My First Time

[1RubyPearl]

I'd love some feedback on my virgin effort at writing literotica. It's my first time, so be gentle, although I can take a few spanks if you must. I think I might like to do it again. . .


http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=405137

 

[sanewildman]

Nice job, RubyPearl. The beginning was a slow start, with too many flash backs, but then the story hit the right pace.

Now I gotta rub myself to sleep! lol

 

[Darkniciad]

You didn't really capture me with this one. Probably a combination of what's below, and some word choice that just didn't click with me. I'm just one person, though. Your public comments already let you know that you have an audience out there

So, what follows is an overview of some style and grammar things.

Mark shuttled me to his sleek black sports car in silence. He opened my door, and shutting it aggressively behind me. I didn't quite know what to make of his mood and couldn't believe he was mad at me for dancing with another man, well boy really.

You have a few verb tense issues. "shutting it aggressively behind me" is an example from the quote. "shutting" should be "shut" here.

"Shuttled" also threw me off, in the sentence before. The word just feels a little off here, and it's too close to "shut" in the next sentence. They sort of blend together, and my brain didn't pick up that L, reading the word as "shutted" on first glance.

You have quite a few places where I think you need commas. This quote has one of those. I would put a comma after "make of his mood" to put a bit of a pause in there for the eyes. Reading through the story aloud and listening for where you naturally pause can help place commas.

Whenever you come to "and", consider a comma beforehand.

I would have changed the last comma in this quote to an em dash as well. That demonstrates a longer pause, and is a little better way to connect the parenthetical phrase to the preceeding sentence.

I saw some places where you have two people speaking in the same paragraph. Whenever you change speakers, always change paragraphs.

Dialogue can also get lost when it's buried in a paragraph. Having dialogue near the beginning or end of the paragraph helps pop it out.

Many of your paragraphs push the limits of what is easy to read on a computer screen. Large blocks of text are harder to read on a monitor than they are on a printed page. The eyes tend to get lost, forcing the reader to backtrack, and possibly pulling him/her out of the story.

The two points before this one would naturally break up the paragraphs a little. Yours are just on the line, so breaking off for a new speaker and keeping your dialogue from getting lost in the middle of a paragraph might just be enough to do the trick.

Ellipses should really only be used for a cut-off thought, rather than as a long pause. A lot of the readers here aren't going to care, but it never hurts to lean away from it for the readers that do. Describing the quality of the speech in narrative can also expand your vocabulary and narrative skills, too.

In a lot of places, you can replace those ellipses with em dashes. That gives you that long pause. In some places, you might be better off with one word exclamations. "Jenn! Ah! Fuck!"

There are a few typo things here and there, too. Words running together ( "Sohot!" )

Just my knee-jerk reaction, typed as I read through the story.

 

[1RubyPearl]

Thanks Darkniciad

Thanks for your constructive feedback. I had a lot of fun writing this, but I'm a bit rusty on the mechanics. I don't know that I've ever written much dialogue, so those comments were particularly helpful. The last time I remember writing a piece of fiction was elementary school, and let's just say that was quite a while ago. I tried to pick an editor to help me with these things, but had no reply. I decided to post my story anyway; I didn't want to wait another 3 days to maybe or maybe not hear back from my next editor choice. Any recommendations on finding an experienced editor?

 

[tickledkitty]

Next time, try posting in the Editor's Forum and ask if anyone is available to help. The good thing is that you already have something posted that they can read and get some idea if they'd be willing to take you on.