Hi I'm new here and have just written my first story. It seems a little niche..

[LimiNalia]

Hi everyone,

I'm new here, and I've just written what I thought would be quite a common type of fantasy story. Now that I've read a few and wandered around literotica a bit it would seem that's not the case!

Anyway, just wanted to say hi and if anyone would like to explore a magical body transformation, with a slightly deeper meaning and some connection to nature, involving unicorns then this could be your lucky day.

Otherwise I'd also just love to know that someone out there has read my story. If you'd be kind enough to give done feedback then I would love to hear it.

https://literotica.com/s/the-forest-of-need-pt-01

Thanks,
LIMI

 

[SamScribble]

Hi everyone,

I'm new here, and I've just written what I thought would be quite a common type of fantasy story. Now that I've read a few and wandered around literotica a bit it would seem that's not the case!

Anyway, just wanted to say hi and if anyone would like to explore a magical body transformation, with a slightly deeper meaning and some connection to nature, involving unicorns then this could be your lucky day.

Otherwise I'd also just love to know that someone out there has read my story. If you'd be kind enough to give done feedback then I would love to hear it.

https://literotica.com/s/the-forest-of-need-pt-01

Thanks,
LIMI

Greetings, LIMI

There's a specific forum for story feedback. It's called (funnily enough) 'Story Feedback'. Try posting there. I think you may get more of a response. Good luck.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Hi everyone,

I'm new here, and I've just written what I thought would be quite a common type of fantasy story. Now that I've read a few and wandered around literotica a bit it would seem that's not the case!

Anyway, just wanted to say hi and if anyone would like to explore a magical body transformation, with a slightly deeper meaning and some connection to nature, involving unicorns then this could be your lucky day.

Otherwise I'd also just love to know that someone out there has read my story. If you'd be kind enough to give done feedback then I would love to hear it.

https://literotica.com/s/the-forest-of-need-pt-01

Thanks,
LIMI

Hi and welcome! I don't have time to read the full story but I took a look at the first page. Transformation isn't especially my thing so I'm not the best person to comment on the story as a whole, but a few things that might be worth thinking about:

The opening is your big chance to get the reader's attention. If the first few paragraphs don't grab them, they may move on to somebody else's story, so it's important to make an impression there. It's worth going over those early paragraphs sentence by sentence and asking "Is this needed? Does it help the story? Is it redundant with other content?"

Some possible edits in your opening:

It was the first time that we had taken a holiday together, well it was only a short trip really. We'd been seeing one another for a couple of months before we decided to go away for the weekend to a cabin in the mountains. It was an old place, and very remote, away from the real world where work and social lives clashed and intertwined to create a complex and sometimes exhausting life.

First sentence above is pretty much redundant with the second. "In the mountains" already suggests remoteness. I'd also consider recasting "where work and social lives clashed... to create a complex and sometimes exhausting life" - essentially you're saying here that your lives interacted to make your life, which feels clunky.

We were late to leave the city because we'd both had to meet friends before we could escape together, not that I don't enjoy meeting friends it's just that sSince being with Reim I had been feeling something new about myself and I couldn't wait to see him again each time we parted company. It was still the exciting new stage of a relationship when you still have questions about the other person and find them fascinating.

First passage above deleted because this didn't seem important to the story. Maybe you were trying to reinforce the "getaway from stressful everyday existence" aspect, but the previous paragraph already establishes this well enough. Watch out for repetition of "still".

I had always been quite shy and self-conscious, which meant that I found it hard to connect with people, always wondering what they thought about me and how I must be being judged by everyone. With this new relationship it was a little different, and I was beginning to feel a bit more at ease with Reim. I think it was his quiet way of smiling whenever I said anything which I was nervous about which calmed me.

Last sentence is clunky there with the two "which"es. I'd recast as something like: "He had a quiet way of smiling whenever I said anything which might have made me feel nervous". You don't really need to spell out the "which calmed me" there; it's implied by what's already there.

Further down:

The path wound through the trees, it's relaxed turns weaving their way up towards the cabin

No apostrophe in possessive "its". "It's" = "it is" or "it has", "its" w/o apostrophe = "belonging to it". This comes up quite a few times in the story and it's something commenters will complain about.

