feedback please

[Foxee Browne]

Too short? No sex? Too cutsie? Poorly writen? What is it about The Round Up that people don't like?

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

GC, you write better than I do. The prose is clean and readable. The idea that there is not sex in the story is neither a plus or minus. Most of my stories have no sex in them. People still read them.

What I can say is the first paragraph is a little long. Then a few paragraphs down, you launched into four more paragraphs that are impossibly long. They are terribly hard to read. Just keep them to 6-8 screen lines.

Other than that, there's nothing wrong with the story from my perspective.

 

[Varian P]

IMO, your opening paragraph is pretty weak:

I have not always celebrated Nude Day; in fact I didn't even know it existed until last summer. I will be celebrating it again this year, but perhaps I should begin by telling you what happened on Nude Day last year. It all started on a camping trip last summer, the weekend before Nude Day in fact, yes we were all drinking and it sounded fun at the time, little did I know that I would end up being the unlucky winner of the game. Well in the end, it was not so unlucky. We started playing truth or dare, a juvenile game really, but we were having fun. Then it was my turn and the question was 'Have you ever exposed yourself in public on purpose?' The answer was 'yes' and a few people there knew it, so I could not lie and I choose dare. "Sue, we dare you to celebrate National Nude Day."

I gather you did this by way of setting up a conversational, intimate tone with the reader, but almost everything I bolded above is extraneous; that the narrator had never heard of Nude Day before will come to light organically in the next paragraph. I'd whittle it down to "On a camping trip last summer..."

The sentence in red is a run-on.

By the end of your intro paragraph, I feel a little bit as though I'm being told a story off-the-cuff by someone who tends to ramble. The chatty, casual tone can work, but you still have to make me want to hear the story, and so far, you're not.

A little further on there's another run-on:

This required some thought, I can't go nude where there are small children, and the thought of going nude in a public place did somehow appeal to me, I had never noticed I had these exhibitionist tendencies in myself before, but it was blissfully naughty sounding.

Also, you've mixed what seems like a direct bit of internal monologue ("I can't go nude") with narrative ("the thought...did somehow appeal..." "...I had never noticed...").

Then we get this sentence with the redundant phrase:

Sighing to myself, I decided to get used to being naked and I undressed where I stood; if people would see me naked on Nude Day, then I had to get used to being naked.

Then we get this, in the narrative:

We stood there speechless and naked as the day we were born

and just a few lines later, this in the cowboy's dialogue:

Humph, that's just like Tom Peterson not to tell me about his citified niece and her friend camping and then seeing them running around out here naked as they day they were born!

Why use the exact same expression twice, in such short succession, from two different characters?

Substantively...well, there's not much there. I mean, it's quite a short story, and it's clearly meant to be light and fun, which is fine. But you didn't slow down at any point to let us feel the exhilaration of the main character at being naked in the woods, or to really get a good feel for the cowboy's surprise, embarassment, or the main character's mischievous impishness as they sunbathe and photograph each other in view of the cattle drivers. The piece never feels like it gets deeper than an outline of a story. I think the idea has lots of potential, but it's not realized, here.

I haven't read your other stuff, but I see here and in other threads that other folks here whose opinions I respect hold your writing in high regard, so I'm guessing that you simply didn't take much time with this story. It's so short, but riddled with what seem careless errors that you could have caught with careful proofreading. If not (I'm first to confess I'm crap at seeing my own mistakes), having someone help out with editing would improve the technical aspect of the story. And you taking the time to flesh out the main character and draw us into her adventure will do the rest.

Sorry if I've been harsh, I do hope it's helpful.

-V

 

[MarshAlien]

It did seem that you were in a hurry to post it, and that you didn't give it the editing that it could have used. In addition to a number of run-on sentences, you also had some tense problems ("choose" instead of "chose"). And then there was the premise of the story. I never played Truth or Dare (wrong group of friends, I guess), but my understanding was that you had to choose before you knew the question. Also, it wasn't a bet (as you later referred to it) that you could pay off a week or so later; I thought the dares had to be accomplished then and there.

