Feedback Request: The Groom's Tale & The Bowyer's Tale

[Ziedrich]

Hello, everyone! I'm a fairly serious writer who submitted my first story here a few months ago because I realized I had no experience writing romance or sex and wanted to get better at that.

Now that I've finished the longer sequel I wanted to ask what other writers think about those stories both as erotica and in terms of efficient world-building, developing characters, pacing, etc.. The more detail about both good aspects and problems the better (and don't worry, I have a thick skin).

The Groom's Tale is a 3-page First Time category story (though both my stories could perhaps have been categorized as Fantasy or Anal or something else as well): https://www.literotica.com/s/the-grooms-tale

The Bowyer's Tale is a 7-page Mature category story: https://www.literotica.com/s/the-bowyers-tale

I plan 4 more parts to the story eventually.

Thanks!

 

[Bramblethorn]

Some thoughts on the first one.

The thunder out over the deep woods was still distant, but rain already pattered on the wooden roof of the charcoal burner's cabin. There was a leak on the far side of the lodge where drops fell into a pan on the earthen floor, but still there was something warm and comfortable about the sound of a storm outside. None of the men by the fire knew each other well yet, but they were starting to talk like old friends while they passed around clay bowls of venison stew and the half-blind charcoal burner wiped ale out of his long, white beard. Most of them wore undyed wool or ragged old linen, but the old equerry was dressed in velvet and fine, oiled furs.

The first four sentences of your story all have that same "X, but Y" structure. Be careful of that sort of repetition; it can work when used as a deliberate device, but here it looks accidental. Try to mix it up a bit.

copper Raimo

Names of currency aren't usually capitalised. "Silver dollar" rather than "Silver Dollar", and so on.

She cleared her throat and gave a little, wry grin, "That's my horse, Clipper."

These are two separate sentences, so you should have a full stop before the speech, not a comma. If you had something like "and said with a grin, " then the comma would be appropriate, because the speech tag "said" makes the quote part of the larger sentence, but that's not the case here.

As she spoke she brushed past me on graceful legs and began explaining how to do my job, "I've got the saddle, stirrups, and reins packed here," she tapped a slender hand on one of the bags hanging on hooks nearby, "Put them in the tack room under my name."

...and all three of the bolded commas here should be full stops, with the bolded "s" capitalised. And similarly through the rest of the story.

she's not into him

This expression felt a bit out of place to me, too modern for the setting.

Other than those things, I thought this was well-written. It held my interest to the end and apart from that one line, the dialogue was good. You had some interesting characters here.

HOWEVER, it set up a lot of stuff that it didn't deliver within the story. This makes sense when it's part one of an ongoing story, but there's nothing within the story to signal that except for an easily-missed note in the comments, and nothing at all to tell readers when or where to look for the next chapter - especially an issue since that one's in a different category.

I would suggest renaming them something like "Arsalin Ch. 01: The Groom's Tale", "Arsalin Ch. 02: The Bowyer's Tale", and so on. The site should then automatically link them together as a chapter story, and the title makes it obvious to readers that this isn't a stand-alone piece. I'd also recommend including a note in each chapter to say when and where the next one will appear. I expect many who read the first chapter will want to keep up with the story; make it easy for them!

I don't have time to read the second chapter right now, but I might add comments on that later, if I get a chance.

 

[Bramblethorn]

OK, read Bowyer's Tale. It held my attention well - didn't feel like seven pages! And I'm interested to see where the story goes from here. I only have a few nitpicks:

You have a Saválas, Saláva, Lasava, Lasara, Salárava, Sadasa, and Savásias in this story. I'm not good with names at the best of times, this got very confusing.

Your kingdom is pretty screwed up at the top if you ask me
It was blasphemy and weird and well, you know, gay.

Again, these felt jarringly modern to my ear.

Anyway, right then I just wanted to squeeze her t- I felt an old scar under her left breast.

This would've worked better with a line break; I had to re-read to see it was an intentional break and not an accidental deletion.

 

[Ziedrich]

Thanks for the suggestions, Bramblethorn!

You know, I actually went through at least fourteen different drafts of that opening paragraph since I kept realizing I had different sorts of repetitive sentence structure there. I was confused reading your comment because I was sure I'd finally gotten rid of most of the "X, but Y"s in the edit I submitted a month ago. Turns out I was right and I did fix that, but the version currently on the site is not the edited version for some reason. I'm glad you brought that issue to my attention!

You're certainly right about currency names not normally getting capitalized, but I'd done that on purpose here. Perhaps that wasn't a good idea though. My hope was to make it clear to readers that the name of the Raimo currency was based on the name of Raim the city (kind of like Florentine florins) without needing to have a character say so. Similarly, I capitalized "Davasmark" in The Bowyer's Tale more to make it clear that it's named after the royal house/country than because many historical marks and thalers really are capitalized. Do you think that rule was worth breaking or would it have been clear enough regardless?

I largely agree with you about phrases like "she's not into him" and "It was blasphemy and weird and well, you know, gay" being too modern sounding. I struggled a lot with the latter in particular because I knew it didn't sound quite right, but I couldn't think of a better word to use there. Most of the older words relating to homosexuality I can think of are either inappropriately formal, inappropriately tied to a real-world place, or inappropriately disparaging. If you've got a good replacement, I'd be glad to hear it.

Good suggestion about a line break after that dash, I'll do that (and double-check for any other places where I should).

I do think I'll want to keep many of the names about the same though; I take your point about some of them sounding similar to each other (and I could change some of the worst offenders in that regard), but I consider that worthwhile overall to give a clearer sense of what their language sounds like and to show why characters in the setting can easily tell a Davasaner name from a Tir Lindrani one and so forth.

Oh, do you have any comments on whether the sex scenes and romance and the like were well-done or how they could be better? That was one of the main things I wanted to try to get better at with these stories.

 

[Bramblethorn]

You're certainly right about currency names not normally getting capitalized, but I'd done that on purpose here. Perhaps that wasn't a good idea though. My hope was to make it clear to readers that the name of the Raimo currency was based on the name of Raim the city (kind of like Florentine florins) without needing to have a character say so. Similarly, I capitalized "Davasmark" in The Bowyer's Tale more to make it clear that it's named after the royal house/country than because many historical marks and thalers really are capitalized. Do you think that rule was worth breaking or would it have been clear enough regardless?

I think it would have been clear without capitalisation.

I largely agree with you about phrases like "she's not into him" and "It was blasphemy and weird and well, you know, gay" being too modern sounding. I struggled a lot with the latter in particular because I knew it didn't sound quite right, but I couldn't think of a better word to use there. Most of the older words relating to homosexuality I can think of are either inappropriately formal, inappropriately tied to a real-world place, or inappropriately disparaging. If you've got a good replacement, I'd be glad to hear it.

TBH, I'd consider the modern use of "gay" = "bad" to be disparaging, and potentially a little more bothersome since it doesn't seem like something the character would say. I don't know of another term that would carry the same double entendre here, but something like "unnatural" might have worked better for me.

Oh, do you have any comments on whether the sex scenes and romance and the like were well-done or how they could be better? That was one of the main things I wanted to try to get better at with these stories.

I thought the sex scenes worked well - unfortunately it's always easier to find things to say about the very few things that didn't than about all the stuff that did! I'm not sure I'd describe what I've read so far as "romance", except for maybe the groom/shepherdess bit, but you had plenty of interpersonal stuff and I always appreciate that in a story. I like erotica where the sex and the plot interact and influence one another, rather than just "this plot gives me an excuse to write a sex scene", and you certainly have that.