Eep, first story ever, "Mile High Love"

[GoodLoad]

Hi all,

Just wondering if I could get some comments on my first ever story posted on here *blush*. Umm...be kind!

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=327741

Figured the best way to introduce myself was to dive in and give it a shot . lol

 

[tickledkitty]

Well, it's not bad for your first time.

I think it would be easier to read in past tense and first or third person. Second person is awkward. There are places when you're saying how Sarah is feeling when you wouldn't really know. You could guess, but you wouldn't really know for sure.

Also, most of your sentences start with I and you. This is another pitfall of using second person. You need to vary this and break the sentences up a bit.

Another problem I had with it was that they seemed to engage in a ton of foreplay. It seems to me there wouldn't be time for it, especially after the knock on the door. Also, you said they were both super horny, so all the more reason for them to run in the washroom, fuck, and get back out quickly. (I know, it's fiction! )

One more thing. Whenever someone begins to speak, you need to start a new paragraph in most cases.

Welcome and good luck with this!

 

[GoodLoad]

Yay

Thanks for the comments kitty! That was mostly harmless lol. I think my ego is still in ok shape.

I'll take those points to heart and hopefully come up with something a bit better from the technical standpoint next time. With luck there will be more to come!

 

[tickledkitty]

Yay

Thanks for the comments kitty! That was mostly harmless lol. I think my ego is still in ok shape.

I'll take those points to heart and hopefully come up with something a bit better from the technical standpoint next time. With luck there will be more to come!

I think most feedback you get on this forum is kindly meant even if it seems harsh sometimes. Good for you for taking it that way. I hope to see your "more to come."

 

[GoodLoad]

I think most feedback you get on this forum is kindly meant even if it seems harsh sometimes. Good for you for taking it that way. I hope to see your "more to come."

hehe. No doubt

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

Easy enough to review this one. IT'S BLOODY BORING!

You have horribly long paragraphs that are murder on the eyes to read on a computer monitor. Your paragraphs should never be longer than about 8 screen lines.

Your dialogue, the few times you use it, is buried in your impossibly long paragraphs. That says, what your characters are saying isn't really very important. That's terribly wrong. What you say is unimportant because you are telling the story. What the Characters say is important, because they are showing the story.

what you've written is 90% long, boring discription. You are doing this...I am doing that. I really don't care. Let your characters do it and stop telling the reader what they are doing.

Like TK said discover past tense and third person. Second person, present tense is hard even for the good writers to do (with some exceptions, I know of).

Now write a beginning and and ending for this sex scene and you'll actually have a story.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

I think most feedback you get on this forum is kindly meant even if it seems harsh sometimes. Good for you for taking it that way. I hope to see your "more to come."

Yeah, TK. I'm a mean bitch. But a few people actually listen to me and become lots better writers

 

[_Lynn_]

Easy enough to review this one. IT'S BLOODY BORING!

You have horribly long paragraphs that are murder on the eyes to read on a computer monitor. Your paragraphs should never be longer than about 8 screen lines.

Your dialogue, the few times you use it, is buried in your impossibly long paragraphs. That says, what your characters are saying isn't really very important. That's terribly wrong. What you say is unimportant because you are telling the story. What the Characters say is important, because they are showing the story.

what you've written is 90% long, boring discription. You are doing this...I am doing that. I really don't care. Let your characters do it and stop telling the reader what they are doing.

Like TK said discover past tense and third person. Second person, present tense is hard even for the good writers to do (with some exceptions, I know of).

Now write a beginning and and ending for this sex scene and you'll actually have a story.

There really isn't anything more I can add to what Jenny said here.

Between the long paragraphs and boring descriptions, I struggled to finish reading it.

 

[elfin_odalisque]

GoodLoad, welcome and congrats for having the courage to post a story.

Jenny is quite right and, although she sounds a bit harsh, it is better than sycophancy.

First: never use second person (you). As far as I know, no-one has ever written a successful story in second person. It is for letters and songs; only a spoken tense.

Keep narration and description to a minimum. Use - to death - dialogue, both to advance the action and give a lot of description, but also to speed up your story.

You must create more 'white space'. Readers always look for soft formatting and your story looks a bit like a Ph.D thesis. The writer must never 'appear'. That went out of fashion with Dickens.

You have clearly got the talent to write good fiction, but you need to let your characters do the work for you.

If I can be of help, PM me - but, keep writing, you can be real good.

Elle

 

[GoodLoad]

Those were the replies I feared .

All good points though after thinking about it. Thanks for the brutal honesty . I'll take it under advisement!

Just a quick question though. Doesn't the 2nd person make it more intimate? Like you are there in the action?

 

[cloudy]

Just a quick question though. Doesn't the 2nd person make it more intimate? Like you are there in the action?

