AwkwardMD and Omenainen Review Thread

[Adam_Sephenson]

As of right now, the only rule I would ask is that no one request feedback on more than a chapter or two of a multi-chapter work. Anything longer than that, or something that's more than 10 Lit pages, I'm likely to just read some and give you feedback on that. There are no restrictions on content or category. I can and will read just about anything.

Nov 2025 EDIT: No feedback for anyone on either of our ignore lists. No alts. No feedback for anyone who thinks AI feedback is a meaningful alternative. Don't waste our time, please

damn, I was hoping to submit my 5 chapter story to be scrutinised by both of you, but chapter 5 is 13 lit pages while the others are between 6-7 lit pages.

is it possible to do 2 chapters one post and then wait in queue for the others?

 

[AwkwardMD]

damn, I was hoping to submit my 5 chapter story to be scrutinised by both of you, but chapter 5 is 13 lit pages while the others are between 6-7 lit pages.

is it possible to do 2 chapters one post and then wait in queue for the others?

Processing

 

[Omenainen]

damn, I was hoping to submit my 5 chapter story to be scrutinised by both of you, but chapter 5 is 13 lit pages while the others are between 6-7 lit pages.

is it possible to do 2 chapters one post and then wait in queue for the others?

How many words is this altogether? All five parts combined?

 

[Adam_Sephenson]

How many words is this altogether? All five parts combined?

149,2k words. I understand if it's way too long.

 

[AwkwardMD]

149,2k words. I understand if it's way too long.

1) Why this story? You have others.
2) What are you hoping to get out of this?
(No wrong answers)

 

[THBGato]

**girds self**

Okay, so I would quite like your feedback on "Clara and the Solar system". It's my only Transgender story, but a recent plot bunny for a second (unrelated) one has popped into my head, so I guess I'd kind of like to know what I did okay on/could have done better on here. It's just under 13k words.

No worries if you don't have time or feel other factors prevent you from reviewing it.

 

[PennyThompson]

**girds self**

Okay, so I would quite like your feedback on "Clara and the Solar system". It's my only Transgender story, but a recent plot bunny for a second (unrelated) one has popped into my head, so I guess I'd kind of like to know what I did okay on/could have done better on here. It's just under 13k words.

No worries if you don't have time or feel other factors prevent you from reviewing it.

Yessss more THBG trans stories!!

 

[Adam_Sephenson]

1) Why this story? You have others.
2) What are you hoping to get out of this?
(No wrong answers)

That's actually a good point.

1. While I do have others (brandi, my father's tribute, the 750 word story, chapter 1 of Twice Linned). The Theory of Love, is a story I spent countless hours pouring everything I had into its completion, and currently it is the one that has the fewest plot holes or complaints about it.

2. I do appreciate the comments and take in everything I've read (takes, trollings, gushing, and actual critique) from the people who read the story. I felt like something was missing from them, something like an honest to goodness review of the overall story was needed (big shout out to Woodstock1969 and Lost_Writer01 for their comments, insights and opinions.)

I heard that both you and Omenainen are THE people to talk to if one wanted a review to see if the positives and negatives mentioned by the comments were valid, and also from an unbiased POV.

That's my honest reason why =).

 

[AwkwardMD]

That's actually a good point.

1. While I do have others (brandi, my father's tribute, the 750 word story, chapter 1 of Twice Linned). The Theory of Love, is a story I spent countless hours pouring everything I had into its completion, and currently it is the one that has the fewest plot holes or complaints about it.

2. I do appreciate the comments and take in everything I've read (takes, trollings, gushing, and actual critique) from the people who read the story. I felt like something was missing from them, something like an honest to goodness review of the overall story was needed (big shout out to Woodstock1969 and Lost_Writer01 for their comments, insights and opinions.)

I heard that both you and Omenainen are THE people to talk to if one wanted a review to see if the positives and negatives mentioned by the comments were valid, and also from an unbiased POV.

That's my honest reason why =).

Okay.

