Looking for comments on my first story

[Mr. Allnite]

Hi all. I've been lightly participating in this site, and what an amazing site it is, for about 6 months now. I've read quite a few stories and I've tried to take tips from the best of what I've read. This was my first attempt and even though I sent it out to at least 10 volunteer editors, I didn't get a single response from them. I finally posted it with no editorial comment, so I'm hoping to get it here.

Thanks

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=72773

(How do you insert a hyperlink here anyway?)

 

[Madame Manga]

Hyperlink worked fine!

This seems generally well written. I saw one or two typos, I think, but that was it. Thank you for spell checking!

Commenting as I go...

Shorter paragraphs, please? Reading off a screen imposes different formatting requirements than reading off a printed page. Try breaking it up into blocks of approximately three to four lines.

This long expository intro could probably go into a much shorter dialog. A few lines in an exchange with his friend, on the phone, perhaps?

There are a lot of modifiers: rather, pretty, very, a bit, sort of. You could cut nearly all of those and gain a more forthright tone.

Watch the passive voice. It sounds distant, and again, not forthright.

The subject was very uncomfortable for me.

How uncomfortable does he really sound? Any of a number of possibilities come to mind.

The subject made me uncomfortable.

or

Thinking about it made me squirm.

The word "was" has come in for a lot of flak on this site lately. ;-) Personally, I don't believe it's necessary to hunt down and kill every "was", but some of them are big targets.

What they didn’t know was that my discomfort with the sexuality of my students was slowly becoming torture. The torture was being inflicted by one student in particular. Her name was Chrissy. She was a petite little blonde with perfect curves. Her hair was long and soft, and she would sit in class and stare at me with those big beautiful crystal blue eyes while she twisted her finger around in it.

There's a lot going on in there. Stronger verbs than "was", active voice and a more varied sentence structure would help bring it out.

"Petite" and "little" are synonyms. Cut one. "Shapely" and "nubile" are also redundant a few sentences later.

You mention discomfort becoming torture here, and then again later in the paragraph. Cut one mention.

I have a believability problem with a girl rubbing her crotch in class. Would he be the only one to notice something that blatant? In my experience, a more likely action, if she just couldn't help herself, would be a tight leg-crossing and pelvis-wiggling. The expression on her face might say it all.

OK, her friend sees it too? ;-) I see where this is probably going to go in future...

A little too much description, especially when we get to his numerical attributes. It stops the action cold. Try working description into action, rather than making a laundry list.

She wrapped her legs around me and gasped as I buried my face in the cleavage presented to me by the top buttons that were undone on her blouse.

As she said it I had finished undoing her buttons, hooked her bra straps and pulled them down over her shoulders, exposing two incredible pink puffy nippled breasts.

These sentences need recasting.

A virgin who shaves her lips? Well...I guess that's a nice fantasy, but again I have a believability problem. How about sparse hair, if a bare pussy is to your taste? If she's a natural blonde and only eighteen, it might not be very dense. (Of course, I'm a long, long way from eighteen, so if high school girls are into that these days, someone is going to have to tell me...)

I'm a little squacked by a teacher behaving this way, but I realize that's just me. ;-) The dirty talk strikes me as porno-style, and not how real people would speak in this situation. Purely in my opinion, the story would be more erotic if he treated her with more respect and tenderness. An encounter can be intense and even rough without being nasty. Your mileage may vary. ;-)

Other than that, the sex is fine. I like the intercourse sequence. The description of her orgasm struck me particularly well.

You break paragraphs every time a different person speaks--good.

Watch the equivalents for "said". Gasped, squealed, responded, snarled, slurred, directed. Usually those are overkill. If the dialog itself says what it needs to say, the gasping and snarling and so on will come through in the spoken words.

If you want to avoid "said", it's not difficult when the scene contains only two people. You have plenty of speeches with no direct attribution in this story, so I see you know how to do it. But if "said" comes along, you don't have to kill it--it's an invisible word if used in a normal way.

OK, I have to go eat lunch! I hope that helps you.

MM

 

[Mr. Allnite]

Hyperlink worked fine!

This seems generally well written. I saw one or two typos, I think, but that was it. Thank you for spell checking!

