First Story: The White Board. Feedback asked

[Mandarinfish]

Hey everyone,

Posted up my first go at writing erotica and would like some reflective thoughts should I decide to write part 2.

Story is MFM focussed, ‘The Whiteboard’ (group sex) and can be found here. https://www.literotica.com/s/the-white-board

This story was actually written for me and my real life partner, who is currently away on a trip and I thought could do with something to keep company. Originally had no plans to publish, but I was rather pleased with the end result. I’m British, so understand some of the writing may not be natural to a largely American audience, but I hope it is enjoyable to outside readers nonetheless. Looking for some suggestions on how to take this further and if I’ve made any glaring literary mistakes.

Thanks

 

[TheRedChamber]

Well that was magnificantly, recklessly overindulgant! If you'd have told us on the forums, prior to writing it, that you were going to write 33k words detailing the course of a threesome over just one night, myself and no doubt many others, would have told you that you were quite mad and such a thing should not even be attempted, even by an experienced writer. Instead, you just plowed ahead and did it anything, and blow me if I didn't just read the whole thing in one sitting after thinking I might just glance through the first page. As I reached the end of the first page and it became increasingly apparent where you were attempting to stear the runaway train, I thought to myself that I'd just continue until the wheels fell off entirely. They never quite did and around page 4, I realized that this was a marathon I had a shot at completing. While, once I'd made that decision, there were moments when I did feel I was continuing only out of bloody mindedness, I did eventually get my second wind and finished exhausted but victorious from the story. If you've been able to add another 7k words you could technically call this a novel.

In terms of literary sins, it was a mostly polished first attempt and you should be congratulated. Here are some little points.

1. You were writing from all three characters points of view and 'head-hopping' between them. This can go dreadfully wrong especially for new writers and the advice is often to avoid it. However, for the most part, you had long paragraphs, clearly signalled whose head we were in at the beginning of each paragraph and so it didn't bother me. Also, given it was pretty much wall-to-wall fucking, there was never any real confusion (although earlier on, I occassionally found myself thinking 'wait, who is the husband and who is the guest again, ah sod it, a cock is a cock'). That said, there were some paragraphs where you had multiple people's thoughts or sensations at the same time and this is to be avoided. This seemed to be particulary a problem starting around page 3 or but then sorted itself out a couple of pages later.
2. Speaking of the long paragraphs, there are those who think that when writing for the Internet you should keep your paragraphs short and snappy. I'm not one of those, I like a good meaty paragraph to get my teeth into and generally yours were a good length. However, some of your paragraphs especially from page 3 onwards were just way to long. Again this sorted itself out, so I'm wondering if maybe the middle section was edited less or written differently from the start and end.
3. It started out as raw fucking, but you managed to hit an emotional core with Katie around the middle (of both the story and the night). The men were initially less well drawn, but you managed to get really inside the husbands head by the end of the story. However, Will remained rather a blank slate character - you played a bit with the fact his wife wasn't there, but I never felt anything about him more than 'lucky guy'. Still 2 out of 3 is pretty good going when, given the premise of the story, it could very easily have been 0 out of 3.
4. For this type of story, the advice might be to start slowly and escalate the activities, saving the wildest stuff for last. You hit 11 after only page two and mostly stayed there. Everytime I thought we were getting some down time, it immediately turned into another fuck session. Despite this, you did mainly manage to escalate things (albeit from 11 to maybe 11.5) across scenes, however I felt by the time you got to Will's last fuck there was nowhere left to go with the three of them and it was a bit anti-climatic. You saved this completely with the post-threesome husband/wife fuck which really rounded things off, but there was a while where I thought the story was flagging.
5. I'm also a Brit, but I didn't notice anything that would be out of place for Americans (but I could easily be wrong).
6. Generally the language and writing was good. Inevitably there were a few mistakes that stood out to me (a missed capital on a name, a missing question mark) but nothing egregious for the length of the story.

Congratulations on your first story and I look forward to you second and more...

