yukonnights
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Nothing to add here, just wanted to say; I got more out of this than anything else that's been said on this subject — Thanks for taking the time to share it.
AwkwardMD and Omenainen Review Thread
- Thread starter AwkwardMD
- Start date
Nothing to add here, just wanted to say; I got more out of this than anything else that's been said on this subject — Thanks for taking the time to share it.
MetaBob
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Scott leaves notes for Megan because she asked him to "keep in touch" and then kissed him (on the cheek) that first morning on the trail together, thus signaling her affection for him rather unambiguously, despite the fact that she's already in a relationship. And, of course, he likes her, too.
As for Glyn, all Scott is to her is a good lay, that's absolutely true, and he's happy to accept (just he accepts similar offers from five "horny young honeys" over the next several weeks), because she's a good lay herself. Megan talks about this early in chapter 2:
Then Scott did:
All of this is absolutely in character for Scott, I maintain. Now, the fact that I failed to communicate this to at least two good writers who were reading it (or skimmed half a page, in one case) can certainly be chalked up as a writing failure on my part.
Most of the people I describe in this story are inspired by real people I met along (or near) that trail, by the way. Or, um ... in Orlando.
You kinda have to be into hiking to try a 2600+ mile walk in the first place, after all. And most of those hikers are young, fit, and not averse to casual sex with similarly minded people. It's how things are, hardly a character flaw.This sentence you quoted is actually not a quote, by the way: "I took two days to summit Mt. San Gorgonio and three days to fuck two horny young honeys senseless."
Here's the actual second half of that text:
Last edited:
8letters
Writing
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I'm sure you've heard the saying, "Show, Don't Tell". You didn't show us any of the affection developing between Scott and Megan. What I saw in your story was a few paragraphs about two people with similar interests being nice to each other as they packed up and said goodbye for probably forever.
The other thing you didn't show was what Scott thought about Megan. There was one line listing a bunch of good things about Megan, but it meant little because it seemed out of the blue. First person allows the reader to be in the main character's head, to see what he/she is thinking about. You didn't do that. Instead, you gave us a laundry list of things Scott did. You never told us what Scott thought about doing those things other than he really enjoyed having sex with lots of different women. And you never told us what Scott thought about Megan as he left messages for her. The absence of those thoughts implied to me that he didn't really care about Megan. Or Glyn. Or any other woman. That Scott was the type of guy who had no emotional connection with the women he had sex with. I didn't like Scott, and when I read the note from Megan my thoughts were that Scott was going to use her and then walk on to the next woman he could bed.
I'm guessing the story filled out Megan, Scott and Glyn's personalities and relationships later in the story. But I never got there. I felt like you didn't give me any reason to read that far.
As AMD said about other stories, you needed to slow down at the beginning of your story. Have an opening scene with lots of dialogue so we have a good idea of what Scott is like and what he finds attractive in Megan (and Megan finds attractive in Scott).
Just my two cents. I'm sure there are other people who liked your approach.
MetaBob
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Thanks, feedback based on what's actually written is much better, and I appreciate the fact that you at least looked, even if you didn't notice:
and
Fwiw, the version of this story on this site is not the most recent one, but the changes to its first five paragraphs are probably too small to change your opinions, replacing one word with a sentence about Megan's background, showing rather than telling. The biggest change is the addition of a scene early in chapter 3. I actually just made another small change based on your thoughts.
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NotWise
Desert Rat
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Isn't the version on this site is the only one people can review?
I don't think you're getting as much out of the review as you could. You're arguing. Maybe you think out loud by arguing with people, but I don't see a lot of thinking going on. I just see denial.
To get something useful out of a review you need to accept the comment, and -- even if you don't agree with it -- you need to ask yourself why it happened. If you don't ask and answer that question, then you're wasting everybody's time. Especially, you've wasted you're reviewer's time.
MetaBob
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I pointed the way to a newer version when I first requested AwkwardMD's review.
I regard concisely and respectfully posting a few quotes that definitively contradict assertions made by a different reader about what is and isn't written in my story as somewhat different than "arguing." I personally feel a responsibility to actually read the part of another writer's work I comment on, thus reducing the possibility of such misstatements.
I think you'll find that I did exactly this with AMD's review, also acknowledging her effort in reading as much as she obviously did and expressing sincere gratitude two separate times for sharing her insight. It's a difficult and admirable thing she volunteered to do for the benefit of the community, putting herself out there like that, and she deserves the benefit of the doubt.
I disagree with several of AMD's criticisms, perhaps because she didn't finish reading the piece (which is her prerogative, that she stated up front might happen for longer stories) and so mistakes Mike's reprehensible treatment of Megan in my story as being an example of some "not as overt" "disturbing themes of women as property" when in fact this treatment and its consequences are the very overt primary arc of the story, though of course happier things happen along the way. Mike's way of thinking about Megan (and by extension, other women), and the actions he takes because of it, are the reason he gets sent to prison, and then later when he gets out and attempts his misguided revenge, several resourceful women and men work together to send him toward a more effective rehabilitation.
I'm obviously in total agreement that the theme AMD draws attention to is disturbing (I go farther and call it "reprehensible"), though less than happy with the implication that I, as the author, am unaware of and therefore tacitly support it, but delighted to have had the opportunity in my story to speak out against it -- I'd much rather speak out about injustice than pretend it's not an issue. By showing rather than telling, no less.
