my story feedback

[jeninflorida]

Hello, has anyone read "I Submit"? would love to get some feedback as i have part 2 and 3 almost ready.

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=108174

thanks

jenn

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Hey Jenn,

I will offer a few comments.

I don't usually go in for the grammatical stuff, I leave that to more experienced writers, but this grabbed me.

Today I hope my husband Glen was not at home yet.

It should read:

Today I hope my husband Glen is not at home yet.

or

Today I hoped my husband Glen was not at home yet.

Also:

Slowly I walked into the house, I see Glen watching TV.

Should read:

Slowly I walked into the house and saw Glen watching TV.

Your verbs have to agree in tense, it seems to me you aren't sure wheter your story happened or is happening as you tell it.

It's the opening sentence of the second paragraph and is hard to overlook. Many readers will forgive gramatical errors, but some will not. While I am no expert; making obvious mistakes in the first few paragraphs will cause many readers to go elsewhere rather than dig into something that is full of mistakes.

The story is filled with short sentences. While this can work it leads to a very staccato feel here and I think, detracts from the idea as a whole.

Ex:
Walking into the house, I check my skirt. I want to make sure I look normal. I'm not sure how Glen will react. I'm not sure how I even feel about today's events yet. I straighten my short skirt then feel my behind. Checking to make sure it does not show. Knowing Glen, he's probably watching television. So, I can walk in, say hello and then dart to the bathroom. There I can remove my surprise.

It reads very choppy. With a few commas you can combine a lot of the short sentences into a paragraph that flows better.

Walking into the house I checked my skirt, wanting to make sure it looked normal. I'm not sure how I feel about today's events and I don't know how Glen will react. Knowing Glen, he is probably watching television so I can walk in, say hello and dart to the bedroom and remove my surprise.

Another problem is this. You end one paragraph with the sentence :

Slowly I walked into the house, I see Glen watching TV.

then you say at the end of the next paragraph:

Knowing Glen, he's probably watching television.

Thats an internal contridiction and is sure to pull your readers out of the story. If you see him watching TV the second sentence is redundent.

More problems with tense:

"You're all flush."

"You're all flushed."

Also, unless I am mistaken the period should be a comma, but I could be wrong there.


Along with tense you have to keep the point of view of the story consistant. You flip and flop in and out of POV's and it gets confusing to a reader.

Ex

I ignore the question, as it will all become apparent soon enough. Slowly I look up in the mirror to watch Glen's reaction. I look at Glen, but not in his eyes. He's smiling enjoying her strip tease. Then he sees it, the plug that Mike gave me today.

By using I you are making the story first person. But then you say
"He's smiling enjoying her strip tease." It should be enjoying my striptease. By saying her strip tease you are moving out of first person POV.

I hate to sound bitchy or nit picky, especially in matters of grammar where the maxium she who lives in a glass house shouldn't throw stones applies to me, but in this case they really are so obvious and prevelent that they detract from the story.

I would suggest you try the volunteer editors program and get someone to help you with this one. I tend to allow a great deal of leeway to a writer when I read a work, but this one is too filled with errors for me to enjoy at all. I am guessing english is not your native tongue and an editor might really be able to help.

Best of luck!

-Colly

 

[dr_mabeuse]

The thing that struck me first was the dull and repetitive sentence structure. It was so bad that I couldn;t get very far in teh story.

Here's a sample paragraph taken at random from the story:
---------
Soon I give in, feeling my husband finally acting like a man. Glen is my husband and I am happy and in love with him. Glen has taken great care of me. He attends to all of my needs. Every now and then I wish he would take me and use me. To be a man and have his way with me.
-----------

This is on a par with "See Dick. See Dick run. Run, Dick, run..." Aside from the first sentence (and the last, which is not a sentence at all), every sentence is Subject-verb-object. You've simply got to vary your sentence structure to make this readable. Combining shorter sentences into compound sentences is one way. Read some good authors (not what you find on Lit) and see how they vary their sentence structure to avoid sounding like a grade school primer.

Also, you have long blocks of unattrivuted dialogue. Even though there are only two people talking, it's easy to get lose track of who's saying what. And occasional "he said" or "Mary replied" would be much appreciated.

---dr.M.

 

[jeninflorida]

thanks so much! i'm going back and putting in some of those suggestions. also, my future stories will be in past tense.

one major problem, i see the story in my mind, and i have a hard time reading the text. is that normal?

 

[dr_mabeuse]

one major problem, i see the story in my mind, and i have a hard time reading the text. is that normal?

If you mean that you actually see the words in your mind, then I would think that makes you pretty extraordinary. I think what you must mean is that you see the action in your mind, and the hard part is getting it down on paper (or on computer, as the case may be.)

No, that's perfectly normal. That's the hard part about writing for most of us, I think. We see perfect stories in our minds, but something happens when we try to turn those stories into words and get the words down on paper. It's suddenly very difficult to describe what you see in your mind and do it is a way that's attractive and inviting to readers. That's where writing becomes an art, and it's something we all struggle with everytime we sit down to write, no matter how good we are. Welcome to the club.

---dr.M.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

What Doc M said is true. I think maybe you were talking about editing a story here. Often times when I finish a work I am still so close to it I read what I meant to type, rather than what is actually on the page. If this is happening I think you are in the norm.

Get a friend to look it over for you or if you don't have anyone, put that story away and work on something else for a couple of days. A little distance will work wonders for spotting typos, gramatical mistakes and places where what you type dosen't really relay what you are seeing.

-Colly

 

[A7inchPhildo]

jeninflorida,
Understand I am bias, I like the story. Could use some help (swinging my stick 9,000 times "Die you dead horse, 'Die!'")in the grammer dept. A real turn on story A+.

