My First Story Posted! Kewl!

[stillgoodenuff]

Hi All,

First one of my poems posted now one of my stories. I've received good comments from friends, now I ask the membership to please comment on:

Viva Las Vegas!
By Stillgoodenuff
Erotic Couplings

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=46216

Thanks in advance!

 

[SexyChele]

Okay, I just got done reading your story. I think the premise for your story is great. You combine the sexual with playfulness and romanticism, and that is a good combination. I am a woman, and much of what you wrote about touched me, so you do have a knowledge of what women like.

Now, the following is just my opinion, but here goes...

The first thing I noticed came in the first two paragraphs. You begin the story with "We'd gone up to my hotel room after having a nice intimate dinner...." Okay. So I'm figuring you are in the hotel room. Then, in the second paragraph, you state, "After paying the dinner bill I ask you what you would like to do now." I had to do a triple read from the beginning. I was lost as to where the characters were. Rather than stating you had already gone up to the room in the opening sentence, it would have been better if you had indicated you were still at dinner.

You are using present tense, and that is a difficult tense to keep up. You do very well with it, but there were a couple of times you slipped into past tense. (Don't worry, I'm always screwing my tenses up as well - and I write in past tense!)

You also use second person in this story, and while that isn't bad, there are a couple of times where you write "her" instead of "you". Kinda nitpicky, I know, but.... Also, there are some readers who don't care for second person - it takes a special skill to really pull it off well. You seemed to have really tried to work with this, though, and that is appreciated.

I noticed a distinct lack of commas in the first part of the story. There are quite a few sentences that would have benefitted by being broken up with commas, making the story an easier read. You seemed to have gained more confidence with commas towards the end of your story, however. Yet, it seems that sometimes towards the end of the story, comma usage was a bit overdone. Just one of those funky grammar things to watch out for.

I think it was an oversight, but you have a huge run-on sentence, one that leaves the reader breathless just reading it. It's the second paragraph from the end, the one that begins, "We kissed as we fucked...." The sentence goes on for 5 1/2 lines. I realize this is the climax of the story, but it would have been better broken up.

As for content, it would have been interesting to know just who these two people were. Had they just met earlier that day? Were they married? Were they going to see each other again? I came away not really being involved with either character, as I didn't know their relationship to each other. (My first story at Lit was one that I did the same way with very little character development, but it was meant to be a sort of vignette)

I would have liked to have seen some dialogue between the characters. Dialogue makes your characters more "real", more "life-like". Indicating in the story that some one said something is not quite the same. I know that dialogue can be scary - exactly where do those commas and quotation marks go? But there are some excellent resources here at Lit for anyone who wants to learn more about that.

Lastly, I would have liked to see the story go more indepth. In the story you talk of riding in an glass elevator, yet only briefly mention the lights of Vegas below. I felt there was potential to go into more detail there, and really let your audience know what it felt like to ride that elevator while in the throes of passion. Maybe allow for the idea of wondering if people below could see the two of you and how that made the characters react. The part of story where the older couple "catch" the other couple could make for a great comedic break - I see potential for more detail there, as well.

I know I have a tendency to be overly descriptive and have to cut down on my words, but I really felt this story could have been given some more "meat" to its audience. You want your story to reach out, grab the reader, and pull them into the story and become a part of it. You do that through details (concisely written, of course) and dialogue.

Overall, I liked the story, but felt it could have been more involved. I do have to give you credit that you seemed to take special care with spelling. I believe I only found one spelling error, which is terrific.

I hope you don't take this as "bashing", and that you will continue in the craft. I will look forward to reading more from you!

 

[Impetus]

I'll drop in some notes here:

One: about 1/3 of the way into the story, where they are in the elevator, " had a Cheshire like grin" should be " had a Cheshire-like grin". Note the hyphen. Just thought I'd toss that in there.

As far as the writing went, I'd be carefull with paralellism. Make sure you pick a tense and stick with it. Switching back and forth is not only awkward, but wrong. It will also help to make your writing more smooth. Instead of, say:

Our mouths pressed, we fell into the bed, and suddenly you stood up, pulling off your panties in a quick and smooth motion.

I would write:

Our mouths pressed and we fell onto the bed. You suddenly stood up, then pulled your panties off in one motion, quick and smooth.

The difference there is where the breaks are. Seperate your ideas by breaks, and in between those breaks, keep the ideas consistant (paralell). The panties come off quickly, and that's the way that part of the senence should read. The idea is to keep the ideas continuous:

Todd ran into the sea, laughing, smiling, and stripping off his clothes.

Notice the ing, ing, ing. That's paralellism. It'll help you keep your ideas organized too, not just your words. Grab and idea or an emotion, develop it, then move on when you think you've developed it enough.

Hope that helps.

-I

p.s. I don't think paralellism is the 'official' word for what I'm trying to get across, but it works.

 

[Showman]

I enjoyed reading your story. Very erotic and romantic.

It reminded me some of my own personal fond memories of Vegas...

 

[stillgoodenuff]

Thank You One and All

Hi,

My thanks to one and all for the feedback. Any comments will go towards helping me improve my writing ability. In my humble opinion if we stop learning, we die.