Heck, I'll express my gratitude to AwkwardMD a third time now, not because I think it needs to be repeated again, but because in my earlier replies I mentioned that her thoughts were very likely to be reflected in my writing still under development, which has been happening. Thank you!
AwkwardMD
The worst Buddhist
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Grgur - Violet and the Warrens Ch. 01
Link
It’s clear to me that you’ve read a lot of erotica. Violet and the Warrens has a lot of elements that work in your favor, and show that you’re probably a fairly shrewd reader (which is an entirely different skill set). The pacing of the story, however, and the order that these elements happen in, is working against you.
I think everyone knows that the trick to boiling a frog is to put them in the water when the water is cool and raise the temperature slowly. There are many story types (Erotic coupling being one of them) where a good, slow build is perfect, but what constitutes ‘slow’ isn’t always a 1-to-1 ratio. Violet and the Warrens is a slow build that takes place over, I want to say, 18 months? The story isn’t long enough to warrant a scope that large, so the first half of the story is a lot of little scenes stapled together that are contributing part of the assemblage. It’s patchwork.
A really good indicator of this is how often Violet gets Zach to the edge of being ready to have sex only to have him pull back. You, the author, need him to pull back because the big sex scene needs to happen (1) with Maeve (2) when Allie isn’t around and (3) when James isn’t around. I’m not built to understand what it feels like to be blue balled, but this story did that quite a few times and it feels like a bug, not a feature.
Had you rearranged these elements to happen one after the other, in a scene setup to take advantage of them happening without the need for all of Zach’s hemming and hawing and (ultimately) fruitless nail-biting, you could have had a really powerful story. As it is, the kink of a married couple and their daughter’s friend has to succeed in spite of some awkward setup.
I’m going to recommend a story of mine, Folie À Deux, for comparison’s sake specifically because both stories feature the ‘you were formative in my sexual development’ element. Take note of where I inserted that as compared to yours. There are some other parallels as well, so watch for how and where I used those in the arc of the story.
***
I also want to talk about the beginning of the story in terms of scenes. There is no economy happening here. There’s a lot of stopping and starting without any visual distinctions between the scenes (like asterisks). Having something between them is a stylistic choice, but it’s worth noting that you have (I think) 10 different scenes that happen between various characters setting things up, and in each scene there isn’t a lot going on except the one thing you set out to do. It’s lacking in depth, compartmentalized, and inorganic. It looks like a bunch of building blocks.
Now, having deep, layered scenes is not the end-all, be-all. Like anything else it is a tool, specifically one to move a story along very quickly and cover a lot of ground in a little bit of time. There are going to be times where a scene having a single purpose is ideal, but one should learn how to execute less important elements quickly and organically.
***
I didn’t feel like any of the characters had a unique voice. Maeve vacillated between indecisive and decisive. In the sex scene, sometimes she was aggressive and gave a little bit of dirty talk, and sometimes she was on the receiving end. Zach vacillated between indecisive and decisive. In the sex scene, sometimes he was aggressive and gave a little bit of dirty talk, and sometimes he was on the receiving end. Violet vacillated between indecisive and decisive. In the sex scene, sometimes she was aggressive and gave a little bit of dirty talk, and sometimes she was on the receiving end. Their proclivities were mostly identical. Their lines were largely interchangeable.
This is fine if what you’re trying to do is enable a quick flick of the bean, but I get the impression that your aims are a little higher. I feel like what you’re eventually shooting for is a story wherein every member of the Warren family is sexually active with Violet. The point of having an ensemble cast is to showcase the differences between them, and how they can have different reactions, simultaneously, to the same things happening.
This is what using an ensemble should look like, but so far it just seems like upon seeing Violet topless, every one of the Warrens just wants to fuck her and that’s redundant. You could do that with one character, four different times, to greater effect.
***
I really liked the choice to make Zach average in length. A good friend of mine who operates a phone sex line once asked for dick pics from her twitter following, and got hundreds of responses. There were some outliers in both directions, but she was surprised to find how many of them were nearly identical. Her sample size isn’t enough to make any kind of conclusion but I think a safe interpretation of her data suggests that the average penis size is not just the average value in a wide range; it’s the most common size because there isn’t as much variation as porn would have you believe. The average size is also the size that most of them are (in the grand scheme).
***
I was struck, at several points in this story, by the feeling that everything was kind of ‘easy’. I had trouble figuring out why I felt like that because it’s a lot of things. Violet is a runner, and extremely fit, but also very busty. Maeve is busty and open-minded, and is semi-aware of Zach’s long-standing tendency to stare at their daughter’s friend. She’s cool with it. Violet is aware of it, cool with it, and responds in lock step the first time Zach lets loose with some dominant language.
There’s nothing to overcome. The only real objection I saw was Maeve being reluctant to try anything with Violet, but her willpower crumbled pretty quick.
Release is a result of tension. Tension is a result of conflict. Conflict is a result of opposing desires/needs/wants, and this story doesn’t have any. The direction of this chapter, and probably subsequent chapters, felt like a foregone conclusion by the end of the first scene. Nobody is going to fight anything. Everyone will be cool with it. Everything after that point was simply going through the motions, and that’s not very engaging.
