First time writer. would love honest feedback!

[Homeroticus]

Hello,

I just published my first story would love any comments or feedback! The good, the bad and the ugly. I'm happy to return the favor.

https://www.literotica.com/s/ch-01-the-spoil-of-war

Thank you

 

[filthytrancendence]

Hey there!

This one's pretty tough for me to analyze, but in this endeavor I shall attempt to persevere.

Obviously you're going for something quite a bit different here. I think that's admirable. I'm going to do my best to approach this work on its own terms and make suggestions I think would improve it on those terms. I expect any value I bring here is entirely from the outside of what you're trying to do. I have a cursory knowledge of Greek myth, and no more. I couldn't articulate to you what the Homeric tradition is, exactly. It's very obvious there is a structure here that is beyond my scope of knowledge to criticize on its own terms. So I'm not really going to try and do that.

Thing is, most (or let's be real, pretty much all) of your readers here are going to be in the same boat I am. I understand and respect your right to discount anything I have to say about this work as ignorance (because it probably is), but I'd encourage you to consider that the audience you've put this story in front of is going to be looking at it a lot more like I am than how you would. Also, I have not and am not going to start goolging these proper nouns. I'm taking the story on its own terms and disclaiming my pre-existing knowledge. Not seeking out additional knowledge to try and decode it. Take that for what you will.

With that long disclaimer out of the way...

My first question is, why isn't this in the poetry section? It reads as poetry, it looks like poetry, and it feels like poetry. I suspect it'd be better received were it labeled as such. I am not really a poet. I'm a narrative fiction writer. So that's the angle I'm approaching the rest of this from.

I think you've got a lot more leeway because of the poetic formatting to avoid accusations of purple prose, but even still, some of these sentences are very difficult to follow. I read through all of it 3 times before I started typing any of this, but this passage stands out to me as where you probably lost some people:

Beside the central pole, the lamp flickered--its tongue of flame

casting trembling shadows upon the bright curve of Achilles' shield,

where Hephaestus' cunning had etched scenes more living than dream:

the high walls of Ilium, the Scamander choked with bodies, and chariots wheeling in dust.

And in the shadow of that bronze prophecy, Patroclus possessed him.

I had to read this about 6 times before I understood what was going on. We're in a tent, there's a lamp, there's a flame, the flame is casting shadows over a shield, the shield has an engraving on it which is apparently a prophesy, and in the shadows of those shadows... our story is actually taking place. There's just too many layers of imagery here, I think. If the shield or what is on it has any relevance to the story, this is inscrutable to me at my knowledge level. The words are pretty, but they don't stick in the brain because there isn't any structure to support them.

The em dash is confusing. It parses (almost, more on that next) perfectly well with no punctuation there. I kept re-reading it because I was trying to figure out why it's there and I still cannot.

The first four lines are a sentence. In that sentence, you have a past tense verb (flickered), then two present tense verbs directly adjacent (casing trembling), then two adjacent past tense verbs (had etched), then another past tense verb (choked), then finally a present tense verb (wheeling). This is another layer of why this is near impossible to follow. There are several layers of imagery, and the verb tense is rapidly vacillating. And the tense switching does not even follow the layers of imagery up or down. All 3 of these problems combine to make this section very confusing.

And that's a significant problem, because it cumulatively represents a significant enough digression from the action, both because of the length and the difficulty to parse, that the reader forgets where they are in the story by the time we get to "Patroclus possessed him," which is the only thing of narrative utility which is communicated in this whole excerpt.

--

Okay, that was a lot over 5 lines. I'll leave the technical stuff there for now and leave you with some food for thought on structure.

You can expect pretty much everyone to know who Achilles is. You can't say the same for Patroclus. I get the sense that I need to know more about him for the second half of this to make any sense (walking around the tent). You give us very few clues as to who he is or how he might be related to Achilles.

And that's odd, because you do give us several context clues as to who Achilles is, even though we probably don't need them:

Achilles, breaker of ranks, swiftest of foot, beloved of Thetis the silver-shod,

The breaker of men, scourge of Troy

Achilles, swift-footed, the scourge of Trojans,

And Achilles, son of Peleus, swiftest of all beneath Troy's high towers,

He--whom Ares blessed in battle, whom no blade could touch--

Even if I'd never read a Greek myth, I could assemble some kind of sense for who Achilles is from reading your story. He breaks entire ranks. He's extremely agile. He is loved. He's unpopular in Troy. He's blessed by the god of war, and he can't be touched by blades. He sure sounds like a badass.

I can't say the same for Patroclus.

He was beneath Patroclus, son of Menoetius, tamer of horses, beloved of men.

...

Menoethis doesn't ring a bell for me. So all I've got is he's a horse tamer and men like him. I'm baffled as to how and why exactly he's dominating Achilles. And that's a bit of a problem. And the thing is, with your characterization of Achilles, I don't even have to understand any of the proper nouns to get the gist that he's a badass. This is good. You just need to do the same for Patroclus. Or else we're baffled as to why what's happening is happening.

--

Last thing I want to say is, you say in the very beginning as more a disclaimer than anything else, that this is consentual BDSM. Alright. But there isn't any consent in the text that I can see. Maybe that would be implicit if I knew who Patroclus was? I'm skeptical. The consent needs to be in the text somewhere. My guess is this was the subtle attempt at including it:

lay not in sleep but in submission.

But just submission is not consent. 'willing submission' and I'm there. 'reluctant submission,' maybe. I need an adverb for submission or else the consent is ambiguous, and I am not personally comfortable with that. And neither are the site's rules, for the record.

--

My hope is that I disclaimed my ignorance and perspective sufficiently that this was of some value to you. For what it's worth, I did enjoy the experience of reading and analyzing it and feel enriched from the experince. It's real far from my usual cup of tea, but that's part of what I'm here for. If there's anything I can clarify, I'd be happy to do so.

Thanks and good luck!

 

[Homeroticus]

This is great feedback! Thank you so much. There is definitely a tension between staying as close or the iliad as possible and making the story enjoyable. You have a very good point, I've gone too far on one side and just like for the myth left the poor Patroclus in the shade. Once again, thank you!