that it’s the same frigging story, but her POV has 36k views and his had 13k. Hers spent some time on First Time top lists and that makes a difference.
SugarStorm
Sapphic Storysmith
- Joined
- Jan 13, 2025
- Posts
- 14
Hi 
Would either of you (@AwkwardMD or @Omenainen) be willing to review Better With You (link)? It's 27k words, lesbian slow-burn romance with a bit of a push-and-pull. I aimed for witty banter, emotional intimacy and vulnerability while creating "real" characters.
It was my first foray into creative writing in English, written years ago but published this year on a whim. When I review it on my own and compare it to the stories I’m writing today, I can see that my style is changing (evolving?), at least from a technical perspective (syntax, grammar, overall clarity), yet Better With You remains my personal crown jewel.
I want to improve. Please help me by sharing what went well and what could have been done better.
Would either of you (@AwkwardMD or @Omenainen) be willing to review Better With You (link)? It's 27k words, lesbian slow-burn romance with a bit of a push-and-pull. I aimed for witty banter, emotional intimacy and vulnerability while creating "real" characters.
It was my first foray into creative writing in English, written years ago but published this year on a whim. When I review it on my own and compare it to the stories I’m writing today, I can see that my style is changing (evolving?), at least from a technical perspective (syntax, grammar, overall clarity), yet Better With You remains my personal crown jewel.
I want to improve. Please help me by sharing what went well and what could have been done better.
Thanks.
The more I read here, the more it becomes clear how heterogenous many of the categories are and how there's sort of camps or cliques of preference in style, content, approach, etc.
Interesting approach. I get what you're doing and I might try something like this in future - it's a cool challenge.
I'm not offering a literary analysis here, but a first (quick) read of both stories left me with the sense of a more complete and satisfying narrative from her POV. Maybe it's just that it's more clearly transformative for her? I guess there wouldn't be a "first time" category on here if folks weren't pumped for that particular aspect.
Hi @AwkwardMD and @Omenainen , would you be willing to review "Secret Menu"? https://www.literotica.com/s/secret-menu-3
It's a gay romance and one of my earlier works. My goal here was to craft a story with realistic and hard-hitting emotional impact. Making the sex at the end feel earned. I thought it was pretty good, but it kind of flopped on Literotica, and I'm struggling to identify where I might have lost readers / what I could have done better.
It's a gay romance and one of my earlier works. My goal here was to craft a story with realistic and hard-hitting emotional impact. Making the sex at the end feel earned. I thought it was pretty good, but it kind of flopped on Literotica, and I'm struggling to identify where I might have lost readers / what I could have done better.
Omenainen
Finnishing
- Joined
- May 5, 2020
- Posts
- 1,613
@SugarStorm
Better With You
First, I want to clarify that me and AMD always do these reviews together, so even when it’s posted as “from me” it’s still “from us.” It feels too pompous to write “in our opinion,” so we write these like we do, but all stories are read and discussed by both of us to produce these reviews.
You say this was your “first foray into creative writing in English”, and if that implies you’re not native, then kudos to you! I understand the struggle like few others can (though, to be fair, there’s surprisingly many non-native smut authors on this site, and many of them are surprisingly fluent.) Language-wise I have zero complaints. Well done.
The dialogue, especially, was excellent. It flowed well and sounded organic. You let them have whole conversations and gave them space to breathe. Your choice of descriptive, lingering prose fits the story. Every time I was like “wait, if this comment would be said by a male boss to a female assistant this would be awful” you checked the thing and made it a topic of their discussion a few sentences later, so points for that.
You didn’t clarify what you mean by saying this story is your “personal crown jewel.” The one you like the most? The most viewed / highest rated / what else? (Browsing your story list I see you’ve posted a story in Pink Orchid - I will read it as soon as I can! I’ve had other commitments getting in the way of plucking my pink orchids this year, and I apologize!) If you’re referring to the view count being high, I’ll tell you that if you’d added the tag “first time” it would be even higher… as you’ve noticed, lesbian readers loooove slow, sappy, romantic stories, but they also loooove first time / first time lesbian / friends to lovers, so include those tags whenever you can. Also always use all ten tags, that is the way for readers to find your stories later.
