Can I have some feedback PLEASE?

[joeroberts]

I have two stories published on Literotica so far. This is my second effort:

http://www.literotica.com/s/sweet-and-sour-shades-of-sandra

I'd greatly appreciate any comments or advice. Thank you.

Joe

 

[polynices]

I thought I’d try an experiment in feedback here – something close to old-fashioned close reading. So I’m going to note my responses as I go – all based on first reading. (Apologies in advance if you find it all a bit too much.)

1. First thought – Paras 1 and 2: I really like the style – the sentences are almost telegraphic at times. That gives it good pace. If the story stays like this, I’ll stay with it.

2. ... we click like a copper's handcuffs ... - Nice.

3. ... Half an hour's brisk walk, a kick this and kick that walk, a kick a cripple if I saw one kind of walk. – Interesting - and a shade sinister at the end.

4. ... As always her vibes say, "Make yourself comfortable, take the edge off." Not quite a, "Make yourself at home, piss in any corner you'd like," kind of comfortable mind, but it'll do, as it always does, ... – An oddly crude metaphor, that ‘piss in any corner’ thing. It implies rage in the narrator, doesn't it? Is character emerging?

5. ... I sit myself down door I've just come in through side of a large work table three feet wide four long, sit down in a been around black leather swivel chair, adjusted to my size. ... – Was there an editing problem here? ... I sit myself down door I've just come in through side of a large work table ... goes a long way beyond style; it’s pretty-well incoherent.

6. ... so's you know who's boss higher. – Ditto. It’s fine without ’higher’ but that last word makes it a shade word-salady.

7. ... Her chair looks out through a bay window into the garden, mine looks inwards, another situation she likes to exploit where she can. One hell of a teacher she is. Must be, to have got ME all the way up to and through my Senior! ... I like this tension between suspicious resentment and respect. At least, that’s what I think it is. Are we with some sort of Holden Caulfield here? (But I’m not suggesting the piece is derivative.)

Still reading; still intrigued.

8. ... As usual her white platform soled sandals glide ghostlike over the carpet, supporting five eleven of hourglass figure. ... - That seems to clash with ‘lithe’ from ‘I watch her lithe figure glide to the opposite chair’ a few paragraphs before. It’s not a major contradiction – maybe not contradictory at all – but it made me blink; I came out of the story for a moment.

9. ... Firm breasts and legs all the way up to her arse ... - I’m not sure how relevant this thought is but I’ve been wondering if the writer is British or American. The setting seems to be American – e.g. One hell of a teacher she is. Must be, to have got ME all the way up to and through my Senior! – but many of the expressions seem British. Still, so what. It’s not a problem, just an observation.

10. ... Same height as she ... 'She' sticks out a bit. I’d say ‘her’ myself. I think it’d fit the persona better.

11. ... if I were any more plain looking I'd be as ugly as a robber's dog. – Oh yes! Lovely! I’ve never heard that one before.

12. ... my mood is still so sour that all she gets by way of reply is a surly grunt. – - It’s good that you’ve taken this long to confirm that directly. The cues – the ‘showing’ that came before – were excellent. And this bit of ‘telling’ now lets the reader know s/he’s on the right track.

13. ... on my surprised glance – This strikes me as a little clumsy. Maybe needs rephrasing?

(14. I’m thinking of Sillitoe’s ‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner’ at the moment. It’s just an echo though – and maybe just coincidence.)

15. ... Oh Jaysus and Mary, why don't I phone the Pope while I'm at it? .. Oh! So are we in Ireland,maybe? That might explain my earlier confusion.

16. "What would you do?"
"Cane your arse. Properly. Don't look so surprised. ... – Oh ho! So now we begin to find out what kind of erotica this is. It was nicely led up to – nicely slipped in. (And, of course, there’s a sexy little shock in hearing the tutor lady say it. So she’s a kinky tutor lady, is she ...?)

17. ... Thanks very much, Lady lay-all-the-cards-out-on-the-table Sandra. ... – Nice.

18. ... Punctual as a tax collector. – Nice again. The language in this story is really rich.

19. ... Roses blood red, lawn emerald green in the storm gray light. ... This is very nice too.

20. ... Oh, and you never heard me say that about your mother, look you. ... – Sorry to go on about this, but it nags me. Is she Welsh – look you?

21. ... "And lastly because, whereas you've always known me as nice friendly helpful caring tutor Sandra, you're about to see another side of me. The icy cold, heartless, uncaring bitch side of me, so enjoy the hug while it lasts!" ... – Ah! So she is kinky, then!

22. ... Rock of Ages, CLEFT for me ... and all the rest of that stuff about her arse. Funny. Good. Sexy.