Now, many stories succeed on Lit without a lot of plot tension, but they do so largely by avoiding plot. I think you had loftier goals here, and I think you have the talent to pull off more complex, layered work.
It will take practice. Just keep writing.
Link
It’s clear to me that you’ve read a lot of erotica. Violet and the Warrens has a lot of elements that work in your favor, and show that you’re probably a fairly shrewd reader (which is an entirely different skill set). The pacing of the story, however, and the order that these elements happen in, is working against you.
I think everyone knows that the trick to boiling a frog is to put them in the water when the water is cool and raise the temperature slowly. There are many story types (Erotic coupling being one of them) where a good, slow build is perfect, but what constitutes ‘slow’ isn’t always a 1-to-1 ratio. Violet and the Warrens is a slow build that takes place over, I want to say, 18 months? The story isn’t long enough to warrant a scope that large, so the first half of the story is a lot of little scenes stapled together that are contributing part of the assemblage. It’s patchwork.
A really good indicator of this is how often Violet gets Zach to the edge of being ready to have sex only to have him pull back. You, the author, need him to pull back because the big sex scene needs to happen (1) with Maeve (2) when Allie isn’t around and (3) when James isn’t around. I’m not built to understand what it feels like to be blue balled, but this story did that quite a few times and it feels like a bug, not a feature.
Had you rearranged these elements to happen one after the other, in a scene setup to take advantage of them happening without the need for all of Zach’s hemming and hawing and (ultimately) fruitless nail-biting, you could have had a really powerful story. As it is, the kink of a married couple and their daughter’s friend has to succeed in spite of some awkward setup.
I’m going to recommend a story of mine, Folie À Deux, for comparison’s sake specifically because both stories feature the ‘you were formative in my sexual development’ element. Take note of where I inserted that as compared to yours. There are some other parallels as well, so watch for how and where I used those in the arc of the story.
***
I also want to talk about the beginning of the story in terms of scenes. There is no economy happening here. There’s a lot of stopping and starting without any visual distinctions between the scenes (like asterisks). Having something between them is a stylistic choice, but it’s worth noting that you have (I think) 10 different scenes that happen between various characters setting things up, and in each scene there isn’t a lot going on except the one thing you set out to do. It’s lacking in depth, compartmentalized, and inorganic. It looks like a bunch of building blocks.
Now, having deep, layered scenes is not the end-all, be-all. Like anything else it is a tool, specifically one to move a story along very quickly and cover a lot of ground in a little bit of time. There are going to be times where a scene having a single purpose is ideal, but one should learn how to execute less important elements quickly and organically.
***
I didn’t feel like any of the characters had a unique voice. Maeve vacillated between indecisive and decisive. In the sex scene, sometimes she was aggressive and gave a little bit of dirty talk, and sometimes she was on the receiving end. Zach vacillated between indecisive and decisive. In the sex scene, sometimes he was aggressive and gave a little bit of dirty talk, and sometimes he was on the receiving end. Violet vacillated between indecisive and decisive. In the sex scene, sometimes she was aggressive and gave a little bit of dirty talk, and sometimes she was on the receiving end. Their proclivities were mostly identical. Their lines were largely interchangeable.
This is fine if what you’re trying to do is enable a quick flick of the bean, but I get the impression that your aims are a little higher. I feel like what you’re eventually shooting for is a story wherein every member of the Warren family is sexually active with Violet. The point of having an ensemble cast is to showcase the differences between them, and how they can have different reactions, simultaneously, to the same things happening.
This is what using an ensemble should look like, but so far it just seems like upon seeing Violet topless, every one of the Warrens just wants to fuck her and that’s redundant. You could do that with one character, four different times, to greater effect.
***
I really liked the choice to make Zach average in length. A good friend of mine who operates a phone sex line once asked for dick pics from her twitter following, and got hundreds of responses. There were some outliers in both directions, but she was surprised to find how many of them were nearly identical. Her sample size isn’t enough to make any kind of conclusion but I think a safe interpretation of her data suggests that the average penis size is not just the average value in a wide range; it’s the most common size because there isn’t as much variation as porn would have you believe. The average size is also the size that most of them are (in the grand scheme).
***
I was struck, at several points in this story, by the feeling that everything was kind of ‘easy’. I had trouble figuring out why I felt like that because it’s a lot of things. Violet is a runner, and extremely fit, but also very busty. Maeve is busty and open-minded, and is semi-aware of Zach’s long-standing tendency to stare at their daughter’s friend. She’s cool with it. Violet is aware of it, cool with it, and responds in lock step the first time Zach lets loose with some dominant language.
There’s nothing to overcome. The only real objection I saw was Maeve being reluctant to try anything with Violet, but her willpower crumbled pretty quick.
Release is a result of tension. Tension is a result of conflict. Conflict is a result of opposing desires/needs/wants, and this story doesn’t have any. The direction of this chapter, and probably subsequent chapters, felt like a foregone conclusion by the end of the first scene. Nobody is going to fight anything. Everyone will be cool with it. Everything after that point was simply going through the motions, and that’s not very engaging.