Commenting as I go...

Shorter paragraphs, please? Reading off a screen imposes different formatting requirements than reading off a printed page. Try breaking it up into blocks of approximately three to four lines.

I knew this going into it from the tips I read, but I like a lot of description to set the tone. How would you suggest I break up the paragraphs? -Mr. Allnite

This long expository intro could probably go into a much shorter dialog. A few lines in an exchange with his friend, on the phone, perhaps?

There are a lot of modifiers: rather, pretty, very, a bit, sort of. You could cut nearly all of those and gain a more forthright tone.

Noted.

Watch the passive voice. It sounds distant, and again, not forthright.

The subject was very uncomfortable for me.

How uncomfortable does he really sound? Any of a number of possibilities come to mind.

The subject made me uncomfortable.

or

Thinking about it made me squirm.

The word "was" has come in for a lot of flak on this site lately. ;-) Personally, I don't believe it's necessary to hunt down and kill every "was", but some of them are big targets.

What they didn’t know was that my discomfort with the sexuality of my students was slowly becoming torture. The torture was being inflicted by one student in particular. Her name was Chrissy. She was a petite little blonde with perfect curves. Her hair was long and soft, and she would sit in class and stare at me with those big beautiful crystal blue eyes while she twisted her finger around in it.

There's a lot going on in there. Stronger verbs than "was", active voice and a more varied sentence structure would help bring it out.

Noted, but this is going to be tough for me. Any suggestions?

"Petite" and "little" are synonyms. Cut one. "Shapely" and "nubile" are also redundant a few sentences later.

You mention discomfort becoming torture here, and then again later in the paragraph. Cut one mention.

I have a believability problem with a girl rubbing her crotch in class. Would he be the only one to notice something that blatant? In my experience, a more likely action, if she just couldn't help herself, would be a tight leg-crossing and pelvis-wiggling. The expression on her face might say it all.

I was trying to show in my description of the room that this would be possible, and in fact more noticeable for teacher because of the lecture hall setup. Maybe I could clarify that somehow. I wrestle with the believability question. I'm trying to push that a little for the sake of setting up a tense situation. I laugh as I sit here and think of all the most unbeleivable, but hot stories I've read.

OK, her friend sees it too? ;-) I see where this is probably going to go in future...

A little too much description, especially when we get to his numerical attributes. It stops the action cold. Try working description into action, rather than making a laundry list.

I consciously kept that to a minimum, but left the number in because it seems like people want to know it. I agree though, it could have been dropped.

She wrapped her legs around me and gasped as I buried my face in the cleavage presented to me by the top buttons that were undone on her blouse.

As she said it I had finished undoing her buttons, hooked her bra straps and pulled them down over her shoulders, exposing two incredible pink puffy nippled breasts.

These sentences need recasting.

A virgin who shaves her lips? Well...I guess that's a nice fantasy, but again I have a believability problem. How about sparse hair, if a bare pussy is to your taste? If she's a natural blonde and only eighteen, it might not be very dense. (Of course, I'm a long, long way from eighteen, so if high school girls are into that these days, someone is going to have to tell me...)

Apparently, they are. Hair is apparently out or kept to a very bare minimum.

I'm a little squacked by a teacher behaving this way That's kind of the point , but I realize that's just me. ;-) The dirty talk strikes me as porno-style, and not how real people would speak in this situationProbably true, but that was for a little D/s color.. Purely in my opinion, the story would be more erotic if he treated her with more respect and tenderness. An encounter can be intense and even rough without being nasty. Your mileage may vary. ;-)

Other than that, the sex is fine. I like the intercourse sequence. The description of her orgasm struck me particularly well.

You break paragraphs every time a different person speaks--good.

Watch the equivalents for "said". Gasped, squealed, responded, snarled, slurred, directed. Usually those are overkill. If the dialog itself says what it needs to say, the gasping and snarling and so on will come through in the spoken words.

If you want to avoid "said", it's not difficult when the scene contains only two people. You have plenty of speeches with no direct attribution in this story, so I see you know how to do it. But if "said" comes along, you don't have to kill it--it's an invisible word if used in a normal way.

