Desert Rat
Virgin
- Joined
- May 9, 2002
- Posts
- 15
http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=99596
I'd say be gentle, but I'd rather have the truth.
I'd say be gentle, but I'd rather have the truth.
My very first Erotic Story. Looking for feedback.
- Thread starter Desert Rat
- Start date
Rainbow Skin
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2002
- Posts
- 514
Your first erotic story? Very sexy and gripping. Clearly not your first story: you've got a good mastery of writing, and plenty of flexibility in wording and form. I think I'm going to write a lot about this story, not because it has a lot of faults, not at all, but because you're worth encouraging.
Quite a few mistakes in punctuation and spelling and grammar that arise from not proofreading, or using a spelling-checker instead of proofreading, but I don't care so much about those and won't detail them.
In trying to be novel, you sometimes hit on words that aren't quite right: either individual words, or a phrase that doesn't quite ring true. The phrase might be a variation from a cliché, or a metaphor. You need to deal with clichés by avoiding them entirely, not altering them to make them more original. This was my overall impression of your writing, that there were just a few too many slightly odd phrasings.
the very walls seemed to shake and buckle in tune with the swaying masses that inhabited
Omit 'very', as you've already said the room seemed to shake, and if it did, what else could this mean but the walls? 'In tune': vibrations of unmusical things are 'in time' with each other, not in tune with. The tune goes up and down, the timing goes side to side. 'Inhabit' means 'live in', not 'be in': it's a dud metaphor if you're just looking for an elegant variation for 'be in': try 'occupy'.
for the number of souls it held
A person can be referred to metaphorically as a 'soul', but a soul is an immaterial thing and can't be held in a room.
Almost at the apex of summer
Summer hasn't got an apex: at the height of summer, at the peak of the summer tourist season, but these are idioms, not in any way literal, and you can't just substitute another word for 'height, peak'.
slippery and glossy with expenditure
Not sure what this means. Glossy because they'd spent a lot of money - getting dolled up, or working out at a gym? Or metaphorically, expenditure of effort - on what, on dancing? If the latter, I think you just want 'exertion', which doesn't drag along the idea of money.
the strobes and lights dance ... my eyes were dancing
Either or both of these fine in themselves; the problem is that they're amid a literal dance.
her body lithe as a snake being charmed
Lithe as a snake, yes, but how does being charmed make it more lithe? It makes it upright, but I don't think the extra qualification adds to the image of litheness.
Unquestionably Unquestioningly?
they had me in a struggle for my sanity
They held me? Can you have someone in a struggle for their sanity?
jade orbs stared back at me from her pristine face
Orbs are large: would they seem orbs from a distance? Pristine woodland, marsh, or meadow: a pristine child's face, perhaps, but what are you saying about a grown woman?
She did not withdraw her proximity to me
When you're in proximity you can withdraw yourself, or your body, but not your proximity. You can withdraw from the proximity of someone.
her body radiated more sweat
She can simultaneously radiate more heat or sexuality, and exude or release more sweat, but sweat doesn't go out in all directions.
Like external appendages
Right metaphor, wrong actual image: it suggests pedipalps and crab claws, quite unsensually (cf. the sensual 'animal, almost feral' just below).
bubble formed ass
Not sure what this means. Just bubble-shaped, i.e. round? Or springy like air-filled bubble-wrap?
to make my knees unbalanced for a moment
To make me unbalanced, or perhaps to make my legs unbalanced, but to make my knees unsteady. You don't balance on knees. To show I'm not just nitpicking, this is typical of the problems I have with your imagery: you take a conventional idea (knees buckling, or losing one's balance) and try to make a new variation on it, but the variation is awkward and not quite correct.
see her shaven mound glisten as my hand traveled its most intimate crevasses
Strictly, her mound hasn't got any crevasses, and can glisten with belly sweat but not with crevasse juice, but I suppose we can let the transfer of meaning pass, from 'prominence above genitals' to 'folds of genitals'. Second, I think there's only one thing you can call a crevasse there - any smaller folds are crevices. But my dictionary tells me there's a US sense of 'crevasse' as a fissure in a river bank, so perhaps it sounds okay to you to describe small folds as crevasses.
I obliged her the dirty epitaphs she murmured into my ear
Wasn't it Mrs Malaprop herself who spoke of 'a nice derangement of epitaphs'?
Now, I can't use 'oblige' like this, but maybe it's your dialect. Can you oblige someone something? I oblige someone with something, and that means giving it to them. So if I obliged someone with dirty epithets it'd be me whispering them in her ear, not vice versa.
Her groans were perforated with every time her back hit the wall
Perforations are small holes in paper; it's not a general synonym for interruptions or intermittences. And her groans can be interrupted by hitting the wall, or can be interrupted every time she hit the wall, but not interrupted with every time she hit the wall.
a dull guttural roar began its way to my lips
Something begins at a place, or makes its way from one place to another.
shooting rivers of my seed into her skull
Into her mouth, and therefore into her head, but not into her skull. If you had your hand on her head you would also have it on her skull, and could say either, but 'skull' is not a synonym for 'head'.
while milking every last drop out of me
A cliché. It stands out poorly against your own writing, which is always adventurous, and usually vivid.
Okay, this has gone on long enough. Well done, and don't think I've torn it to shreds: I haven't. Everything I've mentioned is one related deficiency. One last point on plot: at the end. Does she keep a supply of preprinted matchbooks with her room number and a time on them? Or does she select another matchbook in her room before she goes out, and write her room and a time on it? Where in that slinky, smooth dress did she keep it?
