Dragon story feedback/suggestions wanted..

[NaughtyBones]

Well, I have officially published two chapters of my story Choices to Make.
I am waiting for the third one to be accepted and am currently writing the fourth chapter.

I would really really love some more feedback though.
People have voted, but only 4 or 5 people total have commented..

What I'm looking for in terms of feedback is basically this:
Is the story clear and easy to understand ?
Does the plot make sense so far ?
Are there any glaring plot holes yet ?
What do you think of the characters ?
Are the characters personalities clear ?

What other aspects should I work on ?

Any and all feedback/critique/suggestions are very appreciated.

(Linking to the first chapter, but I need feedback on both of the current ones -and will continue to need feedback as they are posted-)

http://www.literotica.com/s/choices-to-make-life-or-love
My author name is NaughtyBones and this story belongs to the Non-Human category.

 

[CWatson]

First off, I only read the first chapter, so my impressions are confined to that. If I do the second, I will do it as a separate post so that I can give you opinions on a chapter-by-chapter basis. It's very easy to say, "Well, I changed that in the next chapter," and to be clear, that does count for something... but The Reader gets your story piece by piece, and as such it needs to be inspected that way if you're going to get unbiased critique.

Is the story clear and easy to understand?
No. As a matter of fact, the story is the opposite of "clear and easy to understand", because your technicals are a wreck.

First off, the ellipsis. It's a bit of punctuation better known as the "dot-dot-dot", since it involves three periods in a row. Your story has only one ellipsis; all the rest have two dots. For the record, technically an ellipsis needs four dots: three for the ellipsis itself and another one after to serve as a period at the end of the sentence. This is not a hard thing to coach yourself to do, nor would it be hard to Find-Replace all the double-dots with triple-dots. But you didn't, and that doesn't bode well. In any case, stop using doubles. There are circumstances when four dots are correct, and circumstances when three dots are correct, but two is always wrong.

Likewise, the emdash. There's a difference between short dashes (the "endash") and long ones (the "emdash"--look, I didn't name 'em!). Alas, most keyboards lack a discrete button for long emdashes. Fortunately, most word-processing softwares automatically convert double shorts into a single long. If not, just stick with the double short: The Reader will get what you're trying to say. I don't know where you got the dash-space combo thing you're using now, but stop using that--it's also always wrong.

You also need to learn proper comma use. Commas are used to separate clauses. When you lack them, it's called a run-on sentence these things are named because they're like two sentences that ran into each other. (This message brought to you by the Department Of Self-Demonstration.) Your story is filled with run-ons due to missing commas. Even worse, sometimes this results in what is called a "garden-path sentence," a sentence whose first interpretation is incorrect. They are so named because they lead the reader down the garden path. The first one I found from your story is: "she just preferred to be alone and sitting out in the center of the bustling city while droves of other creatures buzzed by like crazed bees", which doesn't agree with the previous statement of disliking people. In fact, what you've said is that she likes to be "alone and sitting out in the center of the bustling city"! The sentiment makes no sense, because it is lacking a comma: "she just preferred to be alone, and sitting out in the center of the bustling city while droves of other creatures buzzed by like crazed bees..."

Also, italics. The proper way to use them is not to use asterisks. Instead, you hit Ctrl-I in your word-processing software, or you use one of a variety of HTML, BBS or wiki-markup tags: <I> and </I> in HTML, [ I ] and [ /I ] on this board (without the spaces), double apostrophes on some wikis. Also, when somebody has thought dialogue, it needs to be treated as though it were spoken, just in italics and with no quotation marks. That means you need a closing punctuation mark--typically a comma, if an attribution rider ("he said" / "he thought") is going to follow. Speaking of which, you need those in normal dialogue too. " 'I'm going to the store_' he said." is always wrong; stop doing it.