No. If you are writing it as if "you" is a woman, then you automatically lose half the readers that you could have had. Men don't relate well to "your pussy is wet."

And, vice versa.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

I find stroes written in second person get totally confused. "You" gets confused with you and you and you. "We" and "Us" gets confused too.

Typically, stories written in 2nd person are written like the writer speaks. The problem is, when we speak to each other, we speak with words, inflections, body language, facial expressions and so on. Can you really put that on paper in a short story?

What really comes out is a mish-mash of "Me", "you", "we", "us" and our that is hard to read, boring and sometimes nonsensicle.

Just don't do it until you gain a lot more experience in your writing.

 

[MarshAlien]

Those were the replies I feared .

All good points though after thinking about it. Thanks for the brutal honesty . I'll take it under advisement!

Just a quick question though. Doesn't the 2nd person make it more intimate? Like you are there in the action?

In my experience, no. It makes it sound like it something I should already know something about, so I wonder why you're telling it to me. Are you offering me insight into your point of view, as opposed to mine? Are you writing me a love letter? If the answer to these is no, then I don't think second person is going to work. In all the stories I've read here, I think I've seen it done well maybe a total of five times.

Besides, we Lit readers are never at a loss for putting ourselves into the action.

As for the story, my biggest trouble, apart from the POV and the formatting (and some storytelling conventions, like the paragraph that begins "3 AGONIZING minutes" or the lack of a transitional dialogue attribution in the second paragraph), is the absence of any real characterization. Sarah and Anthony; so what? Why should they interest us? Who are they?

You seem to have a facility with the language; now you just need to learn some storytelling. Easy, no?

 

[elfin_odalisque]

Marsh, I regard you as an icon higher than Superman, James Bond or even Hillary Clinton.

Just here, you let me down.

Second person POV doesn't work in stories, TV or films. Why? The 'voice' is a spoken part of the verb. It only works in conversation. Sure, on TV, in songs - even poems - it works - as long as you are in a verbal situation. As soon as you get to written stuff, it's not just what Cloudy says ( though she's right), even same sex readers don't assosiate with the 'you'. It's far too intimate and exclusive.

In TV/films, why do they put the camera face on to the character speaking ? To avoid the 'you' problem.

 

[MarshAlien]

Marsh, I regard you as an icon higher than Superman, James Bond or even Hillary Clinton.

Just here, you let me down.

Second person POV doesn't work in stories, TV or films. Why? The 'voice' is a spoken part of the verb. It only works in conversation. Sure, on TV, in songs - even poems - it works - as long as you are in a verbal situation. As soon as you get to written stuff, it's not just what Cloudy says ( though she's right), even same sex readers don't assosiate with the 'you'. It's far too intimate and exclusive.

In TV/films, why do they put the camera face on to the character speaking ? To avoid the 'you' problem.

An icon, eh? I like that. But since you didn't show up at my house naked, with beer, I must respectfully disagree that second person POV never works. Not for a full story, perhaps - that would be very hard to pull off - but for a long scene I think it's entirely possible. In mainstream fiction, I think it might be kind of neat to read a letter written by a serial killer to a copy whom he's watched at the crime scene, all done in the second person. In erotic works, I think it can only be successful if it offers insights into the relationship. That doesn't happen often, but I'm not prepared to rule it out entirely.

As for TV and the movies, I think that the camera is always the "third person," so it's very hard to do it otherwise. Adding a narrator might make it partially first person, but even then the camera is going to see things that the narrator doesn't. I do recall, however, an episode of the TV show MASH, in which the camera is used to represent the wounded soldier, allowing all and sundry to come visit him in the course of the day. That, to me, is as close as you can come to second person POV in TV/films, simply because of the physical limitations involved.

I like a good microbrew. What time will you get here?

 

[elfin_odalisque]

An icon, eh? I like that. But since you didn't show up at my house naked, with beer, I must respectfully disagree that second person POV never works.

I like a good microbrew. What time will you get here?

Can I just keep the sundress on until you open the door? Personally I go for a good Zinfandel - the robust red grapes seem to do something for a guy's libido.

Before I catch the bus across to see you, you are completely wrong. (Jenny speak). Madonna, Sheryl Crow or James Blunt, Eminem can use the second person because it's vocal. I associate with the women's voices and think of my male fantasy. With the guys, I hear them talking to me ('specially when JB sings 'You're Beautiful').

As soon as you use 2nd person in stories you cut the reader out of the loop. Think of the trick in TV and films with a conversation. You rarely see two people talkingto each other. Each character talks to camera, which is meant to put the viewer 'in the scene' and not be a spectator.

