FINALLY got my first story uploaded. was it worth it?

[peterepete]

it took 3 tries but i finally got my very first story uploaded. it is short, but hopefully delivers. please go read and leave feedback. i have thick skinned. i welcome your honest review.

https://www.literotica.com/s/chance-encounter-at-the-gym

 

[AngelaSaxon]

Lol can I ask why it's in the NC/R section? Which one is anything other than consenting? I guess your protagonist has a slight moment of reflection that could seem like hesitation which might pass for brief reluctance if the reader is not paying attention...

Is it in the NC/R section to lull people into thinking they know what's going to happen until you turn things on their head and suddenly she's not just willing the whole time, she's initiating everything... for a while?

I mean even when he starts fucking her face she's very actively and obviously very willingly going along and participating, and in case anyone was confused you have her look up at him with a "look of gratitude" lol Jesus.

I'm sure many would like it, the only comments are positive. But if it had been in a section reflecting its contents or accurately tagged, I would never have read it.

 

[peterepete]

thanks for reviewing and critiquing. i really appreciate as i learn and grow in this artistic endeavor.

you make a good point about what section i put it in. let me tell you my thinking:
i am writing first-person and from my point of view this is starts out a non consent/reluctance situation. its not till the end that i consider that i might have been manipulated and my partner a willing one. i wanted that to be the secondary theme here: that sometimes we may think we are doing something, causing things to happen, making bold moves and maybe even wrong/unlawful/even evil moves when we find out we were being played. and i also hoped to make people get a little tingly in the process.

 

[OnlyHappyEndings]

Given the situation I can see how you chose the non-con category. And since you were probably reluctant to portray a truly non-consensiual act, I can see why you had her be a willing participant. That's well done for a first try.

If I had my way, MC would have switched to her ass instead of her mouth. You were teasing the ass play already and that would have been more realistic in a coerced encounter. Plus, I just like butt stuff. Not everyone agrees.

 

[peterepete]

thanks for the review and critique. i like that genre too and you will be seeing some of that from me.

 

[OnlyHappyEndings]

i like that genre too

I'm not entirely comfortable with it. I went there once and, like you, made it abundantly clear that she was a willing participant. Went there another time in a story about a woman going undercover as a sex worker. She knew what she was getting into but things got out of hand. Happy ending, of course.

 

[AngelaSaxon]

Thanks for engaging. I thought it was very clear from before anything overtly sexual was happening that she was not just engineering the situation but overtly telling him what to do, actively engaging, being manifestly pleased with everything not just from bodily response but from words and, well, everything, so given how clearly he was doing what she wanted, and what he wanted... I don't know, I just didn't read it as even...retrospectively reluctant?...in any real way.

I think it might feel to some like it should go into the NC/R section because the set-up suggests the possibility of her being taken advantage of but it's very obvious that this isn't what the actual story is - the form of NC/R tropes but not the content, as it were. Like one of those 'oh I'm stuck!" porn videos where it's obvious to everyone from the start that she's supposed to have deliberately placed herself in that situation to invite sex...

 

[peterepete]

good point. i suppose all our stories are reflections of who we are. should i try to get it moved you think?

 

[AngelaSaxon]

good point. i suppose all our stories are reflections of who we are. should i try to get it moved you think?

Not really, categories can be tricky. Maybe half the stories in the NC/R section don't really involve either NC or R, often because the person who would possibly fill that role js explicitly framed as desiring their submission, often from stereotypical 'dom' types they'll even call "master" or "sir" or whatever in case anyone might miss the implication, but they don't go in the BDSM section because... I don't know, I never read that section, but I'm assuming there's a reason.

Lots of things get dumped in the NC/R section here not because anyone in the narrative is actually NC- or R-ing, but just because the story feels NC/R adjacent in some, often vague way.

I didn't mean to imply your story is at all far outside of the norms here. It really isn't.

 

[peterepete]

personally i dont find any sexual gratification at the thought of actually forcing myself on someone who really doesnt want me. the role play is fun. the give and take of desire is intoxicating. but actual rape? no. that is using sex as violence. anyone who does that doesnt understand true violence. ive seen enough of that to last a lifetime and there is nothing erotic about.

i will step off my soapbox now. i really appreciate this back and forth.

 

[Hexeon]

it took 3 tries but i finally got my very first story uploaded. it is short, but hopefully delivers. please go read and leave feedback. i have thick skinned. i welcome your honest review.

https://www.literotica.com/s/chance-encounter-at-the-gym

How did you get your story published? Mine has been pending for like 2 weeks!

 

[peterepete]

I got a little help and just kept trying

 

[Husky_Embrace]

How did you get your story published? Mine has been pending for like 2 weeks!

From my limited experience and what I read in the forum it is entirely normal for new writer's stories to take a bit longer. I recently read 2 weeks is about the limit of the pending, though it happens that it goes over that time. It is very dependent on the moderators.

it took 3 tries but i finally got my very first story uploaded. it is short, but hopefully delivers. please go read and leave feedback. i have thick skinned. i welcome your honest review.

https://www.literotica.com/s/chance-encounter-at-the-gym

I started to read but wasn't in the mood, so skimmed a lot. For a first try I really appreciate the amount of story. No over the top wishful thinking with a godly stand in that they imagine is themselves. It is a more complex situation where sex isn't a given. I like that.

Plot wise I do have some questions, though I might have missed some things in the skimming. Why is she in the shower with her clothes on? I personally am used to communal showers. Are these individual showers, where you undress in one of those tiny cubicles where you also hang your clothes? It rattled me from the start. Do people really do a workout where they start to sweat with headwear on? Personally I find that heat incredibly annoying.

