First story, "Atelier Dreams": feedback requested

[LKWilliams]

My first story, "Atelier Dreams" (https://www.literotica.com/s/atelier-dreams), was approved and went up today. Watching the view count tick upwards is an indulgent kind of fun. It's a 19,000-word lesbian BDSM story and an attempted act of literature (though no jury in the land would convict me—all the evidence is circumstantial).

It's the longest single thing I've written and I think it shows a little; I've been working on it off and on for the past year, and I think that, despite being something of an 'apprentice work' and some lurking issues, it hangs together well enough that I'm not going to have to hide my face in a paper bag for showing it off. A kind reader has already given some nice remarks in the comments section, but I would also like weightier criticism and analysis than I'm likely to get from that particular locus—so, please, do have a look and fire away.

 

[Gorza]

Thank you for writing this story

There are all sorts of things about it that are difficult.

Lesbian BDSM is pretty niche, but you write with such compassion that the beauty of the relationship shows through. As this is a piece of erotica, I think the sex could be cranked up a bit. Don't get me wrong, I think the sex in this is great, but I would have thought Mistress could have been even more imaginative and dirty with her own willing Pet.

The story is perhaps a bit longer than many on Lit, but I had no problem keeping on reading. If you had written it a bit longer, perhaps eight pages, it might have been good to split into two chapters with a 'cliffhanger' at the end of the first. All I mean by that is that I finished reading and wanted more of their story.

That beginning -- untagged dialogue without any preamble -- is a brave choice. I think you pulled it off well; it drew me in, intrigued about who these people were. I think writing dialogue is your strength. However, you only described Mistress's accent part way through, and by that time I had heard her speak without knowing that. A little hint early on, and making her use distinctive words and phrases would have implanted that accent better.

Description is perhaps the thing I feel I needed to read a little more of. I wanted to know what the atelier looked like, what the special bedroom looked like, what the characters looked like. Everything was strongly cerebral, and that was good, but I felt it needed a few more visuals to help realise it.

I loved the fact that Pet is a chemist, an intelligent, educated woman of her own means. It gave complexity to a dom/sub line that could just be about total power of one over another, rather than willing submission.

If there's a second chapter, I can't wait to read it.

 

[LKWilliams]

Thank you for the criticism. Coming out from behind the veil and talking about my writings, as opposed to letting the work itself do the talking, makes me nervous, but thoughtful posts like yours deserve a response.

The sex: absoluvely. It's not all that kinky for what it is. There's definitely a lot of slack that I could've played with there and quite possibly I should've been more adventurous.

The points about descriptiveness are well-taken. It's a difficult line to walk: the scene is laid out in my head and I can't purge that and look at it from a reader's perspective; at the same time, I don't want to over-describe and set things in stone that the reader would be better imagining; and, finally, there's always a pacing/readability/over-indulgence concern. Evidently. these weren't balanced quite right, and that's something I'll try and keep a closer eye on. (Saying it like that makes it sound like a lot of description got cut in revision: nope, I just didn't recognise it as a problem. No excuses.)

The first interlude was very deliberately placed because its core conceit was a golden chance to give a bit of physical description; I hadn't thought to make sure that the accent (and hence class) thing was similarly demonstrated early doors (for both characters, though probably the lack is only felt for the deuteragonist), and you're absolutely right in saying that it should've been.

Length-wise, it really does fall into an awkward place. I thought that the plot structure was creaking a little bit already at 19 kilo-words—as I said, it's the longest thing I've written, and my original guess was that it was going to weigh in as a short story at about 10 kilo-words—and making it much longer would have disturbed the pacing and so required some sort of subsidiary conflict(s) to keep it from dragging (like you said, a crisis mid-way through to divide it into two halves would have been a good option). I'd fiddled a bit with the chapter structure and dividing it into parts, but I couldn't really get it to work.

I'm glad that the opening monologue seems to have worked! That was on the chopping block, but I'd already killed a lot of darlings and I thought that throwing the reader in at the deep end, establishing the central (external) conflict in the first few paragraphs, and letting them figure it out from there would be a great (and shamelessly manipulative) way to hook them.

The parts that were cut are lying around in various states of finished-ness: some are complete passages that survived several rounds of drafting, some didn't even make it to the first hurdle and still have a 'finish me!' note attached. These may or may not ever see the light of day. I think that "Atelier Dreams" hangs together nicely as it is and, if I do end up doing more with these characters, it will probably not be a direct continuation, but rather taking a quite different look at them. Better to be left wanting more than feeling like you've had too much, surely?

 

[Gorza]

It's interesting to hear your feedback on my feedback, and thank you for engaging with it.