As for what could have been better, I have a few ideas.
I read the comments and noticed you said this was originally a longer piece, and you truncated it somewhat for publishing on Lit. I think that resulted in some loss of the depth of characterization. It is difficult to self-edit long works and keep track of what is edited out and what remains on the page (spoken with a somber voice of experience).
For me, the way the story opened, combined with the use of perspective that was kind of vaguely outside of both of them but still occasionally covering both their thoughts, and how their names were close-ish to one another, the characters didn’t really come to life as separate people. They felt same-ish. The push-and-pull of their banter added to them feeling similar. I read page after page going, which one was the blonde again, oh is this the rich one now? I didn’t really relate to their intimate moments or the depth of their struggles, because I didn’t identify with either of them. There just wasn’t enough to latch onto and the lack of contrast added to it.
I think the story would have been stronger if you had opened with one of them, doing something that would let readers know that character, before introducing the other. For example, you could have had Evelyn discuss her work with her friends, or Emily out with her brother. If you want to have a story from both perspectives, it might be more effective to still write in close third person, alternating the point of view between scenes.
I think my most pertinent advice is that you do have the dialogue nailed down, so now you should focus on the externals. Where are they in space, what position they are in, who sees what, what makes sense in that context. For example, if you have them lying in bed, and someone is, say, stroking another’s back, they don’t actually have a “free hand” to do much else with. Or if they’re spooning, describing either one’s facial expression is a bit jarring, because who is that for? They don’t see each other’s expressions.
Also, pay attention to emotional continuity. You draw on deep emotions, but then they are at times discarded quite lightly. You have an affinity to one being weak and one being strong, the whole comforting thing (and trust me, I get the appeal!) so you fluctuate between which is which, but some feelings should be more… grave. Emily is distraught enough by her mother’s death to go on drinking bender, but then switches pretty easily to bantering with Eve, and then yet further to being the one taking care of Eve. As separate scenes, yes, but thinking about Emily and her grieving process? …maybe, if you’d justify it better. “Seeing Eve so distraught pulled her out of her own grief,” or “the guilt she felt over being relieved the witch was dead dissolved when she tuned in to how upset Eve was,” or something.
This feedback is maybe on a bit of an abstract level. If you’d like to ask something, please do. We have the story fresh in mind and can elaborate if something is unclear.
For what it’s worth, whether you find it to be harsh or encouraging, I don’t think this story is a crown jewel. Given a couple years, this won’t even be in your top 3. You have better in you. Better justified conflict, better chemistry, better romance. Be proud of this, because it's a rung on the ladder going up, but it's not the ceiling for you.
Welcome to Lit and the best of luck to your future stories!
Better With You
First, I want to clarify that me and AMD always do these reviews together, so even when it’s posted as “from me” it’s still “from us.” It feels too pompous to write “in our opinion,” so we write these like we do, but all stories are read and discussed by both of us to produce these reviews.
You say this was your “first foray into creative writing in English”, and if that implies you’re not native, then kudos to you! I understand the struggle like few others can (though, to be fair, there’s surprisingly many non-native smut authors on this site, and many of them are surprisingly fluent.) Language-wise I have zero complaints. Well done.
The dialogue, especially, was excellent. It flowed well and sounded organic. You let them have whole conversations and gave them space to breathe. Your choice of descriptive, lingering prose fits the story. Every time I was like “wait, if this comment would be said by a male boss to a female assistant this would be awful” you checked the thing and made it a topic of their discussion a few sentences later, so points for that.
You didn’t clarify what you mean by saying this story is your “personal crown jewel.” The one you like the most? The most viewed / highest rated / what else? (Browsing your story list I see you’ve posted a story in Pink Orchid - I will read it as soon as I can! I’ve had other commitments getting in the way of plucking my pink orchids this year, and I apologize!) If you’re referring to the view count being high, I’ll tell you that if you’d added the tag “first time” it would be even higher… as you’ve noticed, lesbian readers loooove slow, sappy, romantic stories, but they also loooove first time / first time lesbian / friends to lovers, so include those tags whenever you can. Also always use all ten tags, that is the way for readers to find your stories later.
