Much Ado About Nothing- Feedback requested

[RogueLurker]

Much Ado About Nothing - Redux is my first posted foray into the Erotic Couplings (M/F) category. It is a "lost scene" from the play. Let me know what you think. <cringe>

 

[MarshAlien]

I thought it was very well-written. You seem to have a good feel for the time period, both in the dialogue and in your descriptions of such things as the characters' clothing. I'm afraid I don't remember enough about the play to appreciate this particular scene in context, but as a stand-alone piece I would have liked to see just a little more of the wordplay between the two; what you had before Benedick crushed his mouth against Beatrice's only whetted my apetite.

There were a few grammatical things I found.

This is a personal bugaboo:

Confident and sure on the battlefields, the last few days in Messina had shaken him to the core.​

I learned, I think from Strunk and White, that the clause in a sentence like this ("confident and sure") should modify the subject of the sentence, which in this case is "the last few days."

Same with this one:

With a soft sigh, her hands moved to caress his chest, exploring the expanse of sinewy muscle beneath her eager fingers.​

This seemed to me a run-on sentence:

Perhaps Hero had it right, his mockery and arguments were a shield against his true feelings, protecting him from her scornful jabs.​

I think that the end of the first clause would have been a better place for a semi-colon, or perhaps even a colon.

But these are picks, because I could find nothing wrong with the scene as a whole. It isn't a story, of course, because that's not what you intended. But as a Shakespeare scene-substitute, I thought it was quite well done.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

Absolutly had
te you. Wish I'd written this

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

I loved the imaginative concept and the writing.

My only quibble is with the format. To me, the story reads like, well, a story, not a scene from a play. To keep the narrative, you might invent a modern couple who have found the scene and are acting it out or some such device.

On the other hand, I might be gagging on a gnat, or in this case, something that bothers no one else. Whatever the case, good work.

Rumple Foreskin

 

[RogueLurker]

Thank you for the feedback.

Marsh (or shall I call you Mr. Alien since you're looking so dashing in your AV) - thanks for the grammar check and tips. This one probably should have gone through a more stingent edit - but I wanted to get it out (I know, no excuse). Reading them, I'm slapping my head saying "hell yeah, how'd I miss that?".

Jenny - thank you, I think. I'm not sure what absolutely had ... but I get the impression you thought it was all right.

Rumple - I wanted this to appear as if it might have been a lost scene from the original play (of course, Shakespeare could be a bit crude, but nowhere near as down and dirty as it got in this story. BTW, in my research, "Nothing" was a euphism for female genitalia, so this particular play was really quite ribald in it's day) - but it would never have worked in a straight play format.

One of my main concerns is whether I nailed the m/f stuff - I'm going to guess that it worked. I'll take any pointers on that which anyone has to offer.

Thanks again,

RL

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

Thank you for the feedback.

Jenny - thank you, I think. I'm not sure what absolutely had ... but I get the impression you thought it was all right.


Thanks again,

RL

Oh Shit. I threw another keyboard against the wall in a tantrum and if flew to bits. Now I'm stuck using this "Ergometric" piece of shit I can't type on.

The word was supposed to be HATE, damnit!

JJ

 

[RogueLurker]

Oh Shit. I threw another keyboard against the wall in a tantrum and if flew to bits. Now I'm stuck using this "Ergometric" piece of shit I can't type on.

The word was supposed to be HATE, damnit!

JJ

I tried one of those keyboards - they are so damn wonky. *That's* the one you should have thrown at the wall.

Just in case, I'll stay in a permanent "duck mode" until you get a new (normal) one.

 

[SavannahMann]

I liked it

Well conceived, good imagination, and well written. I liked it. IMHO