Quite a few mistakes in punctuation and spelling and grammar that arise from not proofreading, or using a spelling-checker instead of proofreading, but I don't care so much about those and won't detail them.
In trying to be novel, you sometimes hit on words that aren't quite right: either individual words, or a phrase that doesn't quite ring true. The phrase might be a variation from a cliché, or a metaphor. You need to deal with clichés by avoiding them entirely, not altering them to make them more original. This was my overall impression of your writing, that there were just a few too many slightly odd phrasings.
the very walls seemed to shake and buckle in tune with the swaying masses that inhabited
Omit 'very', as you've already said the room seemed to shake, and if it did, what else could this mean but the walls? 'In tune': vibrations of unmusical things are 'in time' with each other, not in tune with. The tune goes up and down, the timing goes side to side. 'Inhabit' means 'live in', not 'be in': it's a dud metaphor if you're just looking for an elegant variation for 'be in': try 'occupy'.
for the number of souls it held
A person can be referred to metaphorically as a 'soul', but a soul is an immaterial thing and can't be held in a room.
Almost at the apex of summer
Summer hasn't got an apex: at the height of summer, at the peak of the summer tourist season, but these are idioms, not in any way literal, and you can't just substitute another word for 'height, peak'.
slippery and glossy with expenditure
Not sure what this means. Glossy because they'd spent a lot of money - getting dolled up, or working out at a gym? Or metaphorically, expenditure of effort - on what, on dancing? If the latter, I think you just want 'exertion', which doesn't drag along the idea of money.
the strobes and lights dance ... my eyes were dancing
Either or both of these fine in themselves; the problem is that they're amid a literal dance.
her body lithe as a snake being charmed
Lithe as a snake, yes, but how does being charmed make it more lithe? It makes it upright, but I don't think the extra qualification adds to the image of litheness.
Unquestionably Unquestioningly?
they had me in a struggle for my sanity
They held me? Can you have someone in a struggle for their sanity?
jade orbs stared back at me from her pristine face
Orbs are large: would they seem orbs from a distance? Pristine woodland, marsh, or meadow: a pristine child's face, perhaps, but what are you saying about a grown woman?
She did not withdraw her proximity to me
When you're in proximity you can withdraw yourself, or your body, but not your proximity. You can withdraw from the proximity of someone.
her body radiated more sweat
She can simultaneously radiate more heat or sexuality, and exude or release more sweat, but sweat doesn't go out in all directions.
Like external appendages
Right metaphor, wrong actual image: it suggests pedipalps and crab claws, quite unsensually (cf. the sensual 'animal, almost feral' just below).
bubble formed ass
Not sure what this means. Just bubble-shaped, i.e. round? Or springy like air-filled bubble-wrap?
to make my knees unbalanced for a moment
To make me unbalanced, or perhaps to make my legs unbalanced, but to make my knees unsteady. You don't balance on knees. To show I'm not just nitpicking, this is typical of the problems I have with your imagery: you take a conventional idea (knees buckling, or losing one's balance) and try to make a new variation on it, but the variation is awkward and not quite correct.
see her shaven mound glisten as my hand traveled its most intimate crevasses
Strictly, her mound hasn't got any crevasses, and can glisten with belly sweat but not with crevasse juice, but I suppose we can let the transfer of meaning pass, from 'prominence above genitals' to 'folds of genitals'. Second, I think there's only one thing you can call a crevasse there - any smaller folds are crevices. But my dictionary tells me there's a US sense of 'crevasse' as a fissure in a river bank, so perhaps it sounds okay to you to describe small folds as crevasses.
I obliged her the dirty epitaphs she murmured into my ear
Wasn't it Mrs Malaprop herself who spoke of 'a nice derangement of epitaphs'?
Now, I can't use 'oblige' like this, but maybe it's your dialect. Can you oblige someone something? I oblige someone with something, and that means giving it to them. So if I obliged someone with dirty epithets it'd be me whispering them in her ear, not vice versa.Her groans were perforated with every time her back hit the wall
Perforations are small holes in paper; it's not a general synonym for interruptions or intermittences. And her groans can be interrupted by hitting the wall, or can be interrupted every time she hit the wall, but not interrupted with every time she hit the wall.
a dull guttural roar began its way to my lips
Something begins at a place, or makes its way from one place to another.
shooting rivers of my seed into her skull
Into her mouth, and therefore into her head, but not into her skull. If you had your hand on her head you would also have it on her skull, and could say either, but 'skull' is not a synonym for 'head'.
while milking every last drop out of me
A cliché. It stands out poorly against your own writing, which is always adventurous, and usually vivid.
Okay, this has gone on long enough. Well done, and don't think I've torn it to shreds: I haven't. Everything I've mentioned is one related deficiency. One last point on plot: at the end. Does she keep a supply of preprinted matchbooks with her room number and a time on them? Or does she select another matchbook in her room before she goes out, and write her room and a time on it? Where in that slinky, smooth dress did she keep it?
Last edited:
Desert Rat
Virgin
- Joined
- May 9, 2002
- Posts
- 15
Quite a lot of input to take in, but I'm thankful nonetheless.
It's been a while since I really sat down to write anything, and a lot things I wanted to say, I couldn't quite find the words for. Thanks for your help, and in the future I'm sure I'll spend more time on the adjectives.
It's been a while since I really sat down to write anything, and a lot things I wanted to say, I couldn't quite find the words for. Thanks for your help, and in the future I'm sure I'll spend more time on the adjectives.