23. Good, swift, efficient description of the room they enter.

24. ... but Dante's frozen devil, the one that lives in the lowest circle of hell. The one that REALLY scares you because it doesn't even have to TRY to scare you. ... - Really good.

25. ... every one delivered in a good and workmanlike fashion. There's hardly a carpenter I've ever seen who could have nailed off a floor by hand as methodically. – Great simile. This is good writing.

26. Incidentally, I’m still with you despite myself. I’m not personally attracted to the thought of being caned, so if this were just run-of-the-mill S&M I’d have left you long ago. But the balance of humour and the narrator’s clearly defined character – his voice - keeps me with you. And the language, of course, Probably, in fact principally, the language.

27. ... It's a long and expert butt massage, muscle manipulation such as would arouse a Carolingian Era corpse. ... There’s been too much good stuff to note everything, but this stands out for me. Acute and funny!

28. ... When my Tee shirt comes off, she fondles my pecs and washboard abs .. I have a slight reservation about his describing his own ‘washboard abs.’ It’s not a big deal - after all, we know he’s a serious runner – but it’s somehow self-regarding. It's as if an external observer has taken over the narrative voice for a moment.

29. Incidentally, I’ve been reading for style and language mostly, but Sandra’s seduction of the youth is sexy. That’s probably why I haven’t been making so many notes for a while.

30. ... "Always keep an eye on the nipples, when a woman's nipples go hard, that's a sign you're doing it right." The way hers are, she'll have one or other of my eyes out if she's not careful. ... - I don’t really like Internet slang, but this deserves a lol. – So lol.

31. ... Nice clean washed out blue jeans sky after storm day. – Great – yet again.

Final thoughts: OK, I got to the end without skipping – which is rare for me in Literotica. And I genuinely enjoyed it – as I’m sure you can tell. It really is good writing.

I think one of the challenges of writing sex stories is to try to transcend the obvious limitation – i.e. the fact that we’re mostly writing wish-fulfilment fantasies and the reader knows that at some level. I suppose your story could be true (some kind of memory?) but I doubt it. However, that’s in no way a criticism. The story comes much closer than anything I’ve read here to making the unlikely believable. As I said from early on, the characterisation of Calvin is superb – and that’s a major plus. And the humour – the wry humour – keeps the reader with you. I really liked this. Congratulations.

- polynices

 

[joeroberts]

Thank you very much polynices for taking the time to read this piece and critique it for me. I did think one or two phrases were clumsy myself, but for want of an editor, they stayed in. However, yours are excellent suggestions and I'll do a rewrite in some places. As it happens I live out in the sticks of Australia and I rarely write, but when I do I like to write well.

"I suppose your story could be true (some kind of memory?) but I doubt it. However, that’s in no way a criticism. The story comes much closer than anything I’ve read here to making the unlikely believable."

Thank you, that's more than I could have hoped for. The story is based on memories, in a way. In reality they were not nice memories, still, one does what one can with what one has, eh?

The story of how I came to write this tale may be of interest to some. I was educated in two catholic private schools (nuns and brothers, the last an all male boarding school), and there I got a glimpse or two of some of the rarer aspects of human nature, including some that aren't much spoken of outside of police reports and court records of the more sordid kind. By way of example, for a year, I lived in a dorm which was run by a sadistic homosexual paedophile. I was thirteen years old at the time. Interesting, Chinese curse sort of interesting that is.

The long and the short of it was that I was left with some trauma induced flashbacks. At first I tried to ignore these, but I found, in the words of the old trick cyclist's cliche, "Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."

It was as though I had an out of control slide projector inside my head, one of the old kind with a drum type magazine on it where you load your slides. Then you click on them one by one, or set the projector to show them in a timed sequence. Now this thing was, so to speak, in sequence mode, or, if one were speaking of a firearm, in Semi Automatic mode. Actually it was worse, because it now and then went into Fully Automatic mode and on top of that, it was a Runaway Gun, meaning it was so overheated it just kept on firing even with the trigger released.

That is a frightening thing when it happens, but it's easily enough fixed. The cure for it is to rip the magazine off, or the belt out, as quick as you'd like, let the weapon fire itself out, then let it cool down. However, enough military metaphors.

I started writing little vignettes of things that had happened to me, or that I'd witnessed happening to others. I would let them stand a while, then look them over with a critical eye, a sobered up after two damn decent bottles eye, I mean.

These pieces were little more than exercises in self pity at first, albeit some of them showed a glimmer or two of good writing. Well, that was okay, it was my party and I could cry if I wanted to, couldn't I? Still, if the object of the exercise was not to wallow in self pity, there had to be something else, and there was.

The secret, I found, was to force myself to write about these things as though they had happened to someone else. Then, seeing them from that perspective, it became possible to view them in a detached way, even to see some humour in them, although they were far from funny when they happened.

