Need feedback to improve - New cheating series

[thev_666]

I started a new series based around cheating. It's a story I've been working on for a while and I have plot worth upto 5 parts thought up already. I released the first part 2 days ago. The ratings seem decent so far but without any comments (I posted a thread on this in authors hangout, no idea why I'm not getting any comments) I'm missing some feedback I guess. I would want to improve and tweak wherever required and also keep in elements that readers liked so that the next few parts can be even better and I can deliver a good series. So please read and give feedback on the below. Thanks in advance.

https://www.literotica.com/s/all-thanks-to-sandy-pt-01

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I started a new series based around cheating. It's a story I've been working on for a while and I have plot worth upto 5 parts thought up already. I released the first part 2 days ago. The ratings seem decent so far but without any comments (I posted a thread on this in authors hangout, no idea why I'm not getting any comments) I'm missing some feedback I guess. I would want to improve and tweak wherever required and also keep in elements that readers liked so that the next few parts can be even better and I can deliver a good series. So please read and give feedback on the below. Thanks in advance.

https://www.literotica.com/s/all-thanks-to-sandy-pt-01

I'm not an editor. I'm a writer and a reader of other writers.

That being said, I started on your first part and stopped before page two. I'll probably go back to it later when I have more time, but I will share what I have seen so far:

There are several technical issues related to tense. For example, I think it is in the second paragraph where Vince is providing the narrative when he describes himself in the past tense, "I was 6' tall..." There are also sentences which make no sense such as in the first text conversation between Vince and Sandy when she says, "That's so turning on."

Try to clean this up some before you add further to it. Your readers will appreciate it.

 

[thev_666]

I'm not an editor. I'm a writer and a reader of other writers.

That being said, I started on your first part and stopped before page two. I'll probably go back to it later when I have more time, but I will share what I have seen so far:

There are several technical issues related to tense. For example, I think it is in the second paragraph where Vince is providing the narrative when he describes himself in the past tense, "I was 6' tall..." There are also sentences which make no sense such as in the first text conversation between Vince and Sandy when she says, "That's so turning on."

Try to clean this up some before you add further to it. Your readers will appreciate it.

Got it. I notice a few other instances too. Thanks for that. I'll pay more attention. Would love it if you could complete thr story when you get time and give some more feedback. Really helps. Thanks.

 

[KeithD]

no idea why I'm not getting any comments

Because this is a reading site, not a critique site. Few stories get comments at all. I've been here for over fourteen years, with more than 1,300 stories posted across my accounts, and fewer than half of the stories have gotten even one comment. It is the norm not to receive comment and feedback (those writing in the marketplace don't get much of it either). Best to keep the perspective of that. Bring your stories here, to this board, with a direct request for comment, as you have done, is the best way to get comment on Literotica.

 

[WinsomeWeb]

I read it. It’s pretty good. I only noticed the tense shift a couple of times, so it didn’t affect me too much, but there were some typos here and there that could probably have been picked up with a more careful proofread or a beta reader. Also, Sandy’s name changes to Susan at the end of the second page for two paragraphs (once as Susan and once as Susam), probably just a remnant artifact from a rewrite, but that’s the type of thing you should be able to pick up in a proofread. If you’re using a word processor, you should always try to use the Find and Replace function when changing names. It doesn’t always catch all of them (as it wouldn’t with your Susam typo) but it will catch a lot of them.

As far as the story goes, I think it was a solid story and you should be happy with it, but there are a few things that I would suggest keeping in mind for future work.

Firstly, I think you should give more care to where you start the story. In this case, the first two paragraphs are mostly exposition that sets up the story, but which don’t really tell me anything about the story. The real story starts in the third paragraph with “Our sex life wasn’t great.” That’s what this story is all about, and, in my opinion, that’s where this story should have started. When you write your first draft, it doesn’t matter where you start. Start at the main character’s birth, who cares. But you want your final draft to get right into the matter at hand. Intrigue your reader with the problems of your characters and make them want to read on. “Our sex life wasn’t great” is a good opening because it establishes the problem in their relationship, and, because it’s erotica, you’re making an implied promise: “Our sex life wasn’t great … but it gets better.”

I, personally, am not crazy about describing characters in great detail, but a lot of people seem to like it. I’m not telling you to not include everything in the first two paragraphs, but maybe not at that point.

When you start describing something you should always ask yourself: Is this important right now? At some point, you have to describe Vince and Tina, but am I, the reader, best served by first hearing about how hot Tina is, or hearing that Vince and Tiny fuck like dead fish? For me, I’m more interested in hearing about their sex life than what sports Vince played as a kid. There will probably be a time to tell me about Vince and Tina, I just don’t think it’s important at the moment.