Now, many stories succeed on Lit without a lot of plot tension, but they do so largely by avoiding plot. I think you had loftier goals here, and I think you have the talent to pull off more complex, layered work.
It will take practice. Just keep writing.
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ElectricBlue
Joined 11 Years Ago
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- May 10, 2014
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- 18,447
This made me chuckle, MD - "not built to understand..." is masterful understatement.
I can assure you, for a young man blue balls can be agonising; for an older man, they're a sign things are still working correctly
.Cudos again for the depth of your commentary. There's little to make me wander off to read many of these stories (some I do) but your comments alone are worth a ticket.
yukonnights
Literotica Guru
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- Apr 15, 2007
- Posts
- 3,894
I found the conclusion of this review very helpful AMD. I've even expanded on it a bit and put it in my file of 'writing tips'. To me, this is the takeaway from your comments.
I'm generally pretty lame when it comes to meaningful/believable Tension/Conflict — as a result, there's no big "Release". I've taken to doing more planning/outlining to force myself to take myself out of my 'happy world' and write in some of life's unpleasant moments. The way you said it brightened the light a bit for me ~
Be interesting to hear how others handle this.
ElectricBlue
Joined 11 Years Ago
- Joined
- May 10, 2014
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- 18,447
I agree. There's a place for angst, but many readers (judging by comments received to my stories) just want a safe place to escape their day-to-day world. Sometimes a little bit of pleasurable smut is enough - readers don't always want Hamlet or Macbeth.
B
b7ffh1
Guest
Would love feedback for my first story
The story is "Shy Indian Wife's Humiliating Exam"
For some reason, I am unable to post a link to the actual story, so here is the link to my submissions.
https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=4946373&page=submissions
I have written other stories, but this is my first and longest. Would love your feedback.
The story is "Shy Indian Wife's Humiliating Exam"
For some reason, I am unable to post a link to the actual story, so here is the link to my submissions.
https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=4946373&page=submissions
I have written other stories, but this is my first and longest. Would love your feedback.
Last edited by a moderator:
AwkwardMD
The worst Buddhist
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2014
- Posts
- 2,947
b7ffh1 - Shy Indian Wife's Humiliating Exam
Link
Okay, so first thing first. I want to address the fact that there are clearly some cultural elements to this that I will be oblivious to. As a white woman I’m going to miss some things, and that cuts both ways. There’s going to be some good things that I won’t pick up on, and there will be some things that I’ll take the wrong way. I’m sorry about those things, in advance. I always tell people to take my reviews with a grain of salt, but I think you should take a bit more.
First of all, you are an extremely competent writer in the technical sense. The nuts and bolts of it; sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, etc. Very solid. Clearly you’ve spent a lot of time mastering the written word, and that’s impressive. I felt like this story probably had fewer typos and general mistakes than one of my stories, and I only write/speak one language. Very impressive.
On the other hand, the writing felt a little dry and formal. We were kind of distant from the action, or anything even resembling an emotion. We had to intuit and infer anything subtle, and that's not just austere; it's bland.
I did not understand the point of breaking this story up into ~30 ‘chapters’. The story wasn’t long enough to warrant being broken up into two chapters, let alone as many as you did. Some of them were just a few paragraphs long. You arbitrarily broke up your own storytelling.
***
This story is a CMNF story, and I think that the execution of the kink was my biggest problem. Theoretically, I have no problem with CMNF. Nervous anxiety is kind of my jam when it comes to informing a character, but the way you connected the dots to start your story doesn’t hold up to any scrutiny.
Wife needs a physical for a visa - makes sense.
Protagonists get a doctor who is a friend - doesn’t make sense.
Forms need a witness - doesn’t make sense.
Doctor allows an 18 year old to witness someone else’s physical - doesn’t make sense.
In my experience (which is limited), Immigration Services usually assigns an impartial doctor and tells you when your appointment is. The witness is understood to be someone who has gone through the extensive ethics training that doctors and nurses go through. Jamal’s excuse that “I might go into pre-med” struck me as truly bizarre. Pre-Med coursework, in American universities, does not include any patients, nor does grad school. Someone who goes through both wouldn’t see a patient until they were 8+ years into their medical career. Those 8 years are full of ethics courses that should have taught Dr. Bill that you can’t let randos sit in on invasive physical exams, let alone three of them.
That’s the stuff that’s purely wrong, not counting the stuff that is absurdly coincidental. Jamal just happening to show up when he did. Jamal’s dad being the janitor for Dr. Bill’s office. Jamal’s dad being cool with giving away the keys to a doctor’s office. This is a small thing in the story, but if you think about the kinds of records that doctors keep then it should be a massive red flag. In reality, Jamal would have carelessly gotten his father fired from a paying gig. Then there’s the matter of Jamal and his ‘friends’ getting the equipment they did in under an hour, with no medical training, no guidance, and no time to prepare a plan.
Here’s where things get sticky. CMNF is a kink with a fairly specific gender imbalance. The woman’s nakedness is usually presented as a proxy for powerlessness. On the surface of it, that’s fine. Imbalances make for great contrast, but when the reason for something is flimsy it makes it seem like the story is really about something else. That’s how lies work.
In a story like this, where the point of the story is to render your only female character powerless, it mostly just comes off as misogynistic… but I don’t think that was your goal. I put off writing this response for a couple days because I was annoyed after reading this, and I knew that what I was seeing was not your intent.