I had, many years ago, a tiny bit of military training. I was neither a Veteran nor a Regular, only a Reservist, but in our units we had Regular Army instructors, some of whom were Veterans. These men had many colourful expressions, as many as had some shearers and workers in the wool industry that I'd known, and still know. Some of their expressions would, even now, be just about unprintable, but they didn't make as much use of them as some in Hollywood or elsewhere would have you believe, be it noted. However, when they DID use them, you listened!


Now the instructors didn't tell war stories as a rule. If they did, it was between themselves, and then usually only when they were at least somewhat the worse for drink. Yet it would happen once in a wee while, usually to illustrate some tactical point or other, that they'd tell us such yarns, and very descriptive they could be, to put it mildly. Nearly always, they would crack some black humoured joke or other when speaking of this or that gory thing or event, or both. Indeed, a casual observer might have thought some of them took a perverse pride in being able to joke about things that would leave most other people gaping.

I realized their gallows humour wasn't a display of callousness, it was one of the ways they survived without going mad, and, I suppose, the same thing obtains with policemen, firemen, and emergency services people in general.

To go back to the slide projector, I had regained control of it. It would now show the slides I wanted to see, when I wanted to see them. It was also possible, with a now detached view of these scenes, to be able to pick out characters here and there, change their ages, sexes and what not, and then ask, "Well what if?" Then, one MIGHT have a story, erotic or otherwise.

Thank you once again polynices, and thank you, Literotica, for publishing this piece. While I'm at it, my thanks also to this forum for allowing me to talk what probably reads like the most insufferable rot about creative writing as therapy lol.

Regards to all,
Joe

PS My thanks to DL for first reading this story.

 

[polynices]

I found your response fascinating - particularly the stuff about the slide projector. I've heard about flashbacks, of course - everybody has - but, though I accepted that these things happened, I never fully believed in them before because I couldn't quite imagine the mechanism that produced them (or perhaps I should say 'the way they occur'). Your description here brings it home - makes it real for me.

As for writing as therapy, I think it is for all of us to some extent. (I'm sure somebody will disagree with that at some point, so I'd better qualify: it is for me, anyway.) My personal theory is that the so-called sexual revolution was never really finished: repression is still the most powerful sexual force. The Internet has allowed a strange state of affairs to appear: it's given us the freedom to be honest about our fantasies, but from behind a mask. So we have a sort of double consciousness: we're daringly open but hidden, all at the same time.

That's probably a little way away from your own concerns - but what you've written here reminds me of something I 'know' but usually discount as too high-fallutin': art really does have a practical value - and your story really is art, of course.

- polynices

 

[Dream_Operator]

I enjoyed the story. It took me a little while to get used to the minimalist style in which it was written, but overall I thought it was well done.

One thing I found a bit odd was that after all the build up, the actual sex part of the story was quite brief. I would have thought for a first time story this would have been a more prominent, memorable and detailed part of the tale.

 

[joeroberts]

Thank you Dream Operator. I am thinking of expanding the sex scene as a separate tale.
Regards,
Joe

 

[Dual_Triode]

Hey Joe,

I found a link to your story over at the SDC. I wanted to leave some initial impressions here.

I really enjoyed the stylistic prose. It was almost poetic, in a way. I felt like I was sitting in a pub, pint in hand, listening to Calvin wax philosophically about Miss Van Lewin. The metaphors and similes are colorful and kept me reading. Excellent job.

There were just a couple of place where I got lost. I suppose I stumbled on your local dialect, but this excerpt never really made sense to me:

I sit myself down door I've just come in through side of a large work table three feet wide four long, sit down in a been around black leather swivel chair, adjusted to my size. She'd known I was coming, had set it up beforehand. Never misses a trick, that one. I watch her lithe figure glide to the opposite chair, exact same but set up just that little bit so's you know who's boss higher.

The first sentence threw me so far off that I had to read it several times. Perhaps another comma or two might guide the phrasing.

There was one other spot where I got a tad lost:

Then she's lying on the bed, knees drawn up, her bottom resting on a pillow, my head between her legs, with her explaining just where she wants my tongue and my lips, how to keep The Little Man in the Boat happy and all that gubbins. I know I've got that right when her crutch slams into my face and she sinks back with a long drawn out contented sigh.

At first, I thought Sandra may have turned sadistic again, beating Calvin's face with her crutch. Then, I realized this was a humorous typographical error. I also enjoyed the image of the man in the boat and all that "gubbins". In America, gubbins is not a common word, but usually denotes odds & ends, litter, or rubbish. I interpret its use to mean, "and all that stuff".

I'll try to pull some more thoughts together for the SDC. As a preview to your question, however, please continue writing. Please.

~Dual