Technical details are the single most important part of your story. Plot, characters, message, all the stuff I personally love and always encourage writers to develop... All of that comes second. Details come first. Details have to come first, because if you get them wrong it reduces your masterpiece to a pile of gibberish. You could be writing the next War and Peace, but nobody will ever know it because they can't read it. It's obscured by missing commas and weird punctuation and misleading phrasing. And at that point, what has all your work amounted to? What have you accomplished?


Does the plot make sense so far?
Only kind of. Evidently there's some sort of courtship going on, but that's all I could glean. You have a good sense of pacing, in that you know you can leave some explanations for later and that The Reader will accept things on faith--Okay, she's got magic; Okay, there are creeds; Okay, there's a human alter-ego and a dragon alter-ego--if you make it clear that you know what you're doing and it'll all make sense eventually. (Speculative fiction is like a murder mystery that way.) The problem is, you leave too much of it in the air.

I don't get the sense that dragonhood comes with its own set of rules. To me, that is a turn-off. I want to know what the rules are so that, in the future, when you (The Writer) try to add new things to what dragons can or can't do, I can decide whether it makes sense and whether I want to keep reading. Rules are less about making things realistic and more about showing that you have actually put some thought into the topic--they're a way of showing your research. More importantly, they're a way of promising that you're not going to Deus Ex Machina in the future. Because you haven't succeeded in establishing that, my interest in the story is diminished. That is my personal opinion and others may disagree.

(This is another reason why getting your technicals straight is important. The speculative-fiction genres--fantasy, sci-fi, horror--rely to a greater extent than other genres on the trust between Writer and Reader. The Reader has to believe that you, The Writer, know what you're doing and where you're going, since you'll be deliberately withholding important details. And it can be difficult to place that kind of trust in a writer who has already demonstrated that they can't type "dot-dot-dot" correctly.)


Are there any glaring plot holes yet?
Not yet. Little has happened. There might be one involving their aerial battle, but that depends on the setting, which you haven't established. If Lark lives here on Earth, then the skirmish almost certainly took place above some buzz-cut cookie-cutter suburb, and about fifty thousand people heard them flirting as they flew overhead. Not to mention that, to us, a seven-foot woman is something hysterically astonishing--one of my best friends is a mere 6'4 but attracts attention by being invariably taller than everyone in the room, including her husband. But these are all rules that apply to this particular planet, in orbit of this particular star, because of the particular ways we've decided to live. If Lark lives Elsewhere, maybe these rules don't apply. Again, you've withheld them, partially to the story's detriment.

What do you think of the characters?
Not much. Lark doesn't have much personality. She doesn't like crowds, she thinks skyscrapers are unnatural and she had emotionally-abusive parents. My ex-fiancée was similar, though she's not a dragon. Male Dragon doesn't even have a name yet. Obviously, that's on purpose, but that doesn't help make him interesting.

Are the characters personalities clear?
Only kind of. Unnamed Male Dragon is evidently quite polite and very much in control of himself, but you haven't explained why that second is significant. Maybe he's really disciplined. Or maybe he's socially awkward, the scaled version of Mr Darcy. Lark is shy and careful, probably because of what's gone on in her past with her parents, but she's clearly not damaged enough that she can't respond to human (dragon) intimacy the way she's supposed to. Oh, and she makes jewelry--presumably whilst in human form, since I can scarcely imagine a dragon cobbling anything together that would sell to a human. (I've been reading the Temeraire novels.)

The thing about personality is that it's context-sensitive. There's a scene in Dune where Duke Leto first meets the Fremen, the desert-dwelling warrior people who are part of the planet Dune's fearsome reputation. Duke Leto orders the Fremen customs respected... and the Fremen leader, in response, spits in front of him. Everyone's offended until the translator reminds them all how precious is water, any moisture at all, on a desert planet. For a Fremen to give some away is a show of respect, and what seems uncouth was actually intended as a compliment. It's the same with burping after dinner--in some cultures that's rude, and in others it's a sign that you enjoyed the meal.

