Begging for first story feedback

[CaseyKeith]

Hello, I just published my first story here, Genie In A Bottle, and I would love feedback. I was hoping for feedback in comments, but after 1.1K views, I still have no comments. All I know is that the very first person to rate my story gave it one star, and I now have 4.36 stars after 11 total ratings, meaning I got three 4s and seven 5s. Which is great, but it doesn't tell me what worked and what did not work. I would greatly appreciate any substantive comments.
Note: I know my story is ridiculous. That fact should be neither a detriment by itself, nor an excuse for any other faults.

 

[StillStunned]

Comments are rare. My most viewed story has been viewed more than 115k times, and it has 15 comments. The entire series has more than 300k views, all red Hs, and together only 42 comments.

What you did right, what you did wrong... who's to say? Your first voter might have had a bad day, or seen a typo, or had unpleasant connotations with one of the characters' names. Or maybe they were just being a dick. Or maybe they wanted to click on 5 stars, but their finger slipped. You just don't know.

Take heart from the other votes. Enjoy the fact that you've written something that more than a thousand people have at least opened on their screens, and that several of those people liked it enough to rate it highly.

As for constructive feedback, well, you might get it here, but don't hold your breath. Maybe head over to the Authors' Hangout and join some of the discussions there. It's often a bit silly, but sometimes something useful emerges. Have a look around and see whether there's any useful threads to jump in on.

Or take a look at this thread and ask for a review, but beware that there are no punches pulled.

Whatever you do: welcome to Lit, and try not to be discouraged. Overall, being an author here is a positive experience.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Feedback through commentary is rare. My rule of thumb is one comment per thousand Views, and one Vote per hundred views. It's early days.

I skimmed your story. It's competent writing, although your glaring spelling mistake (masterbate) let you down, given the amount of repetition that word gets. That's simple editing, run spell check every time!

The only other comment I'd make from a presentation point of view is shorter paragraphs. Many readers read on phones, so give them more white space on the screen.

Keep writing. You'll get yourself a following .

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I would advise you to tag your next story. Tags can be important to let readers know what kind of content your story has, but also to make your story show up in search queries.

 

[CaseyKeith]

Feedback through commentary is rare. My rule of thumb is one comment per thousand Views, and one Vote per hundred views. It's early days.

I skimmed your story. It's competent writing, although your glaring spelling mistake (masterbate) let you down, given the amount of repetition that word gets. That's simple editing, run spell check every time!

The only other comment I'd make from a presentation point of view is shorter paragraphs. Many readers read on phones, so give them more white space on the screen.

Keep writing. You'll get yourself a following .

Thank you. My actual problem was relying entirely on spell check, or at least the automatic red underlining, and not having an actual human read it before I published it. Google Docs and ColorNote both let "masterbate" through without underlining it, though they caught other forms of the word and made me change them. Actually this comment section does not underline "masterbate" even though it does underline "ColorNote". I just went to see if maybe "masterbate" is considered an acceptable alternative spelling, but every thing I found said, "misspelling of masturbate". So lesson learned: have a human read it first.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Thank you. My actual problem was relying entirely on spell check, or at least the automatic red underlining, and not having an actual human read it before I published it. Google Docs and ColorNote both let "masterbate" through without underlining it, though they caught other forms of the word and made me change them. Actually this comment section does not underline "masterbate" even though it does underline "ColorNote". I just went to see if maybe "masterbate" is considered an acceptable alternative spelling, but every thing I found said, "misspelling of masturbate". So lesson learned: have a human read it first.

True that, or buy an old dictionary.

I'm astonished that those spell-checkers don't how to spell. That's a fundamental thing to get right - not helpful at all. It's the same with Word not knowing the grammatical difference between its and it's.

Still, knowing this early, saves you next time.

Seriously, buy a second-hand dictionary from a bookshop. I still use the one I bought in my first term at university (and that's a long time ago), and its just as accurate now as it was then.

 

[CaseyKeith]

I would advise you to tag your next story. Tags can be important to let readers know what kind of content your story has, but also to make your story show up in search queries.

Is there a way to tag this story now that it is published? It did not look like I could edit the tags.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Is there a way to tag this story now that it is published? It did not look like I could edit the tags.

You have to submit it as an edit.

Resubmit the whole thing (correct your spelling, fix your tags), same title plus the word EDIT. Add a Note to the Editor, saying what you've done.

Edits are low priority, be prepared to wait at least two weeks.

 

[Stimtheone]

I can also confirm that comments are rare. IF you wanna hear even rarer, any of you get email feedback? I got a damn ESSAY on my works.

Most of the time I don't worry about it and just let it be. I had some guy specifically stalk me to give one-star reviews BEFORE THEY EVEN READ IT. I know this because the story took me six hours to proofread and they posted the review in TWO, so clearly they didn't read all that and just hated that it contained something or had something with me in particular.

