First real story - Feedback please!

[PhillyGuy88]

This is technically my second story, but my first one was just put together from a bunch of e-mails between me and a woman so it wasn't very good. I decided to write a second one. It's inspired by a true story, but changed drastically. It's an exhibitionism story about a young couple having some fun while on the road. Nothing crazy.

Here is the link, let me know what you think - good or bad!

http://www.literotica.com/s/low-side-of-the-road

 

[slyc_willie]

Not too much in the way of grammar or spelling issues, although a couple of things jumped out at me -- "right lame" as opposed to "right lane," for instance. A quick read-through would fix that.

This is more of a vignette, and as such, there are two things, in my opinion, working against it. One is that everything is described pretty much like a series of recipe directions. She did X. I did X. There are quite a few sentences that begin with "she . . ." in general.

The other thing that bothered me as I read the story were the large blocks of text. Some of them comprised twenty lines or more. That's a little hard to follow. Break up your paragraphs a bit to, say, no more than ten lines at most. You might also want to try including more dialogue then what was given. There's block after block of text, and then four lines or so of dialogue. You can tell a lot more of what's going on, and how the main character and Emily feel, through dialogue than through narrative. Narrative gets a little boring after a while.

 

[PhillyGuy88]

Whoops, must have missed that typo. Thanks for catching it.

Dialog is definitely something I'm not very good at writing and need to work on. A lot of what I write for dialog I feel ends up sounding off or forced or just entirely unnatural so I tend to cut it out. It's unquestionably something I can do better at.

The blocks of text I tried to separate by when things would change a bit. I can see how that might not be the best way to go and how smaller blocks would make it a better read. Improving my dialog would also help with that.

Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it.

 

[slyc_willie]

Writing convincing, natural-sounding dialogue is one of the hardest things for an author. It's one of those things where you learn when to bend the rules here and there regarding sentence structure, use of slang terms, and alternate spelling. The best thing you can do to improve dialogue writing is to read a variety of examples and figure out what works for you.

 

[PhillyGuy88]

My grammar and sentence structure isn't good enough for that part to bother me. I'll get better at it, I'm sure, just need to work on it.

Again, thanks for the feedback.

 

[2981notrohrm]

I agree that the large blocks of text make the story hard to follow. Two or three smaller paragraphs would work better.

The story itself is solid, IMO...you definitely have a lot to work with.

 

[CarolinaPeach]

Dialogue is very tricky. One thing i noticed is that you use a tag for every line of dialogue. ... I said, Emily agreed, I replied, she said. That can make things sound forced.

One way to avoid that is to include an action after the piece of dialogue, instead of a tag.

For example...

"I figured we could have some fun down here," I replied, trying to make it sound as sexy as possible.

vs

"I figured we could have some fun down here." I tried to make it sound as sexy as possible.



And sometimes you can just skip the tag entirely.



For example...

...soon I felt my balls tightening.

"Oh shit, I'm going to cum!" I exclaimed loudly.

It's pretty clear who is exclaiming, you can trust the reader to figure that out.

A big thing about dialogue is use as few tags as possible and still get the reader to understand who is saying what. That is where a good editor can come in. If you try leaving out more tags, the editor can let you know when it might be hard to figure out who is speaking.

 

[elfin_odalisque]

Couple of points.

Always start in the action and explain, if necessary, as you go along. Try and avoid dialogue tags. They are anathema to the flow of your story. Most times the flow of the story will make it clear who is speaking (in MF stories) but simple 'said' is enough to avoid the redundancy of 'replied', 'sighed', 'laughed', etc.. CP gave some good examples.

Your paras are a bit long, especially for the backlit rolling screen of Lit. In my view, 6 to 8 lines is the max for easy reading.

 

[LWulf]

Let's give this a try...

I can only look at this from a raw reader's perspective, so check with the "luminaries" to see if I was right or not...

The first thing that pops up is "anyways" which I did a "look up" and it said

“anyways,” a colloquial corruption of “anyway.” It’s universally considered nonstandard and should be avoided altogether. It might help to remember that “anyway” is an adverb, and adverbs can’t be plural

Anyways, the next thing that popped up was:

"We both had too good of careers to worry..."

this seemed a bit awkward. it might be better if you said

"We both had careers that were too good to worry about"

Another part is something I tend to have a problem doing myself:

"I hope somebody does," Emily replied as she started to undo my belt and pants.

Soon she had my belt and pants open...

