AwkwardMD and Omenainen Review Thread

[CharlotteKurai]

Having read your English and your Spanish, I wonder how much better off you would be publishing in Spanish. It's clear that the translation is losing a great deal, possibly because the added difficulty of composing English text causes you to adopt a much more brief, summary-like style.

Yeah but sadly the spanish Literotica, it's dead like, probably when I finished the english version of the story. Even is an non con, my story will have like five alternatives ending, the good one and the truth ending. And the neutral and the bad and worst ending.


Desgraciadamente Literotica en español, está muerto x.x es decir, no es muy activo. Pero cuando termine la versión en inglés, lo publicaré en español pero el problema es que se tarda de subir mucho las historias.

 

[APilgrimSquare]

Not sure if there's a protocol or etiquette around requesting feedback, but I'd like to submit a recent story for review. It's a 14k word I/T story about a first time with the narrator's cousin.

Return to Dungeon Island

The early voting feedback has been underwhelming, at a 3.67 (albeit with only 9 votes), and I'm not exactly sure why. It could be that it's not raunchy enough, that it ends too abruptly, or that the writing just sucks, but it's not so different from my usual fare and it's a full point lower than my average.

I have some other pieces that scored lower than the average (that's how averages work!), but I usually understand why something doesn't land with readers. I'm surprised here, though, and curious if you two might have some feedback/criticism I can use as I develop. No holds barred, brutal honesty is welcome!

 

[AwkwardMD]

@PennyThompson
Link

Full disclosure: Before submitting this request, Penny PM’d me to ask if making another request was okay, and I said that it’d be fine but we’d probably dispense with the most of the lovebombing in favor of getting to whatever criticisms we were going to get to. And yet, I can’t not bring up how talented of a wordsmith Penny is. There are so many interesting, complex, and nuanced turns of phrase in this story that my head was spinning. Dandelion Greene is an absolute delight of a character.

The weakest tool in my authorial toolbox is my prose. My words are functional and boring. Effective, but not pretty. I always respect it when people can do things I can’t, and I was deeply impressed by the work here.

*

I have a friend who is an adult graphical artist. Most of their business, in the time we’ve been friends, is predicated on work that involves nostalgia characters. Kim Possible, Velma and Daphne from Scooby Doo, Mary Jane Watson and Gwen Stacy from Spider-Man, etc. That is what most of their patrons and commissioners want, and they’re very good at adapting characters to be identifiable in their style. In addition to being their friend, I am also a fan, and I know that this work is less fulfilling for them. They would want, under perfect circumstances, to be drawing their own characters, making up their own stories, and doing more things their way. I have tried to encourage them in this.

One of the ways I tried to encourage them was to try to get them to shortcut their normal style, which is very detail oriented, so that when they have the time to make work of their own they can crank out a lot of work. Do some pages in black and white. Do some pages with no shading. Get it in front of patrons in volumes so the patrons can see how good it is, how good the ideas are, how talented my friend is, and sell the patrons on letting them do what they want. I tried a few different tactics, and ultimately they weren’t satisfied with those so it never got off the ground.

One idea that went further than the others was to try to develop an alternate style that was a bit like Chibi. Tiny, expressive, cutesy, funny, yes, but it struggled to then make the transition to being erotic.

This is really the only place I can find to criticize this story. It’s so good. The first 80% of it is chock full of character and vibes and mood, and when it came to the sex I was kinda meh. It’s clearly trying to be hot. I don’t think you only tacked on the sex scene as an afterthought and that it wasn’t supposed to get anyone off. I just don’t think it connects to the rest of the story in a way that matters.

For one thing, I’m here for Dandelion Greene, not Margie Colton and not Ms. Only Appears At The 11th Hour. Dandelion isn’t really involved, and the sex isn’t really the culmination of any kind of arc for her. It does awaken some things, and we love that for her, but Dandelion is incidental past a certain point and that’s fundamentally unsatisfying as the apex of a story.

Now, this is the part where I need to point out that this is not normally my kind of story. Folk Tales are a lot like Noir/Pulp in this respect, where an airtight plot is less important than a plot that allows for plenty of opportunities for the main character to deliver killer lines. Zingers. Folk Tales operate on the same kind of logic.

The out-of-left-field plot turns that involve the Hidebehind and Billy Green Eyes, those are staples of this kind of Folk Tale. It isn’t what I would call good storytelling, but that’s because Folk Tales operate on different criteria (much like Noir), and that’s out of my wheelhouse. In a Folk Tale, it’s okay to have characters appear to exemplify a moral or lesson only to then get discarded, never to reappear. It’s not just acceptable, it’s expected.