If you want a review from me... I could start by saying to go get Grammarly, as not just the spelling, but also the grammar is a bit eh in some places. Kinda painful to read at times. Try to not repeat yourself, ESPECIALLY when referencing characters. Putting the name of something constantly makes one grow tired of it, starting paragraphs with it is exhausting. Honestly, there's a lot to say there, but sounds like you impressed enough people so might be more about my taste. Decent stroke story for some there. Seems more about the smut than the story.

 

[AG31]

Hello, I just published my first story here, Genie In A Bottle, and I would love feedback. I was hoping for feedback in comments, but after 1.1K views, I still have no comments. All I know is that the very first person to rate my story gave it one star, and I now have 4.36 stars after 11 total ratings, meaning I got three 4s and seven 5s. Which is great, but it doesn't tell me what worked and what did not work. I would greatly appreciate any substantive comments.
Note: I know my story is ridiculous. That fact should be neither a detriment by itself, nor an excuse for any other faults.

Hi, welcome to authorship!
I normally wouldn't have read this because I'm not into sci-fi or fantasy, but I did skim the first Lit page. I liked the beginning, what I call "simple erotica," but I got lost a bit when you segued into the non-erotic parts of the story. I'm only mentioning a couple of things here that I think would have been confusing even if I were into sci-fi/fantasy.

"the thick transparent aluminum" I have no concept of what transparent aluminum is supposed to be like.

"Genie was looking at Stephan Alarie, DNP, on her wall. She could see Virgo just underneath him. Dr. Alarie had the job of reviewing Genie's health monitoring with her on a daily basis. The position was extremely routine and required almost no decision making, but it required a highly trained professional to do it. The primary decisions he had to make that required his Doctor of Nursing Practice was determining what information to alert Genie's doctors to, and which specific doctor needed to be altered."

Do you mean "alerted" instead of "altered?"

I'm not sure where she is. She communicates through visual images. Is she in space? Perhaps a little more explicit setup would be in order?

 

[AlexBailey]

Holy fuck! What a great piece! Not ridiculous at all!

That was wonderfully sexy and touching- even without physical contact.

I’ve never been in space but there was so much that was still relatable for me - being isolated for a time with all of the toys and available media but still having a need for human interaction. When no one is there, to want to reach out and feel that you’re having an effect on someone…

At first the writing felt sterile and technical but it fit the story perfectly, the same with the imagery, it felt technical and esoteric in a way that an involved scientist would relate the whole encounter. Still, I’m glad you didn’t go fully technical as if it were an official report - that may have worked but it would not have been so enjoyable.

My main criticism is that I often lost track of who was speaking. There are many paragraphs that include speech by one character and action by the other. It was usually made clear by what was being said but not always so I sometimes found myself going back to check.

You did a great job of entangling their emotional reactions to the dialogue - the writing flowed even as the characters’ geeky nature was awkward.

I think you’re going to fall under the radar of a lot of readers who would love this piece because of how the title doesn’t broadcast the content. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a very clever title, but it’s sort of an inside joke. I was expecting a genie in a bottle fantasy with flying carpets, not a space oddity.

The descriptive line helps greatly but I think referring to her as a ‘slut’ is too much. After reading it I feel endeared to the character and defensive that you would call her that. I guess it’s projection on my part because I guess you’d call me a slut then too.

I related to her ache to have someone enjoy seeing her fit athletic body, and how their reactions were so exciting for her. I also relate to outwardly presenting as normal and technically competent while having a secret inner kinky nature.


Tags and a human editor could have helped but I see that you’re already considering that. Frankly my dyslexia allowed me to skip right over the spelling issues. I had a similar problem with the words ‘portal’ and ‘porthole’.

It’s a great first piece. Well done!

 

[AlexBailey]

"the thick transparent aluminum" I have no concept of what transparent aluminum is supposed to be like.

It’s sci-fi geek thing but it really exists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_oxynitride

 

[Britva415]

Thank you. My actual problem was relying entirely on spell check, or at least the automatic red underlining, and not having an actual human read it before I published it. Google Docs and ColorNote both let "masterbate" through without underlining it, though they caught other forms of the word and made me change them. Actually this comment section does not underline "masterbate" even though it does underline "ColorNote". I just went to see if maybe "masterbate" is considered an acceptable alternative spelling, but every thing I found said, "misspelling of masturbate". So lesson learned: have a human read it first.

It sounds like what happened was that you "trained" your spellcheck to accept the mis-spelled "masterbate" at some point in the past.

It could have been accidental.

It's not "this comment section" which is providing the spell-check function, or Google Docs, or ColorNote, it's your own operating system doing it in all those places/apps. Mine underlines "masterbate."

 

[Constories]

If comments are what you seek, well then I have the category for you... Comments, votes, hatred, and bile as well... It is all waiting for you in Loving Wives .

I have one story posted in Loving Wives... One story only: 181 comments (like 5 of those are mine lol) and 2075 votes. The story was posted back in late July.

Loving Wives fans aren't kind, but they are talkative, and they definitely vote. Haha

 

[MohanSingh]

The story lost after me the first paragraph