I think it was too short, and either too cutesie or not cutesie enough. I think you're in a middle cutesie area, where you could have made it over the top cute (with more dialogue with Wendy, maybe) or much more serious (a woman who's terrified about what she's agreed to do). As far as the lack of sex goes, posting a story in Non-Erotic should have let people know that in advance, but if this was entered in the contest, people may not have realized where it was posted.

 

[Foxee Browne]

Thanks so much for the feedback! Now I can work on avoiding those things next time.

Don't worry V, I can handle harsh as long as it's honest. Jenny, will try and keep my paragraphs more uniform in size, never noticed that problem, thanks for pointing it out! Marsh, the story was meant to be told from an air-headed young woman's POV, sounds like she was successful with that.
GC

 

[writelove]

Geeky Chick,

I like your name, nude or not. I will read the other comments after I post this. I apologize if my comments are duplicates of others.

I thought you wrote your story well and you kept my interest. That probably is a good sign because this was despite your fairly long paragraphs. I actually don't mind long paragraphs. My problem was that it took me just a bit of extra energy (I am a lazy guy) to try to figure everything out as to who as speaking etc.

The following could be done as follows:

I followed suit, jumping from my tent naked and yelling, "Happy Nude Day Wendy!"

Both of us laughed and ran down to the stream to go skinny dipping, making a lot of noise along the way. The skinny dipping did not last long as the water was ice cold so early in the morning and we got out of the cold water and walked back to our camp shivering, wet and nude. The sun quickly warmed us and we were laughing once more.

Neither of us noticed the scowling old cowboy as we entered our camp."Humph! Noisy city people have no respect for us country folk," he muttered.

We stood there speechless and naked as the day we were born, when he turned around his mouth fell open. "My god, put some clothes on women," he said frowning at us and quickly averting his gaze.

I followed suit, jumping from my tent naked and yelling, "Happy Nude Day Wendy!" Both of us laughed and ran down to the stream to go skinny dipping, making a lot of noise along the way. The skinny dipping did not last long as the water was ice cold so early in the morning and we got out of the cold water and walked back to our camp shivering, wet and nude. The sun quickly warmed us and we were laughing once more. Neither of us noticed the scowling old cowboy as we entered our camp."Humph! Noisy city people have no respect for us country folk," he muttered. We stood there speechless and naked as the day we were born, when he turned around his mouth fell open. "My god, put some clothes on women," he said frowning at us and quickly averting his gaze.

I would like to read more of your work.

 

[Foxee Browne]

Thanks write, I just spotted an error Lit let thro!! To be honest in my orginal script it is written a bit differently, but when posted it has been changed. I know Lit does not allow 2 different people speaking in one paragraph. Must be a glitch in the posting. Here is the orginal test from my backup.

orginal text:

I followed suit, jumping from my tent naked and yelling “Happy Nude Day Wendy!” Both of us laughed and ran down to the stream to go skinny dipping, making a lot of noise along the way. The skinny dipping did not last long as the water was ice cold so early in the morning and we got out of the cold water and walked back to our camp shivering, wet and nude. The sun quickly warmed us and we were laughing once more.

Neither of us noticed the scowling old cowboy as we entered our camp, “Humph! Noisy city people have no respect for us country folk.” He muttered. We stood there speechless and naked as the day we were born, when he turned around his mouth fell open. “My god put some clothes on women.” He said frowning at us and quickly averting his gaze.

 

[LadynStFreknBed]

Even though the lack of sex doesn't affect the quality of the story, I believe it may have affected reader voting for you. Remember that most readers at Literotica are looking for the sex scenes, IMHO.
The story is overall a good story, but I also thought the beginning was a bit weak. If the beginning is too drawn out, the readers quickly lose interest, especially on the internet.

 

[palisa]

Neither of us noticed the scowling old cowboy as we entered our camp, “Humph! Noisy city people have no respect for us country folk.” He muttered. We stood there speechless and naked as the day we were born, when he turned around his mouth fell open. “My god put some clothes on women.” He said frowning at us and quickly averting his gaze.

Still some punctuation problems here, chick, and one small story development logic issue.

...entered out camp. Period, not comma. The preceding sentence has him doing something, not saying something.

...day we were born, when he turned... That's a comma splice. Should be "day we were born, and when he turned"

...country folk," he muttered. THAT'S the part that should be connected to the quote. Then begin a new paragraph.