You had all the makings of a solid story here, but it took me about ten minutes of asking a couple friends to realize that the setup doesn’t hold any water. I couldn’t suspend my disbelief because the circumstances you were asking me, as your reader, to accept did not feel genuine. Something can be unrealistic but genuine, and readers will eat it up, but disingenuous tends to land flat more often than not. The more disingenuous it is, the fewer number of readers there will be who can accept what you’re telling them and move on without backing out.
I’ve written this kink. One of my more recent works was a CFNF story where the protagonist’s embarrassment and humiliation were the driving kink of the story. You want to give the characters a reason for being where they are, and doing the things they do, to be effective at the thing you’re trying to do. If your CMNF story just looks like the author doesn’t like women, you’ve done something wrong as a storyteller. If your lesbian story just looks like the author hates men, you’ve done something wrong as a storyteller. If your Loving Wives story just looks like the author needs to be in therapy after their divorce, you’ve done something wrong as a storyteller.
Spend a little more time thinking things through and finessing your plot. The effort pays off in dividends at the end.
Link
Okay, so first thing first. I want to address the fact that there are clearly some cultural elements to this that I will be oblivious to. As a white woman I’m going to miss some things, and that cuts both ways. There’s going to be some good things that I won’t pick up on, and there will be some things that I’ll take the wrong way. I’m sorry about those things, in advance. I always tell people to take my reviews with a grain of salt, but I think you should take a bit more.
First of all, you are an extremely competent writer in the technical sense. The nuts and bolts of it; sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, etc. Very solid. Clearly you’ve spent a lot of time mastering the written word, and that’s impressive. I felt like this story probably had fewer typos and general mistakes than one of my stories, and I only write/speak one language. Very impressive.
On the other hand, the writing felt a little dry and formal. We were kind of distant from the action, or anything even resembling an emotion. We had to intuit and infer anything subtle, and that's not just austere; it's bland.
I did not understand the point of breaking this story up into ~30 ‘chapters’. The story wasn’t long enough to warrant being broken up into two chapters, let alone as many as you did. Some of them were just a few paragraphs long. You arbitrarily broke up your own storytelling.
***
This story is a CMNF story, and I think that the execution of the kink was my biggest problem. Theoretically, I have no problem with CMNF. Nervous anxiety is kind of my jam when it comes to informing a character, but the way you connected the dots to start your story doesn’t hold up to any scrutiny.
Wife needs a physical for a visa - makes sense.
Protagonists get a doctor who is a friend - doesn’t make sense.
Forms need a witness - doesn’t make sense.
Doctor allows an 18 year old to witness someone else’s physical - doesn’t make sense.
In my experience (which is limited), Immigration Services usually assigns an impartial doctor and tells you when your appointment is. The witness is understood to be someone who has gone through the extensive ethics training that doctors and nurses go through. Jamal’s excuse that “I might go into pre-med” struck me as truly bizarre. Pre-Med coursework, in American universities, does not include any patients, nor does grad school. Someone who goes through both wouldn’t see a patient until they were 8+ years into their medical career. Those 8 years are full of ethics courses that should have taught Dr. Bill that you can’t let randos sit in on invasive physical exams, let alone three of them.
That’s the stuff that’s purely wrong, not counting the stuff that is absurdly coincidental. Jamal just happening to show up when he did. Jamal’s dad being the janitor for Dr. Bill’s office. Jamal’s dad being cool with giving away the keys to a doctor’s office. This is a small thing in the story, but if you think about the kinds of records that doctors keep then it should be a massive red flag. In reality, Jamal would have carelessly gotten his father fired from a paying gig. Then there’s the matter of Jamal and his ‘friends’ getting the equipment they did in under an hour, with no medical training, no guidance, and no time to prepare a plan.
Here’s where things get sticky. CMNF is a kink with a fairly specific gender imbalance. The woman’s nakedness is usually presented as a proxy for powerlessness. On the surface of it, that’s fine. Imbalances make for great contrast, but when the reason for something is flimsy it makes it seem like the story is really about something else. That’s how lies work.
In a story like this, where the point of the story is to render your only female character powerless, it mostly just comes off as misogynistic… but I don’t think that was your goal. I put off writing this response for a couple days because I was annoyed after reading this, and I knew that what I was seeing was not your intent.
You had all the makings of a solid story here, but it took me about ten minutes of asking a couple friends to realize that the setup doesn’t hold any water. I couldn’t suspend my disbelief because the circumstances you were asking me, as your reader, to accept did not feel genuine. Something can be unrealistic but genuine, and readers will eat it up, but disingenuous tends to land flat more often than not. The more disingenuous it is, the fewer number of readers there will be who can accept what you’re telling them and move on without backing out.
I’ve written this kink. One of my more recent works was a CFNF story where the protagonist’s embarrassment and humiliation were the driving kink of the story. You want to give the characters a reason for being where they are, and doing the things they do, to be effective at the thing you’re trying to do. If your CMNF story just looks like the author doesn’t like women, you’ve done something wrong as a storyteller. If your lesbian story just looks like the author hates men, you’ve done something wrong as a storyteller. If your Loving Wives story just looks like the author needs to be in therapy after their divorce, you’ve done something wrong as a storyteller.