Actions never take place in a vacuum; there's always a context that has to surround them. The problem is, you haven't established that context yet. You've described how Dragon!Darcy and Lark act, but you have not said very much about how Stereotypical Dragons act, and what would be normal behavior for Stereotypical Dragons in that position. How do dragons court? Do they flirt in midair and then just immediately couple?--is it an animal thing? What counts as intimacy for a dragon in dragon form, or in human form? What is normal for dragons, and how are your characters deviating (or not) from it? I don't know, because you haven't said. And because you haven't said it, I can't make judgments.


That's all I've got. I'd say it's enough to be going on with. Hope some of this helps.

 

[NaughtyBones]

Thank you very much for the feedback !
I really do appreciate it.

I think that the main issue with the understandability of the first chapter is that it was not intended to be read alone. I write in the intention of it making sense on a whole, as a novel, not in the sense of taking one chapter and expecting to understand the whole idea so far.

I also write with the idea of letting certain things be discovered as it goes along --just as you said, just to a more intense degree.

As for the grammar mistakes, I am very sorry for that.
I was home schooled from the 4th grade onward by my mother, who was not exactly the best at grammar herself. What I know of in terms of writing is literally all self taught, so it is difficult to get everything right.

I focus a lot on my story plot in and of itself, so that may be where the lack of little details comes from. I have a tendency to go back and re-work things a lot. So, I will certainly benefit from this critique.

I sincerely hope that you will read my story in the future, and let me know if I have remedied the problems that you mentioned.

 

[DRS_EROS]

Thank you very much for the feedback !
I really do appreciate it.

I think that the main issue with the understandability of the first chapter is that it was not intended to be read alone. I write in the intention of it making sense on a whole, as a novel, not in the sense of taking one chapter and expecting to understand the whole idea so far.

I also write with the idea of letting certain things be discovered as it goes along --just as you said, just to a more intense degree.

As for the grammar mistakes, I am very sorry for that.
I was home schooled from the 4th grade onward by my mother, who was not exactly the best at grammar herself. What I know of in terms of writing is literally all self taught, so it is difficult to get everything right.

I focus a lot on my story plot in and of itself, so that may be where the lack of little details comes from. I have a tendency to go back and re-work things a lot. So, I will certainly benefit from this critique.

I sincerely hope that you will read my story in the future, and let me know if I have remedied the problems that you mentioned.

It would help for other people/readers if you had contact information. Some people, including myself like to make some comments by PM instead of on the thread itself. Just a suggestion.

 

[NaughtyBones]

Okay, thank you.
Sorry, that did occur to me, but I was not sure if anyone would do so.

Everyone is welcome to E-mail me, if they would like: Unerenardebete@yahoo.com
Or you can message me at my account, NaughtyBones.
Here is the link: http://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=1457231&page=bio

 

[CWatson]

Read your second chapter. The technical issues are the same, but I covered those already and won't waste your time with repetition.

The biggest problem I'm having here is the same one I had before: I don't know what it means to be a dragon. Why do dragons have an internal dragon-half of their mind?, even when they are in dragon form? When your male lead talks about it, I think it's just a silly euphemism for the fact that he's thinking with his cock, but Lark does it too. Also, you have this constant talk about "sensing energy" and "radiating energy" or whatever, without bothering to explain what you mean. It sounds like you just need a plot device to allow the two characters to find each other. In that case, why not scent?--dragons are bound to have individualized scents.

Alternately, why not networking? There may not be many dragons out there, but surely Lark and Thunder have some friends; they probably have a few in common, as a matter of fact, because from the sound of it there just aren't any dragons around, so all of them are bound to know each other to at least some extent. Thunder could pass some quiet inquiries. His friends could tease him. This would have the added virtue of involving more people in the story. Your world feels utterly deserted, because so far the only characters that have even received mention are Thunder, Lark and Lark's parents. Your world consists of four people total. I ran into more than that at the grocery store this evening.

