Is this a good format or distracting?

[IslandPower]

I'm currently writing a series of short stories (approx 3,000 words each) about a son discovering his mother starred in several porn videos when she was younger. Each chapter is him watching a new video of hers. They are written in a standard 3rd person perspective as if someone were watching the video unfold. Things like the camera moving and the soundtrack are described. I also have separate paragraphs written in 1st person from the son's perspective as he describes his feelings about what he's seeing and hearing. These paragraphs are clearly separate from the rest of the story and can be skipped if the reader doesn't care about that perspective. Here is a small example:

The woman quickly moved onto her knees in front of the muscular frat boy who was eagerly stroking himself to completion. She closed her eyes tightly while keeping her mouth wide open and tongue sticking out. A smile tugged at the corners of her open mouth. The camera swung in closer to capture a close-up of her face just before the frat boy grunted loudly and several thick streams of white cum erupted from his cock, hitting the girl in the face. She jumped slightly and grimaced, but burst into laughter a second after. She continued to giggle even as the gooey slime dripped down her face and onto her chest.

*​

The sight of that face, the spitting image of my own mother's, covered in cum and giggling uncontrollably was a bizarre sight. I was so used to seeing that face scrunched up in a stern scowl or held up with dignified grace. Seeing it now... like this... I simply could not believe that this laughing slut on my screen was my mother. It was simply impossible...

*​

On screen, the frat boy pushed his still-hard cock back into the woman's mouth. She didn't resist, but gladly accepted it and resumed her enthusiastic sucking. With cum still coating her mouth and chin, she sucked on him for a moment longer, ignoring his pained groans, until at last she pulled him from her mouth and blew a kiss to the camera. The screen faded to black as she giggled...

So... opinions? Am I making a needlessly complicated format or does it add an interesting layer to the story?

 

[ElectricBlue]

It's intriguing. Providing the POV shifts are distinct and consistent, it could be very effective. You might need to pay close attention to the length of each POV element - the first person might be more effective if it's consistently shorter, or a very similar length (I don't know), but I reckon some kind of regular steady beat might be important to get and keep a rhythm.

 

[NotWise]

It's fine. I doubt anyone will complain.

 

[SimonDoom]

Needlessly complicated. I don't get it. It's a son watching videos. That's first-person perspective. If he's watching the video and narrating the video, then his narration may read at times like third person (without omniscience, because he cannot possibly know what is going on in the minds of the people in the video). But it's still first person. I would recommend keeping it simple that way. You don't have to inject "I" into the video narration all the time. The reader will understand that the narration is by the son.

 

[Lifestyle66]

For this brief sample, what you've written is fine. But in a longer story, the back and forth might get confusing.

Your use of the asterisks to indicate a shift in perspective is good. But you might add some dialog tag for the thought bubble earlier in the first-person paragraph to indicate "I watched as ..."

My wife often complains about my story dialogs, if during a back & forth I don't have enough dialog tags to keep her on track with who is speaking. So, while you don't need to over-use dialog tagging with each change, some readers need the assistance more often than others.

 

[Voboy]

I would bail out of that story so fast your head would spin.

Sorry, OP. It just seems gimmicky to me, and "distracting" is the ideal word you could have chosen. I'm sure it'll find an audience stylistically, but the other problem (for me, not for all readers) is that it would quickly get repetitious. Every story is essentially the same, other than the sex acts Mom performs.

But? As I'm always fond of saying, if you would read it? Someone else will want to, as well. Good luck!

 

[IslandPower]

Thanks for the feedback guys. Seems to be a bit of a mixed bag, so what if the son's perspective is only inserted at the start and finish of each chapter? He just sums up his feelings on whatever he saw and the revelations that follow? I think that would solve the issue of repetitiveness that Voboy mentioned, as well as keeping things easy to follow.

 

[SimonDoom]

Thanks for the feedback guys. Seems to be a bit of a mixed bag, so what if the son's perspective is only inserted at the start and finish of each chapter? He just sums up his feelings on whatever he saw and the revelations that follow? I think that would solve the issue of repetitiveness that Voboy mentioned, as well as keeping things easy to follow.