As for what could have been better, I have a few ideas.
I read the comments and noticed you said this was originally a longer piece, and you truncated it somewhat for publishing on Lit. I think that resulted in some loss of the depth of characterization. It is difficult to self-edit long works and keep track of what is edited out and what remains on the page (spoken with a somber voice of experience).
For me, the way the story opened, combined with the use of perspective that was kind of vaguely outside of both of them but still occasionally covering both their thoughts, and how their names were close-ish to one another, the characters didn’t really come to life as separate people. They felt same-ish. The push-and-pull of their banter added to them feeling similar. I read page after page going, which one was the blonde again, oh is this the rich one now? I didn’t really relate to their intimate moments or the depth of their struggles, because I didn’t identify with either of them. There just wasn’t enough to latch onto and the lack of contrast added to it.
I think the story would have been stronger if you had opened with one of them, doing something that would let readers know that character, before introducing the other. For example, you could have had Evelyn discuss her work with her friends, or Emily out with her brother. If you want to have a story from both perspectives, it might be more effective to still write in close third person, alternating the point of view between scenes.
I think my most pertinent advice is that you do have the dialogue nailed down, so now you should focus on the externals. Where are they in space, what position they are in, who sees what, what makes sense in that context. For example, if you have them lying in bed, and someone is, say, stroking another’s back, they don’t actually have a “free hand” to do much else with. Or if they’re spooning, describing either one’s facial expression is a bit jarring, because who is that for? They don’t see each other’s expressions.
Also, pay attention to emotional continuity. You draw on deep emotions, but then they are at times discarded quite lightly. You have an affinity to one being weak and one being strong, the whole comforting thing (and trust me, I get the appeal!) so you fluctuate between which is which, but some feelings should be more… grave. Emily is distraught enough by her mother’s death to go on drinking bender, but then switches pretty easily to bantering with Eve, and then yet further to being the one taking care of Eve. As separate scenes, yes, but thinking about Emily and her grieving process? …maybe, if you’d justify it better. “Seeing Eve so distraught pulled her out of her own grief,” or “the guilt she felt over being relieved the witch was dead dissolved when she tuned in to how upset Eve was,” or something.
This feedback is maybe on a bit of an abstract level. If you’d like to ask something, please do. We have the story fresh in mind and can elaborate if something is unclear.
For what it’s worth, whether you find it to be harsh or encouraging, I don’t think this story is a crown jewel. Given a couple years, this won’t even be in your top 3. You have better in you. Better justified conflict, better chemistry, better romance. Be proud of this, because it's a rung on the ladder going up, but it's not the ceiling for you.
Welcome to Lit and the best of luck to your future stories!
SugarStorm
Sapphic Storysmith
- Joined
- Jan 13, 2025
- Posts
- 14
Thank you for taking the time to read, reflect and write. For someone who still second-guesses their writing more often than not, your words genuinely mean a lot. And just for the record: I don’t think your feedback is abstract in the slightest. It all made perfect sense to me. Some of your points I’ve even tried to tackle in my newer stories Chasing You, Finding Me and Hellos, Goodbyes & Fireflies. Makes me happy that I seem to be on the right track. (Whether or not I'm successful is a different thing!)
The personal crown jewel comment: this isn’t about ratings, views, comments, or favorites. This one’s about heart. It was my first story… And this kind of writing with witty/fun banter, tension and emotional intimacy is where I feel most at home. Emily and Eve will always mean something special to me. Even if I didn’t quite get them onto the page in a way that was, well, good enough, I know them inside and out. Perhaps "crown jewel" was the wrong phrase. It's not my best work, but I see it as my most important one.
Of the three proper stories I’ve submitted, Hellos, Goodbyes & Fireflies is the one I’m proudest of. It’s the most “me” I’ve ever put into something, shaped by everything I’ve learned along the way.