You exposition on one action then reiterate the same action again. It's probably not wrong, but I think it's unnecessary and therefore too wordy? Maybe "micromanaging the action" better explains it? IDK *shrug* I mean, sometimes you WANT to micromanage the action because you want to expand on the way someone is teasing and drawing out every action they do, but I don't think that's what you intended here...

"Emily removed herself from my sack..."

It's probably petty, but it seemed a bit awkward a phrase using "removed". I mean, do you "remove yourself from a broom" or do you "let go of a broom"?? I'm sure you can come up with a better turn of phrase than "let go", but just so you get a gist of what I mean.

I'm not going to go over word and verse of everything, you see there's a trend of awkward phrases, which we all do sometimes...

Blowjobs aren't something I am interested in, so while the action seemed fine, I kind of went over this area fast.

okay, one last editing suggestion...

"...had an uneventful day. Both of us were a little let down by the display and spent most of the time making jokes about how terrible it was. The rest of the night was uneventful. We had dinner at a nice casual restaurant and then got a so-so hotel room for the night. We spent the night watching TV and having pretty standard sex."

It's hard to judge when to compress time and how to do it skillfully. Something I have issues with too. Maybe it's just nit picking, but you reiterated "uneventful", and the order of the day seemed a bit jumbled. You mention the rest of the night was uneventful" which suggests you are about to get in bed and sleep, then start discussing dinner and a movie. Then "pretty standard sex"??? Is sex so boring when it's "only" standard?? heh If you thought a little more about this, I'm sure you could have come up with something better, like

"...just before bed, we had some sweaty heartfelt sex. While nothing special, it was just the sort of fun romp to put us both to sleep."

or something like that...
the point is, the choice of words or wording is going to allow or restrict your reader from reading between the lines... My gut reaction to reading about "standard sex" was "oh wow, are the both of them bored with their relationship?" I mean, if that is what you want your reader to think, then sorry for mistaking that, but otherwise...

Sometimes you want to move along to the juicy parts, and cut out the exposition about the "before sleep" sex, okay, but maybe you should cut it out all together or put in something about when they woke up in the morning and after they kiss, one comments that "the sex last night was good" "what? 'good' not 'great'?!?" "ALWAYS great, just not, you know, imaginative." "Wench! I'll show you later on how imaginative I can be!" "She smiled before kissing him "I BET you will!"
Doing something like that would give better depth while suggesting sex happened which will make the reader warm to relating to the conversation.

Then again, I just re-read from the top that this is based on a "real story", meh...
Okay, there are different ways to expand on "real life" to "enhance" it so the reader understands the chemistry is there even though it is still "ho hum" life. Okay, I think I beat that dead horse well and truly enough now...

Okay, sorry, one more thing... and this is just a personal thing.
You mention "...as sexy as possible." then say in the next sentence "...replied with a sexy smile..." it's a lot of "sexy" try to use a thesaurus to jumble around some of those terms. For instance, count how many times you said "cock" and "ass" in that paragraph.
Not that I have a problem with any of that action, but meh, maybe it's just me...

Okay, last thing on editing, I promise. I'd suggest not going with using more than two types of emotions on someone's face or eyes. It's just... it SOUNDS good, but stand in front of a mirror and TRY to do all three emotions. Even two is pushing it, but I think you can say it like "I saw fear in her eyes, but the way she panted I think she was excited too."

...okay last-last thing. Don't be afraid to describe emotions.
"Yes, yes, fuck me," Emily moaned, loud enough for the van to hear, "I want it in my ass."
So... this was business as usual? did you feel elation at her suggesting something so naughty that you never did before in public? Did you smile in disbelief at her suggesting something like that? What? Bring the reader into you head or at least sitting on your shoulder. Make them FEEL the moment. I mean, why are you writing about it, because it was a GREAT moment, right?

Writing isn't just about perfunctorily telling what happened, but allowing the reader to feel like they are in that moment too, or at least that's what I think it should be, and what I strive to put into mine.
...hopefully.

The story itself isn't exactly my bag, as I tend to like longer stories to read. Not saying you should change to suit MY opinion, but just stating my point of view.
That said, it was a pretty good read for what there was, you have a nice grasp on flow and exposition, and aside the above, it really was a nice erotic story. Judging by what you have written here and how you did it, I think you can do better, you just need to polish it some to make it shine!

Just remember, opinions are like ...noses. Everyone has one and everyone thinks everyone else's; smells.

Whew! Did I say ALL that!?