This is tough because I fully understand asking for a longer, self-contained work. Usually, the people who come to us with chaptered stories are really writing semi-serialized episodes of kink. It's not necessarily going anywhere, so we can just absorb some of it and that's enough to work with. Clearly this is something else, and the multi-chapter rule isn't a good fit for this situation.

On the other hand, we do not have infinite time to dedicate to this. It's a labor of love to foster constructive help for our peers, and we have to balance that with our jobs, lives, events, and our own creative endeavors.

Here's what we'll offer. We will commit to reading chapters 1 and 5, and you provide a summary of 2-4 in PM to the two of us. There's a non-zero chance we get sucked in and read the whole thing, but we have to limit what we'll commit to.

How does that sound?

 

[Adam_Sephenson]

Okay.

This is tough because I fully understand asking for a longer, self-contained work. Usually, the people who come to us with chaptered stories are really writing semi-serialized episodes of kink. It's not necessarily going anywhere, so we can just absorb some of it and that's enough to work with. Clearly this is something else, and the multi-chapter rule isn't a good fit for this situation.

On the other hand, we do not have infinite time to dedicate to this. It's a labor of love to foster constructive help for our peers, and we have to balance that with our jobs, lives, events and our own creative endeavors.

Here's what we'll offer. We will commit to reading chapters 1 and 5, and you provide a summary of 2-4 in PM to the two of us. There's a non-zero chance we get sucked in and read the whole thing, but we have to limit what we'll commit to.

How does that sound?

That's perfectly reasonable and fair. it's more than I expected, considering what I was asking of the both of you =)

 

[Omenainen]

That's perfectly reasonable and fair. it's more than I expected, considering what I was asking of the both of you =)

Cool! Send links to chapter 1 and 5 to this thread, and the summary of 2-4 to us (or post it here if you want), and we’ll get reading.

@THBGato is next in line

Kind of nice to be back in business.

 

[Adam_Sephenson]

Cool! Send links to chapter 1 and 5 to this thread, and the summary of 2-4 to us (or post it here if you want), and we’ll get reading.

@THBGato is next in line

Kind of nice to be back in business.

The Theory of Love Ch. 01

The Theory of Love Ch.05

I'll send the summary of 2-4 via DM as I don't want to give away too much for those who haven't read it yet =D

 

[AwkwardMD]

The Theory of Love Ch. 01

The Theory of Love Ch.05

I'll send the summary of 2-4 via DM as I don't want to give away too much for those who haven't read it yet =D

Put both our names in the Recipient list so we get the same thing at the same time.

 

[PennyThompson]

Hello @Omenainen and @AwkwardMD, the previous review you gave me was so incredibly helpful and nourishing, it still makes me feel warm when I think about it

If it's not too greedy to ask again, I would very much love to get a critical and constructive review of a recent story of mine, Dandelion Greene and the Witch of Watson County. (8,500 words). I'm overall very happy with it, and with how it was received, and I think I've got more stories to tell with this character and setting.

But it's also a style of writing and plotting that was new to me. Finding the right pacing, level of detail and lore, and having fun with dialect and tone without getting annoying about it... It's hard for me to know if I'm doing it well or not, or if I should consider shifting the structure or focus if/when I return to it.

I will fully admit that I took major inspiration in tone and subject matter from a variety of sources, Mike Mignola's episodic weird horror and Harper Lee's witty Southern narration being the strongest influences. I had not read any Manly Wade Wellman until after my story was published and a commenter mentioned his work, but after reading a bunch of his short fiction I realized how much of his work and style I absorbed second-hand from Mignola's gleeful pilfering

I'm also on the fence about how much sex is the right amount for this story or future stories with this character. My inclination is usually to get specific and spicy rather than implying or fading to black, and I'm not sure if that's the best approach here... so, I'm extremely open to critique!

 

[AwkwardMD]

Hello @Omenainen and @AwkwardMD, the previous review you gave me was so incredibly helpful and nourishing, it still makes me feel warm when I think about it

If it's not too greedy to ask again, I would very much love to get a critical and constructive review of a recent story of mine, Dandelion Greene and the Witch of Watson County. (8,500 words). I'm overall very happy with it, and with how it was received, and I think I've got more stories to tell with this character and setting.