I wouldn't do it this way. Too artificial. Just stay in first person POV from the son's point of view, and as he is watching something on the TV screen have him from time to time insert his feelings about what he's watching. But to the extent you can avoid thought tags like "I thought the woman's boobs were amazing." Just write "The woman's boobs were amazing." It will be obvious in context that this narrative is from the son's point of view.

I personally think it's much better to mix up dialogue, internal thoughts, and narrative regularly rather than to have one big block of one framed by bits of the other.

 

[ChloeTzang]

I'd stay with one POV all the way thru. If its being told from the son's POV, go first person. Changing POV's almost always loses the reader and they get b ugged trying ti figure out who's telling the story. Third person is fine, but to my mind, 1st would work better for what you're trying to do.

 

[AlinaX]

In F&F Ch2 I include a section where the narrator watches her mother star in a porn film. I made it a brief section in italics.

The trouble with porn films is a bit like the trouble with dream sequences: the reader knows they're not real. The reader wants to be in the action, and believe it.

I imagined myself as that frat boy, pushing my still-hard cock back into my mother's mouth. She doesn't resist, but gladly accepts it and resumes her enthusiastic sucking. With cum still coating her mouth and chin, she sucks on me for a moment longer, ignoring my pained groans, until at last she pulls me from her mouth and blows a kiss to the camera with a giggle...

 

[NotWise]

Hmm. Readers won't complain, but writers might tell you to do it their way.

I think your idea of limiting the method to the beginning or end of the story is a good one. It's hard for me to imagine telling an entire story that way -- not that it can't be done.

For what it's worth, I have stories in which the main, 3rd-person characters relate tales in 1st person, complete with frequent changes back and forth. Changes in POV are ubiquitous in 3rd person stories, because dialog is usually in first person.

There are a lot of different ways to tell stories, and you can use them to add complexity and texture to the telling.

 

[Voboy]

Thanks for the feedback guys. Seems to be a bit of a mixed bag, so what if the son's perspective is only inserted at the start and finish of each chapter? He just sums up his feelings on whatever he saw and the revelations that follow? I think that would solve the issue of repetitiveness that Voboy mentioned, as well as keeping things easy to follow.

Take my advice (and all of ours) with a grain of salt, though. We're not "all readers" (nobody is) and, again, you'll find an audience doing it your way. I just personally hate shifts in and out of different kinds of narrative voice. To me, stories are told consistently all the way through.

I'd use FP from the son, and be done with it.

 

[SamScribble]

Clarity, clarity, clarity. Many people will say that that only applies to non-fiction. I disagree. Try not to let anything get between your story and the reader's mind is what I would say.

 

[KeithD]

Sure, this is the place to experiment with that sort of presentation. I would normally put the video descriptions in italics, but it looks like you'll have too much of that for it not becoming disconcerting very quickly. Of course, it might become disconcerting very quickly anyway. So, the separations as you have them might be the best approach if you want to experiment with this.

A note on the specific content here. In the first video you quickly go from woman to giggly girl, which might set off the site's underage tracker.

 

[AlinaX]

There was a device. The 4D. Banned, of course, because so many people had died while using it, but if you knew where to look on the web, you could find people selling old 4D devices or cheap newer ones that supposedly did the same. I managed to find an old original, still in good condition, and it wasn't cheap.

But it was worth it, not least because it was compatible with DVDs, like the ones I found in the attic. The ones with my mother pictured on the front, scantily dressed and very suggestive, with titles like 'My Stepmom's A Slut'.

That's the one I played first, the 4D headset humming like a swarm of bees as the opening credits rolled... and suddenly I was there, not myself but a muscular youth wearing a T-shirt and shorts, and even before looking I knew that I possessed a significant cock.

The 4D device worked. It had created a reality out of the story. I was the stepson, and my real life mother was my stepmother now. I looked across the room at her. I knew how the story went. I knew what to say and do to make her my slut for the next hour and a half.

I was already hard.

 

[Trionyx]

Write how you want to but be careful, very, very careful. Too many times when there are similar changes in points of view or tenses, the writers get sloppy and mix things up leaving a mess.

 

[lovecraft68]

Going beyond your question about tense, the premise works, but like anything else can only work for so long before it becomes repetitive, if every chapter is going to be the son watching one of her movies, it might hold up for the strokers, but for people who to see a story move forward. you'll lose them fairly quick.