First submission in a very long time -- feedback requested

[Vioan]

Lust On The Beach. I know the title is very uninspired, but it describes what the story is about. It's in the NonHuman category because the main character is a cat girl, but if she were human, it would have been posted in Erotic Couplings.

Please leave some feedback and advice here, but only if it's about the story and not about the category. I will probably keep writing NonHuman stories so there is little point in trying to change my mind about this.

 

[Darkniciad]

The thing that strikes me right out of the gate is that you describe your character in an author's note, and then almost immediately give the same description ( with a few additions ) in narrative.

I think the descriptions drag the story down at the beginning. If it were me, I would certainly eliminate the description in the author's note, and move the mentions that this is part of a series of stories about the same character to a closing note. Since the story is in Nonhuman, I think you'd be fine without any preface.

You could work in the details by describing her features with actions rather than having the character describe herself. Instead of having her talk about her ears, have a fly that got in the house land on one while she's waking up, tickling the fur, and setting them into that rapid twitching cats do when something is messing with their ears -- especially when it's something sudden.

There are a lot of people who don't like exact measurements, especially in what's sometimes called "laundry list" format. ( of course, some do, but I've frequently seen dislike, and only rarely praise ) Again, bringing out these details as she goes about her morning would probably keep the pace moving better in the opening of the story. In this case, as your character doesn't have overly large breasts, you escape one pitfall. This complaint comes up most often when you start listing double-ds and larger.

That's the stumbling block in the opening to me -- too much telling us about the character and not enough moving the story along.

Reading the story alone, I don't get enough sense of what I call the "X-men factor" to really paint a picture of the world. We have cat-girls roaming about, and you make the point that there's racism against them, but the story just doesn't give enough detail to answer the wider world questions.

Where do they come from? Always normal parents? Are there any other hybrids besides cat-girls? How is the government/school/etc. dealing?

Things like that.

The context may be there in the whole of your stories, but if each story is meant to stand alone, I feel as if you need at least a bit stronger representation of the way the world reacts to your apparently rare and quite different race.

I'll certainly agree that the story is a median that people who otherwise might cringe at furry stories could enjoy. You have just enough stress on it in the heart of the story ( after the opening ) and the sexual elements to keep her features in mind, but not so much that it's going to assault someone who might be on the fence.

There's plenty of heat, and classifying it as a sexy episode in her life, I think it stands up. That also alleviates some of the need to get into the details of how the world reacts to her race, provided there's an obvious introductory story for the character that does describe this better. I think it does need a starting point that readers can find easily to have a base view of the wider world before moving into each episode.

That does limit your readership, requiring additional reading beyond the story that's appearing on the New list to have a full grasp of the world, though.

I would have eliminated the guy at the end of the story, simply having her go out to finish her tan as the closure. Putting him in there makes it feel as if the story should continue right from that point.

To boil my impressions all down:

It moves a little too slowly due to the description of the character at the beginning, I don't get enough of a parallel world feel from it overall, and the guy in the ending made me blink a bit.

On the positive side, the heat is there, you have a mix that can appeal beyond the narrow range of furry readership, but which I think will capture those readers as well. That's not an easy line to walk, and I think you do it quite well in this tale.

 

[Vioan]

Thanks a lot, that was some quite useful feedback.

I've found out that properly describing my characters is indeed a very difficult thing to do, but I thought giving exact measurements would make the story seem like it's really being told from the character's perspective -- she knows her height, weight and measurements so in her own eyes, this is probably the most accurate way to describe her body.

In the newest story I've written (I'm still looking for an editor for it, and right now a friend of mine is correcting my rather atrocious grammar), I described her the same way, but maybe I'll try something different. Describing her features through actions like you said, sounds like a very good idea in fact.

I wonder, though, how I should go about describing this species. Indeed, there's some history about them, and my first story ("I love you, Lil Ch 01") describes how Viona's human mother got impregnated by a fully furred felid man during a one night stand. But adding this information to all my stories would make them boring for people who have read them all. This leaves me with a bit of a dilemma, you could say. I'm not sure how I should go about this.

 

[Darkniciad]

Ah... so there are fully feline characters in the world? That adds another potential dynamic. How do the "pure" cat folk react to the halfbreeds?

I don't know that you need to describe the history in each story, although I would probably put an ending note in there that points to the introduction of your characters with each new tale, saying that the reader will get a fuller picture of the world by starting with that story ( and any others that give context to the "moments of life" like this story )

You can really bring across the world with little things. Maybe some racist grafitti on a wall that she notices while going somewhere. Maybe a DJ on the radio who has a hate-on for cat folk, but who's still on the air because what he's saying just doesn't make the advertisers worry about lost sales or the station about lost ratings. Maybe there are people from historically oppressed minorities torn between identifying with the cat folk and being repulsed by them.

Little things in passing like that can really paint a picture of the world she lives in, show how it's different from "the real world", and give it depth without pulling too far away from your central character. You touch on that in this one, describing how it's impossible to find work, but I think there needs to be a bit more to back it up.

If "equal opportunity" doesn't apply to this race, then there's going to be some serious debate going on in the world, because in some things ( such as her going to school with the "normies" ) there's effort towards integration, and it would almost have to be government enforced. I think that's going to have to be a bit more visible.

That's going to be yet another fine line to walk on "episode" stories like this one, as you don't want to detract too much from the heart of the story, which is the hot encounter.