Correspondents in Pleasure

[welshman]

Woulkd anyone care to read this story and tell me why it got no feedback and only one score? my other stories got a lot more attention/feedback. Have I put it in the wrong category? is it just naff!

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=34209

Thanks.

 

[Ray Dario]

Welshman;

I don't think you put your story into the wrong category. I think that the main reason you got no feedback and only a single vote was the feel of the first several sentences.

The start of a story is very important. If it feels awkward or clumsy or, on Lit, non-erotic the story isn't likely to read all the way through.

The first sentence

Not expecting anyone at this time of the morning, thought Anna, as she headed to answer her door-bell's beckoning.

is awkward to read. I was thrown off by the first segment, her thought, and had to re-read it a couple of times to understand what you were saying.

The second sentence

Her breasts danced alternately up and down; side to side as she hastily did up the buttons of her billowing white cotton shirt as she strode toward the door.

is also awkward to read. There is something wrong with it. Read it outloud to yourself, verbatim, just as it is punctuated and see how its rhythm is jerky. The ; here is awkward and the whole sentence needs to be rewritten. Then we get to the third sentence

Fortunately when her door-bell made its surprise announcement her bottom half was already clad in a pair of jeans that had magically taken the exact form of her curvaciousness.

This is very passive and oddly verbose. Curvaciousness would have been the final straw for me and I would have back clicked right there. However, because I was reading this with giving feedback in mind, I didn't.

Your writing didn't improve thoughout the entire story. There were many tense shifts, run-on sentences, comma-splices and way too many passive sentences.

All these things together are probably a big reason you didn't get much feedback. Unless you ask for feedback, most people won't give it on stories that are hard to read.

Well now that I have really ripped you to shreds, let me offer some salve for the wounds, so to speak.

The plot of the story was good, a little used, but still fresh enough to be interesting. The character Anna slowly became more interesting until toward the end of the first Lit page I was starting to get a feel for her. This is a good sign.

My suggestion is to get an editor that will do more than spell check for you. Try to find one who will really work with you on grammer and sentence structure then work hard to learn from them. Once you clean up the mechanics of writing then your talent will begin to shine through and you'll find you get a lot more feedback and better votes.

Never forget you have to "hook" the reader in to your story in the first couple of sentences and then you have back up that hook with a well written story. You can do it. Keep writing and keep reading and it will come.

Ray

 

[SexyChele]

I think Ray summed it up nicely.

I could relate to many of the things you wrote about - having a very special "cyber friend" myself. I did find that spin on the story exciting.

But the sentence structure was a bit hard to get through. I also think the opening note you included might confuse some people. It left me thinking you had just typed some stuff and posted it without any reasoning behind it. I'm not certain how many people read these notes, but some may have felt confused and left then.

I did find myself having to read through some sentences a couple of times, though. So, I would have to agree with Ray. Try to find an editor who can help with the story's flow, sentence-wise.

Actually, I think if put to good use, you might just have a certain way with words that is very erotic. I found the use of many words not normally seen to be refreshing, but placed in awkward structure. Sounds like a back-handed insult, I'm sure, but not meant to be. I would encourage the use of fresher words, but tighten up on the sentence structure.

Good luck!

 

[jon.hayworth]

WELSHMAN,

You are going to hate this.

I disagree with Ray and Chele, I think the story would have been better in the Fetish Category.

But otherwise my criticisms would be the same. Annoying Tense shifts between past and present. - Early on when she opens the door there is a rambling paragraph that slips into future tense - before she signs for the parcel she has opened it. If I had just opened the story at random I would have clicked off there and then.

I think that you wrote the story from your gut - that's good, but you never editted it or if you did you were not being detached. You knew what you meant, but you never asked yourself, will others?

One tip I have come across recently is to tape yourself reading the story. - If it does not read easily it needs a rewrite.

I hope this helps you because the idea is ok, the images are great, but in this story you do not make that leap from mind to paper

jon

 

[damppanties]

I'll go with Fetish

I agree with jon that Fetish would be a better category for this story because, firstly, masturbating men is actually her fetish. Secondly, I think you should try and submit stories to categories other than Erotic Couplings if you can, because that category is totally over-stuffed with stories. You should see if your story can go elsewhere before 'settling' for Erotic Couplings. (BTW, was it really a 'coupling'?)

I found your use of long sentences and unnecessary words a bit trying. Too much detail can get the reader bored.

"She connected her Sony Digital8 camcorder to her TV's second AV-scart socket so she could monitor the camera's output and check it was working correctly."

I don't think readers need to know what type of camcorder she's using and the continuing detail of how exactly she set it up.

I found the first part of the story too long and tedious to go through but once the sex started you got me hooked. Nice usage of words and lots of new ones too, but some of them were not exactly to my taste. Once the sex starts, it should single-mindedly build up to the obvious conclusion and there should be no hurdles in the form of bad words. Some of the pace-blockers I found were:

"I liked showing you around my bits and pieces."
bits'n'pieces??

"Her fingertips wring pleasure from her teats which are as thick as the digits surrounding them."
Huh? What was that again?

"...as if her nipples were sharing their glut of pleasure with it."
Didn't quite get it....

Now for the good part (yeah, I know I should have done the good part first but I wanna leave you with a good feeling ) I absolutely loved the theme cos I share Anna's fetish So, in that way, I loved the story. It would be really great after you edit it.

Best of luck and keep writing!

-DP.

 

[welshman]

Thank you for your comments. I think indeed the story was in the wrong category. I think what Ray Dario didn't like about those sentences I'd call 'style of writing'! I like to write things in other than 'ordinary' sentences, and find that some sentances in published books need re-reading to 'get' but I think I shall use the simple approach in future stories.

I do have 'problems' with tense shifts and have changed entire stories from present to past!

I did edit this story, many times, perhaps too much! I wouldn't feel right about letting someone else do it, but it might well be a good idea to let someone tidy it up, perhaps I'll ask Lit. for somebody to do that in the future.

I tried to show Anna as a rather shy young woman, hence her embarrasment at the postman seeing her nipple, but as the story developed she transformed into a 'sexual tigress' due to George's video's effect on her, I wanted to clearly show that, what a fetish can do for/to a person.

I think this story in the fetish section would have had readers more readily willing to read it through, as they anticipated Anna's fetish, although I do think it was a coupling, tho a rather unusual one with each in a different time frame, what each did for each other was a shared experience of sorts.

Finally, I think as I write a story I get to know it so well it's difficult to read it afresh, so getting someone else to first before its published is a good idea.