I must have gone wrong with this one...

[Lovepotion69]

Just had my latest story posted.

The Wild Rose

Ok, so it hasn't been up for long, but the score has been unusually low. I'm talking below 3.0 here, and I'm used to getting above 4.0.
Naturally there's bound to be quite a few crap ones among my collection (I'm new at this), but I'm starting to wonder where I went wrong with this one.

It's based on a Nick Cave song "Where the wild roses grow". The basic plot follows the song, but of course I added stuff too.

I'd like to hear comments what you thought of the story. Overall impression and feedback regarding writing style.

Thanks for your time.
/LP

 

[hiddenself]

Well, well, if that's erotic horror, I'm a dwarf.


This is a straightforward Romance story. The two little sentences at the end do not Erotic Horror make it. I kept reading and reading expecting the "horror" part and was very annoyed when I got at the end. Perhaps that's how other readers feel too?

 

[Jenny _S]

Don't worry about it, LP69. It happens to everyone. I've read some of your other stories and liked them. But I do agree with hiddenself. This story should have been in a different catagory.

Don't sweat the small stuff. Just go on and write another one.

 

[A7inchPhildo]

Lovepotion69,
Good story I was into it bad topic. Title makes me think romance.

I might be off, but introduceing a rape or insinuating sexual dementia due to past experience. Is that a good way to spark a romantic embrace? Then request a promise of sexual fantasies before the "Kiss of Passion".

Romance ???? Did I miss it? This was more like an erotic coupling story than a romance story. Horror story? You don't say I think if you delete the end and add a loving kiss you got a great couple story.


I once had a dog named Fluffy. Loved him and played with him and shot him in the head. <---not scarey stupid

I took my dog Fluffy that once was the neighbors beloved pet. Good boy petting him on the head tenderly. Suddenly, grasping him by the rear legs I swung him furiously. When the Flufster's body hit the oak tree it snaped and the neck lay limp. Thinking that was just meaningless as of what was to come. The evil pulsed through my mind. Placeing the corps on the hood of the owners car like Fluffy was sleeping . I had some time to wait, until I could fill my thirst .... For now I just watch your every move.

suspense, unknown, creepy crawlwers all missing.
Could have been very romantic I still say.
Phildo

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

LP69,

Dispair not. Erotic Horror is a new, amd somewhat peculiar new category. Not a single story has over a hundred votes and less than 65 stories have scored above 2.00. That makes your 3.00 seem like a real achievement.

I've got a hunch the other posters were right about your choice of categories. Folks looking for a Texas Chainsaw, Friday the 13th type horror story with a little sex, probably didn't like yours which, to me, more resembled something from Twilight Zone. IMHO, that's a compliment, but it seems like that, and everything else, was stacked against your getting a decent score.

Either chalk it up to experience and move on or ask Laurel to delete it and then re-submit in another category.

Rumple Foreskin

 

[jon_jones]

It's a great idea for a story, but I think you possibly follow the song too closely, instead of using the whole wild girl/rose/murder as a jumping off point and doing your own thing.

Incidentally, I believe the song is actually based on an old story itself, though I may be wrong about this.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

You can't do this to us. An author can't just spring something like that from left field on a reader without rhyme or reason. Writing a nice little love story and then having a maniac jump out of the bushes with a chain saw or something and slaughter the lovers doesn't make it an erotic horror story. It makes it a love story with an unrelated shock ending. The reader basically feels betrayed.

There are a lot of unwritten rules in fiction, and one of them says that you have to give the reader a fair chance at figuring out what's going to happen. A good horror story should probably carry the seed of its ending in its beginning, and then the horror develops as we watch the seed unfold. Otherwise it's not a story, it's just a series of random, unrelated events. In this story you don't give us a hint of a clue that something is going to happen. Then it happens, and we feel cheated and dissatisfied. An earlier mention of some killer stalking the community probably would have been too much of a give-away, but we need something like that to make the story hang together and make sense.

I think that's the major plot defect: a lack or presaging or foreshadowing, but there are some other problems too.

I found their lovemaking to be strangely dispassionate and unsexy. It felt very gratuitous, and it was, wasn't it? In fact, the whole story had a kind of detached feel, as if you already knew what was going to happen (which you did) and had already distanced yourself from your characters and what they were doing. They're both just 2-dimensional actors, not real people.

She apparently hasn't made love in an awfully long time, if ever. Yet after 3 hours with a guy she's just met they're in the sack and pledging their love to one another. I couldn't buy that. That's why the sex seemed gratuitous. There was also a lot of telling during the sex: "He was in heaven" occurred a couple of times. i'd rather you described what he was doing and let me make up my mind for myself what he's feeling.

I also have to object to something I'm seeing more and more of in stories here, and that's the identification of brand names or other pop specifics. I have no idea what it means that he wears Hugo Boss cologne. Does that mean that he has no taste? That he has impeccable taste? That he smells good? Bad? Use this kind of information very carefully.

I'm very old-fashioned when it comes to horror. Horror to me is when people encounter the supernatural and realize that the world is not what they thought it was. Horror is not the same as being frightened or even shocked, so slasher movies are not really horror movies to me. In this story, you gave us the shock without the fear.

The story of a woman's murder at her lover's hands by a river is really ancient, and goes way back in folk songs. (Why always a river? No one knows). (BTW, your image of the wind as a theif was quite lovely.) But there it's presented as a kind of inevitable tragedy. The problem with this story was that it was presnted as a random act of senseless violence.

---dr.M.

 

[Lovepotion69]

Thanks guys!

Oh, thanks a lot people. I certainly needed those things cleared. I guess I was just in too much of a rush, really wanted to write something (to finally feel I'm being productive). Not sure why I put it in the horror category, probably blinded by the whole Halloween thing.

