Looking for feedback from other authors.

[lovecraft68]

Been writing on Lit since May (My first story Almost Perfect debuted 5/13) I now have 36 stories, 26 of which are from the same series, and am looking for some general feedback from other authors. I've gotten good scores and mostly good feedback through lit, but recently it's mostly about my ongoing incest series and mostly the same people who love the characters and may no longer be unbiased. So what I was looking for is another author to check out a couple of stories and let me know what you think. I realize (my opinion) that my grammar is my weak spot. I am on my third editor as I guess the other 2 weren't much better than me. I have found someone who is the real deal and will be debuting their skills in my next chapter. So what I'm really looking for is feedback on stories, erotica, dialogue and anything else.

My link is in the post. Now most of the stories are the ongoing series Siblings with benefits and there is also a spin off Lex Talionis that is 5 parts.
The solo stories Allison scores first (by far my weakest and a bit silly, it's a foot fetish story) Almost Perfect and the 2 part Breaking of Allison feature a character named Allison I created last year and Breaking also stars Mark, who is the brother in the incest series (just him there is no sister involved)
Weekends with Laura is a Mother/Son that I wrote on a lost bet because I said I wouldn't touch Parent/child incest (somehow it's my highest voted)
Siblings with Benefits Samhain is my most sexed up entry and my only group sex story. As for the ongoing it's long and involved but chapter one sets the general tone and 4/5 feature the sisters seduction of her brother.

On a personal note my favorite is Breaking of Allison as it features Allison and Mark the first two characters I created paired together. I'm open to any constructive feedback good/bad/indifferent. Feel free to PM me or put your comments here on the thread. I got the idea from another thread I started where an author out of curiosity checked out my stuff and gave me a review. So if anyone has some time I'd appreciate their input.



http://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=1115397&page=submissions

 

[KillerMuffin]

I went over Weekend with Laura because it appears to be a stand alone short story.

I'm not a big fan of incest, but I'm not a big non-fan of incest either. Apathetic, yeah, good word.

At any rate. The first few paragraphs of exposition were interesting, not because of the exposition, but because of the voice of the narrator. After that, I got bored with it. You have what amounts to 11 paragraphs of pure exposition (details of the backstory and who, what, where, when, why, how of need to know information that's not actually a part of the plot.) Then, paragraph 12, we have action.

Some of those 11 paragraphs could probably be considered "plot" rather than backstory, but the tone of the narration is one of "I am telling you how it all went down" where the you is never specifically mentioned, but exists anyway. A sentence such as "You should see my mom, she's hot!" would not have been out of place at all anywhere in the narrative.

Tone makes or breaks. If it's good, you can usually keep the audience hooked. If it's wrong, you'll get no where with the story. An example would be a Beavis and Butthead tone of narration for Saving Private Ryan. I bring this tone thing up not because you have a "wrong" tone, but because you shifted strategy 1/3 of the way through the story. You went from confessional narration to scenic narration. While it wasn't completely abrupt, it was confounding. Your readers at Lit will go happily with confessional or scenic narration, so either one is the way to go. If you want to preface a plot developed by scenes that the characters play out with a confessional narrative from the first-person, that works too, but you do have to give the reader sufficient cues to shift from style to another. It doesn't have to be a lot of work, but something like "This is how it all went down" can work. It depends on the narrator and what he/she is like in how you structure the transition from to the next.

Because it was clear that the narrator was more confessional, I had a lot of trouble believing the dialogue. Seriously, can you word-for-word a conversation you had last week? Even four hours ago? Few people can do it. Dialogue doesn't suit confessional narration well--not saying it can't be done, but it does have to be dealt with. How do you go from talking to the reader to living in the scene?

The big reveal (where mom feses up that she knows sonny boy has been drooling and she wants to have sex with him, too) didn't really pull me in. Keep in mind that I'm not quite a hostile audience, but I am an apathetic one. I'm not going in wanting to read Mom and Son, so I'm not willing to believe things are the way they are just because that's what the story is about and that's what I want. In my world, manly men fall into the sack with manly men all the time, without a lick of trouble. In your world, yeah, you would so need a lot of development before you'd ever buy it. Same thing with mother and son, or really, any other kind of couple/polygrouping. I didn't buy the falling into bed, er couch, together thing so much. Of course, I didn't find it completely out of touch with reality because the exposition spent so much time telling me that mom was hot and wore his happy ass out every weekend. Because I did have this exposition, it softened my inability to believe mom's let's-do-it. Of course, this is logically problematic. This is a description of the beginning of their sexual relationship. There should be something in the parts of their parental relationship that give clues that the sexual relationship could happen. It shouldn't be all in the yeah, we've been banging and it's great part. It should be in the lead up. What made it possible for mom to go from appalled, to flattered, to masturbation?

Anyway, the couch is also an important part because that's where the tone shifts completely in the story. Up until the couch, it was a confessional tone, spoken directly to the reader, even the few bits of scene that appeared still had a strong note of confession. On the couch, though, it drops confession completely and the reader is no longer addressed at all. It moves into a plot developed by scenes. Why does this shift occur? Why was there confession at all? How does confession enhance the story (it does) and how does it hinder the story (which it also does)? Why did the confessional tone not return at the end of the story to wish the reader adieu?

So, tone was a problem. Exposition was both a problem and handled well. The first person character was the only character with dimension until the couch scene. Everyone else was cardboard, even Laura, until the couch. Since that's about 1/2 the story, that's a problem.

The scenes are developed well, not too fast, not too slow. The characters are realistic.