Naming your female lead "Lark" was bad enough, but when "Thunder" came out, I lost all interest in your story. There's a phenomenon called "Jumping the Shark", and it's when your audience abandons you because you've just demonstrated, visibly, that you've run out of steam. Darcy-dragon's name is when it happened.

Another technical issue: you have problems with repeated words, needless words, run-on phrases. It makes the story very repetitive. It works to pad out your word count, I suppose, but punchy prose is a lot better. Observe the following sentence:

She was showing off again, he noted as he observed her impressive aerial acrobatics, and decided that he would have to improve his own show if he was expecting to get more than just some nuzzling.

The commas in red are ones I added because I'm a perfectionist asshole. D) The words in blue are completely unnecessary. If you took them out, no one would miss them. As to repetition:

Her scent was hot and tinted with a slight rose scent that had not been there before

A single sentence should never contain the same noun, verb or adjective twice.) Pronouns or linkages like "the" or "and" are don't count.) The one exception is if you are using repetition deliberately: "Oh crap oh crap oh crap running running running!"

Finally, the sex was pretty hot, but it contains an anatomy fail: what did she do with her tail while they were fucking? You didn't say anything about it, so I know what your answer is: "I don't know, I'm not sure." And that in itself is damning evidence, because all I had to do to answer the question was look up the Wikipedia article on "reptiles." It's got a picture of two skinks mating. And you can see how they got around the tails. There was no reason for you to not describe what she did with her tail.


I've been struggling with this conclusion for a while now: I'm not sure how to say it. So I'll just come straight out: your story is lazy. You throw in a lot of things and just expect The Reader to take them for granted, because you want those things to be in the story. Sometimes, as with the "radiating energy" thing, you even throw in things you don't need to. You definitely don't take any time to describe or explain them. This is lazy, and it's going to turn readers off. That includes me. I wish you all the best in your future publications, but I shan't be reading or critiquing.

 

[NaughtyBones]

Thank you for taking the time to give another critique, even though you clearly didn't enjoy reading my story.
I'm sorry for wasting your time.

The overall problem that I have is not actually laziness --despite what it might seem like.
No one has ever actually read my stories, so I have never had anyone tell me what I needed to fix.

As far as the lack of information goes, it comes down to the same problem.
I do have the answers for all of the issues that you brought up, but I just haven't put them into the story yet. (Unfortunately, because I know the story already, it just didn't occur to me that the reader wouldn't want to wait around to find out)

Name wise, I suppose that depends on what you're expecting as far as the 'style' of name.
I once read a story about a woman named Sunshine and one about a cat-species man who was literally called Cat, and I did not find their names to be such a turn off that I didn't enjoy the stories.

Anyhow, I do appreciate your critique and I will certainly continue to work on my stories.

Best wishes and merry holidays.

 

[Derroreaper]

I wouldn't worry too much about CWatson's critical review. Work on your run on sentences, and read your paragraphs out loud. It will help you with the few that are hard to read.

His comments on grammar are correct, but I still managed to read the story, and I ENJOYED IT, just to make that clear

I never gave her tail a second thought, and I never wondered why he didn't know her, or her name. Keep telling the story the way you want to, it works just fine.

I very seldom take time to comment on stories, but to be honest, I really enjoyed this one, and I look forward to reading the rest of the tale.

I'm no editor by any stretch, but if you'd like someone to read and make suggestions before you submit, send me a PM.

 

[NaughtyBones]

Thank you very much !
I really appreciate that, so much more than I can say.

To be honest, the way that I write is such a part of me that I couldn't really change that if I wanted to.
I intend to continue working on my grammar issues though, as I always will, and I do intend to try and add more detail. (because this was originally a quicker story that I thought I might or might not finish --depending upon if anyone actually read and enjoyed it, but I've decided to go through with it.. so I'll be adding more info through out the chapter.