Maybe things I just notice as I'm not in any mood. I like the more complex stories, so I encourage you to write more. If you can, add some more depth to it with a theme. Here it seemed a rivalry that was being used to intensify sex. It ended a bit abruptly, so there's no real resolution. Does the rivalry endure? Are they okay with each other now that the frustrations have been fucked out? Do they give each other a new chance and forget the parking incident? It might seem small, but it can add a more satisfied ending to it.

 

[LilyBright]

Thank for for taking the leap and publishing! I'm working on my first story now and admire your courage.
I liked your story a lot and appreciated the way you played with the line between reluctance and being willing to give into what you want "because you were forced". That's an intriguing grey area to explore.
Her finger being stuck in the drain took a bit of willing suspension of disbelief, but once I got past that, I feel well rewarded by the rest of the story.

 

[draco519]

Well done, sir. I'm still nervous to post work on lit... lol

 

[SkyBubble]

it took 3 tries but i finally got my very first story uploaded. it is short, but hopefully delivers. please go read and leave feedback. i have thick skinned. i welcome your honest review.

https://www.literotica.com/s/chance-encounter-at-the-gym

I had one that took four tries.

 

[SkyBubble]

categories can be tricky.

Sometimes a story can fit in more than one. My solution to that is to pick the one I think fits best, then use the other as a tag.

 

[filthytrancendence]

For a first story, this is pretty solid. But you're the only one who can answer if it was worth it. Writing is hard. Editing is exhausting. You won't make it on external validation alone.

Alright, feedback. I'm not going to nitpick every small technical error, but I picked out some patterns you should work on fixing. I'll start with the more technical stuff and then I'll address character/structure a bit.

Technical Stuff

• You've heard of 'show, don't tell'? Well, you're doing an odd thing of telling then showing, consistently. This is good because it's an extremely easy fix. I picked out 3 instances. Just delete them. If you ever have an impulse to write a declarative sentence that summarizes your next paragraph, ideally just don't write it. And if you feel the need to write it, delete it after. Each of these is the first sentence of a paragraph in which you go on to describe the thing. Just describe it.

I continued my mean and lascivious line of response.

Then something really surprising happened.

What followed was the most aggressive face fucking that you could think of.

• Your title has a lot of descriptive utility, but it is boring. Titles are important, they're the first and maybe only thing somebody's going to see of your story. Punch it up. "A Predicament at the Gym" is better. Something that makes somebody say 'huh, wonder what that is?'
• Along the same lines, your first line is the most important line. It should be a hook. Lots of people, if you convince them to click based on the title/description are going to read a boring first line and nope out to something else. "It was a Thursday morning" is very boring. It's also irrelevant. Nobody cares that it's Thursday, unless it being Thursday has something salient to do with the story, which it does not. The thunderstorm is evocative, at least. You could easily rework the first 3 sentences into something much, much better:
  • The Florida panhandle thunderstorm was slowly dying against the struggling morning light.
    • You have a setting, you have a vibe, you have an image in the reader's mind. They are hooked.
• There are some noticeable typos. Not sure what level of proofreading you did, but it would benefit with some more.

Structural Stuff

• I think the biggest problem with this story is the sparse and ambiguous characterization of the MC. It rings like an author insert. That's fine, but you have to at least back up enough to get the audience on board with where he is coming from. To me, there is a huge shock when he opens his mouth for the first time, because the words that come out are incongruous with his own inner monologue. This is not necessarily bad, but it comes across as unintentional, which is definitely bad.
  • I'll just name it. He seems to think of himself as an amiable guy, just going for a workout. The second he opens his mouth, he comes across as an obliviously misogynistic asshole.
    • Again, that's a valid characterization. Problem is, it doesn't feel like what you were going for. And it clashes, hard, with her reaction to him. I have a feeling that is where a lot of people noped out of this story.
    • Because it clashes so hard with her reaction to him, the reader has to invent a reason to explain why she's behaving the way she's behaving. They have to do your job for you, in other words. There's plenty of things that are good to leave to a reader's imagination. The entire core of what makes the story happen is not one of those things.
• The initial meeting is written in a confusing way. You do not do a good job of illustrating why the MC is behaving the way he is. You have the bones of a fix for this already, you just need to expand it.
  • He sees an attractive ass. Okay. Sure. That's a valid enough reason for a person to be lost for words. But give us a lot more. Sell that ass. What makes it so stunning? What does he want to do with it? Is he self-conscious about staring at her ass? Give us a solid paragraph just absolutely gushing about how great that ass is and how it makes him feel. This is where the author insert thing is most glaring. I expect YOU, the author, know why his brain turned off when he saw her ass. You just forgot to share that with us.
• You break up their background together into a couple different parts and spread it through the scene. This is a mistake. As soon as he sees her, he needs to tell us exactly what the background is. Before they speak to each other, the audience needs to know that there is tension, why there is tension, etc. That would strengthen the characterization of the MC as well.

By way of conclusion, I just want to point out that these structural problems would not be so obvious if the genre you were attempting was less fought. NC/R is one of those categories that many readers and authors just won't even touch. It is difficult to write a story like this that is anywhere close to believable. It takes a lot of finesse. It's a tough thing to start with, is my point. It makes the structural errors much harder to ignore, because you fumbled the core of what should make it work.

If you feel a desire to keep writing, I highly suggest you take a shot at something a little easier to pull off.

And I hope you do, for the record. Good luck!