Once I’ve grown a thicker skin, I’ll return to the two of you and see what you think of it, and whether you believe it’s a step forward or not.
I do have one question:
Anyway, know that your thoughts have stuck with me. Cheers!
The personal crown jewel comment: this isn’t about ratings, views, comments, or favorites. This one’s about heart. It was my first story… And this kind of writing with witty/fun banter, tension and emotional intimacy is where I feel most at home. Emily and Eve will always mean something special to me. Even if I didn’t quite get them onto the page in a way that was, well, good enough, I know them inside and out. Perhaps "crown jewel" was the wrong phrase. It's not my best work, but I see it as my most important one.
Of the three proper stories I’ve submitted, Hellos, Goodbyes & Fireflies is the one I’m proudest of. It’s the most “me” I’ve ever put into something, shaped by everything I’ve learned along the way.
Once I’ve grown a thicker skin, I’ll return to the two of you and see what you think of it, and whether you believe it’s a step forward or not.
I do have one question:
I write in third person omniscient (or at least that’s the intention). Facial expressions, inner thoughts, gestures, and the like are meant for you, the reader, unless they’re directly part of the interaction... Like a shrug or a glance during dialogue. Could you please elaborate on why that came across as jarring to you? Where did I mess-up?
Anyway, know that your thoughts have stuck with me. Cheers!
Omenainen
Finnishing
- Joined
- May 5, 2020
- Posts
- 1,613
I'm glad you found the review useful! Bear in mind that we're essentially two strangers on the internet, so it's not like we have definitive answers to the Life, Universe and Everything. (Well, for that we actually do, but you know what I mean.) So take what works for you and leave what doesn't.
The thing is, I did get a feeling of emotions I think the story invokes in you. I have once written something similar (not posted on Lit). I get the same vibes from your story than I do from reading that old story of mine now. It's like, I can remember the feelings those words ignited in me at the time, but now that I look at the text, it's... not as impactful. It's difficult to explain. I do believe it is within your grasp to learn how to invoke a certain emotion in the reader, and once you get there, you'll be dynamite. Heck, it already works for some people, you've had many many comments to testify that, so maybe I am just an exceptionally picky reader. Please don't think "not good enough." More like, I see the shimmer of what you had in your mind, and it's like... you weren't all the way there, and if you would have been, oh boy what a story it could have been.
I have gotten better since writing mine, but sadly some of the "heart's blood" quality has lessened for me so that while my writing is better and in some way more effective, it is less personally impactful. And some of that personal intensity does come through to the story, it did in mine, it did in yours. I guess the trick would be to find a way to channel that, and control that, and damned if I know how. I'm a pantser and for me writing is a little like bleeding, the bigger the vein the more furious the flow, but damned if I know how to portion it
You're welcome to, we have no hard limits on how many reviews one person can request. I think you could also easily find people to exchange beta reading favors with, which might be beneficial. I know I've really liked the community I've cultivated.
It might be more a reader error in that I keep trying to read it in close third person instead of omniscient. Choose the narration style you want, but I would encourage you to experiment writing in close third person, either the whole thing from one person's perspective or then alternating. My feeling is that writing sex from omniscient makes it too removed to be really invested in it. It's not a rule, and my preferences aren't necessarily universal, but it costs you nothing to try it out. Many people even swear in the name of writing erotica in the first person, because "it feels more immediate" and "it makes it more relatable," but personally I'm not a fan of first person.
Edited to add: I realize I still didn't explain why it is jarring for me
It makes me aware there's this narrator that is separate from the characters, and that now I as the reader am being addressed, which brings me out of the story and out of the characters and makes me feel like I'm watching a play rather than being there with them. Like the narrator is a puppeteer that's explaining to me that see, now this one makes this gesture, and this one doesn't notice it. It breaks my immersion. There's some types of stories that narration style fits, there's some situations perfect for every writing tool, but I didn't like this choice for this story.
