Constructive feedback please?

[Brazen]

These are my first stories on Literotica and I would realy love some serious feedback. If you like them, or don't like them, tell me why. I want to polish me skills and become the best writer I can be. (Plus I just love ot hear others opinions of my work!)

Here are the links:

1. http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=49931

2. http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=60240


C'mon.....give me your best shot!! I can take it!!!

Brazen

 

[sirhugs]

someone else will have to take the shots. Both links went to one story, so if you fix that, I'll try the other one. " Another Good Workout" had the polish I associate with a veteran writer. I'm no editor, but I found no glaring errors in grammar. The sentence structure and paragraphing was strong. A few run on sentences, but I do worse. A few too many one sentence paragraphs, but not that really broke up the story.

I didn't care for the device of Laura- It set me up to expect a payoff with Laura that never materialized.

I thought "the moan that couldn’t escape " was too artifical a description- a moan being a sound, is it subject to the "tree in the woods" rule- that is, if you can't hear it, is it really something else?

"I took hold of Marti’s wrists and pulling them away from my body and behind her back" - grammar error?- should this be "pulled" to agree with "took"?. Also, the use of " and" here is inappropriate unless you add another verb, which you need anyway- I think pulling them behind her back when you are facing her is odd.
" Pushing"?

In the paragraph after that, you have your narrator look down at Marti, and then glance up. I couldn't find a change of positions, so this seems like bad continuity.

" my thumbs moving up to gently graze her nipples"- do thumbs graze? How about "brush"?

"For what must have been an agonizingly long time for Marti"- POV shifting is risky. How do you know what Mari feels? Better to say " Hoping that it built Marti's anticipation to an agonizingly fevered pitch, I...". Or, add dialogue. As much as I love your descriptive skills, I craved more dialogue. I talk during sex. Does Marti?

"drove my tongue straight to her center. " then " I began to run my tongue along her smooth, hairless nether lips"- how does the tongue get from A to B?

"Marti reached for one of my hands guiding it to where she so desperately needed my touch."- POV alert. The narrator cannot know Marti's motivations. You are also not clear where the finger goes. The reader is forced to pause to figure this out, breaking the spell.

I look forward to more stories from you.

 

[Aurora_s_Flame]

" my thumbs moving up to gently graze her nipples"- do thumbs graze? How about "brush"?

Sorry, just making a quick comment. YES, thumbs can most definitely graze! *grins* This all being from a personal standpoint of course...

~ Rora


*will add constructive comments later...after I get back from work and have time to read!*

 

[sirhugs]

Sorry, just making a quick comment. YES, thumbs can most definitely graze! *grins* This all being from a personal standpoint of course...

~ Rora


*will add constructive comments later...after I get back from work and have time to read!*

mmmmm- I'll have to investigate this in person next trip to Sudsbury

 

[sirhugs]

Sorry, just making a quick comment. YES, thumbs can most definitely graze! *grins* This all being from a personal standpoint of course...

~ Rora


*will add constructive comments later...after I get back from work and have time to read!*

I always find Lit enlightening. My Shorter Oxford Dictionary does define " graze" as " touch lightly". Thank you.

However, in the way it is used in the story, I still find it an odd usage- " my thumbs moving up to gently graze her nipples"- I think mmaybe its the passive voice that detracts . I suggest " my thumbs grazed her bipples" is simpler and reminds one less of the association bewtween grazing and eating, which was what distracted me. But I quibble.

 

[Brazen]

Thanks so much for the comments!

The links have been fixed. The first link was wrong. So there you go if you want to read what started the whole thing with Marti!

Brazen

 

[Maskman]

Thumbs are versitile... they can graze, brush, touch, crush.

Brazen, four things:

- I also felt let down a bit by 'Laura'. I was kinda hoping for a triangle, or maybe a tug of war with the narrator in the center... Lots of room for erotic tension, many posibilities, including competition between Marti aand Laura, with the narrator as the scoreboard and prize, so to speak.

- The jousting for control between the narrator and Marti was Hot. You could have made more play with that, but instead, you backed off. Think about that for a future story. Competition for control brings passion with it...

- I didn't get very turned on by the stories. This may be a very good thing, depending on your intended audience. I think that if I were a lesbian, I'd have been running right out to join a gym, but being a straight male, I was a little shut out. You did a very good job of writing a lesbian love story. If you were aiming to cross-over, you missed the mark by a fair bit. Depends, like I said, on your intended audience. Sorry, but I'm not sure what I would've changed to create cross-over appeal.

- Lastly: Very polished writing! Nice indeed, and I'm bookmarking your profile, in the hopes of finding more stories there soon! Even though I didn't get into the stories' passion, I still enjoy skilled writing!

Well done, and you've raised the bar for novices (such as myself), curse your skilled fingers!