Spend a little more time thinking things through and finessing your plot. The effort pays off in dividends at the end.
Last edited:
AwkwardMD
The worst Buddhist
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2014
- Posts
- 2,947
General advice unrelated to any feedback.
https://youtu.be/3IG0Y63LkDM
Spend some time thinking about where you want to be, and why you do what you do. There are some wrong answers, but that's usually because we aren't being honest with ourselves.
https://youtu.be/3IG0Y63LkDM
Spend some time thinking about where you want to be, and why you do what you do. There are some wrong answers, but that's usually because we aren't being honest with ourselves.
B
b7ffh1
Guest
Re: b7ffh1 - Shy Indian Wife's Humiliating Exam
Thank you so much for taking the time to review my story and provide such detailed feedback. I really appreciate it.
Like you astutely observed, I am pretty good with the mechanics of writing, but often come off as dry and technical. I am working on that
And good point about the chapters, it unnecessarily breaks up the story.
As you mentioned, there is a little bit of a cultural divide and I took some of the background emotions for granted and did not do a good job of elucidating them and have made this story a lot more niche than it needed to be. If I may, I would like to talk about some of those background emotions.
As part of the Indian immigrant community, there are two main emotions when dealing with the US Immigration Service, hope and fear. Hope because for a lot of Indians, coming to the US is a lifelong dream. Fear because you are worried that they are looking for an excuse to send you back, and that you must carefully dot all the i's and cross all the t's.
Fear makes people do irrational things, as evidenced by the IRS scams where scammers are calling immigrants and telling them that they have outstanding taxes and unless they wire money immediately they will be deported. I had a close friend who was actually driving to a money sending service, when he realized the absurdity of it. Many others across the nation did not, and the scam made millions of dollars.
As the story starts the couple is fearful. The wife needs a required physical, but they can't get an appointment before it is due. The way immigration physical work, is that if you are outside the US, the Immigration Service will send you to a physician of their choosing. If you are in the US, you are free to pick any physician that is a US Civil Surgeon, which is something a general practitioner may apply to become. Running out of options they decide to try their friend Bill who can do these exams. Now Bill is doing that as a favor and fully expects to just check a few boxes and sign the forms and be done. Also many times it is not uncommon for medical forms to be witnessed, the most common being surgical consent forms and the witness is typically office staff who may or may not have formal medical training.
Into that milieu walks Jamal who is off the charts smart and charismatic. As soon as they give him the forms he knows he has them. They have all attested to something that did not take place (the physical) under penalty of perjury.
The fear factor goes up. For the wife, she knows that lying on a form is grounds for deportation and a permanent ban on entering the US. She will be separated from her husband and never allowed to come back to the United States. For the husband, he will now face the horrible situation of being forced to choose between his career and the life he has lived and built in the US versus not being with his wife. Bill, like many doctors is deathly afraid of having his medical license revoked. Perjury on a medical form is grounds for having his medical license revoked. His entire medical career that he spent over a decade studying for will immediately cease to exist.
These three want at all costs to avoid these outcomes. Jamal takes advantage of this and gradually pushes the boundaries.
In regards to pre-med students observing, I grew up with close friends who became doctors. As part of pre-med they were volunteering in the hospital and shadowing doctors in late high school and early college. I believe one of the hospitals allowed volunteers and shadows as young as 17. Of course the doctors ask the patient's permission before allowing them into the exam room.
Thank you once again for reading this story and giving your detailed feedback. I see that I did a poor job of setting up the plot and relied on a lot of implicit assumptions, and that limited the audience that could enjoy the story. I am sorry for that and hope to do better in the future.
Finally, if I may be so bold as to ask for one last review.
"A Keen Sense of Obligation"
https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=4946373&page=submissions
While it also involves Indian immigrants, I think I did a much better job of setting up the situation. It is a CMNF story, but the female has far more agency. I would love to hear what you think of that and if you find the writing as bland as this one.
Thanks,
- b7ffh
Thank you so much for taking the time to review my story and provide such detailed feedback. I really appreciate it.
Like you astutely observed, I am pretty good with the mechanics of writing, but often come off as dry and technical. I am working on that
And good point about the chapters, it unnecessarily breaks up the story.
As you mentioned, there is a little bit of a cultural divide and I took some of the background emotions for granted and did not do a good job of elucidating them and have made this story a lot more niche than it needed to be. If I may, I would like to talk about some of those background emotions.
As part of the Indian immigrant community, there are two main emotions when dealing with the US Immigration Service, hope and fear. Hope because for a lot of Indians, coming to the US is a lifelong dream. Fear because you are worried that they are looking for an excuse to send you back, and that you must carefully dot all the i's and cross all the t's.
Fear makes people do irrational things, as evidenced by the IRS scams where scammers are calling immigrants and telling them that they have outstanding taxes and unless they wire money immediately they will be deported. I had a close friend who was actually driving to a money sending service, when he realized the absurdity of it. Many others across the nation did not, and the scam made millions of dollars.