Agreed.


OK, I have to go eat lunch! I hope that helps you.

MM

Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate your comments.

 

[Madame Manga]

I think I might have to PM you on various questions...unless you don't mind my doing it on the thread! As an editor, I have what I think of as a bad habit of wanting to rewrite other people's sentences and paragraphs.

If that's what you need, however, I could behave badly and do so. ;-) Maybe someone else could benefit from the examples? I am leery of telling anyone "Do it my way."

Gotta run, will get back here later...

MM

 

[Mr. Allnite]

I think I might have to PM you on various questions...unless you don't mind my doing it on the thread! As an editor, I have what I think of as a bad habit of wanting to rewrite other people's sentences and paragraphs.

If that's what you need, however, I could behave badly and do so. ;-) Maybe someone else could benefit from the examples? I am leery of telling anyone "Do it my way."

Gotta run, will get back here later...

MM

Oh please do. That would be the clearest way to make your suggestions, right? I promise not to be offended by your suggestions, as long as you promise not to be offended if I pick and choose what I use. That is supposed to be the standing agreement in this critical back and forth.

Thank you again for your time.

 

[Madame Manga]

Here you go; I hope it's helpful.

Break long paragraphs every two to four sentences, in general. Look for changes of idea. Most ideas can be expressed in a couple of sentences; as soon as the narration moves on, break the paragraph.

As an example, here's your first paragraph cut up at logical breaks and rewritten, mostly by cutting unnecessary material. I'm working on making it both shorter and more punchy, since the major problems I noted with the beginning were prolixity and vagueness.

I am not trying to put a lot of style into the rewrites, of course. It's not polished or necessarily the way I would leave it if this were a story I was writing, which of course it's not. This is only functional illustration.

I'm living my dream.

I’d always secretly wanted to be an English teacher, but I didn’t have the balls to make the jump from my hometown newspaper job. I’d have to go back to school and take a pay cut, but I still dreamed of standing in front of a class. Since I was in my early thirties, I figured that I would never realize that dream.

Then one of my college buddies came to me with an amazing proposition. The high school where he worked needed someone to replace a retiring English teacher, and since they were desperate, they were willing to hire someone without a teaching credential. My experience matched the job qualifications. My prayers had been answered!

I soon came to realize that not only had I landed my dream job, but I had landed it in one of the most affluent schools in the state. This school put some college facilities to shame. I taught in a small lecture hall that was larger than any regular classroom I’d ever seen. I even had my own private office adjoining the room.

The students seemed to like me, maybe because their previous teacher had been old and crusty. They enjoyed the stories I assigned, at least.

"Never let them see you sweat," Kevin told me by way of warning me about handling a classroom. I thought I was managing well. Only one thing threw me for a loop. The girls.

Had girls looked like this when I was in school? I didn't remember my classmates looking so mature and so...well, built. I mentioned this to Kevin as delicately as I could. He said, “You just have to put it out of your head, man, or it’ll drive you crazy.”

Something about the way he said it sounded like he spoke from experience, but I didn’t question him any further. Just thinking about it made me squirm.


Short sentences or sentence fragments can be effective when you are trying to emphasize something on its own. Don't drown your ideas with extra words. What I said about recasting this as dialog, however, still applies. Something like this:


"Hey, man! Are the kids driving you nuts yet?" Kevin pulled out a chair next to me and sat down with his foam cup of teacher's-lounge coffee.

"No, I'm managing OK. Thanks for the advice." I kept scribbling on my lesson plan. "I love the job. English teaching was always my dream."

"Then I'm glad I helped you get the job." Kevin sipped the coffee and made a face. "I think I need to make a new pot."

"Count me in on that." I got up to rinse the carafe as he dumped his cup in the sink. "Uh...could I ask you one thing?"

"Sure." Kevin opened drawers looking for the coffee packs.

"Well...there's one thing that's a little different from when I was in school."

"Yeah?"

"Um...seniors are still eighteen, but they all seem...older. These days, I mean."

"Older?" Kevin raised his brows at me. I had the feeling he might know what I was getting at. I wasn't sure he wanted me to say much more about it, however. This could be dangerous ground.