And on that note, there are other ways to show things about your characters other than coming out and saying what or who they are. For example, perhaps Tina asks Vince to get something from the top shelf, which he reaches easily. Now we know he’s tall, and she’s short. Or, Vince empties the workout clothes from the bag he takes to play [casual pickup sport], and now we know that he’s somewhat active. There are all sorts of ways to show things about your characters and their relationships with one another other than just coming out and saying what sports Vince played as a kid.

My point, of course, isn’t that you shouldn’t tell your reader that Vince is 6’ tall with medium length black hair, but that most of what you wrote in the first two paragraphs is information which can be given out in smaller chunks throughout the story, by either showing the characters doing or thinking things that show what kind of people they are, or by coming out and telling us the information when it’s important.

Secondly since we’re talking about describing things, I think you have a bit of “white room syndrome” once or twice, which is not accurately describing a location where something is happening. A lot of the time, you can get away without describing a place by using generic language to describe what type of place it is. In the story, part of the plot takes place in the guest room. In my opinion, that is a completely acceptable description of where something is happening. You don’t need to describe the bedsheet colour and its thread count, or the last time the carpet was vacuumed, or anything like that unless you’re trying to evoke a specific mood or atmosphere. A lot of the time just saying “guest room” is enough for someone to picture a place.

But at the same time, there were a few times where you don’t offer much of a location description at all. When Vince meets Sandy for the first time they meet at Tina and Sandy’s office, but there’s no real location given to us. Are they meeting in a lobby? The parking garage? Sandy’s specific office room? Outside? Inside? Is the building a tall skyscraper, or a one-room commercial industrial building? Later they are talking at the office cantina, which, again, is an acceptable enough idea for a location, but that first location isn’t set anywhere for me.

Just be mindful of where your characters are when establishing a scene.

Thirdly, I would suggest putting a little more trust in your reader when it comes to dialogue. You use a lot of variants of ‘said’ and adverbs to hammer home the emotions of dialogue, but a lot of times it is unnecessary. Your reader can intuit and infer a lot of meaning just from context and the words you’re using in their speech. Sometimes adverbs and unusual dialogue tags are necessary to make your point or emphasize something, but a lot of times you’re using a sledgehammer when you should be using a ballpeen hammer.

Consider the first time Vince meets Sandy:

"Wel well! We finally meet. This has been long overdue," exclaimed Sandy as she pulled me in for a tight hug.

I reciprocated the gesture and couldn't help feeling a little turned on as her soft breasts pressed against my chest. I was wearing a thin white t-shirt and blue jeans, so it felt much better than I expected.

"I know! It's been a while. No idea why we never met until an actual business opportunity came up," I quipped back while looking at Tina.

"Seriously girl, he's right! You have not even called me to your house a single time," Sandy continued reprimanding Tina, as we broke off the hug.

"I did last month! It just didn't happen, okay? Now both of you don't gang up on me. I've had a hard day and I have an early call tomorrow too. I have to go and get some sleep," Tina cribbed in her usual trying-to-be-cute way.

That’s four unconventional dialogue tags in a row where you—maybe—would use one. ‘Said’ and ‘asked’ make for good dialogue tags because they are largely unobtrusive and easy to ignore. They establish who is speaking, but they’re common enough that they’re like ‘the’—you largely don’t notice them. When you hit me with an ‘exclaimed’, ‘quipped’, ‘reprimand’, and ‘cribbed’ all in a row you’re telling a lot more than you need to.

Consider an alternative:

"Well, well! We finally meet. This has been long overdue.” Sandy pulled me in for a tight hug.

I reciprocated the gesture and couldn't help feeling a little turned on as her soft breasts pressed against my chest. I was wearing a thin white t-shirt and blue jeans, so it felt much better than I expected.

"I know! It's been a while. No idea why we never met until an actual business opportunity came up," I quipped back while looking at Tina.

"Seriously girl, he's right!” Sandy broke off the hug. “You have not even called me to your house a single time.”

Tina smiled in her usual trying-to-be-cute way. "I did last month! It just didn't happen, okay? Now both of you don't gang up on me. I've had a hard day and I have an early call tomorrow too. I have to go and get some sleep."

I’ll admit I don’t understand the meaning of the word ‘cribbed’ in this sentence as it doesn’t align with my understanding of the word, so I used ‘smiled’ to get along the meaning that I intended in the rewrite, but it ultimately doesn’t matter. My focus in rewriting this was to omit dialogue tags to demonstrate how little you really need them to follow a conversation.

In this case, I left quipped because I think it’s a fair demonstration of when to use unusual dialogue tags. Here, Vince is saying something that may be contradictory to his literal meaning, so saying that he’s joking is important for the reader to understand what’s not being said. But everything else in this dialogue exchange has been rewritten to be entirely action. And, just through the use of paragraphs and action, you can still easily tell who is speaking.