 

[Mandarinfish]

Well that was magnificantly, recklessly overindulgant! If you'd have told us on the forums, prior to writing it, that you were going to write 33k words detailing the course of a threesome over just one night, myself and no doubt many others, would have told you that you were quite mad and such a thing should not even be attempted, even by an experienced writer. Instead, you just plowed ahead and did it anything, and blow me if I didn't just read the whole thing in one sitting after thinking I might just glance through the first page. As I reached the end of the first page and it became increasingly apparent where you were attempting to stear the runaway train, I thought to myself that I'd just continue until the wheels fell off entirely. They never quite did and around page 4, I realized that this was a marathon I had a shot at completing. While, once I'd made that decision, there were moments when I did feel I was continuing only out of bloody mindedness, I did eventually get my second wind and finished exhausted but victorious from the story. If you've been able to add another 7k words you could technically call this a novel.

In terms of literary sins, it was a mostly polished first attempt and you should be congratulated. Here are some little points.

1. You were writing from all three characters points of view and 'head-hopping' between them. This can go dreadfully wrong especially for new writers and the advice is often to avoid it. However, for the most part, you had long paragraphs, clearly signalled whose head we were in at the beginning of each paragraph and so it didn't bother me. Also, given it was pretty much wall-to-wall fucking, there was never any real confusion (although earlier on, I occassionally found myself thinking 'wait, who is the husband and who is the guest again, ah sod it, a cock is a cock'). That said, there were some paragraphs where you had multiple people's thoughts or sensations at the same time and this is to be avoided. This seemed to be particulary a problem starting around page 3 or but then sorted itself out a couple of pages later.
2. Speaking of the long paragraphs, there are those who think that when writing for the Internet you should keep your paragraphs short and snappy. I'm not one of those, I like a good meaty paragraph to get my teeth into and generally yours were a good length. However, some of your paragraphs especially from page 3 onwards were just way to long. Again this sorted itself out, so I'm wondering if maybe the middle section was edited less or written differently from the start and end.
3. It started out as raw fucking, but you managed to hit an emotional core with Katie around the middle (of both the story and the night). The men were initially less well drawn, but you managed to get really inside the husbands head by the end of the story. However, Will remained rather a blank slate character - you played a bit with the fact his wife wasn't there, but I never felt anything about him more than 'lucky guy'. Still 2 out of 3 is pretty good going when, given the premise of the story, it could very easily have been 0 out of 3.
4. For this type of story, the advice might be to start slowly and escalate the activities, saving the wildest stuff for last. You hit 11 after only page two and mostly stayed there. Everytime I thought we were getting some down time, it immediately turned into another fuck session. Despite this, you did mainly manage to escalate things (albeit from 11 to maybe 11.5) across scenes, however I felt by the time you got to Will's last fuck there was nowhere left to go with the three of them and it was a bit anti-climatic. You saved this completely with the post-threesome husband/wife fuck which really rounded things off, but there was a while where I thought the story was flagging.
5. I'm also a Brit, but I didn't notice anything that would be out of place for Americans (but I could easily be wrong).
6. Generally the language and writing was good. Inevitably there were a few mistakes that stood out to me (a missed capital on a name, a missing question mark) but nothing egregious for the length of the story.

Congratulations on your first story and I look forward to you second and more...

Thanks for this. As previously mentioned, this was written for my partner, and I expected she would read a chapter or sex scene per night, so fair play to you for sitting through in one sitting- I certainly couldn’t and I wrote the damn thing!

I shall take on all the above points should there be a second weekend with Michelle or the four together. The feedback around the middle being a bit lacking was interesting- I knew how the story should start and end, but I did find the middle somewhat tricky. Perhaps a little rushed here as I was keen to get it out, and also probably interrupted by my own self pleasure. More downtime is a good shout too, perhaps more of a story approach rather than just hardcore pornography interlaced with a sprinke of characterisation.

Thank you so much for giving your time, appreciate your comments immensely.
I hope my partner enjoys it as much (hopefully more) when I send her the weblink in a few days time!