"They don't look like kids to me." I glanced out the open door of the teacher's lounge. A group of girls sauntered by, their short uniform skirts displaying long, curvaceous legs. Their white blouses barely restrained their full breasts. The coffee maker boiled and squirted away in the background as if to mock my rising temperature. I watched the bounce and sway of feminine flesh until the girls passed out of sight. "They look mature, you know? Sometimes it's hard to remember that they're students, and that I'm their--"

Kevin blew out his cheeks. "Don't even think about it, man. It'll drive you crazy." He gave me a comradely pat on the shoulder, as if to say that his mind had sometimes run in the same directions.

"OK, I get the point." I sighed and poured myself some fresh coffee.

Then he can go to his classroom, and that's the place to describe its layout, his office, the raised tiers of seating and so on. It's best to put descriptions of settings right into the scenes that use the setting, revealing each fact right when it's needed and not before. You don't have to front-load all the info. Just draw us in and we'll keep reading to learn more.


Here's the paragraph I singled out for "was":

What they didn’t know was that my discomfort with the sexuality of my students was slowly becoming torture. The torture was being inflicted by one student in particular. Her name was Chrissy. She was a petite little blonde with perfect curves. Her hair was long and soft, and she would sit in class and stare at me with those big beautiful crystal blue eyes while she twisted her finger around in it.

This paragraph would probably be better as action, like the way I put the backstory into dialog. Make it happen in real time, with some thoughts on his part about how this has been going on for a while. That helps the immediacy of the story and puts it all in one tense, avoiding the perfect ('was being' or 'had been'). But if I were to directly rewrite it, this is how it might come out:

Slowly my discomfort heated into torture. My students seemed to flaunt their sexuality in my face every time I turned around.

One student in particular acted as my chief torturer. Pretty little Chrissy. Twisting her long blonde hair around her forefinger, she sat in class and stared at me every day. Her big blue eyes and soft curves occupied my dreams every night.



As for believability: I like realism, so you could call that a bias of mine. Obviously sex stories can't do things entirely realistically, because lost erections and cold wet spots on the sheets and sudden farts are not the point. ;-)

I mean an illusion of realism, a sense that these are real people having real sex. Give them personalities and give their sex individuality as well as heat. Overkill kills the illusion. It's not hard to drop the ball, so to speak, so you have to be careful about overstating or exaggerating unless you have somehow backed it up. If you've established a non-realistic feel to begin with, especially a humorous one, you can get away with more, but arousal may suffer at the same time.

Relative realism is much more erotic, in my opinion, than something stereotypically crammed with huge, never-tiring cocks, gallons of cum, and hackneyed talk about 'dirty' acts. All of those are porno cliches and lost their charm for me a couple of decades ago, if they ever had any charm. When a detail in an otherwise good story jumps off the page and screams "Porn!" I lose immersion and my interest level goes way down. That's true of any genre--cliches have little power. Don't use other erotic stories as models, unless they are fresh and truly exciting. Use real life and your imagination, and you will engage the reader. At least, you'll engage me. ;-)

Well, that's my two cents! Time for lunch!

MM

 

[secret_love]

Hi,


Good Writing:

This is very well written, but the setup is too fucking long! Since I don't have a fantansy about schoolgirls, it did not excite me. It may excite someone else, though. I hope you at least get turned on when you read this story.


Sex? Hello, sex? -

You took way too long to get to the sex. It took a long time to get to something that really made-excuse me-- my pussy juices flow.


Feedback from editors:

I get the feeling that a lot of the editors are women. There seems to be kind of a bias against "blondes" and "teens," although this seems to be a common male fantasy.

Therefore, I think your story might just annoy a lot of them.

Also, this story is a little too close to some of the bad things that women have nightmares about. ie childhood sexual abuse or male teachers targeting innocent schoolgirls

A hot fantasy for you, and I am not knocking it at all; just be prepared if the story does not get very high marks.


OK, remember, sex is good. Lenghty, hum-drum prose is not-so-good. Also, you sound kind of cute. If you are really not dating, go out and make some girl happy! A girl your own age, of course.


secret_love