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StillStunned
Scruffy word herder
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2023
- Posts
- 8,507
If you don't mind me jumping in here with my thoughts:
I feel that 3P omniscient works best for stories that are about events rather than people. A complicated adventure where the different things are happening to different people, for instance. Or an epic tale about a war. Or even something smaller, like a community that's turned upside down over the course of a single weekend when a stranger comes to town.
With these kinds of stories, you want to keep the narrative moving forward. 1P or close 3P is likely to slow things down as the characters explore their thoughts and emotions. An omniscient narrator can describe a character's feelings and quickly move on.
SugarStorm
Sapphic Storysmith
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- 14
Hmm... okay. Thank you. 
AwkwardMD
Belzebutts
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- Apr 13, 2014
- Posts
- 2,227
@Zeronix
Link
This was a delight to read. Beautiful prose. Wonderfully written. Real joy went into making this, and it comes through in the final product.
This comes up in a lot of feedback we give, but it’s always worth reiterating; there is not-inconsiderable divergence between a well-written story and a story that succeeds on Literotica. These are not the same thing, and we’re not able to give you the keys to the latter. The audience in each category is different, the audience in each category is not homogenous, and the audience that logs in to read each category one day is not always the same audience that will log in to read it the next day. Success on Literotica is a moving target that is (largely) impossible to predict. Our advice is always to refine your own style, to find your own voice, to write for your own goals, and over repeated postings you will begin to attract your own audience. The same names will start to show up in all your comments sections story after story.
This is a gradual process, more of an art than a science, and we can’t do it for you. No one else can. Every new author on Lit spends some time peeking over the fence, trying to figure out what everyone else’s idea of success is, and what all of us realize eventually is that we define our own success individually.
There will always be a new story that comes out, that’s half as good as the thing you just wrote. There will always be a new author who seemingly can’t keep the names of their secondary characters straight, and whose story rockets right up to the top of the score lists while yours treads water. Your choices are to either drive yourself insane dissecting inferior work that resonates for incomprehensible reasons OR to get comfortable ignoring what others are doing (to a certain extent) and focusing on your own art.
***
Where this thread comes in is in helping you execute your vision. General writing tips that lead to strong fundamentals, an appreciation of the craft, and some community. This response will be somewhere around 1,363 of this thread, and the first 1,362 were from other authors just like yourself. Trying to learn, trying to grow. Trying to make the next one even better.
This story was beautiful, floaty, dream-like. The prose flows like a poem. However, it could have been better, and more impactful.
The whole story feels like a montage. It doesn’t stay with any of its scenes long enough for them to really get going. It felt like a literary equivalent of skipping a stone over the surface of a pond. Scenes take time to unfold. Setting up tension takes time. You are, instead, implying tension through the passage of time, but that has the reader doing a lot of the legwork for you, imagining what these dates are like. By the time we’re halfway through the story, the reader has done more work inventing what kind of chemistry these two have on any given night than you have.
Creating real chemistry is hard to do. I understand why you’d want to skip it. It’s difficult to write two characters sitting down and having a 10 minute conversation. It’s much easier to have them sit down, and narrate “They talked for 10 minutes, laughing the whole time,” but that’s lame. That is the coward’s way out.
God hates a coward.
You need to understand what makes a pairing work at a deeper level than “This is the hot one” and “This is a nice one.” These are skin deep descriptions. Lacking in depth.
I think you could have had a third of the number of scenes you have here, in the finished product, if you compressed some of the ideas in them and let these two characters exist in a room together for a little while where the reader could see. If the finished product has fifteen scenes, I think you could have gotten there in five with some tighter planning.
Per your request, yes, I do think that you created a work that is realistic and hard hitting. Kudos on that. However, I don’t feel like the sex at the end was earned in the same way that I think you intended it. It was good, and I’m here for it, but the story implied that these two have had a lot of sex beforehand. You can’t exactly earn something by the end if you were also getting it the whole time on the side, just off screen. It would be like if the only thing keeping Indiana Jones alive throughout The Last Crusade was him taking frequent sips from a Holy Grail he kept stuffed in his back pocket the whole time.