But it's also a style of writing and plotting that was new to me. Finding the right pacing, level of detail and lore, and having fun with dialect and tone without getting annoying about it... It's hard for me to know if I'm doing it well or not, or if I should consider shifting the structure or focus if/when I return to it.

I will fully admit that I took major inspiration in tone and subject matter from a variety of sources, Mike Mignola's episodic weird horror and Harper Lee's witty Southern narration being the strongest influences. I had not read any Manly Wade Wellman until after my story was published and a commenter mentioned his work, but after reading a bunch of his short fiction I realized how much of his work and style I absorbed second-hand from Mignola's gleeful pilfering

I'm also on the fence about how much sex is the right amount for this story or future stories with this character. My inclination is usually to get specific and spicy rather than implying or fading to black, and I'm not sure if that's the best approach here... so, I'm extremely open to critique!

1. Adam_Sephenson
2. THBGato
3. PennyThompson

and we'll get to them as soon as possible.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

No alts.

Does this mean you won't review anything published under my alt or you won't review anything requested by that alt? Or just that I should disclose our relationship?

In other words, what if I say, hey @NoTalentHack is how I keep the LW crowd from one bombing my shoe fetish stuff, please review "meat market"?

(I am not NoTalentHack.)

 

[AwkwardMD]

Does this mean you won't review anything published under my alt or you won't review anything requested by that alt? Or just that I should disclose our relationship?

In other words, what if I say, hey @NoTalentHack is how I keep the LW crowd from one bombing my shoe fetish stuff, please review "meat market"?

(I am not NoTalentHack.)

I have no problem with people publishing stuff under a second account for their own reasons, but we have had users abuse their alts to make multiple requests back to back in the past, and its left a sour taste.

Disclosing it would be preferable. It can be done in private, if you'd prefer.

 

[NoTalentHack]

I have no problem with people publishing stuff under a second account for their own reasons, but we have had users abuse their alts to make multiple requests back to back in the past, and its left a sour taste.

Disclosing it would be preferable. It can be done in private, if you'd prefer.

Well, thank you for letting me know that. Like I said, I’m not NTH, though. I’d hate to be confused for that jerk, amirite?

 

[big_cane_sugar]

These reviews are golden! You guys are doing some great work. I'll hold off for now because joy_of_cooking is already reviewing something for me, but within a few weeks I'll ask for one myself.

 

[AwkwardMD]

@Adam_Sephenson
Link
Link

One of the most frequent ways I’ve used to break down stories is to adopt the military planning system. I find it helpful for separating different concepts. You’ve got your Tactical, your hand to hand efficiency, which in this case translates to the nuts and bolts of writing. Can you write sentence. Can you write paragraph. Then you’ve got your Strategic level, what would be an individual battle. Here, we’re gonna use that to assess how you string all of those sentences together to make interactions, or a single scene. Finally, at the top, you’ve got your Operational level, where battles matter less than the overall war effort. How you stitch multiple scenes together to tell a story, a theme, or an arc.

The first layer is the tactical layer. On the one hand, most of this story is acceptable. The SPAG (Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar) needs work. Sentences are mostly there. Descriptions are pretty fine most of the time. It gets worse in the sex scenes. There’s tense changes, punctuation missing, incorrect capitalization. More conceptual sentence failures like this:

And as our bodies met again, joined, fused, breath for breath, and I knew there was no going back.

I understand that this is a moment of passion, and the point was to write a run-on sentence to convey a kind of rush of emotions, but the double and is a different kind of structural failure. In order to break rules, you have to understand the rules. This is one example of a widespread problem.

Seek out a volunteer editor. They can help you with this kind of thing.

The tactical layer is pretty straight forward and small. What you’re doing is mostly fine, and the mistakes aren’t hurting your scores or the impressions of most readers. If you put it in front of us, though, we’re going to point it out.

*

We’re gonna skip up to the Operational level next. The big picture.

