Looking for feedback on Sailing Away from Reality series

[Wind7sailor]

Hi everyone, I started to write this adventure about five years ago, it's in the Mind control area. Lately, I'd been busy with life and haven't finished it off. I was just wondering what people thought about it. I know that my first stories were rough, not edited well. I'm glad this site and others have posted my stories, even though they are long and not perfectly written. I've worked to improve, but I consider myself more of a story teller, than a real author.

My main question is: Have I run this story into the ground or should I continue to expand it by using the twists that I have envisioned from the view of Joe's wife and 'the real story' from Jeffrey's own mouth?

Thank you for your time and I'd appreciate any feedback. Joe

 

[PacoFear]

Hi Joe,

To give yourself a fighting chance at getting some feedback from the folks here, it's best to provide a link to your stories. We're a pack of lazy bastards.

As a public service, you get one freebie. Link below. G'luck.

Joe's Stories

 

[Wind7sailor]

PacoFear, Thanks for putting up the link. I'd really like to know what people think. Joe

 

[PacoFear]

Hi Joe,

As a friendly heads-up, you may not get much feedback on your saga, mostly because it's pretty lengthy and your large scope questions require reading the entire lot. My point is, don't take a shortage of comments personally. You're a fine human being. It's just that we all have a finite amount of free time.

So I started in on Part 1. It's darn slow in the beginning. There's a lot of paragraphs (fifteen?!) to set up the situation and they read, to me, as a fairly heavy-handed effort to assure the reader that the main character is the poor, suffering, undersexed hubby --the victim-- so that everything he does from there forward with respect to hypnosis is justified. My sense is that this could be cut down considerably.

I'll try to swing back to this later with fresh eyes.

In the meantime, I noticed there's a roughly two-year break between chapters 5 and 6. Did you originally plan to stop there? What made you continue? In my experience, one of three things happens in these situations: 1) life got in the way; 2) you reached a difficult chapter and wisely hunkered down to get it right; or 3) you picked up what was originally intended to be a finished word and started adding.

1) and 2) put you in safe territory as far as jumping-the-shark fears. 3) makes for trouble.

-PF