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[agent23a1]

PENDULUM ACT I PENDULUM ACT II PENDULUM EPILOGUE

I am getting ready to start writing my next erotic novel, and I would appreciate any comments, complaints, gripes, praise, laurels, votes, taunts, jeers, etc y'all might have regarding my first novel, Pendulum. Your comments will help me be a better writer so please, PLEASE vote and speak honestly

Furthermore, if any of you have stories that need a fresh set of eyes I would be happy to lend mine to the task.

thanks in advance!

-Agent

"He who laughs last thinks slowest"

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Hey agent,

I read the first three pages of Pendulum, and I thought it was good, but a little too slow. You do the scenes between the three friends very well, but I think maybe you overdo it. There’s too much exposition and talking, and it makes the story drag. I got really impatient and started skimming, looking for the heart of the matter.

This is just my opinion, of course, but it takes almost two Lit pages before we understand what the story’s going to be about, and I wonder if your average porn reader’s going to be willing to wait that long. I know you threw in a sex scene with Julie close to the start, but at that point we still don’t know what the story’s really about, so it’s hard to know what to make of the sex, and it makes it seem gratuitous.

Personally, I would have started the story with John’s idea of making the film, and filled in the rest of that business about his weariness at ‘playing the game’ as backstory. That way we’d immediately know what the story was about and what we were in for, and it would give the story a better feeling of direction.

As I said, I haven’t read the whole thing, so I don’t know if James and Z get involved in the action, but as it is now, the three of them spend an awful lot of time eating and talking, which does nothing to move the story forward. In fact, it slows the story down, sometimes to a crawl. In my own opinion, anything that doesn’t absolutely have to be in a short story should be cut out.

In the writing, I’d look out for your verb tenses. You have a tendency to jump from past tense to present tense without rhyme or reason, which gives the prose a kind of loosey-goosey feel. I didn’t mind it so much, but I think any professional editor would stop reading as soon as they saw this. You’ve got to choose one tense and stick with it.

Aside from that, I think you write unusally well. Although most of the conversation between the three friends felt superfluous to me, it was well done and believable. It was fun being inside John’s head. He’s not the most pleasant guy in the world, but at least he’s honest, and that’s refreshing. Their constant harping on getting laid at the beginning was kind of tedious, but then, these guys have to be kind of shallow for this premise to work in the first place.

Anyhow, those are my thoughts. I wish you the best with this.

---dr.M.

 

[agent23a1]

dr. M.

I appreciate your comments! I've been working pretty hard to find the right balance between story and sex. I don't think I've found the right mix yet, as other people have privately expressed the same concerns about Pendulum as you have. The trick seems to be finding a way to get the sex integrated into the story seemlesly so one doesn't seem like a pause or departure from the other.

Anyway, thanks for the input. I'll certainly take it into account for the next ms!

-Agent