Feedback on story please

[PowerThruster]

Hello all. I have posted pt. 1 of my story called Road to Recovery, and pt. 2 should be up in a few days. It is about a nurse and a patient, but takes a different spin on it. I would love feedback on both, and thoughts on where I should head with pt. 3.

I have strong ideas about where I will take it, but would love input from readers.

Thank you in advance.

-PowerThruster

 

[CWatson]

I'd love a link.

More than a hundred stories are posted on this site every day. The less time I have to spend hunting down your story amongst all of them, the more time I have for reading your story, critiquing it, and enjoying it.

 

[PowerThruster]

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=466271

Would help wouldn't it? lol

 

[Experiencedguy]

Well, it is interesting. It is more like a good start to a story, than a story. You do have my interest level so high that I want to see where you go with this. Please PM me with a link to Part 2 -- if you do I will send you constructive comments, and may then be able to give you ideas about where to go with part 3. As it is now, the story could go anywhere -- like, I went home and never saw her again, but that is one hand job that I will never forget. I really don't think that is what you want to do with a good start.

 

[CWatson]

I agree with ExperiencedGuy that you picked an excellent place for a chapter break. This story could really go anywhere from here, and that's a cool thing to be able to say. (Certainly isn't something I can ever say about my work! )

Personally, I want to know more about Ken, the accident, and--particularly--the extent of his injuries. What exactly happened to him that put him in a hospital bed for so long?

Also, what I want to encourage you to work on is technicals. There are no glaring errors in spelling, grammar or punctuation, and that's a good thing considering how often we see those on this site. But there are times when you could (or should) rephrase statements or add punctuation to them for reasons of clarity. The biggie is this paragraph:

The part that had been killing him was why would a nurse, who had seen far more interesting things in her time than a random hard-on from a patient, have avoided the area; or not merely make a joke about it for that matter.

At the very least, you ought to have a comma before "why would a nurse", to avoid the run-on sentence, and preferably you would re-phrase either the lead-in or the internal monologue itself. This sentence is very jagged, and is likely to break the Suspension of Disbelief. That's the last thing you want.

But hey: I consider myself an editor, and as such it's my job to be picky. If this is the only thing I can find to zing you on, you're in good shape! *grin*

 

[PacoFear]

Read it. Liked it.

Hiya PT,

CWatson's being easy on you. As best I can tell, you've got something against commas. You're regularly leaving them out where your constructions scream for them.

The one grammar thing that struck me was a subject-verb agreement issue that reads like nails down a chalkboard. Below should read thusly:

When he was first able to speak all he could ask of his family and friends WAS about work, what they had been doing.

An odd character reaction struck me too. Your paragraph reads as follows:

She finished checking on him, and as she walked away she turned back and winked. He was overwhelmed with a feeling of helplessness. Was she toying with him? Was she just doing her job to keep his morale up? He hadn't pretended the flirtatiousness between the two of them, he knew that.

Maybe consider replacing "a feeling of helplessness" with "curiosity"? It jives better with the rhetorical questions that follow it.

Movingon, CW picked out the painfully punctuated paragraph. I'd go at it a different way though. Below is my suggestion (double dash is an en dash):

The part that had been killing him was why would a nurse -- who had seen far more interesting things in her time than a random hard-on from a patient -- have avoided the area? Or not merely made a joke about it for that matter?

All this technical-shmechnical stuff aside, I liked your story. True, it's short and sweet, but it shows a kind of patience in its pacing that I liked -- enough so that I checked the age listed on your profile. Your diction is twenty-something but your pacing is forty-something. That's a strange compliment, but it is one I promise.

Here's a more straightforward compliment: after I post this, I'm clicking directly over to read the next chapter.

I vote you keep writin'.

-PF

 

[PowerThruster]

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=468449

Thank you... I take you compliments humbly. I will say I am not happy with pt. 2, but it sets the stage for pt.3 and what I am believing will extend to a fourth part. Thank you for your comments, please critique more.

 

[PowerThruster]

The link to part 2 is in the post above, thank you for your comments. I do feel as though I overlook grammar for story and pacing. I know grammar I do have to work on. I try to write stories from the point of view of my my mind, and how I would see it. So sometimes it does not come out clearly.

Thank you, please keep commenting and critiquing, I will take them all to heart.

 

[CWatson]

CWatson's being easy on you. As best I can tell, you've got something against commas. You're regularly leaving them out where your constructions scream for them.

Well, yes, I kind of feel the same way. But the thing is, he's allowed to write like that. We all have our stylistic quirks, and an editor's job is not to smother them. It is an editor's job to point out when a quirk crosses the line into intelligibility; and, for good or ill, PowerThruster, that happens sometimes. But it's reasonable for you to say, "I have a certain writing style (one that doesn't involve many commas) and The Reader will just have to live with that." Some will take it; some will leave it. That happens no matter what. So don't stress about people not liking your style. Worry, instead, about driving people off who should like your style. You can be clear and legible even within the bounds of your own idiosyncracies.

(And PF, if you think this guy is bad, go to StoriesOnline and check out "Where Is The Love". Makes PT look like a comma fiesta. )

 

[bwallard]

The commas or not don't bother me as much as the change from the scrubs into shorts. What?!

 

[poppy_cock]

The commas or not don't bother me as much as the change from the scrubs into shorts. What?!

Yeah, I was kind of puzzled about that one.

But what really puzzled me was how he got into the bath.

"ok lover boy, up and into the tub."

Um, how? This was a man who hadn't even got out of bed. Did Gerri help him into a wheelchair? How did she get him down to the bathroom?

It also looked to me as though you thought a feeding tube would stop Ken from being able to talk? Not so. A breathing tube, maybe, if Ken was on a ventilator after his accident.

Yep, I'm being pernickety. But readers around here are one hell of a lot more pernickety than me, believe me. Most of us here have learnt that the hard way. The stories may well be free reads, but the readers still expect what they read to make sense.