Of course, this is just how I would write it. That doesn’t mean you have to write this way, but the advice I am suggesting here is to consider laying off on the unusual dialogue tags more often and trusting your reader to intuit your meaning. With dialogue, less is often more.

That’s my general advice. The only thing about this story in particular that I thought was a problem was Vince’s sudden refusal at the end to go ‘all the way’ with cheating with Sandy. In this case, I think Vince’s decision felt contrived, as if you were only making him say no to build tension for the next chapter. I think things have played out in a way that absolutely can make sense, but his decision to refuse because he didn’t’ want to be “at the mercy of her again” didn’t feel like it was built up properly. Before he said that, I didn’t really get the sense that he felt like he was doing anything that he didn’t want to do, or was at her mercy in any way.

But that’s just my interpretation.

With all that being said, I think you wrote a good story here. There’s a lot to like, and you should be happy with your effort. Take what I said with a grain of salt, as I am hardly an authority on writing, creative or otherwise.

There is one other thing that I would like to mention. At some point Sandy says “I don’t think your dressing sense is great to be honest, but your body totally makes up for it.” I really loved this moment. It would have been so easy to have her feel like he’s absolutely perfect in every way and he’s everything she ever wanted etc., etc., but this one comment felt really genuine and honest, and I felt it did a good show how much she herself values honesty.

All in all, well done.

 

[ChasPHX]

Whoa WinsomeWeb. Great feedback, and I'm not even the author of the story under discussion, nor did I read it ; )

It's just nice to read intelligent thoughtful feedback here. Kudos.

 

[thev_666]

Because this is a reading site, not a critique site. Few stories get comments at all. I've been here for over fourteen years, with more than 1,300 stories posted across my accounts, and fewer than half of the stories have gotten even one comment. It is the norm not to receive comment and feedback (those writing in the marketplace don't get much of it either). Best to keep the perspective of that. Bring your stories here, to this board, with a direct request for comment, as you have done, is the best way to get comment on Literotica.

Yeah I've realized the trend of comments based on category as well. I think I've made my peace with that now and as you said posting here for constructive feedback makes more sense. Thanks.

 

[thev_666]

I read it. It’s pretty good. I only noticed the tense shift a couple of times, so it didn’t affect me too much, but there were some typos here and there that could probably have been picked up with a more careful proofread or a beta reader. Also, Sandy’s name changes to Susan at the end of the second page for two paragraphs (once as Susan and once as Susam), probably just a remnant artifact from a rewrite, but that’s the type of thing you should be able to pick up in a proofread. If you’re using a word processor, you should always try to use the Find and Replace function when changing names. It doesn’t always catch all of them (as it wouldn’t with your Susam typo) but it will catch a lot of them.

As far as the story goes, I think it was a solid story and you should be happy with it, but there are a few things that I would suggest keeping in mind for future work.

Firstly, I think you should give more care to where you start the story. In this case, the first two paragraphs are mostly exposition that sets up the story, but which don’t really tell me anything about the story. The real story starts in the third paragraph with “Our sex life wasn’t great.” That’s what this story is all about, and, in my opinion, that’s where this story should have started. When you write your first draft, it doesn’t matter where you start. Start at the main character’s birth, who cares. But you want your final draft to get right into the matter at hand. Intrigue your reader with the problems of your characters and make them want to read on. “Our sex life wasn’t great” is a good opening because it establishes the problem in their relationship, and, because it’s erotica, you’re making an implied promise: “Our sex life wasn’t great … but it gets better.”

I, personally, am not crazy about describing characters in great detail, but a lot of people seem to like it. I’m not telling you to not include everything in the first two paragraphs, but maybe not at that point.

When you start describing something you should always ask yourself: Is this important right now? At some point, you have to describe Vince and Tina, but am I, the reader, best served by first hearing about how hot Tina is, or hearing that Vince and Tiny fuck like dead fish? For me, I’m more interested in hearing about their sex life than what sports Vince played as a kid. There will probably be a time to tell me about Vince and Tina, I just don’t think it’s important at the moment.

And on that note, there are other ways to show things about your characters other than coming out and saying what or who they are. For example, perhaps Tina asks Vince to get something from the top shelf, which he reaches easily. Now we know he’s tall, and she’s short. Or, Vince empties the workout clothes from the bag he takes to play [casual pickup sport], and now we know that he’s somewhat active. There are all sorts of ways to show things about your characters and their relationships with one another other than just coming out and saying what sports Vince played as a kid.