 

[sirhugs]

unlike Maskman, your story did turn me on, which not all lesbian stories do. I felt like I was watching, but also felt "your" heat. Thats why I gave it a 5

 

[ladyphoenix]

To agree and disagree...

Yes, thumbs can graze.

Yes, the stories were very good. "Another Workout" (it's workout, not work out) was definitely more polished, and while there were a few minor grammar bumps, hugs there caught everything I would have pointed out.

But in disagreement with some other comments, I LOVED the whole BBQ/interlude with Laura thing. I think that we too often look at every relationship in these stories as nothing more than a jumping off point for someone getting jumped. I liked that you had a friendship relationship here; some time away from Marti that allowed the character to explore her feelings and have some second thoughts/doubts about where everything was going to go, instead of shoving us right into another sex scene (yours are great by the way and I am not into 2 female scenes at all).

In studying lit, you get acquainted with the idea of "foil" characters; those characters in the story who provide a contrast to some others. Laura is a foil character; she provides our main character with a friend as opposed to a lover, AND shows that the main character has other normal, healthy adult relationships outside of sex. i.e, she's NORMAL....and we don't see that enough.

Thanks for two GREAT reads!

best,
ladyp

 

[Maskman]

Good points, ladyp.

Let me note, as I didn't before, that I gave the stories top marks too. Even if they didn't run my engines into the red, I still recognize the high quality of the writing, and want to see more of it!

 

[Jocund Day]

I paced the house restlessly. [Adverbs are not your friends. What constitutes "restlessly?" Describe the action, and let the reader decide whether your character is restless.] I was lonely. I was bored. I was horny!! [Exclamation points, particularly multiple exclamation points, used to emphasize language that is neither uttered nor exclaimed mark your work as that of an amateur. You would do better to end the last sentence of this paragraph with a simple period. The word "horny" is exclamatory enough.]

I went in and took a shower and readied myself for bed. I knew what had
started all of this. I lay on my bed and my mind drifted back to the late[-]night
session at the 24-hour gym where I worked out regularly. [Nice flow here. I like the short, direct thoughts. You switch into and out of her head quickly and well.]

It was a slow night, only a few people working out on the weight machines. I
had gone in to the women's locker room, getting ready to go home.[You have obviously mastered the comma. Isn't it liberating; to focus on the language and not on the punctuation.] Marti had
been there.

[Nice transition.] Marti was one of the main reasons I frequented this gym at such an odd hour.
She was on the night staff and I had been trying to work up my [the?] courage to ask
her out for months. Just thinking about her firm, tanned body set my pulse
racing.

I walked into the locker room and heard the shower running. Now [,] I am not some
kind of voyeur, and I don't go around the locker room peeking at the other
women. But this was the first time I had heard the shower running at this time
of night. I usually darted home and showered in the privacy of my own
bathroom. As I walked past I glanced into the showers. It was Marti.

I froze in my tracks, my eyes widen[ing] and my heart beating like a bass drum.
Marti's back was to me and I had a perfect view of her tight ass. Water and
soap ran down the crack between those perfect globes.[Nice detail, the soap.] She turned slightly to
one side and I saw the curve of one high[-]riding breast. Her breasts weren't
large, [an observation which seems out of place, something, perhaps that one would place here if one's audience were expecting a buxom babe, don't write to the audience, write to the character, good characters leave the archetype behind] the nipples small like the tip of my pinkie finger, but I ached to cover
them with my hands and lips.

Marti turned farther to let the water rinse her back. I saw that she kept her self
completely shaved. I had always wanted to be with a woman who was hairless.
Now I knew that Marti was everything I was looking for. [Based on her hairlessness alone? Marti's turning out to more of the object than I thought she might, or did you intend for your protagonist to be thought shallow?]

I was lost in [day, cut] dreams of my head buried between those muscular thighs when
I heard [there occurred?] a polite cough. It might as well have been a gunshot. I jumped and
nearly screamed.[too much, I started, perhaps] My eyes flew up and locked with Marti's amused gaze.[nice touch, "amused gaze", real, I can see it]

"Like what you see?" he asked. Her hand moved down and I thought she was
trying to cover her bare[cut, redundant, or exposed] pussy. Instead her middle finger slid between the
hairless lips and made small circular motions. My mouth dropped open and a
flash of searing heat washed over me.

[We could use Marti's reaction here before you flee. Visualize the Tango. Even the pauses and holds convey meaning. It takes two to Tango.] I kicked myself all the way home over what I did next. Instead of falling on my
knees and worshiping th[e] naked goddess [please don't go here, "goddess " is much overused] before me, I panicked. I ran![Now this is exclamatory in nature.] I dashed
over to my locker, grabbed my things, and raced out of the gym.