On the one hand, you’ve got scope and pacing problems. The basic premise of this story is paper thin. It could have (and should have) been resolved in about 15k words, not 150k. In the course of attempting to expand this idea, you did the thing that every new author does (hence why I’m summing this up quickly) in throwing the kitchen sink at this story. We’ve got cosplay, we’ve got incest, we’ve got multiple flavors of LGBT happening mostly in the background, and so, so, so much Witcher III.

It’s too much. It’s not good storytelling. We come across this conflict all the time, and you are not the first writer to bring us something that readers like, and that gets an enthusiastic response. That’s fine, and if that’s what you’re aiming for, then good. Stop reading here. Keep doing what you’re doing.

Good storytelling, though, requires you to spend some time interrogating your ideas to see if they’ve got the legs for a story this long. It requires you to take your hot girl and nerd plot and your Kay loves her brother plot and your Hannah blackmails her friends to hide her spurned lesbian past plot side by side and think “Should these go together? Do they blend? Are they complementary, or are they simply more? Should these maybe each be their own story?”

You are not the first writer to struggle with this. I certainly did. My first story is a kitchen sink story. Growth is not always pleasant or linear.

The one good thing I’ll say, at this layer, is that you definitely are working toward a vision. In the sense of this being a summation of the effort, a confluence of themes and arcs, you did execute and complete a story that contains complexity, but it’s a bit like pouring soup on top of a of congealed jello, waiting for that to cool, and then layering breakfast cereal on top to get a nice crust.

The comments suggest that some readers want that. I am suggesting that maybe you could have done something different with those elements.

That’s the plot. The other part of the Operational level is the way that you build characters over the course of the story. Characters should be a part of the plot, reacting to it as it develops, and so we can’t really know them fully until we’ve seen how they react and grow alongside unfolding events.

That’s not what happens here. Every character is, functionally, who they are when they first appear except for when the plot needs them to be something different and then they pivot. At first, putting these two concepts side by side, you might think “well that sounds like the same thing,” but I’m giving you credit for one thing at the expense of another here. You have a vision for the plot. You have a thing that you are working toward, and the sheer scale of this is a testament to how much you want that bigness, that dramatic plot, to be the point.

Your characters suffer in that tradeoff.

The story reinforces, at every turn and through the mouth of every other character, that Tom is a nerd. That’s the entire point. The plot hinges on it, except it also hinges on him being super cute, hot, hung as hell, a sexual dynamo, able to flirt with the best, self-aware of his nerdy interests to the point that he doesn’t let them overtake his school/life balance, and a powerful fighter.

Hannah is transparently manipulative in a way that requires Jessica, Rachel, and Kat to be incompetent at reading others except that them being friends is what the plot requires so it’s fine. Again, that was clearly your focus, and I’m trying to give you credit here, but having this grand and sweeping plot veer as far and wide as it does comes with tradeoffs.

All of the characters have the same speech patterns. Everyone sounds like it’s your voice coming out of their mouth, without a lot of deviation.

There’s a lot we could dig into here, but you’re a relatively new author and we are trying to foster your creative efforts.

*

Finally we get to the Strategic layer, and that’s where the biggest offenses are. The most numerous offenses. I’m just going to pick one example, but every page had multiple instances like this.

The (slightly reductive) setup here, and I’m paraphrasing for the audience, is that Jessica, the hot girl, has been dared by her friends to seduce a nerd. She has a window to get this done, and she’s in danger of missing that window so her friends have reached out to remind her.

I sighed, locking my phone and tossing it onto the library table. Across from me, Tom glanced up from his notes.

"Everything okay?" he asked, brows furrowed slightly.

"Yeah." I forced a smile. "Just my friends being nosy."

He smirked. "They're not interrogating you about me, are they?"

I froze for half a second before laughing it off. "Oh, please. They don't even know you exist."

Ouch.

I regretted it the second I said it. It wasn't even true--not anymore. But Tom just chuckled, shaking his head.

"Right. Makes sense. A guy like me isn't exactly conversation material for your crowd," he said lightly, but I caught something underneath. A flash of something in his eyes before he looked back at his notebook.

I swallowed, the guilt hitting me in a way I didn't expect.