The other huge problem with 'you' is that it seriously curtails your ability to describe other people. Even writing in first person, you can take time to flesh out the antag but this is impossible when you only talk from the mind of the protag. Also if you start using 'you' in narrative and exposition,you are severely limited in using dialogue. Reads funny if 'you' talks to 'I' saying, 'Do you love me?'. Kinda clashes.

Sorry to go on but second person is one of my pet hates - first person is soo much more exciting. Now where did I put your address? Ah, yes, between my breasts.

A bientot.

 

[sr71plt]

Can I just keep the sundress on until you open the door? Personally I go for a good Zinfandel - the robust red grapes seem to do something for a guy's libido.

Before I catch the bus across to see you, you are completely wrong. (Jenny speak). Madonna, Sheryl Crow or James Blunt, Eminem can use the second person because it's vocal. I associate with the women's voices and think of my male fantasy. With the guys, I hear them talking to me ('specially when JB sings 'You're Beautiful').

As soon as you use 2nd person in stories you cut the reader out of the loop. Think of the trick in TV and films with a conversation. You rarely see two people talkingto each other. Each character talks to camera, which is meant to put the viewer 'in the scene' and not be a spectator.

The other huge problem with 'you' is that it seriously curtails your ability to describe other people. Even writing in first person, you can take time to flesh out the antag but this is impossible when you only talk from the mind of the protag. Also if you start using 'you' in narrative and exposition,you are severely limited in using dialogue. Reads funny if 'you' talks to 'I' saying, 'Do you love me?'. Kinda clashes.

Sorry to go on but second person is one of my pet hates - first person is soo much more exciting. Now where did I put your address? Ah, yes, between my breasts.

A bientot.

Right up to that last sentence of this posting by Elfin, the argument on whether to use 2nd person to be more personal had lost me (admit I didn't examine the postings in detail--just got a general impression of what was being argued). When I want to be personal with erotica (which is often), I use the 1st person. I've read several "how to's" here saying not to use 1st person, and I can't possibly see how that applies to erotica. Most readers I know of read erotic for a personal transport by the story. Can't get any more personal in delivery than 1st person. I just, then, need to be general enough about the characteristics of the "I" so that the reader will transport with me.

 

[MarshAlien]

In my entire pornography career (approaching my anniversary; no flowers, please), I have only recently started to write in the third person (and in the present tense, which is a fascinating exercise). Everything seemed more natural to me in first person.

As for my being completely wrong about second person - in other words, Marsh, you ignorant slut. I can live with that. I may have liked a few of the stories that I've read that have been written in second person, but I used to like Hydrox instead of Oreos, and family and friends were always quick to inform me that I was wrong about that as well. De gustibus non est disputandum, except in my case. My gustibus est always in disputandum. (That's one of those foreign phrases I try to keep on hand to make myself look smarter than I really am; my favorite is "'esprit de l'escalier": wit of the staircase, which refers to the remark that you think of after you've already left the room.)

 

[rupert_ravenclaw]

I'm no expert, but a story written in second person means an instant back button for me. I wouldn't mind a love letter thrown in somewhere in the story, but having it all in second person makes it unreadable to me.

Just my five cents.

 

[MarshAlien]

I'm no expert, but a story written in second person means an instant back button for me. I wouldn't mind a love letter thrown in somewhere in the story, but having it all in second person makes it unreadable to me.

Just my five cents.

Oh sure. Take her side. See if you're still on my Christmas card list come December.

 

[elfin_odalisque]

"Marsh, give it me now. Now, I insist. I've had a shitty day, I've brought your microbrew - you know I prefer my men fuelled with red wine , but what the heck. Get your clothes off now -and I want you to fuck me royally. Now. now."
~~
You sprawled excitingly against the doorframe. I felt excitement cascading through my body as I saw you slowly expose yourself to me.

You really excite me as I put your beer down on the table in front of you. Will you take me tonight, or will I have to encourage you to slip my nightgown off.
~~
OK, I pushed it, but do you see what I mean. If you slip into second person, you stop telling a story and become a journalist.

 

[MarshAlien]

"Marsh, give it me now. Now, I insist. I've had a shitty day, I've brought your microbrew - you know I prefer my men fuelled with red wine , but what the heck. Get your clothes off now -and I want you to fuck me royally. Now. now."
~~
You sprawled excitingly against the doorframe. I felt excitement cascading through my body as I saw you slowly expose yourself to me.

You really excite me as I put your beer down on the table in front of you. Will you take me tonight, or will I have to encourage you to slip my nightgown off.
~~
OK, I pushed it, but do you see what I mean. If you slip into second person, you stop telling a story and become a journalist.

Oh, piffle. You are an excellent writer, and I have no doubt that you can write a bad second person story without even trying. But that doesn't answer the question of whether someone can write a good one. Plus you switched tenses in the middle of the story. Bad elfin_odalisque, bad!