My point, of course, isn’t that you shouldn’t tell your reader that Vince is 6’ tall with medium length black hair, but that most of what you wrote in the first two paragraphs is information which can be given out in smaller chunks throughout the story, by either showing the characters doing or thinking things that show what kind of people they are, or by coming out and telling us the information when it’s important.

Secondly since we’re talking about describing things, I think you have a bit of “white room syndrome” once or twice, which is not accurately describing a location where something is happening. A lot of the time, you can get away without describing a place by using generic language to describe what type of place it is. In the story, part of the plot takes place in the guest room. In my opinion, that is a completely acceptable description of where something is happening. You don’t need to describe the bedsheet colour and its thread count, or the last time the carpet was vacuumed, or anything like that unless you’re trying to evoke a specific mood or atmosphere. A lot of the time just saying “guest room” is enough for someone to picture a place.

But at the same time, there were a few times where you don’t offer much of a location description at all. When Vince meets Sandy for the first time they meet at Tina and Sandy’s office, but there’s no real location given to us. Are they meeting in a lobby? The parking garage? Sandy’s specific office room? Outside? Inside? Is the building a tall skyscraper, or a one-room commercial industrial building? Later they are talking at the office cantina, which, again, is an acceptable enough idea for a location, but that first location isn’t set anywhere for me.

Just be mindful of where your characters are when establishing a scene.

Thirdly, I would suggest putting a little more trust in your reader when it comes to dialogue. You use a lot of variants of ‘said’ and adverbs to hammer home the emotions of dialogue, but a lot of times it is unnecessary. Your reader can intuit and infer a lot of meaning just from context and the words you’re using in their speech. Sometimes adverbs and unusual dialogue tags are necessary to make your point or emphasize something, but a lot of times you’re using a sledgehammer when you should be using a ballpeen hammer.

Consider the first time Vince meets Sandy:


That’s four unconventional dialogue tags in a row where you—maybe—would use one. ‘Said’ and ‘asked’ make for good dialogue tags because they are largely unobtrusive and easy to ignore. They establish who is speaking, but they’re common enough that they’re like ‘the’—you largely don’t notice them. When you hit me with an ‘exclaimed’, ‘quipped’, ‘reprimand’, and ‘cribbed’ all in a row you’re telling a lot more than you need to.

Consider an alternative:


I’ll admit I don’t understand the meaning of the word ‘cribbed’ in this sentence as it doesn’t align with my understanding of the word, so I used ‘smiled’ to get along the meaning that I intended in the rewrite, but it ultimately doesn’t matter. My focus in rewriting this was to omit dialogue tags to demonstrate how little you really need them to follow a conversation.

In this case, I left quipped because I think it’s a fair demonstration of when to use unusual dialogue tags. Here, Vince is saying something that may be contradictory to his literal meaning, so saying that he’s joking is important for the reader to understand what’s not being said. But everything else in this dialogue exchange has been rewritten to be entirely action. And, just through the use of paragraphs and action, you can still easily tell who is speaking.

Of course, this is just how I would write it. That doesn’t mean you have to write this way, but the advice I am suggesting here is to consider laying off on the unusual dialogue tags more often and trusting your reader to intuit your meaning. With dialogue, less is often more.

That’s my general advice. The only thing about this story in particular that I thought was a problem was Vince’s sudden refusal at the end to go ‘all the way’ with cheating with Sandy. In this case, I think Vince’s decision felt contrived, as if you were only making him say no to build tension for the next chapter. I think things have played out in a way that absolutely can make sense, but his decision to refuse because he didn’t’ want to be “at the mercy of her again” didn’t feel like it was built up properly. Before he said that, I didn’t really get the sense that he felt like he was doing anything that he didn’t want to do, or was at her mercy in any way.

But that’s just my interpretation.

With all that being said, I think you wrote a good story here. There’s a lot to like, and you should be happy with your effort. Take what I said with a grain of salt, as I am hardly an authority on writing, creative or otherwise.

There is one other thing that I would like to mention. At some point Sandy says “I don’t think your dressing sense is great to be honest, but your body totally makes up for it.” I really loved this moment. It would have been so easy to have her feel like he’s absolutely perfect in every way and he’s everything she ever wanted etc., etc., but this one comment felt really genuine and honest, and I felt it did a good show how much she herself values honesty.

All in all, well done.

Wow. This is really really helpful. First up, thanks so much for such detailed feedback. I've noted down all of these along with the rest of the feedback in this thread. I will take extra care of these for the future parts of this series. The way you've described some of my writing issues with examples and details is really appreciated. I agree on almost all of your points and am surprised i missed out on some obvious ones myself but I guess that's why I needed feedback. I'll work on these. I'm glad you enjoyed the other parts and I hope you find improvements in further stories by me. Thanks a lot again. Means a lot.