"Hey," I nudged his foot under the table, "I didn't mean it like that."

Tom looked up, an amused glint in his gaze. "Then how did you mean it?"

I hesitated. I could have said something flirty, something to steer the conversation back to safe territory. Instead, I found myself saying the truth.

"I mean... they don't know you. Not like I do."

The words hung in the air between us, heavier than I meant for them to be.

Tom held my gaze for a moment longer before exhaling through his nose, shaking his head like I was some kind of puzzle he couldn't quite figure out.

"Well," he said finally, a small smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. "Guess that means I'm one of the lucky few.”

In this scene, given this setup and these characters, Jessica is the lucky one. She’s getting to understand that Tom is more than he first appears. The line is great, but it’s coming out of the wrong mouth. Everything before that is great, but everything before that should be building up to that one line and it falls completely flat if Tom thinks he's the lucky one. Pancake flat.

Characters know things they shouldn’t, there are assumptions being made that don’t quite make sense given the knowledge they’re supposed to have at that stage in the plot. This kind of mistake, the above, is happening all over the place, constantly. The actions you cover for different points of view do not match up with sequential scenes that should have, in theory, shown the same thing, but not in a way that’s merely colored by the different points of view. The dialogue doesn’t match.

This kind of problem is everywhere. Every scene. The inconsistencies plague every aspect.

*

The entire reason I started giving reviews is because I wrote my kitchen sink story, and I knew there was something wrong with it. I just couldn’t get anyone to tell me what it was. I needed someone to sit me down and tell me about restraint, and scope, and pacing. I’m trying to give you what I would want if I was in your shoes.

I genuinely believe that you have it in you to create and share the things that are in your mind, and I hope that you’ll tackle something smaller next. Something simpler. Put two characters in a room and let them meet each other. Build up from a different, more stable creative foundation. Learn to manage scope. Pair ideas that build upon each other.

I look forward to your next submission.

 

[Adam_Sephenson]

@Adam_Sephenson
Link
Link

One of the most frequent ways I’ve used to break down stories is to adopt the military planning system. I find it helpful for separating different concepts. You’ve got your Tactical, your hand to hand efficiency, which in this case translates to the nuts and bolts of writing. Can you write sentence. Can you write paragraph. Then you’ve got your Strategic level, what would be an individual battle. Here, we’re gonna use that to assess how you string all of those sentences together to make interactions, or a single scene. Finally, at the top, you’ve got your Operational level, where battles matter less than the overall war effort. How you stitch multiple scenes together to tell a story, a theme, or an arc.

The first layer is the tactical layer. On the one hand, most of this story is acceptable. The SPAG (Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar) needs work. Sentences are mostly there. Descriptions are pretty fine most of the time. It gets worse in the sex scenes. There’s tense changes, punctuation missing, incorrect capitalization. More conceptual sentence failures like this:



I understand that this is a moment of passion, and the point was to write a run-on sentence to convey a kind of rush of emotions, but the double and is a different kind of structural failure. In order to break rules, you have to understand the rules. This is one example of a widespread problem.

Seek out a volunteer editor. They can help you with this kind of thing.

The tactical layer is pretty straight forward and small. What you’re doing is mostly fine, and the mistakes aren’t hurting your scores or the impressions of most readers. If you put it in front of us, though, we’re going to point it out.

*

We’re gonna skip up to the Operational level next. The big picture.

On the one hand, you’ve got scope and pacing problems. The basic premise of this story is paper thin. It could have (and should have) been resolved in about 15k words, not 150k. In the course of attempting to expand this idea, you did the thing that every new author does (hence why I’m summing this up quickly) in throwing the kitchen sink at this story. We’ve got cosplay, we’ve got incest, we’ve got multiple flavors of LGBT happening mostly in the background, and so, so, so much Witcher III.

It’s too much. It’s not good storytelling. We come across this conflict all the time, and you are not the first writer to bring us something that readers like, and that gets an enthusiastic response. That’s fine, and if that’s what you’re aiming for, then good. Stop reading here. Keep doing what you’re doing.