As the story starts the couple is fearful. The wife needs a required physical, but they can't get an appointment before it is due. The way immigration physical work, is that if you are outside the US, the Immigration Service will send you to a physician of their choosing. If you are in the US, you are free to pick any physician that is a US Civil Surgeon, which is something a general practitioner may apply to become. Running out of options they decide to try their friend Bill who can do these exams. Now Bill is doing that as a favor and fully expects to just check a few boxes and sign the forms and be done. Also many times it is not uncommon for medical forms to be witnessed, the most common being surgical consent forms and the witness is typically office staff who may or may not have formal medical training.
Into that milieu walks Jamal who is off the charts smart and charismatic. As soon as they give him the forms he knows he has them. They have all attested to something that did not take place (the physical) under penalty of perjury.
The fear factor goes up. For the wife, she knows that lying on a form is grounds for deportation and a permanent ban on entering the US. She will be separated from her husband and never allowed to come back to the United States. For the husband, he will now face the horrible situation of being forced to choose between his career and the life he has lived and built in the US versus not being with his wife. Bill, like many doctors is deathly afraid of having his medical license revoked. Perjury on a medical form is grounds for having his medical license revoked. His entire medical career that he spent over a decade studying for will immediately cease to exist.
These three want at all costs to avoid these outcomes. Jamal takes advantage of this and gradually pushes the boundaries.
In regards to pre-med students observing, I grew up with close friends who became doctors. As part of pre-med they were volunteering in the hospital and shadowing doctors in late high school and early college. I believe one of the hospitals allowed volunteers and shadows as young as 17. Of course the doctors ask the patient's permission before allowing them into the exam room.
Thank you once again for reading this story and giving your detailed feedback. I see that I did a poor job of setting up the plot and relied on a lot of implicit assumptions, and that limited the audience that could enjoy the story. I am sorry for that and hope to do better in the future.
Finally, if I may be so bold as to ask for one last review.
"A Keen Sense of Obligation"
https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=4946373&page=submissions
While it also involves Indian immigrants, I think I did a much better job of setting up the situation. It is a CMNF story, but the female has far more agency. I would love to hear what you think of that and if you find the writing as bland as this one.
Thanks,
- b7ffh
AwkwardMD
The worst Buddhist
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You know, I thought that fear was a big part of it, but I didn't want to put my foot in anything by suggesting that too strongly that fear was a motivation. It felt like the kind of that might come across as extremely insulting, but your use of it here was powerful.
NotWise
Desert Rat
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This is a belated thank you. I put a lot of time and work into that dialogue, and I'm glad it came through.
AwkwardMD
The worst Buddhist
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If you had written this within a hospital, exactly as you're describing here, and avoided some of the other oddities that were forced when the story tried to happen in Vinod's house, it would have made a lot more sense. I think I would have questioned it less and felt more a part of the flow of the plot.
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AwkwardMD
The worst Buddhist
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I'm not entirely sure what you're thanking me for. You wrote it, and have every reason to be proud of it. I should be thanking you for sharing your efforts with the world.
AwkwardMD
The worst Buddhist
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b7ffh1 - A Keen Sense of Obligation
Link
This story is everything that the first story you gave me could have been. It's a believable setup, with believable characters. The motivations of everyone involved are organic and natural. I wasn't taken out of the flow of the story once. It isn't my favorite type of story, but it does seem to be everything you set out to do and that is amazing.
Everything worked. Everything made sense. Kudos.
The formality of the writing was greatly improved as well. There is, perhaps, some room for improvement yet, but you will quickly reach a point of diminishing returns where no one will notice extra effort on your part to add more word polish. Once a story reaches a certain threshold of literary quality, you stop helping yourself. It doesn't hurt to be perfect, but no one will remember it. They only remember it when it gets in the way.
EDIT: I can see that CMNF is your theme, but I think that if you wanted to you could take a story like this just a little further into cuckoldry and have something that is absolutely dynamite. Cuckoldry isn't a kink for everyone, but you're already in that neighborhood.
Link
This story is everything that the first story you gave me could have been. It's a believable setup, with believable characters. The motivations of everyone involved are organic and natural. I wasn't taken out of the flow of the story once. It isn't my favorite type of story, but it does seem to be everything you set out to do and that is amazing.
Everything worked. Everything made sense. Kudos.
The formality of the writing was greatly improved as well. There is, perhaps, some room for improvement yet, but you will quickly reach a point of diminishing returns where no one will notice extra effort on your part to add more word polish. Once a story reaches a certain threshold of literary quality, you stop helping yourself. It doesn't hurt to be perfect, but no one will remember it. They only remember it when it gets in the way.
EDIT: I can see that CMNF is your theme, but I think that if you wanted to you could take a story like this just a little further into cuckoldry and have something that is absolutely dynamite. Cuckoldry isn't a kink for everyone, but you're already in that neighborhood.
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B
b7ffh1
Guest
Re: b7ffh1 - A Keen Sense of Obligation
Thank you very much for your review, especially since this is the second review of one of my stories in the past few days. I greatly appreciate your insights and recommendations.
Thank you very much for your review, especially since this is the second review of one of my stories in the past few days. I greatly appreciate your insights and recommendations.