I agree that it could be worked a lot more. As I already admitted, too rushed. And yes, I know it's not exactly one of my better stories.

I think that changing the category is probably the best idea at this stage. As I have too little time to rewrite it right now, I'll do that for now. Then perhaps I'll rewrite it later on.

dr_mabeuse, regarding the Hugo Boss perfume thing. I don't usually use brand names in stories, but I do believe they can be justified. Every brand name has an image, something that the advertisers has been trying to get into our heads. Most of the time it unconsciously works. Using certain brand names can help describe the character along the brand name's image. And well, that's how people in real life often describe others too at times. Perhaps not perfume brands, but certainly clothing brands. He/she is wearing Chanel. Prada. Louis Vuitton. Nike. Target. Wal Mart. Versace. He's driving a BMW. Volvo. Ford. Porsche.


/LP

 

[Lovepotion69]

Romance or Erotic Coupling?

Which category should I change it to? And why that one? Just wondering.

 

[A7inchPhildo]

Erotic coupling is my vote--- unless you wish to change considerable parts in the story. I thought this would make a great romance story needs a bit of configureing though to do that.

Just make the end have some passion instead of a rock and I like it.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Re: Thanks guys!

dr_mabeuse, regarding the Hugo Boss perfume thing. I don't usually use brand names in stories, but I do believe they can be justified. Every brand name has an image, something that the advertisers has been trying to get into our heads. Most of the time it unconsciously works. Using certain brand names can help describe the character along the brand name's image. And well, that's how people in real life often describe others too at times. Perhaps not perfume brands, but certainly clothing brands. He/she is wearing Chanel. Prada. Louis Vuitton. Nike. Target. Wal Mart. Versace. He's driving a BMW. Volvo. Ford. Porsche.

I know, I know. Advertisers have been working for decades to have us define ourselves in terms of their manufactured images and they've finally succeeded. But I can't be the only one who has no idea what Hugo Boss means, and when I see people describing others that way I assume I'm dealing with some pretty superficial and status-obsessed characters.

As with everything in writing, as long as you're aware of it, you're certainly free to use it. But who today knows what it means that a woman was wearing Capezios or Blaize sunglasses? And if she's listening to Laura Nyro, does that tell you anything about her?

 

[Rainbow Skin]

I have to disagree with the most serious complaint: the ending is a shock, but (disregarding the fact that if it's in Horror we know something horrible must happen even if only at the end) it is sort of foreshadowed. The fairy-tale opening is disturbing, unreal, it mentions blood (Lips the color of the roses that grew down the river all bloody and wild), and the whole thing is awkward, edgy, you never feel comfortable with them.

I don't mind the twist. But a really good story with a twist sends you back to the beginning to re-read it to confirm the author didn't cheat. All the time you thought they were saying X. The ending means it was Y all the time. You must be able to go back and confirm, yup, everything was compatible with Y. You let it slip in several places:

And Nick knew he would never play any games. He would never lie to her. He would never forget the way her eyes had rendered the painful memories of her youth.

Now that's not strictly incompatible with what later happens, but it does quite strongly imply he's good and decent and loving. It is just possible to go back and re-read it after you know the ending, but it's not consistent enough to make you relieved the author didn't cheat.

Okay, other point. dr_mabeuse must've been really, really rattled by the ending, to not mention the stylistic flaw that usually sets him off. Well I can tell you it drove me ratty. Fragments. Reading them time after time. Once or twice is fine. Repeatedly, without a good reason. Just a quirk to give it that 'edgy' feel. Just a repeated quirk. Drove me positively ratty. Use sparingly.

 

[Rainbow Skin]

brand names

But I can't be the only one who has no idea what Hugo Boss means, and when I see people describing others that way I assume I'm dealing with some pretty superficial and status-obsessed characters.

Nope, nope, you're not alone. I have no idea what it's supposed to mean, but it immediately rings alarm bells and makes me think the writing is using superficial shorthands.

There is a legitimate use of names, just as with any description. Instead of saying s/he was wearing a piece of clothing, say a jumper, merely for the purpose of ripping it off and getting her/him naked, you could say a red jumper -- a red jumper with cream animal patterns -- or perhaps a Marks & Spencer jumper (or whatever brand names are meaningful to you and/or your intended readers). That's description: that's good. The fact that it has a pattern of stylized elks and bears can be mentioned without it having to have any impact on the plot.

The bad use of brand names is when they're used instead of description. Does a Hugo Boss perfume mean a naff, overeffusive perfume? A subtle, sensual perfume? A strong perfume as used by a certain class of boring middle-aged men who like golf and sailing boats? We don't know (unless we know what Hugo Boss is). If you expect people to understand and to provide a stereotype -- rugged, smells of leather, owns a Volvo, labrador by the real fire? -- then that's as bad as any other stereotype. It's a replacement for character creation.

So don't avoid brand names altogether, do say she got a Coke if that's the way we'd normally say it; but as in every other respect, don't avoid true description. No shortcuts.

 

[Lovepotion69]

I've resubmitted the story

And I put it in Erotic Couplings. Also did some minor changes to the content; changed the scene where Nick says feels he's in heaven, deleted the Hugo Boss reference (and I stick to that it's fine to use Brand names when valid, but I agreed with the Dr it could be deleted here), and I also changed the ending slightly. Not much though, just deleted the last sentences and added a couple others.

Too be perfectly honest I know it could be a lot better, but I'm far too lazy and busy right now to rewrite it (ok, mainly lazy). Let's file it away as a learning experience, and hope the next stories are better!

Thanks everyone!
/LP