I am not suggesting that comedy and sex are unmixable. I think I’ve pulled that off, so I know it’s possible. I’m suggesting that first person comedy with a wisecracking POV character is mostly incompatible with emotional vulnerability, with intimacy, and with payoff. Wisecrackers break tension like it’s a 2x4 at a karate convention. For me, good storytelling involves cultivating that tension like a flower, not trampling it underfoot if a good enough punchline presents itself. In third person, you can have a wisecracker cracking wise while the narrator is able to make the audience more aware, say, of the underlying sadness that drives this character’s desire to fill every pause and bit of silence with something pleasing and smile-inducing. In first person, all you have are the bits (read: jokes).

At the end of the day, I feel like you’ve got a great Folk Tale AND a sex scene. The choice to put it in first person contributes to this. The nature of Folk Tales contributes to this. The characters involved in the sex scene contribute to this. To circle back around, it doesn’t make the transition from sexy to erotic. Maybe that’s not what you’re going for. Maybe that’s an acceptable loss for an experiment in a new style.

I can’t make that judgement call for you, or decide how important this element should have been. I can only tell you that it doesn’t quite work.

 

[Omenainen]

@PennyThompson

I have something to add to the above. The way we work these reviews is that we have a file for each story, and jot down notes as we read as to what aspects we want to cover, to work as a starting point for us discussing what to include in the review.

This is verbatim what I wrote after first reading this:

From a deeply personal and definitely subjective perspective, I am depressed by this story. Dandelion Greene and the Witch of Watson County is a perfect short story. Perfect scope, flawless execution, spotless style, strong characterization, marvelous descriptions. The attitude towards life, universe and everything that this story encapsulates, makes me uncomfortably aware of how wounded and messed up I am as a person. This story makes me reconsider my life choices, like writing stories in English, and writing stories in general. I have nothing to say about this except I hope Penny will stop asking us for more, because I think I should be asking her for advice instead of the other way around.

 

[PennyThompson]

From a deeply personal and definitely subjective perspective, I am depressed by this story. Dandelion Greene and the Witch of Watson County is a perfect short story. Perfect scope, flawless execution, spotless style, strong characterization, marvelous descriptions. The attitude towards life, universe and everything that this story encapsulates, makes me uncomfortably aware of how wounded and messed up I am as a person. This story makes me reconsider my life choices, like writing stories in English, and writing stories in general. I have nothing to say about this except I hope Penny will stop asking us for more, because I think I should be asking her for advice instead of the other way around.

holy heck, that's a hell of a paragraph to wake up to and I have no idea what to do with my feelings about it

Tiny, expressive, cutesy, funny, yes, but it struggled to then make the transition to being erotic.

when it came to the sex I was kinda meh. It’s clearly trying to be hot. I don’t think you only tacked on the sex scene as an afterthought and that it wasn’t supposed to get anyone off. I just don’t think it connects to the rest of the story in a way that matters.

At the end of the day, I feel like you’ve got a great Folk Tale AND a sex scene. The choice to put it in first person contributes to this. The nature of Folk Tales contributes to this. The characters involved in the sex scene contribute to this. To circle back around, it doesn’t make the transition from sexy to erotic.

Thank you, this is so extremely helpful, and cuts to the core of my feelings about this story. I feel like I succeeded reasonably well at writing the Weird Americana folktale that I wanted to write, and in the process I failed at writing erotica.

I want to write more with this character and this setting, I think I've got something here... and I think that Literotica might not be the right place to do it, and that really scares me!

 

[AwkwardMD]

Thank you, this is so extremely helpful, and cuts to the core of my feelings about this story. I feel like I succeeded reasonably well at writing the Weird Americana folktale that I wanted to write, and in the process I failed at writing erotica.

I want to write more with this character and this setting, I think I've got something here... and I think that Literotica might not be the right place to do it, and that really scares me!

Nobody is clamoring for my ideal. Even for me, I read this at the time it came out and loved it. If it makes you happy, then you should explore the oddball intersections and fuck what I have to say about it.

It sounds, though, like I've hit on something you were maybe already thinking. Proceed with knowledge. If it comes out wonky and wonky was what you were going for, that's okay! If it comes out asymmetrical and asymmetrical was what you were going for, that's okay! I reject the idea that you can't use Literotica as a platform to explore whatever kind of creative writing fulfills you, even if it's inherently non-erotic.

 

[AwkwardMD]

And, importantly, if your creative ambitions are  bigger than Literotica, I support that too.