Personally I would have enjoyed a 300% increase in the sex, but that’s me and I am not the intended reader of your work.
I was worried, as the story went on, that it was going to turn into a “Saving the sex worker” plot, and it kinda didn’t… because Reed (conveniently) didn’t need a job after getting back together with Eli. All he had to do was chop vegetables. Sign me up for that job.
Sex work is real work, and this part of the story kinda falls apart once the plot gets going. If Reed is still working, then he’s clearly having a lot of other sex with other partners that he isn’t telling Eli about, but then later Eli isn’t mad that he was at risk of getting STDs. The story doesn’t engage with the reality. The complexity. That is a ripe conversation for these two to have, but instead Eli is just mad about being lied to and tells Reed to go.
Again. Surface level. Lacking in depth.
I wrote a story called Work in Progress that treads a lot of these same waters, and one of the things I explored was the idea that the sex worker actively tries to keep things very superficial, very surface level, as a professional reflex. She gives answers to questions that don’t really say anything (How was your day / Oh, you know), because she has to be careful how she talks about her job and how she spends her time. Then I had the love interest realize that’s what she was doing, and it became a deeper conversation. She was surprised to be called out because no one else notices, because most of her conversations are with clients who are happy to just get the surface level and move on. The fact that the love interested wanted more, and was interested in her answers, knocked my main character off her center. She’d been looking for an opportunity to talk about her real job, because she wasn’t going to have sex with him until she did, and this was the opening she’d been looking for.
I’ve certainly come across more egregious portrayals of sex work in the reviews we’ve given here. I’ve seen worse, but I definitely wanted more.
***
It’s a cliche to respond to new authors with “Grow thicker skin”, but it’s also not un-true. A big part of repeat postings on Lit is learning to ignore the ups and downs of reader responses and focus on your own creative process/your inspiration/your muse. Whatever it is that motivates you to create, focus on that and not on the incomprehensible metrics Lit gives you.
Godspeed, you magnificent bastard.
Link
This was a delight to read. Beautiful prose. Wonderfully written. Real joy went into making this, and it comes through in the final product.
This comes up in a lot of feedback we give, but it’s always worth reiterating; there is not-inconsiderable divergence between a well-written story and a story that succeeds on Literotica. These are not the same thing, and we’re not able to give you the keys to the latter. The audience in each category is different, the audience in each category is not homogenous, and the audience that logs in to read each category one day is not always the same audience that will log in to read it the next day. Success on Literotica is a moving target that is (largely) impossible to predict. Our advice is always to refine your own style, to find your own voice, to write for your own goals, and over repeated postings you will begin to attract your own audience. The same names will start to show up in all your comments sections story after story.
This is a gradual process, more of an art than a science, and we can’t do it for you. No one else can. Every new author on Lit spends some time peeking over the fence, trying to figure out what everyone else’s idea of success is, and what all of us realize eventually is that we define our own success individually.
There will always be a new story that comes out, that’s half as good as the thing you just wrote. There will always be a new author who seemingly can’t keep the names of their secondary characters straight, and whose story rockets right up to the top of the score lists while yours treads water. Your choices are to either drive yourself insane dissecting inferior work that resonates for incomprehensible reasons OR to get comfortable ignoring what others are doing (to a certain extent) and focusing on your own art.
***
Where this thread comes in is in helping you execute your vision. General writing tips that lead to strong fundamentals, an appreciation of the craft, and some community. This response will be somewhere around 1,363 of this thread, and the first 1,362 were from other authors just like yourself. Trying to learn, trying to grow. Trying to make the next one even better.
This story was beautiful, floaty, dream-like. The prose flows like a poem. However, it could have been better, and more impactful.
The whole story feels like a montage. It doesn’t stay with any of its scenes long enough for them to really get going. It felt like a literary equivalent of skipping a stone over the surface of a pond. Scenes take time to unfold. Setting up tension takes time. You are, instead, implying tension through the passage of time, but that has the reader doing a lot of the legwork for you, imagining what these dates are like. By the time we’re halfway through the story, the reader has done more work inventing what kind of chemistry these two have on any given night than you have.