I certainly will PM you, I'd love to know what you think of the chapters. ^.^

 

[CWatson]

As far as the lack of information goes, it comes down to the same problem.
I do have the answers for all of the issues that you brought up, but I just haven't put them into the story yet. (Unfortunately, because I know the story already, it just didn't occur to me that the reader wouldn't want to wait around to find out)

Well, fair enough, but the thing is, that's completely backwards. As you tell the story or begin to tell the story, it is your responsibility to make The Reader interested, not The Reader's to maintain interest.

I quote this guy a lot, but I'm going to pull it out again. His name's John Rogers, he's a screenwriter, and right now he's the showrunner for the television show Leverage. He says: "The three main rules of storytelling: who wants what, why can't they have it, and why do I give a s**t." The last of those three questions is by far the most important.

Because here's the thing: when it comes to sex, there are other writers who are very good. Nick Scipio, Don Lockwood, Jeremy Spencer, brightlyiburn, jfinn... I haven't really found anyone new since the turn of the century, so these names are somewhat dated, but they are all quite good. And when it comes to dragons, there are also writers who are very good. Naomi Novik, writer of Temeraire, is my personal favorite, but there's always bunches of stuff from Weis & Hickman, the trope codifier Anne McCaffrey and her Pern series... Even Eragon, if you feel the need to smash your brain with terrible schlock. With all these excellent (or at least popular) writers out there, why should The Reader spend time on you? Why, in other words, should The Reader give a s**t?

That is the question that you, as the writer, have to answer. And quickly--the figure typically quoted is that you have about five paragraphs to hook The Reader before s/he gives up and hits [BACK]. Because when it comes to new authors and new fiction, the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" is reversed. A new story is always boring until proven otherwise.

Now, you have a complicating factor, because you're writing fantasy. Fantasy, science-fiction, horror, alternate history--what bookstores today lump together under the term "Speculative Fiction"--always has its own rules attached, and at some point those rules need to be spelled out. Doing this at the front of the story can be a mistake, especially if there are a lot of them (eg, the fourteen million rules of channeling in The Wheel of Time), but waiting too long to do it is also a mistake. As a result, every spec-fiction writer has to learn to develop a sense of when to stop for an "info dump" and when to keep the story going. This is a very personal skill; it depends partially on the story, partially on the audience and partially on whether you can make said infodumps interesting. But it's a skill you have to develop quickly, because that's one of the burdens of writing spec-fiction: you are obliged to be at least a little bit boring in those critical opening pages, because if you aren't, the story doesn't make sense. (Anybody who ever says that spec-fiction is easier to write than "literary" / non-genre'd fiction, by the way, is only revealing the fact that they've never actually tried to write it.)

So there is a balance every spec-fiction author has to find between "too much explanation" and "not enough". However, that balance is never "none at all". Unfortunately, that's the one you chose, and it's part of why your story has problems.


Finally, I owe you something of an apology. You are much more of a beginner at writing than I realized, and I have been holding you to standards that are inappropriate for your progress. Even worse, instead of asking questions, I formed incorrect judgments and proceeded on them. This is my failing, not yours.

You have a lot of good ideas and a great deal of imagination. That's part of why I misjudged you; I assumed that anyone plunging into a story of this complexity would have more experience under her belt. Well, as it turns out, your ambition outstrips your ability at present... but there are a lot worse problems to have. It means you're going to get better: it means you're going to keep saying to yourself, "I want to write [this]," and discover that you can't, and then sit down and work at it until you can.

So don't give up. You have problems, but they are by no means unconquerable. Nobody ever emerged from the womb magically able to string prose together; they all had to learn it, step by step. That's exactly what you're doing, and I apologize for not giving you the benefit of the doubt as you did so.