Good storytelling, though, requires you to spend some time interrogating your ideas to see if they’ve got the legs for a story this long. It requires you to take your hot girl and nerd plot and your Kay loves her brother plot and your Hannah blackmails her friends to hide her spurned lesbian past plot side by side and think “Should these go together? Do they blend? Are they complementary, or are they simply more? Should these maybe each be their own story?”

You are not the first writer to struggle with this. I certainly did. My first story is a kitchen sink story. Growth is not always pleasant or linear.

The one good thing I’ll say, at this layer, is that you definitely are working toward a vision. In the sense of this being a summation of the effort, a confluence of themes and arcs, you did execute and complete a story that contains complexity, but it’s a bit like pouring soup on top of a of congealed jello, waiting for that to cool, and then layering breakfast cereal on top to get a nice crust.

The comments suggest that some readers want that. I am suggesting that maybe you could have done something different with those elements.

That’s the plot. The other part of the Operational level is the way that you build characters over the course of the story. Characters should be a part of the plot, reacting to it as it develops, and so we can’t really know them fully until we’ve seen how they react and grow alongside unfolding events.

That’s not what happens here. Every character is, functionally, who they are when they first appear except for when the plot needs them to be something different and then they pivot. At first, putting these two concepts side by side, you might think “well that sounds like the same thing,” but I’m giving you credit for one thing at the expense of another here. You have a vision for the plot. You have a thing that you are working toward, and the sheer scale of this is a testament to how much you want that bigness, that dramatic plot, to be the point.

Your characters suffer in that tradeoff.

The story reinforces, at every turn and through the mouth of every other character, that Tom is a nerd. That’s the entire point. The plot hinges on it, except it also hinges on him being super cute, hot, hung as hell, a sexual dynamo, able to flirt with the best, self-aware of his nerdy interests to the point that he doesn’t let them overtake his school/life balance, and a powerful fighter.

Hannah is transparently manipulative in a way that requires Jessica, Rachel, and Kat to be incompetent at reading others except that them being friends is what the plot requires so it’s fine. Again, that was clearly your focus, and I’m trying to give you credit here, but having this grand and sweeping plot veer as far and wide as it does comes with tradeoffs.

All of the characters have the same speech patterns. Everyone sounds like it’s your voice coming out of their mouth, without a lot of deviation.

There’s a lot we could dig into here, but you’re a relatively new author and we are trying to foster your creative efforts.

*

Finally we get to the Strategic layer, and that’s where the biggest offenses are. The most numerous offenses. I’m just going to pick one example, but every page had multiple instances like this.

The (slightly reductive) setup here, and I’m paraphrasing for the audience, is that Jessica, the hot girl, has been dared by her friends to seduce a nerd. She has a window to get this done, and she’s in danger of missing that window so her friends have reached out to remind her.



In this scene, given this setup and these characters, Jessica is the lucky one. She’s getting to understand that Tom is more than he first appears. The line is great, but it’s coming out of the wrong mouth. Everything before that is great, but everything before that should be building up to that one line and it falls completely flat if Tom thinks he's the lucky one. Pancake flat.

Characters know things they shouldn’t, there are assumptions being made that don’t quite make sense given the knowledge they’re supposed to have at that stage in the plot. This kind of mistake, the above, is happening all over the place, constantly. The actions you cover for different points of view do not match up with sequential scenes that should have, in theory, shown the same thing, but not in a way that’s merely colored by the different points of view. The dialogue doesn’t match.

This kind of problem is everywhere. Every scene. The inconsistencies plague every aspect.

*

The entire reason I started giving reviews is because I wrote my kitchen sink story, and I knew there was something wrong with it. I just couldn’t get anyone to tell me what it was. I needed someone to sit me down and tell me about restraint, and scope, and pacing. I’m trying to give you what I would want if I was in your shoes.

I genuinely believe that you have it in you to create and share the things that are in your mind, and I hope that you’ll tackle something smaller next. Something simpler. Put two characters in a room and let them meet each other. Build up from a different, more stable creative foundation. Learn to manage scope. Pair ideas that build upon each other.

I look forward to your next submission.

