Looking for feedback on my first story.

[Idiap]

Hey literoticans! I just posted my first story to the site and was looking for some feedback. It's fantasy/sci-fi with trangender/gay themes. If that's not your thing I understand but I'd still appreciate any feedback on story structure and the like. And of course votes and comments are totally appreciated! Here's the story:

https://literotica.com/s/akila-and-leya

 

[TheRedChamber]

You've got a very good score for a first story and some positive comments, and I'd agree overall that as a first story, this was successful. I'm going to focus on things which could be improved or at least things I might of done differently.

1) Your title is just two fantasy names - obviously your characters mean a lot to you, but I would tend to avoid using names in titles as these characters don't mean anything to anyone else yet. That said your blurb underneath does give the reader a very clear idea of what to expect.
2) I tend not to focus on grammar too much when looking a story, but you have multiple places where you're missing an apostrophe in "Laya's".
3) The use of the present tense bothered me in this story. It can be used effectively for action scenes, but it jarred a bit, especially when you are describing how she is the heir to the throne.
4) Speaking of which, you start with an action scene, but this is broken up by long paragraphs explaining the politics of the world and Akila's position in the world. This could potentially wait as it's not immediately relevant to her survival. It could possibly be more subtly woven into the narrative later.

She is the Heir apparent to the throne of the Empire of Sumanita. Tasked with the honour of ruling by Emperor Asair Mumahete in recognition of her prowess in battle, bravery and legendary feats during the twenty year conflict between Sumanita and Caelyrion She is what her people call a Sewseti, a person born female in all but genitalia. one in every thousand or so baby girls are born like this. It is considered a great blessing among the Sumanitian people. So it is no surprise to her countryfolk that she has achieved so much and is set to achieve even more.

Later on you could do something like.

How embrassing to die like this? Would her realize that they had killed the Heir Apparent to the thone of the mighty Sumanita Empire? Would they realize they had killed a foe who was spoken of as legend during the twenty year conflict between their people? Would they even check her body and realize that they had killed a Sewseti - a person born female in all but genitalia? Sewseta were so rare that only one in every thousand girls were borh that way and it was considered a great blessing among the Sumanitian people. Would they even find her body? She'd achieved so much already during her short life, but she'd wanted to achieve so much more. She wasn't ready to die.

5) The story is well balanced, giving appropriate length to each 'section' of the story. However, I noticed a distinct tonal shift when you reach the sex. The first part of the story is tender and sweet but the sex is animalistic and graphic. You have phrases like "Completely exhausted from the lurid pleasures that smothered Leyas entire body in her steaming, protoplasmic yolk", and "She is a savage animal lost in cumlust and feeding on her prey voraciously." I haven't really read much Futanari based porn before, so maybe this is an expected and wanted part of the genre, but it was very noticable. The two characters seem to have feelings for each other, but they don't really talk at all once the sex begins.
6) I have to highlight the sentence - 'options, option, options.' She considers her options. - as being (unintentially?) hilarious.
7) The basic idea for the ending is good in principle, but I thought some of the particulars could have been strengthened. As a presumably good ruler, Akila should be abiding by the principel of 'justice done and justice seen to be done'. So if Leya is accused of theft and assault she needs to do more than just say 'I'm the Princess, he's with me." - she needs to show that the workhouse is inhumane and so Leya's actions were justified and potentially make things better there.

 

[Idiap]

Thanks so Much TheRedchamber this is exactly what I was hoping for!

1) Yes this is something I was aware of from the beginning actually. I'm kind of embarrassed at how long I stared at my screen trying to think of an appropriate title and I admit I just got sort of frustrated and named it that so I could go ahead and publish it. I definitely regret not taking a moment to really try and come up with something more eye-catching. If I'm not mistaken you cannot change a story title after it has been posted on Literotica, right?

2)I didn't realize that so thank you for pointing it out. I did notice in other places after reading it back a few times where there were some grammatical errors also. I'm certainly going to fix these but I wanted to wait until I had caught them all because it just seems frustrating to edit on Literotica. Again, if I'm not mistaken I would have to re-submit a new draft with the same title (or maybe I could change it then) which means I would need to manually go through the entire piece again redoing all of the bold an italics, which is just a huge pain. I should have gone with an editor but I didn't even know that Literotica offered a service like that until after it was published.

3)yeah this is another thing I'll try and take special care to pay attention to when I go back to edit it and make it less clunky.

5) This is actually another thing I noticed myself when writing it but I wasn't sure if anyone else would so I'm glad you mentioned it. I didn't write the story chronologically I wrote a scene here and one there and went back and forth filling in the gaps. The sex scene was one of the first I wrote so I hadn't really figured out the tone yet. I'm not sure what I can do about that now without basically re-writing the whole scene. I can definitely tone it down a bit in my edit though to make it less jarring. Maybe add some foreshadowing earlier on as well.

6) Haha, no that was meant to be tongue in cheek. I knew what I was doing when I wrote that ;p

7) I agree, especially considering I paint her as 'the peoples hero' fairly strongly. I'll have to consider what I can do to about that.

Thank you again RedChamber! You reinforced some of the doubts I had about certain parts and highlighted ones I hadn't noticed. I really appreciate the time you took to read and consider my story.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Hi again. I'm happy if my feedback was useful in anyways.

Regarding editing stories - firstly, no I don't think you can edit your title without deleting and losing all your votes and comments. I wouldn't worry about it too much (lots of famous works like Romeo and Juliet are just titles). Updating a story can take a significant amount of time (last time I tried it took a month), so it's best avoid if at all possible. Rather than continue to work on this, which seems to be well liked anyway, you might be better off trying to write something else, and only coming back to this in a few months if it still bothers you.

We do all kinds of things in our first stories, but I guess writing the sex before the rest of the story is dangerous because you don't know exactly who the characters are yet - that only tends to come once you've got inside their heads a bit. Don't be afraid of completely rewriting whole scenes, sometimes it's necessary and it makes the whole work stronger.

Regarding the joke, it's good but because the rest of the story has a serious narrator, I wasn't quite sure what to make of it when I saw it. Hence not being sure if it was intention.

 

[AlexBailey]

Great first work!

There were a few grammatical issues - things that an editor could help with.

You might want to review how to write dialogue for fiction. There were a few spots where I lost track of who was speaking and a few minor style issues that distracted a bit from the flow.

I also think you could let more of the backstory come out through situations and dialogue rather than info dumps, but I must say that you handled this much better than many first-time fantasy writers.

Your story has depth. I’m drawn to find out what else happens with these characters.

Well done!