 

[Omenainen]

holy heck, that's a hell of a paragraph to wake up to and I have no idea what to do with my feelings about it

I’m usually less dramatic, at least in what ends up in the review or the thread. But there you have it, my unfiltered first impression

 

[Omenainen]

@Rambling_Chantrix
Butterfly Weed

First things first: well done. This was a very skillfully crafted story. Everything fits, everything has its place, it is beautiful. It is painful, but the pain is exposed in carefully measured portions in a way that makes it palatable, yet thought-evoking, yet believable. There’s just enough and not a bit more. Of everything, there’s just enough and not a bit more. And the prose is exquisite.

Contains spoilers.

The story is structured as four parts. I’d like to say for equal parts, but I’m not sure that’s true. All four parts are what this story consists of, but they’re not all the same. Usually, I’d advise against publishing chapters this short as separate things, but in this case it makes kind of sense, though I’m not sure if the reception on the site would’ve been very different if you had published it as one story. I’ll leave site mechanics out of this. What’s done is done, it’s published in separate chapters, and here we are on the other side with the whole of the work in our hands.

The parts are from the point of view of different characters each:

1. It Ain’t Much, but It’s Honest Work / Portia
2. The Food Court / Nouglas
3. Insistence / Frankie
4. Untitled Polyptych / Abi

I’m usually not one for forewords, but in this case I think it was justified. There was a lot of ground to cover as is, without including the details about sex work in this world of yours. This is one of the rare cases where I think doing it exactly like this was the best option.

The most pain, the closest to the crux of the things, are Portia and Frankie. Portia whose pain it is and Frankie whose relationship is affected. The way you start with Portia and then move away from her, inferring her struggles but from a distance, lessens the impact. I have no doubt that this is intentional. This is a fantasy, a what if all went well, and while there surely is pain, getting too close to it would be… well, painful, for a lack of a better word. I do understand this.

You open so strong. The first chapter was heartbreaking, impactful, confusing-but-it-all-made-sense-in-the-end, genuine, just… this is it. I was spellbound. Everything about it was good, and the last sentence was perfect.

The second chapter is a step away from the eye of the storm. The action is where half of the pain is, but it’s narrated from Nouglas and not Frankie. I have no doubt that this is intentional. It lessens the impact and lets us see it from the outside, and I loved how you incorporated Nouglas’s own struggles with his art and how you included his creativity into the mix. It felt justified, and it felt like he’s a character in his own right and not just a prop to display Frankie’s pain.

The third part, we get back closer to the thick of it, from Frankie’s POV. Having given us a breather with chapter 2, we get to plunge back in now. And it hurts, for sure, in a very relatable and understandable way. I love what you did with the bolded out sections. I love what you did with Frankie pondering about their sex life. I love how you let Frankie have the self awareness to get to the hurt behind the hurt and to the real issues. It might be too good to be happening in real life, but oh how I’d want it to be possible, so I’m right there with you. It wasn’t a coincidence that these two chose each other in the first place, and that is the thing, isn’t it.

It was exactly the thing to have Portia try to solve the issue like she did. It was exactly the thing to have Frankie flee and try to wait it out. I feel these people, viscerally, which is impressive, because you’ve given me precious few words to see them through. It’s all very lightly colored, with a very light touch, but it’s all there.

The least painful and the least load bearing is the last chapter, the wistful epilogue, the “after the dust settles everyone can breathe again.” It’s the one you could almost have left out, though it does tie a cute little bow on top of it all (and neatly sidesteps the most laborious parts of the story). It was the weakest of the chapters, and I have to say that while I loved how you explored Nouglas’s creativity in chapter two, having Abi “see it” in chapter four was a leetle bit too much. It was a bit too on the nose, a bit too “I’ll tie this thing up too.” Also having them meet by chance at the art exhibition was a bit too chance-y. The chapter is there to round things up, to show us the conclusion, and as such it has its place.

Now, what could have been better?

For this story, covered like it was, nothing. I think you knew what you were doing and you succeeded in exactly that. Changing the point of view character and distance from ground zero lets us see the whole picture, the shape of everything, and tell the whole story. It prevents readers from attaching too strongly to anyone’s perspective and picking sides. It’s a story about this incident, the whole of it, and as such, it is perfect.

Personally, I’m here for the pain. My art comes from pain, and pain is what I love most in others’ work. I don’t think it was an accident that you started from the most painful part, and then never got back to it, but I would’ve wanted to get back to it. I wanted the gut-wrenching grief, and doubt, and desperate certainty. I wanted to stay with Portia through it. I wanted to stay with Frankie through it. I wanted a longer story, with more depth, around these themes, but that is not a fault in this story because it is not what this story set out to do.

(If you write it one day, let me know.)