Reim, his lovely body still unclad, stepped into the entrance room and smiled at me, saying, "Wwell, that was something new wasn't it!".

Punctuation issues here: "his lovely body still unclad" needs a comma at both ends, and it's worth looking up rules for punctuating speech, as again this is a thing readers are likely to nitpick.

I couldn't breath again

"Breathe" for the verb, "breath" for the noun.

And a few other minor spelling/punctuation'grammar issues here and there. I'd recommend finding a beta reader or editor who can help catch this kind of thing.

 

[PennameWombat]

Congrats on posting your first story. If you do a tags search using "transformation" it'll bring up 3,500 stories across a number of categories (mostly Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Erotic Horror and NonHuman, but plenty of other categories as well.) Not all are magical, I (and others here) did a request story for a reader wanting to read about human women being transformed into mermaids.

But, yes, although 'unicorn' brings up a few hundred stories, transformation+unicorn is only three, including yours. That's stories that use both tags, so it's harder to find if they didn't tag the stories. But good on your finding your niche.

Edit: okay, so a text search using '+unicorn +transform*' is 53 stories (stories that use both words, so still limited in what it'll find). Still pretty cool, on this site, finding that.

 

[LimiNalia]

Hi and welcome! I don't have time to read the full story but I took a look at the first page. Transformation isn't especially my thing so I'm not the best person to comment on the story as a whole, but a few things that might be worth thinking about:

The opening is your big chance to get the reader's attention. If the first few paragraphs don't grab them, they may move on to somebody else's story, so it's important to make an impression there. It's worth going over those early paragraphs sentence by sentence and asking "Is this needed? Does it help the story? Is it redundant with other content?"

Some possible edits in your opening:



First sentence above is pretty much redundant with the second. "In the mountains" already suggests remoteness. I'd also consider recasting "where work and social lives clashed... to create a complex and sometimes exhausting life" - essentially you're saying here that your lives interacted to make your life, which feels clunky.



First passage above deleted because this didn't seem important to the story. Maybe you were trying to reinforce the "getaway from stressful everyday existence" aspect, but the previous paragraph already establishes this well enough. Watch out for repetition of "still".



Last sentence is clunky there with the two "which"es. I'd recast as something like: "He had a quiet way of smiling whenever I said anything which might have made me feel nervous". You don't really need to spell out the "which calmed me" there; it's implied by what's already there.

Further down:



No apostrophe in possessive "its". "It's" = "it is" or "it has", "its" w/o apostrophe = "belonging to it". This comes up quite a few times in the story and it's something commenters will complain about.



Punctuation issues here: "his lovely body still unclad" needs a comma at both ends, and it's worth looking up rules for punctuating speech, as again this is a thing readers are likely to nitpick.



"Breathe" for the verb, "breath" for the noun.

And a few other minor spelling/punctuation'grammar issues here and there. I'd recommend finding a beta reader or editor who can help catch this kind of thing.

Thanks so much for taking the time to respond in detail, it's much appreciated

 

[LimiNalia]

Congrats on posting your first story. If you do a tags search using "transformation" it'll bring up 3,500 stories across a number of categories (mostly Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Erotic Horror and NonHuman, but plenty of other categories as well.) Not all are magical, I (and others here) did a request story for a reader wanting to read about human women being transformed into mermaids.

But, yes, although 'unicorn' brings up a few hundred stories, transformation+unicorn is only three, including yours. That's stories that use both tags, so it's harder to find if they didn't tag the stories. But good on your finding your niche.

Edit: okay, so a text search using '+unicorn +transform*' is 53 stories (stories that use both words, so still limited in what it'll find). Still pretty cool, on this site, finding that.

Hi, thanks for explaining. The mermaid thing sounds fun. Maybe there's scope for something like that in the forest...

 

[stickygirl]

It's got pace but needs tidying up to remove the chaff as Bramblethorn outlined. Most importantly, I think the central idea is great so don't feel disheartened. Welcome to Lit.