...My god, put some clothes on, women!" he said, frowning at us and quickly averting his gaze. As the sentence is punctuated now, it says that god put some clothes on some women. . Then you ended the sentence after "women," breaking the connection with who said it.

Picky, picky, I know, but these things bother some people, including me, and distract us from the story line.

Then look at the time sequences -- who did something when. As you wrote the narrative, the cowboy must have been in the camp but not looking at the women as they approached, and talked without turning around. Has to be that way because he didn't notice they were nude until later, when he turned around. Well, that may be what you intended, but it doesn't sound very commonsensical that he didn't see their approach.

If you indeed want it written that way, you might add something to the paragraph. "...he muttered, his back to us as he stared into the distance." Still sounds odd, but it does explain why he didn't react to the nudity right away.

 

[Foxee Browne]

Even though the lack of sex doesn't affect the quality of the story, I believe it may have affected reader voting for you. Remember that most readers at Literotica are looking for the sex scenes, IMHO.
The story is overall a good story, but I also thought the beginning was a bit weak. If the beginning is too drawn out, the readers quickly lose interest, especially on the internet.

TY, I think you are right.

Picky, picky, I know, but these things bother some people, including me, and distract us from the story line.

My weakest point, I know. One I am slowly improving upon.

 

[vixenblack]

I know its off the subject but I had to say this!! Geekychick I LOVE LOVE LOVE the shoe thing going on in your pictures , I have a major shoe fetish LOL.

 

[Foxee Browne]

I know its off the subject but I had to say this!! Geekychick I LOVE LOVE LOVE the shoe thing going on in your pictures , I have a major shoe fetish LOL.

Ummm, thanx vixen, I guess that's feedback too ... since I took the picture of my foot!

 

[Darkniciad]

There's a good chance that this problem happened due to transferring from a word processor to plain text. The page breaks in word processors will eliminate double carriage returns that fall at page breaks, and when you paste/save them as text, those missing carriage returns come out in the text.

The last thing I do before I submit anything to Lit ( I transform all my files into plain .txt with the html tags for italics, bold, center, etc inserted manually into the text ) is go through the whole story looking at the first letter of each line. When I hit a Cap, I check to make sure it isn't supposed to be part of a new paragraph.

Then, when I submit it, I go through the preview scanning as well. The font/width change will usually reveal any accidental misses by creating short lines at the end of paragraphs that have collided due to word processor page breaks.

Thanks write, I just spotted an error Lit let thro!! To be honest in my orginal script it is written a bit differently, but when posted it has been changed. I know Lit does not allow 2 different people speaking in one paragraph. Must be a glitch in the posting. Here is the orginal test from my backup.

orginal text:

I followed suit, jumping from my tent naked and yelling “Happy Nude Day Wendy!” Both of us laughed and ran down to the stream to go skinny dipping, making a lot of noise along the way. The skinny dipping did not last long as the water was ice cold so early in the morning and we got out of the cold water and walked back to our camp shivering, wet and nude. The sun quickly warmed us and we were laughing once more.

Neither of us noticed the scowling old cowboy as we entered our camp, “Humph! Noisy city people have no respect for us country folk.” He muttered. We stood there speechless and naked as the day we were born, when he turned around his mouth fell open. “My god put some clothes on women.” He said frowning at us and quickly averting his gaze.

 

[Foxee Browne]

I am sure that is what happened to me! I do write the HTML into the text, otherwise I know Lit won't see it properly. However I did copy/paste the text from M$word directly to Lit this time, a mistake I won't repeat. Shortcuts don't work! LOL.

There's a good chance that this problem happened due to transferring from a word processor to plain text. The page breaks in word processors will eliminate double carriage returns that fall at page breaks, and when you paste/save them as text, those missing carriage returns come out in the text.

The last thing I do before I submit anything to Lit ( I transform all my files into plain .txt with the html tags for italics, bold, center, etc inserted manually into the text ) is go through the whole story looking at the first letter of each line. When I hit a Cap, I check to make sure it isn't supposed to be part of a new paragraph.

Then, when I submit it, I go through the preview scanning as well. The font/width change will usually reveal any accidental misses by creating short lines at the end of paragraphs that have collided due to word processor page breaks.