I do really like your 'cerebral' style, emphasized by that opening monologue (I think I called it a dialogue: sorry!). You take us inside Pet's head, and that's compelling and makes the sex sexier.

I have the problem of being over descriptive when I write. I have a tendency to over-visualise and then write it all down. I have to edit out adjectives and adverbs mercilessly, and ask myself if the reader needs all this detail. In the end, it's about striking a balance between the reader's imagination and the writer's description. If I put in too much description, I leave little room for the reader to make the story their own. However, the opposite can be quite demanding on the reader: we have to work hard at engaging our imagination, and, if we fail, we are left with a shallow experience of the story. Your way of writing emotion and thought meant that there was enough depth to the experience, but I was left unsure how to see the story, as if Mistress and Pet were floating through the narrative.

With description, I think about each person, place and object and what I can see, even if it's just one thing about them/it. For example, a pen might be sitting on a table, as a character is going to write something. It's just a pen and the plot needs no more than a pen, but, as a writer, if I force myself to ask what kind of pen it is, I instinctively know that it must be a disposable BIC, a handcrafted fountain pen, or a slim diary ballpoint because I know enough about the place or person to know that kind of thing. It does nothing for the plot, but the tiny, meaningless detail cues the reader to a little clue about the quality of person and place, and enriches the story.

In Atelier Dreams, the odd thing I wanted described to me was the tea service Pet brought in. You obviously liked the power dynamic of Pet serving tea to her mistress, and I thought this could be such a good illustration of their relationship: you describe a tea set, but the subtext is their relationship. I fancied a hand-painted bone-china set, beautiful and brittle. I wondered if there could be a painful impracticability to the set: perhaps the teapot's handle was too hot to handle easily, or it was difficult to pour. Suddenly, I want there to be silver sugar tongs with which to pinch sugar cubes before letting them dissolve in the hot liquid. I hope I'm not coming across as a tea fetishist!

The other object of importance was the collar. I wondered how that might be described so that we knew something about their relationship. You see, I don't think Mistress ordered it from an online sex shop. She must have had it made, designed it, chose it. And when the collar becomes more real, I want the characters to interact with it more: how does Pet touch her collar, how does Mistress touch it?

The eponymous atelier was a little anonymous. Given the title and the story itself, it should be the most important place (your description of the great outdoors surpassed any indoor scenes, by the way). As the writer, I reckon you know what that atelier is supposed to look like, perhaps based on a place you know, or a montage of different places. Yet the reader doesn't get any of that inspiration. You wrote about the room being cold, and I wondered why that is. Perhaps it's better to write about old, drafty windows with paint flaking off them, than just saying the room is cold. You mention some painting paraphernalia some basic furniture and the heater, but that's about all you give us. I wondered if Mistress's other paintings were hanging around. Having Pet describe an old still life painted by Mistress could be a great opportunity to explore the psychological background of the characters.

That great scene, early on, when Mistress paints Pet, the focus is all on Pet. With good reason: we want to watch Pet strip, pose and masturbate repeatedly for her Mistress. Yet Pet is also the narrator, which puts us in her head too. However much I want, voyeuristicly, to look at Pet, it would be good to see through the narrator's eyes. When she's sat there, what can she see? Perhaps it's her favourite painting by Mistress on the wall. How does Mistress look as she paints? I wonder what it looks like watching someone mix paint to the colour of your flesh, or even the colour of an intimate part of your flesh. And Pet sees this, is turned on by it, and the finger fucking intensifies. I think that kind of description can make Pet's masturbation so much more erotic.

I enjoyed your writing of the last sex scene, in the 'special bedroom'. I think it's because you promised BDSM, gave us hints, and finally let us have Pet chained and caned, all quite gloriously. On reflection though, I wonder whether the idea of 'special bedroom' is a bit contrived; I don't think it figured earlier in the story. I wonder whether having the final scene back in the atelier would have been far more fitting. That idea sets of my artist fetish! I wonder whether Mistress would have a bed in the atelier, or just tie Pet to a large canvas. Then I imagine Mistress painting Pet's naked body, and perhaps using brushes or other artist's equipment instead of S&M stuff from a sex shop. We've already had Mistress fucking Pet with her fingers, so I wondered how much more erotic it would be if she used the handle of a large brush to finish her off in the final scene. All sorts of ideas about letting Mistress paint her on the inside could be a real turn-on.

These are just thoughts: my sharing the things I would have liked to read in your story. I really did enjoy reading you. Some of these ideas you will hate, but I hope one or two might inspire you in your future writing. I look forward to reading your next offering. Let me know when it's out!