Creating real chemistry is hard to do. I understand why you’d want to skip it. It’s difficult to write two characters sitting down and having a 10 minute conversation. It’s much easier to have them sit down, and narrate “They talked for 10 minutes, laughing the whole time,” but that’s lame. That is the coward’s way out.
God hates a coward.
You need to understand what makes a pairing work at a deeper level than “This is the hot one” and “This is a nice one.” These are skin deep descriptions. Lacking in depth.
I think you could have had a third of the number of scenes you have here, in the finished product, if you compressed some of the ideas in them and let these two characters exist in a room together for a little while where the reader could see. If the finished product has fifteen scenes, I think you could have gotten there in five with some tighter planning.
Per your request, yes, I do think that you created a work that is realistic and hard hitting. Kudos on that. However, I don’t feel like the sex at the end was earned in the same way that I think you intended it. It was good, and I’m here for it, but the story implied that these two have had a lot of sex beforehand. You can’t exactly earn something by the end if you were also getting it the whole time on the side, just off screen. It would be like if the only thing keeping Indiana Jones alive throughout The Last Crusade was him taking frequent sips from a Holy Grail he kept stuffed in his back pocket the whole time.
Personally I would have enjoyed a 300% increase in the sex, but that’s me and I am not the intended reader of your work.
I was worried, as the story went on, that it was going to turn into a “Saving the sex worker” plot, and it kinda didn’t… because Reed (conveniently) didn’t need a job after getting back together with Eli. All he had to do was chop vegetables. Sign me up for that job.
Sex work is real work, and this part of the story kinda falls apart once the plot gets going. If Reed is still working, then he’s clearly having a lot of other sex with other partners that he isn’t telling Eli about, but then later Eli isn’t mad that he was at risk of getting STDs. The story doesn’t engage with the reality. The complexity. That is a ripe conversation for these two to have, but instead Eli is just mad about being lied to and tells Reed to go.
Again. Surface level. Lacking in depth.
I wrote a story called Work in Progress that treads a lot of these same waters, and one of the things I explored was the idea that the sex worker actively tries to keep things very superficial, very surface level, as a professional reflex. She gives answers to questions that don’t really say anything (How was your day / Oh, you know), because she has to be careful how she talks about her job and how she spends her time. Then I had the love interest realize that’s what she was doing, and it became a deeper conversation. She was surprised to be called out because no one else notices, because most of her conversations are with clients who are happy to just get the surface level and move on. The fact that the love interested wanted more, and was interested in her answers, knocked my main character off her center. She’d been looking for an opportunity to talk about her real job, because she wasn’t going to have sex with him until she did, and this was the opening she’d been looking for.
I’ve certainly come across more egregious portrayals of sex work in the reviews we’ve given here. I’ve seen worse, but I definitely wanted more.
***
It’s a cliche to respond to new authors with “Grow thicker skin”, but it’s also not un-true. A big part of repeat postings on Lit is learning to ignore the ups and downs of reader responses and focus on your own creative process/your inspiration/your muse. Whatever it is that motivates you to create, focus on that and not on the incomprehensible metrics Lit gives you.
Godspeed, you magnificent bastard.
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AwkwardMD
Belzebutts
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2014
- Posts
- 2,227
We love other people's thoughts.
Omenainen
Finnishing
- Joined
- May 5, 2020
- Posts
- 1,613
Thank you for the wonderful review! I'm glad you enjoyed it so much.
Re: character chemistry lacking substance. I think this is bang on, and looking back on it I realize I never really let them have a complete conversation. I do think I learned this lesson in later works, but it doesn't really show here. My characters here feel like 'ideas' or 'dreams' of characters rather than fully fleshed out people.
Re: not enough sex. Yeah I think I agree with this too, and for me I think writing the sex should feel 'fun' and natural. If it doesn't, then the characters probably didn't have chemistry haha. Which goes back to the previous point.
