First Story submited

[darkdragonlover]

This is my first story submission. I would really appreciate any feedback you could offer.

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=149967


darkdragonlover.

 

[Rainbow Skin]

Sometimes spelling matters: when it makes a big difference. So when I read in the first paragraph that 'his body lay there in udder abandonment' I had to walk around the room a few times to recover my composure, and I'm afraid that first impression is going to dominate how I think of this story. I realize you probably speak a dialect in which 'utter' and 'udder' are pronounced the same, but the effect is so ludicrous in this case that you really need to get it right.

 

[Rainbow Skin]

Okay, that hurdle passed, the story isn't bad. You've got the basics of writing down, and you know how to form reasonable sentences, which is a big step up on some of the people who submit. I wondered if her beauty wasn't being depicted as too perfect, but given the ending, it makes sense that he should perceive her that way.

There are a few minor editing errors, some of which seem to result from using a spelling-checker the wrong way (i.e. for editing instead of just for checking spelling): such as 'please and pain', 'Kisses were laid done his entire body', and 'His moans echoed thorough the room'. Nothing important in themselves, but you'd have caught (most of) them if you'd set it aside after it was finished and done another read-through for rhythm.

Because there are a few passages that read oddly. Almost as if you weren't a native speaker -- but surely a non-native wouldn't make the utter/udder error. A few passages where I think you just wouldn't say that, and if you'd read it again you'd also notice that it's not what you actually say.

'A boyish face that has but a single dimple on his left cheek, now shown a well groomed beard and mustache.' -- first, 'but a' sounds old-fashioned, a little out of place in this story; second, 'now shown' just doesn't seem English, even if we amend it to 'now showing'. I'm not entirely sure what you were intending there.

'He needed to release himself.' -- Releasing oneself is by, say, undoing straps or handcuffs. To achieve orgasm is to give oneself release. This sounds like a non-native who hasn't quite picked up this subtlety of English idiom. (Your profile doesn't give a location, so I'm left guessing.)

'throughout the room'

'a vision of total beauty that couldn’t be compared' -- This looks like a non-native who's heard 'beyond compare' but doesn't quite understand its grammar, and has substituted a grammatically straightforward version. But we'd actually say 'compared to/with' something.

So, overall, quite good, and nothing major wrong with any aspect of it. You convey scenes accurately and with the right words. Assuming you're a native speaker, it's just an editing problem: one more read-through with a fresh mind to make sure that everything sounds natural.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I agree with Rainbow. There were snatches of strange language in here that kept on hitting wrong notes. I don’t know if they come from being a non-native user or not. I kind of think they were a result of your operating in “writer mode”

“Writer mode” is actually the mortal enemy of good writing. It’s where you sit down to write and hit the switch in your brain that you think will activate your prose centers, but what actually happens is that you start writing in cliches and according to formulas that some part of you thinks are “literary”. The prose gets stiff and self-conscious and artifical and tends to rely on things you’ve picked up in reading other stories, which were also usually written in writer’s mode. We all do this, and most writers struggle for a lifetime to overcome this urge so that they can write honestly and with freshness and directness.

I think there were 3 or 4 mentions of the room echoing with their moans, or their moans filling the room. That’s just a cliché. Surely there are other ways to describe the sounds they made without bringing the accoustic properties of the room into it. The cliches also jump out when you try to describe her beauty. Describing a woman’s beauty is always tough, but it’s always better if you can do it in your own words without resorting to things like “beyond compare”, which really don’t tell us a thing about what she looks like to him.

I think it’s a nice idea for a story, but I think it would have been much better if you’d really sat down and tried to work your way through his feelings and perceptions and worked to convey those in your own words. Sometimes we’re forced to fall back on cliches, but cliche’s are the mortal enemy of good writing, and they’ll kill us in the end.

---dr.M.