That was how I found myself tossing and turning in my bed, alone.[I love your sense of the paragraph. It's the thought, not the words employed to convey said thought. Well done.]

Reaching into my bedside table drawer I removed my newest plaything. A
battery operated, strap[-]on butterfly. I had been skeptical when I saw it in the
back of a magazine, but boredom and desperation can make you do anything. I
hadn't had a chance yet to try it out, but tonight was the night.[connect the last sentence lyrically to the sentence before it, i.e., but tonight the wrinkles on the back of my hand were beginning to look suspiciously like the lettering for the words "desperate" and "bored," I'm sure you can achieve the same effect more succinctly than I]

I had barely secured the harness straps when the doorbell rang, followed by a
hard knocking. I contemplated pretending to be asleep, but the ringing and
knocking came again and I knew that whoever was there had no intention of
going away. In fact [, it] got louder and more insistent. I began to worry [it]
would wake my neighbors. I grabbed my robe and shoved [in] my arms[nice, telling detail] [into it, cut] as I
ran down the hall.

Now[,] I have always been safety conscious, and normally I wouldn't have opened
the door without checking the peephole. All I can say is that sexual frustration
dulls ones instincts. Or does it heighten them? [This type of aside, particularly when it includes a rhetorical question, fairly screams amateur. You've done all this work to draw us into the story, why pop us out of it? Your character will have sex with a complete stranger, but not without checking the peephole? Cut the whole paragraph.]

I flung the door open ready to give whoever it was a piece of my mind[, but n]one of
the scathing verbal abuse[] I was prepared to heap on their heads ever made it
past my lips. Marti stood on my doorstep, a smug grin on her face. My mouth
must have dropped open [again,] because she reached out and pushed my chin up with
her knuckle [nice].

"You left something at the gym." Marti said[,] stepping inside.[Yes! Marti's coming back into focus.]

"Wh-what?"

Marti nudged the door shut with her foot as she reached out and shoved me up
against the wall. Her body pressed hard against mine, pinning me in place.

"Me," he whispered, her face barely an inch from mine. She took my hands and
stretched the[m] above my head, holding them there with one hand.

"All my careful planning," he said, "Watching you night after night, wanting
you, trying to get you alone. I finally manage it and you run away[.] You left me
there all turned on and damned if I was going to let you get away with it."[Very nice. Your fiction deepens and livens when you begin to imagine the words that could come out of their mouths.]

She kissed me then, hard and demanding. Her teeth pressed against my lips
forcing them apart so her tongue could plunge inside, plundering[too much, pirates plunder] my mouth
mercilessly[adverb alert!]. Her free hand pulled my robe open and she reached inside to stroke[trace?]
her hand down over my stomach. Her searching fingers found, not soft[,] pliant
skin, but a leather harness and the battery pack of the butterfly. Marti drew
back with a surprised smile on her face.

"What have we here?"[Wee!, just right] Marti's fingers explored the contraption I wore, her eyes
never leaving mine. "You are a bad girl, aren't you? I bet you have all kinds of
interesting toys to play with."

She pulled me away from the wall and turned me around. Taking the belt from
my robe she tied my hands behind my back.

"Show me your toy chest, baby," he whispered.

I was on fire. I could feel her in every cell of my body. I wanted her more now
than I ever had. I led the way down the hall to my room and stopped in front of
the bedside table that held my implements of pleasure. Marti opened the drawer
and let out a low whistle. [Your tone is even; your sense of "flow," of narrative continuity, is very nearly flawless. Well done.]

"My, my, my!! Isn't this cute?" She took out a small slender vibrator and held it
up between us. She looked back into the drawer and made a sound of delight.
"But this is much better!"[Here we go, you just might get away with one ex. point at this juncture. "A sound of delight' is, indeed, exclamatory.]

She put her hand into the drawer and removed my pride and joy. The box had
advertised it as nine inches long and two inches thick. It was covered with
rubber nubs that gave extra stimulation. It came with it's own removable
harness, which I had [hadn't yet used?] never used yet [awk.]. This was no toy[.] t was a serious tool. She
turned and looked at me speculatively [too lexical, described what happened to her face when she looked at you, eyes widened, lips pursed, head titled, nostrils flared, etc.].

"On the bed," he ordered. I stepped backward until my legs bumped the side of
the bed[nice detail, it tells] and started to sit down. Marti smiled and grabbed my shoulders.

"Not like that." She said turning me around. "On your knees!"

I shivered in anticipation as she pushed me onto my face on the bed and
climbed up to kneel behind me. Her hands caressed my bare ass, her fingernails
dragging over my skin. She ran one hand up along the inside of my thigh and
flicked on the butterfly [I still wore, cut]. I jumped and cried out as the vibrations
began to make my clit tingle. Marti chuckled and began to rub and squeeze the
cheeks of my ass with both hands.