Re: implications of sex work. You're totally right I didn't really think through the implications of this in a super detailed way, thanks for pointing it out!
Re: fewer scenes; Yeah I think I'm still generally confused about how to do 'slow burn' / 'spiralling' stories. IMO those usually have lots of scenes, but maybe your point was that a lot of the scenes felt repetitive / insubstantial, which is totally fair. I think in more recent work I tried to plan out my scenes better according to the 'beats' I wanted to show, and this may have given them more substance.
And finally, thanks for the wonderful advice re: following my muse. I do think I've updated towards doing this just because I enjoy writing more when I create things I'd want to read. I do still dream of hitting it "big" someday, like writing a story that gets 100+ likes, but I guess that will come in time ^_^ I'll keep writing and improving.
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If it’s allowed to post consecutively, can I request another review?
https://www.literotica.com/s/the-way-she-held-me
Another oldie of mine. Here I wanted to write a nostalgic, loving romance, where the narrator enjoyed it and parted with no regrets, having grown from the experience. I also wanted to capture that old-timey vibe of early 2000s sitcoms or romcoms. Looking back on it I definitely spot problems, but I’m curious if you’ll come up with the same ones!
https://www.literotica.com/s/the-way-she-held-me
Another oldie of mine. Here I wanted to write a nostalgic, loving romance, where the narrator enjoyed it and parted with no regrets, having grown from the experience. I also wanted to capture that old-timey vibe of early 2000s sitcoms or romcoms. Looking back on it I definitely spot problems, but I’m curious if you’ll come up with the same ones!
AlinaX
Asymmetric Snowflake
- Joined
- Feb 1, 2014
- Posts
- 4,934
It's written well, but also rather annoying with short, distracted paragraphs, and... how the hell do you get through six whole chapters in one Lit page?
This is very valid! Thanks for reading.
Yeah I realized after my first few stories that the choppy paragraphs were annoying to read, and stopped using them.
The chapter counts I also concede are weird; in this story they roughly correspond to scenes. I originally thought it’d be useful to leave fairly granular ‘checkpoints’ so people could leave specific feedback (“I didn’t like chapter 3” etc) but I realized afterwards people don’t really do this, haha.
AlinaX
Asymmetric Snowflake
- Joined
- Feb 1, 2014
- Posts
- 4,934
I sometimes have titles (or character names if there's a POV switch) in bold as scene separators, especially in longer stories.
AwkwardMD
Belzebutts
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2014
- Posts
- 2,227
You can, in theory, request more than one or back to back, but are you sure this is the one you want?
The point of this thread is not to provide a mouthpiece for our opinions on things. Lord knows we can sound off on whatever we want whenever we want; we don't need more opportunities for that. The point is to be helpful, and you pointing us at a bunch of works gathering dust in your catalog, that you already have an understanding of the flaws of, does not sound like it would help anyone all that much. We understand how rare it can be to get someone to really take a look at your work and take it seriously. That’s part of the reason why I started doing these in the first place.
We will, if you want us to, take a look at this story, but we usually suggest that you’d get more bang for your buck by having us take a look at something more recent and indicative of where you currently are in your authorial journey.
Okay it’s published! Interested in getting feedback on this one (warning, 24k words, gay male)
https://www.literotica.com/s/onlyfans-olympian
I consider this my highest effort work to date. I got really into writing it - basically did the first draft over 12h of mania - and I’m pretty proud of the result. I want to know how I handled the characters, the realism, the romance, the sex!
Edit; don’t be afraid to give some brutal criticism
https://www.literotica.com/s/onlyfans-olympian
I consider this my highest effort work to date. I got really into writing it - basically did the first draft over 12h of mania - and I’m pretty proud of the result. I want to know how I handled the characters, the realism, the romance, the sex!
Edit; don’t be afraid to give some brutal criticism
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TheRedChamber
Apprentice
- Joined
- Mar 21, 2014
- Posts
- 2,362
I dunno, as Brits, apologies are kind of our thing. Sorry if that offends anyone.
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