 

[chocolatecookie3]

Feedback

Hi! Here's some feedback. I know someone already mentioned the grammar errors, so I'll just say that makes it hard to stick with the story. Also, you have a lot of backstory and explanation in the beginning about what kind of dragon she is and why she's special. I struggle with this, too, but you have to get the reader interested in the character before they care to go through all of that. You haven't even had any interesting action when you start explaining things. You need a hook first. I think the key part of Lark's background that you should emphasize before you get to the action with the other dragon is that she avoids guy dragons because of her mother. Everything else can be talked about later.

The second chapter is so much better because we already have a character we're interested in and you make it clear that he's different in some way. He has a need that is not being met. The girl dragon seemed happy on her own, so she wasn't as interesting.

As far as the rules, I got a sense that there are rules about how the dragons operate, but it's not clear, and it doesn't neatly fit into any other fantasy worlds I've read. So it might be helpful to flesh out the rules in your mind so that things will be consistent. One question that is never answered--where are they and how is it different from Earth (besides there being dragons)?

I wasn't too big on the dragon sex, but in the story it feels like it comes too soon. She didn't play hard to get for very long. First she's avoiding all men, then she's cuddling? And where did the barbs come from? Are they like cats?

Finally, don't give up! It looks like there is an audience for this type of story, so work on your technical skills and keep going!

 

[Dream_Operator]

Also, you have a lot of backstory and explanation in the beginning about what kind of dragon she is and why she's special. I struggle with this, too, but you have to get the reader interested in the character before they care to go through all of that. You haven't even had any interesting action when you start explaining things. You need a hook first.

I agree. The natural opening is when Lark is flying back to her den (lair?) and senses the male dragon.

Something like this:

Lark was two miles above the ground, flying back to her den at two hundred miles per hour when she sensed the presence.

It was another dragon and his energy was strong.

You can fill in the back-story and description(s) as you describe their encounter.

 

[NaughtyBones]

Thank you to everyone who has given me feedback so far, I really do appreciate it a lot.

I think it's important that I explain that this was written rather more in a rush than I normally write --mostly because I'm looking for feedback on the things that I mentioned above.
I do intend to add more detail --I'm working on that every day. Again, I do have the answers to all of these problems... I just haven't had the chance to work it all out just yet.

As far as writing experience goes, I have been writing since I was a child --quite literally, but I have never had feedback from anyone. Not even my family, because they do not like to read.
So, as I mentioned before, these problems have just been compounding on top of one another without my noticing.
Explaining my world to other people is a new concept for me, because my brain works a bit differently --I'm not even good at explaining myself to people ordinarily, so I just 'assume' that people know why my characters are the way they are and understand my world.

I am working on these aspects.

If anyone has any other feedback, please let me know. I would like to know exactly which points are confusing people, so I can remedy that.

 

[chocolatecookie3]

more feedback

Some things that are not clear: why are there less female dragons? How do dragons normally mate? Do they dance around first, or does the male just attack? Do they always mate in dragon form? What about their human forms? What does Thunder look like as a human? How do normal humans think of dragons? Are they scared of then, or just think they are a nuisance? Maybe some of these are mentioned, but I didn't go back to look.

To answer your specific questions:
The story is clear but it's not easy to understand. It goes back to the rules and what makes these dragons special.
Like I said, I didn't follow the jump from flying around to mating. Is that how fast it normally goes? Is it his voice that makes her like him so much? In the second chapter it's easy to see why he goes for her. If you really want to get to the sex, include a flashback or fantasy on the guy's part. I think people are willing to hang with you for a few chapters before they want a lot of sex.
I don't know about the characters. The girl is a recluse and the guy is erratic and powerful. I need more to know why I should care about them. They don't have strong or unique personalities. I don't think that is always required for erotica, but if you want people to stick through multiple chapters, you need something interesting.

Looking ahead, the readers will be looking for a few things in the next chapters. First, an antagonist or something that will keep the heroes apart. Second, more character development. The relationship should bring up good and bad feelings, so tell us about them and why. Third, more sex because it is erotica.