AwkwardMD
The worst Buddhist
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- Apr 13, 2014
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NotWise - Her Dream House
Link
Okay, first the specific topics at hand:
Anonymous protagonists - I think it’s important to point out that the only thing not mentioned are names. We do get, over the course of their conversations, many details about them, their experiences, their relationships, etc. That’s a lot more than we get from most authors who are trying to do something anonymous. I didn’t have a problem visualizing these two, and I feel like if either one showed up in one of your later stories and talked about themselves for five minutes, I’d be able to pick them out and say “Hey it’s that guy/gal!”
I think what I’m trying to say is that despite your successful efforts to refrain from giving them identities, you still informed their characters enough that I felt like I understood them. Kudos!
Present Tense - I giggled more than I should have when I saw, in your own thread, where you said that present tense and anonymity have their uses. It’s totally true. Those uses might be rare, and they might be best served in small doses, but you found a situation that served both at once, and that’s awesome!
I didn’t find your questions until after I read the piece, and at the time I didn’t notice that it was in the present tense because I didn’t have a problem following her monologues. It just felt like someone telling me something. In a lot of ways, things like tenses and perspectives only really *fail* when they get in the way of the story, and that wasn’t the case here. I liked the execution of it, and I liked how you found a way to organically work it into your past tense narrative and your existing authorial style.
Dialog Tags - Like above, I didn’t notice this at all during the reading. I had no problem following who was speaking because you gave them specific voices and motivations. I knew who was saying what because you did such a good job of informing them at the outset. The two of them being so distinct made the tags redundant.
***
Lastly I want to touch on motivations, since that seemed to be a topic of conversation for others. I think it’s important to point out that even though many of the male feedback givers didn’t understand what was happening or why, the one female beta reader did and so did I. It’s subtle, and it’s intriguing, but it’s there and I loved it. My next story (I’m 5k words into it out of an estimated 30k) is very much about this same topic so I don’t want to go into a ton of detail, but I was instantly sold on your protagonist. I recognized her plight. I suspect Belle did too, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of your female readers did even if they didn’t say anything about it in comments (and the reason is coming from the same place as her motivation). It was lovely to see.
Link
Okay, first the specific topics at hand:
Anonymous protagonists - I think it’s important to point out that the only thing not mentioned are names. We do get, over the course of their conversations, many details about them, their experiences, their relationships, etc. That’s a lot more than we get from most authors who are trying to do something anonymous. I didn’t have a problem visualizing these two, and I feel like if either one showed up in one of your later stories and talked about themselves for five minutes, I’d be able to pick them out and say “Hey it’s that guy/gal!”
I think what I’m trying to say is that despite your successful efforts to refrain from giving them identities, you still informed their characters enough that I felt like I understood them. Kudos!
Present Tense - I giggled more than I should have when I saw, in your own thread, where you said that present tense and anonymity have their uses. It’s totally true. Those uses might be rare, and they might be best served in small doses, but you found a situation that served both at once, and that’s awesome!
I didn’t find your questions until after I read the piece, and at the time I didn’t notice that it was in the present tense because I didn’t have a problem following her monologues. It just felt like someone telling me something. In a lot of ways, things like tenses and perspectives only really *fail* when they get in the way of the story, and that wasn’t the case here. I liked the execution of it, and I liked how you found a way to organically work it into your past tense narrative and your existing authorial style.
Dialog Tags - Like above, I didn’t notice this at all during the reading. I had no problem following who was speaking because you gave them specific voices and motivations. I knew who was saying what because you did such a good job of informing them at the outset. The two of them being so distinct made the tags redundant.
***
Lastly I want to touch on motivations, since that seemed to be a topic of conversation for others. I think it’s important to point out that even though many of the male feedback givers didn’t understand what was happening or why, the one female beta reader did and so did I. It’s subtle, and it’s intriguing, but it’s there and I loved it. My next story (I’m 5k words into it out of an estimated 30k) is very much about this same topic so I don’t want to go into a ton of detail, but I was instantly sold on your protagonist. I recognized her plight. I suspect Belle did too, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of your female readers did even if they didn’t say anything about it in comments (and the reason is coming from the same place as her motivation). It was lovely to see.
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Haulover
Literotica Guru
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AMD, I've read (most of) this thread with interest, and appreciate your insights.
I'm part way through a new story with a similar pace and length to this one:
https://www.literotica.com/beta/s/surprise-on-the-appalachian-trail
I'd appreciate it if you could give it a once-over, and let me have your thoughts.
Incidentally, a key difference between that story and the new one is that as a male writer, I'll be writing from a female's perspective - in the first person. it's been a fun challenge so far.
Many thanks in advance if you decide to spend a few moments on the story.
I'm part way through a new story with a similar pace and length to this one:
https://www.literotica.com/beta/s/surprise-on-the-appalachian-trail
I'd appreciate it if you could give it a once-over, and let me have your thoughts.
Incidentally, a key difference between that story and the new one is that as a male writer, I'll be writing from a female's perspective - in the first person. it's been a fun challenge so far.
Many thanks in advance if you decide to spend a few moments on the story.
AwkwardMD
The worst Buddhist
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- Apr 13, 2014
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- 2,947
Hey Haulover,
I have a couple stories to edit for friends, and another piece of private feedback to give, so this request might take me a week to get to. I apologize for the wait, but I promise I'll get to it as fast as I can.
Haulover
Literotica Guru
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- Sep 22, 2014
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NO rush! So many thanks!