Spelling and grammar? I didn't notice much with spelling, if at all. I did notice your fear of the comma. You have complete sentences and the words are in proper syntactical order. You are really missing a comma. This can cause problems by shifting meanings. Get a basic grammar book to figure out where commas go. You also have issue formatting dialogue. Whispersecret has a thing called "How to Make Characters Talk" in the writer's resources section of Lit. It'll tell you how to format dialogue, that way you won't use semi-colons incorrectly and put speech in the wrong paragraph.

 

[lovecraft68]

I went over Weekend with Laura because it appears to be a stand alone short story.

I'm not a big fan of incest, but I'm not a big non-fan of incest either. Apathetic, yeah, good word.

At any rate. The first few paragraphs of exposition were interesting, not because of the exposition, but because of the voice of the narrator. After that, I got bored with it. You have what amounts to 11 paragraphs of pure exposition (details of the backstory and who, what, where, when, why, how of need to know information that's not actually a part of the plot.) Then, paragraph 12, we have action.

Some of those 11 paragraphs could probably be considered "plot" rather than backstory, but the tone of the narration is one of "I am telling you how it all went down" where the you is never specifically mentioned, but exists anyway. A sentence such as "You should see my mom, she's hot!" would not have been out of place at all anywhere in the narrative.

Tone makes or breaks. If it's good, you can usually keep the audience hooked. If it's wrong, you'll get no where with the story. An example would be a Beavis and Butthead tone of narration for Saving Private Ryan. I bring this tone thing up not because you have a "wrong" tone, but because you shifted strategy 1/3 of the way through the story. You went from confessional narration to scenic narration. While it wasn't completely abrupt, it was confounding. Your readers at Lit will go happily with confessional or scenic narration, so either one is the way to go. If you want to preface a plot developed by scenes that the characters play out with a confessional narrative from the first-person, that works too, but you do have to give the reader sufficient cues to shift from style to another. It doesn't have to be a lot of work, but something like "This is how it all went down" can work. It depends on the narrator and what he/she is like in how you structure the transition from to the next.

Because it was clear that the narrator was more confessional, I had a lot of trouble believing the dialogue. Seriously, can you word-for-word a conversation you had last week? Even four hours ago? Few people can do it. Dialogue doesn't suit confessional narration well--not saying it can't be done, but it does have to be dealt with. How do you go from talking to the reader to living in the scene?

The big reveal (where mom feses up that she knows sonny boy has been drooling and she wants to have sex with him, too) didn't really pull me in. Keep in mind that I'm not quite a hostile audience, but I am an apathetic one. I'm not going in wanting to read Mom and Son, so I'm not willing to believe things are the way they are just because that's what the story is about and that's what I want. In my world, manly men fall into the sack with manly men all the time, without a lick of trouble. In your world, yeah, you would so need a lot of development before you'd ever buy it. Same thing with mother and son, or really, any other kind of couple/polygrouping. I didn't buy the falling into bed, er couch, together thing so much. Of course, I didn't find it completely out of touch with reality because the exposition spent so much time telling me that mom was hot and wore his happy ass out every weekend. Because I did have this exposition, it softened my inability to believe mom's let's-do-it. Of course, this is logically problematic. This is a description of the beginning of their sexual relationship. There should be something in the parts of their parental relationship that give clues that the sexual relationship could happen. It shouldn't be all in the yeah, we've been banging and it's great part. It should be in the lead up. What made it possible for mom to go from appalled, to flattered, to masturbation?

Anyway, the couch is also an important part because that's where the tone shifts completely in the story. Up until the couch, it was a confessional tone, spoken directly to the reader, even the few bits of scene that appeared still had a strong note of confession. On the couch, though, it drops confession completely and the reader is no longer addressed at all. It moves into a plot developed by scenes. Why does this shift occur? Why was there confession at all? How does confession enhance the story (it does) and how does it hinder the story (which it also does)? Why did the confessional tone not return at the end of the story to wish the reader adieu?

So, tone was a problem. Exposition was both a problem and handled well. The first person character was the only character with dimension until the couch scene. Everyone else was cardboard, even Laura, until the couch. Since that's about 1/2 the story, that's a problem.

The scenes are developed well, not too fast, not too slow. The characters are realistic.

Spelling and grammar? I didn't notice much with spelling, if at all. I did notice your fear of the comma. You have complete sentences and the words are in proper syntactical order. You are really missing a comma. This can cause problems by shifting meanings. Get a basic grammar book to figure out where commas go. You also have issue formatting dialogue. Whispersecret has a thing called "How to Make Characters Talk" in the writer's resources section of Lit. It'll tell you how to format dialogue, that way you won't use semi-colons incorrectly and put speech in the wrong paragraph.

Hi
First off let me say thank you for your time, review, and critique!
Second let me say I have read your essay on dealing with negative feedback and it is pretty damn funny.
Now addressing your remarks. First off the fear of comma has been addressed as in I have an editor now I wrote that one without any help at all and even without an editor I am better now.
I do get your point, which I previously would have never caught, about the tense or the tone. Basically your saying I went from "okay this is a past event" to when the sex started making it seem as if it were current day. I get he wouldn't recall converstions to that detail (the sex yes I'm sure) and like you I won't remember what I said to you here an hour from now. I use a lot of "This is how we got here" in my stories adn now will look more carefully. The funny thing is I daresay a casual reader wouldn't notice. This is erotica nad although there are a lot of people who like story with their "stroking" once the sex starts the mind numbs and it's all about the fun. Having said that this is why I am asking other authors I want to be better. You ahve given me something to work on and I appreciate your time. On another note. I put more "background" into this than you felt was necessary and part of that is because I do not like the subject so I think i was trying to justify it I mean I even had "kevin" thinking he was sick. I'm an odd duck I guess because I like brotehr sister incest but not parent child. Anyway thank you again.
Mike