Wow! Thanks so much for the detailed review.

I expected a few punches and I’ll take them on the chin. I really appreciate that you didn’t sugarcoat anything either. I’m a straight-up kind of bloke, and I welcome anything that helps me improve.


You absolutely nailed one thing in particular. Yeah, this story was supposed to be a short 15k word piece. But somewhere along the way, it ballooned into this 150k word beast. I had so many ideas kicking around that I just kept tossing them in. What can I say? I love my drama ^.^
(And yep… guilty as charged on the Witcher 3 overload! I fully blame the Witcher 4 announcement at the Game Awards around the time I started writing!)


I’ll admit, I hadn’t heard of the SPAG breakdown before, but I’m really glad you brought it up. I’m right in the middle of writing another multipart story, so I’m going to take that lens with me going forward. Especially for the tense, structure, and punctuation issues you flagged.


You were also spot on with the Tom observation. The more I reflect, the more I realise: yep, I made a bit of a Gary Stu. He’s a nerd, but he’s also buff under baggy clothes, knows how to take people down with medical knowledge, can spot AI content at a glance… yeah, I hold my hands up there. I let the fantasy override the grounding.


All in all, this was really helpful. I’m glad I decided to bite the bullet and ask for a deep dive. How else are we supposed to improve if we don’t let our work get picked apart now and then?


Thanks again for taking the time, and one last question, if I may.

Is there a cooldown before we can request another review on a different story, or is it more of a “first come, first served” setup?

 

[Omenainen]

All in all, this was really helpful. I’m glad I decided to bite the bullet and ask for a deep dive. How else are we supposed to improve if we don’t let our work get picked apart now and then?

I’m glad you took it so well. It’s not very easy to get thorough, honest feedback for erotic content, and I’m glad we can do our part in bettering that situation.

Thanks again for taking the time, and one last question, if I may.

Is there a cooldown before we can request another review on a different story, or is it more of a “first come, first served” setup?

We don’t have a hard limit on how many stories or how many words we’ll do for a single author, but we will not become a step in anyone’s publishing process. I recommend saving up the “second chance” for something you genuinely want to ask something about, for example if you try a technique, feel it didn’t work, and don’t know why.

 

[Adam_Sephenson]

I’m glad you took it so well. It’s not very easy to get thorough, honest feedback for erotic content, and I’m glad we can do our part in bettering that situation.



We don’t have a hard limit on how many stories or how many words we’ll do for a single author, but we will not become a step in anyone’s publishing process. I recommend saving up the “second chance” for something you genuinely want to ask something about, for example if you try a technique, feel it didn’t work, and don’t know why.

That's totally fair =) I won’t push my luck.
I’d hate for it to ever come across like I’m just using people to further my own gain. That’d leave a bitter taste in my mouth. I really appreciate the time and effort you’ve given already.

 

[AwkwardMD]

All in all, this was really helpful. I’m glad I decided to bite the bullet and ask for a deep dive. How else are we supposed to improve if we don’t let our work get picked apart now and then?

Just to be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with writing things to please an audience. That is a perfectly noble pursuit. No growth required. If that's what you want, then no amount of our criticism should matter.

Fostering growth is the point for us, though, and it’s always very rewarding for us when we're all on the same page. Take what feels authentic to you, and leave the rest.

 

[Rambling_Chantrix]

Hi! Erozetta recommended I be brave and take a number.

The story in question may not meet your requirements—it's technically published to Lit as a series with 4 installments—but it's only about 15k words (4 pages on lit) total, so here I am pushing my luck. If you'd like to review only part of it, that is obviously just as acceptable as if you'd like to review none of it (i.e. 100% acceptable). If you do choose to review only a portion of the work, I recommend sticking to the first part, as those that follow are not written to stand on their own.

It was a fairly experimental work on my part. I could say more, but I'd rather not prime you unnecessarily if you don't need additional information.

Series: Butterfly Weed
Part 1: It Ain't Much, but it's Honest Work
Part 2: The Food Court
Part 3: Insistence
Part 4: Untitled Polyptych

Thank you for your consideration, and all that you do!