First story publishedon Literotica

[DanielStone666666]

This is the first story I have published here or anywhere else really.

https://www.literotica.com/s/the-ghost-of-armand

I would love to hear any feedback anyone here has. Good, bad, ugly, whatever.

I wrote it to test out some ideas and would like too see if they worked out and what people think.

 

[ElectricBlue]

The layout and the rhythm and pacing of each small paragraph made it more like a poem than a story. It's got a sweet charm, even if it's as light as the breeze that spun the dust motes in the empty room.

A couple of minor typos: "hiscular" should be "his muscular" - although hiscular made perfect sense; an it's where it should have been its. Maybe some other, typical typos. Nothing that got in the way, though, just the signs of eagerness and the need for a tighter edit .

 

[DanielStone666666]

Yes, I do need to be more careful with my editing.

I did rush the story in a couple of hours as I was super nervous to publish anything to an audience for the first time.

I will try to be more careful in the future.

Thank you so much for the feedback electricblue66!

 

[ElectricBlue]

Yes, I do need to be more careful with my editing.

I did rush the story in a couple of hours as I was super nervous to publish anything to an audience for the first time.

I will try to be more careful in the future.

Thank you so much for the feedback electricblue66!

Don't lose that nervous rush - there's a rawness to spontaneous writing that works for short pieces like this. It's that edgy energy that keeps the writing fresh and raw.

For future stories though, think about your paragraph breaks, how the text ebbs and flows. I don't know if your short paragraphs were deliberate, or whether you're just not sure how to handle the pace and flow of a narrative. The brevity works here, but in a longer piece, it could be too much, it might be annoying.

Check out how other writers do it, how they mix up short paragraphs with longer ones. The same goes for sentences and phrases - vary their length for different effects. Short and punchy, quick and hard; alternated with long, flowing sentences that weave in and out of your words like a river, like smoke, slowing everything down. Then a rush!

 

[yukonnights]

I enjoyed your piece for many of the same reasons as electricblue mentioned. Just one additional critique for the future; In the part I copied below, the rythem was broken by the repetitive use of the word "He". I found myself wanting to skip over that as I read it. In general, it's usually good practice to mix your word choice up and read back over it to see if it flows. That's especially true in something like this, but also holds for a longer more structured story too.

One final tip. It's always good practice to let your work sit for a couple of days or more after you have polished it into it's final shape. Give your eyes and mind time to forget what you thought you wrote and actually see it with fresh eyes and you'll be surprised at the things you might want to change.

You'll recognize it below: ('He' was a busy ghost )

He led me towards the bed backward and I found myself falling upon the soft mattress.

He smiled for a moment and then came down atop me as we kissed once more.

He broke away and then his hands were on my breasts clasping them firmly and applying a light and immensely pleasing pressure.

He craned his neck to take a hard nipple in his mouth and suckled it as I moaned and my body buckled.

He then began moving his kisses slowly down my belly until he reached the top of my pants.

When he got there he tore off my pants with a passionate fury and threw them aside.

He bent down to kiss the top of my mound as while he was removing my panties.

I trembled as his lips touched me there, so close yet so far away from the center of my pleasure.

He stopped kissing me there and then got up and removed his breeches his eyes gleaming with naughtiness.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I agree with the previous commenters. (Who are both talented and perceptive writers.) You have written what really amounts to an outline of a really terrific story.

There is a discussion in the Authors Hangout right now about the wisdom of reworking. I think, generally, it's not worth pursuing, but in this case, I think you'd do well to go back through this piece, paragraph by paragraph, and flesh it out.

I've never been to Northumberland, what's it like there? I picture it being foggy when the narrator arrives. Was it? Is the manor in good repair or a falling down ruin? Is this a Brigadoon type situation?

The sound of music...was that from the period when they were together? What is it, strings, piano, a chorus of angels? Help me imagine the scene more completely.

You get the point, I'm sure.

It's scary, sending that first one in, isn't it? My first submission was rejected for bad punctuation and formatting errors. That was a blessing, it gave me an opportunity to go over it one more time. Now, here I am with more than three dozen submissions online. I hope you'll stick with it, and I'm looking forward to seeing more from you.

 

[SimonDoom]

I like the air of mystery and eroticism in the story, and in general I think the way you write it serves that air well. But I'm puzzled by what, exactly, is going on. The narrator says they've both been dead for a long time, so she seems to be reincarnated, or maybe a ghost, but she refers to her "boring and unsatisfying life in America." If she's a ghost, what does that mean? Why must she stay in America if it's boring? I didn't understand the setup.

If she's reincarnated, then why is Armand a ghost? Why isn't he reincarnated?

If she's a ghost, as well, why would she wake up naked the next day, alone?

If the whole thing is just a dream, then why is she naked in a crumbling ruin at the end? Where did her clothes go?

It appears that the narrator and Armand have not seen one another for centuries. I would think they would want to say something to one another, but there's no dialogue. Dialogue would make the story more appealing and interesting. The narrator and Armand could be turned into real characters with dialogue, rather than just dream figures.

I agree with comments previously about your paragraphs. Generally speaking, I think it's good to keep paragraphs in Literotica stories short, but you have too many one-sentence paragraphs. Too many of your sentences start with the subject, often the pronoun "he," and the rhythm becomes repetitive, although you may intend that, to give the story a dreamy, hypnotic flavor. I think you'd be better off mixing up the sentence structure. More sentences should start with introductory clauses or phrases.

The editing could be tighter, but it's not bad. You use "it's" where you should use "its" in one place, for example. The phrase "storm-tossed coast" doesn't work; storms toss ships, but they don't toss coasts. "Storm-battered coast" would work.

You may or may not be interested in what score you get, but stories that are significantly less than one Literotica page tend to be voted down. If you fleshed out the story, with more scene-setting, more dialogue and interaction, and a longer sex scene, you'd get a higher score. My recommendation, if you want more positive feedback in the future at this site, is to make sure your stories are over 4,000 words (but this may or may not matter to you).

If you truly did this in just a few hours, then you did really well. It's pretty clean for a story written so quickly. The basic concept and the dreamy, erotic quality are good. With more time taken to flesh it out and edit it it could be very good.

 

[GroverLang]

I liked the idea of the story and, ignoring anything requiring an editor, I would make three comments.

1. A frequent comment on here is paragraphs being too long and not enough white space. This was the opposite extreme.
2. Because of each paragraph being a sentence it reads like a list.
3. The story needs to flow more, could do with fleshing out, and be longer.

Plus the other good advice you’ve already been given.