I must admit "jeninflorida" my stumbling block is you are suppose to be a female telling the story. I am 92.5% convinced you are a man. Nothing personal it just takes away from what I was expecting a females perspective, softer.

None the less I am glad to see a great state such as Florida can be blessed with another demented mind. Catch ya later

Phildo

 

[jeninflorida]

Thanks that is the best compliment I could ask for. I enjoy writing and would love to make a career out of it, but I do know my writing needs to be improved. When I found literotica I took some time to see what stories were being posted and what type of stories people wanted to read. Maybe my marketing research was incorrect but I thought 99% of the readers were men. I’m a little free with my sexuality as women my age have fewer restrictions placed on us from society. Slut – to my generation is a good word (well when used in some ways). Maybe women have always been this way but in today’s culture women can express their sexuality (look at pop starts and the videos girls gone wild).

My goal was to write something for the audience. So, yes I am writing a story thatas a man to please the male reader. Would love to consider myself an artist, but I’m not here yet. My first stories were very soft but no one read them.

 

[wornoutkeyboard]

Whoa...Nelly....

*grabs the reigns as the horse comes to a screeching halt*

I'm a little confused.

From what I gather (and I often gather berries and nuts) you are somehow saying that "your generation" is somehow more sexually free than "my generation" because you embrace the term slut. (BTW...I am only 27, so unless you are under legal viewing age for this group, you cannot even be considered a full generation apart from me).

I see the random use of this term to be something akin to black people who call each other n*gger. It is still stomach turning to hear thrown about casually.

I think is has its place and time (as all words do) in works of fiction when the writer can appropriately justify its use.

I hardly see that as a reason to claim that my generation (or personal experiences) is/were not sexually freeing. It is a matter of personal taste, not sexual liberation.

And be careful where you tread with this one, honey. Don't even think that for one moment your sexual freedom you *think* you gained from brittnay spears holds a tiny little bic lighter flame to the sexual freedom of the "swinging 70s".

Please consider that word choice has less to do with your greater (and implied: better) sexual freedom. That is a pissing contest I don't think you want to get into.

~WOK (who is actually equestrophobic)

 

[jeninflorida]

Yikes WOK, don’t take it personal as I’ve never spoken to you before. Let me apologizes for offending you. I have no desire to offend you or anyone.

Granted, I was making general statements. Yes I agree that the 60 and 70’s were wild times for some. But (my impression) the swinging 70’s was not the norm for most people. Maybe it was and people didn’t talk about it.

Today, the lines are very lose. Look at tv, shows like will and grace. I love the show but something like that would never be on in the 60, 70, or 80’s.

For the record, I’m not a fan of brittnay spears.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Words and usages do change, we all know that. When I was coming up, calling someone a 'pimp' was a punchable offense; now it's a term of approbation. The same thing seems to be happening to the words 'bitch' and 'whore' (as 'hoe'). Younger women call each other the b word with impunity; older women (at least some) still take great offense at the word.

I myself use the words 'bitch', 'whore', and 'slut' in my stores. Usually they're used in the heat of passion, and the characters who use them don't mean to imply that the woman in question is either morally loose, especially nasty and vindictive, or trading sex for money. "Slut' and 'whore' are the closest I can find to the female equivalent of 'stud', meaning someone who is great in bed. I just can't have my male lead say, in the heat of passion, "Fuck me, you wonderful sex partner!" or even "you wonderful woman." So they use 'slut' and 'whore'.

I think that's the way the words are usually used in this site. There's probably some people who use them in their pejorative sense, but for the majority they aren't negative labels.

---dr.M.

 

[wornoutkeyboard]

As I said before...

I have no issue with using "slut" (or any other word) in a story (even ones generally cosnidered to be offensive to just about 100% of the population). As long as you justify its inclusion appropriately within the story.

Your example Dr. M, is perfect to illustrate my point. I think during the wild passionate throws of sex some pretty crazy things can come out of people's mouths and in those moments inhabitions are low and "dirty" words become sexy and exhilarating.

But to a lot of the world when someone calls another person a "slut"...they are intending it in the denotative sense and not the connotative sense.

Personally I don't find embarcing negative labels as being particularly freeing for anyone involved. I think it shows a "If I can't out think em... I'll out sheep em" attitude. Baaaa.

Not that it matters to me really what people want to call themselves or label themselves with. Hopefully by the time my 2 year old is grown I will see little girls sporting t-shirts that say "Cock Sucking Ass Hair" on the front of them and not just "Slut" and "Bitch".

I guess the wonderful thing about the English laguage is its fluidity.

What I took offense to was the implication that embracing the word "slut" somehow made Jen's generation more sexually free than others past.

I think there is a lot to be said about the LACK of sexual freedom those in recent generations have had due to HIV. I remember being about 11 years old and looking up to my suave older cousin who was in high school. He was a real "ladies man" and I was just getting old enough to know what that really meant. However, by the time I got to high school you had to make time to visit the county clinic for an HIV test before you even kissed (there was still a lot of bad information out there back then).

Have hemlines raised? Yes. Have wasitbands dropped into the pubic region? Yes. Are 16 year olds getting boob jobs? Yes.

I don't think those are sure signs that REAL sexuality is being examined and explored. I think its more like little girls playing with mommy's makeup. You know how little girls do it? They smear on the blue eyeshadow and the scarlet lipstick. They aren't really their mom. They are just playing her on TV.

That little rant of my opinions aside, do whatever you want whenever you want. Plaster "I Suck My Dad's Dick" on your t-shirt for all I care. Just please don't imply you are more sexually free than others because you do.

~WOK

PS~ No offense, but please remember you are on an open board. You don't have to be addressing someone personally to say something that might come off poorly.