"God I've wanted this for so long!" he said. "I've laid in bed at night thinking of
all the delicious things I could do to you, all the things we could do together."

I felt her fingers run along the crack of my ass stopping to tease my puckered
backdoor [coarse, for lesbian erotica, IMO]. She laughed again as I gasped and clenched my butt muscles. Her
fingers lingered for a second before continuing on, searching and finding me
open, wet, and willing.[alliteration, in moderation, is always satisfying, well done]

I moaned as she slid first one, then another and another finger inside me. She
moved slowly, but the vibrations of the butterfly and the reality of having her
here combined to bring me quickly to the edge of a powerful orgasm. My moans
got louder and louder and my hips started to rock against her hand. Just as I
was sure my world was about to explode a flick of her finger shut off the
butterfly and her ha[n]d moved away leaving me empty. I cried out in protest and
Marti leaned over my back to whisper in my ear. {More sensory detail here. I want to know how your character knows she is at the edge of a powerful orgasm. The Devil-and the fun-is in the details.]

"What do you want, baby?"

"Please…[…,]" I gasped, my body aching for release. "Marti, please…[…]I need…[…]"

"Need what?"

"Oh, God……..please……..fuck me…….I'll go crazy if you don't!"

[Paragraph break with each dialogue switch] "That's what I
wanted to hear!" he said[,] rising up on her knees. Marti began to push the dildo
slowly into my eager body. Too slowly.

Spreading my legs farther apart I pressed back, groaning deep in my throat. I
wanted all she could give me, and I wanted it now[.]

"You want this?" he teased, moving back so that only the tip remained inside
me. She twisted it a bit and I began to cry with need. She pulled out and I felt
her moving around on the bed. I started to turn my head but she growled low in
her throat, "[d]on't move!"

Once more I felt the tip of the punisher press against my wet and willing
opening, then I felt Marti's hands on my hips. A long[,] low moan escaped me as I
realized she was wearing the harness and I was about to get the fucking of my
life[.] With agonizing slowness she pushed into me, holding my hips firmly when I
would have reared back to take it all at once. She ground her hips against my
butt when she had it buried in me completely and I knew that the tiny nubs
inside the harness were rubbing against her clit. Then, inch-by-inch, she
withdrew and I couldn't take it any longer.

"Damn it, FUCK ME!" I screamed. Marti laughed and squeezed my hips hard.

"You asked for it." he said, half a second before she rammed all nine inches of
the dildo into my body. I barely had time to gasp in a breath before she had
pulled out and driven it in again. Over and over she pounded into me, her fingers
digging into my hips.

It was like nothing I had ever felt before. All of my previous lovers had been so
sensitive, so gentle, so politically correct. This was what I had been needing.
To be taken brutally, forcefully, to be claimed and had. [Out of place both in this story and in lesbian erotica in general.

"Scream for me baby![]" She yelled as she continued to pummel my body. "I'm
gonna fuck you till you scream yourself hoarse![]"

That was all it took. My body began to spasm and each furious thrust brought
out a loud scream of pleasure. I was oblivious to Marti's own cries as we
imploded [Great word, "imploded," but, regrettably, meaningless in this context. Show us what implosion does physically to your heroine. Tell us why her orgasm feels to her likes she's imploding.] simultaneously [cliché]. She fell forward onto my back gasping for breath.

It was a while before either of us could move, but finally Marti slid to one side
and reached up to untie my hands. I turned onto my side and opened my eyes[and looked] at her beautiful face. She reached up and ran the tip of one finger along
my bottom lip.

"I hope you don't have to work tomorrow[,]" he murmured. "['C]ause I intend to
keep you up all night[.]"

"I've got the whole weekend off[,]" I answered[,] and reached for my dream come
true.

1. Brush up your dialogue punctuation. I recommend Hodges's Harbrace College Handbook, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1998.
2. Write with your senses, not with your vocabulary. "Imploded simultaneously" is a cop-out. A perceptive reader will feel cheated; a casual reader will feel nothing.
3. This piece, upon very close inspection, betrays its male authorship. Write as you choose, Brazen, but know that the radically different perspectives that alternate gender, preference, or sex require is a very tough trick to turn. (See John Mahaileck's short story "Green Life" for an exquisite example of men writing women exquisitely.) If you do, indeed, have intimate experience of that which you write, then I humbly apologize for the intrusion, but add hypocrisy to the charges.
4. Don't take anything I've written here too much to heart. As the others here have attested to, you have many strengths, including a good ear for dialogue, a sharp sense of the dramatic, and an even and compelling grasp of "flow." You're good. You could be great. Keep writing.

JD___________________________
"A writer should know too much."
Ernest Hemingway