New Story - Rites of Beltane

[christabelll]

http://www.literotica.com:81/stories/showstory.php?id=325192

Wow that was record timing!!!!


Back story - Excerpt from my yet to be published novel - Two worlds slipping apart -Vivienne is brought back in time to learn and train in time to wield the "wierd of the earth". Through much trial and tribulation = she comes to the Beltane Fires Prepared to give everything within herself - and her body to keep the doorway from closing forever -

Enjoy -

Feedback and Comments welcome - PLEASE?????


ps - its really soft compared to my other stuff -

 

[christabelll]

Why is it you never see the errors until its up and 5 thousand people have read it already??

20 thousand edits later and I see stupid shit that breaks my teeth!

 

[christabelll]

bump

 

[MarshAlien]

Sorry, hit the "submit" button too early. The full (much more readable) post is below.

My bad.

 

[christabelll]

AH.... Thank you!

Well it was a magical ceremony - I was trying to convey the ceremony - the visuals and the physical sensations and everything else at once LOL... I will try to work on that in the future...

I struggled with the wording for a Long, Long, Long time. What you see here is the remains of twice that amount!

But I must say I am a comma whore LOL... I see what you mean with the ones you pointed out though.
I am working on eliminating needless commas and putting them where they are most effective and grammatically correct...

Thank you so much Marsh for taking the time to read this excerpt from my novel and to comment on it.

Every little bit helps - as I am a sponge when it comes to learning...

 

[MarshAlien]

bump

We prefer bumps with smiley faces, to make us think that our work here chopping other peoples' pride and joys (prides and joy? prides and joys?) to bits is appreciated.

Oh, right, the story.

I enjoyed it, although I had the feeling that you were trying to hard to make each paragraph its own individual jewel. Each seemed to have its own unique descriptions and verbs, to the point that it actually overwhelmed the story, and made it very difficult to maintain an even pace of reading. I think it would be more effective, personally, if you cut down on your adjectives and gave us nothing more than raw narrative, so that we could better enjoy those instances in which beautiful description was really necessary to advance the cause of the story.

On a technical level, I found two sentences where I would have wanted a comma, both for the same reason:

The sun was low in the sky painting it purple and pink.

A great shout came up from the base of the tor drawing her gaze and attention.

The last sentence might even have been better with "drew" instead of "came up" as the verb.

This sentence was a little repetitive:

Pipes skirled through the air, as the first tentative beats of several drums throbbed through the air.

I'm sure you intended this to be a sentence fragment (which do have their place; God knows I use enough of them), but in this case I think it would have worked better as an actual sentence by simply inserting "were they" in front of "in their tasks" and "that" afterward.

So solemn in their tasks she'd felt nervous laughter try to escape as they plied her with a deep cup of mead.

Finally, I don't think the passive voice served this sentence well. I think I knew what you meant, but it really made me stop and think about what she was feeling.

Scintillating pressure increased under her skin.

I can see how the whole work would be more effective as part of a larger whole, but that would even strengthen my recommendation to cut down on the adjectives a bit and pick up the pacing.

 

[christabelll]

Me cut down on adjectives??? Perish the thought...

Yikes! I hadn't caught the redundancy - thanks for pointing it out.

My regular editor is MIA - got any reccomendations?

So - hmmm - yes and no. It didn't tag as passive and I try to pay attention to those. She drank holy mead - was surrounded by magic, had been prepped and trained to wield such magic as what comes, and scintillating pressure was the only way I could think to describe how it feels - almost like the first rushes of an acid or shroom trip.

Ahem ... not that I would know.... hehehehhe...

Very good points, and when I can I will incorporate them into the story.

 

[yukonnights]

I can't quite put my finger on it, but I found it difficult to stay interested.

The descriptive sentences were very beautiful, but it seemed that I was being jerked back and forth from the action to the setting. And the action seemed to be sort of a prop for the beauty surrounding it. Like I said, it's hard to say why, but the scene just didn't grab me like it should have given the outstanding sentence structure and overall imagination you put into it.

For what it's worth, I might have been more captivated if there was a build-up of the initial setting, then some straight dialog/action w/o so much flowery description of the surroundings, then go back into descriptions of the setting and events in the heavens w/o any dialog/action, etc... As it is, I couldn't get interested in either setting or characters, I was just too split.

But, very imaginative and descriptive vocabulary. (and take this all with a grain of salt, I'm more of a reader than a writer, so what do I know?)

 

[christabelll]

Fair enough -
It does have that dichotomy - nothing like a back handed compliment lolol

Hmmm... More back story?
Because of the solemnity of the rite there is little or no dialog except for ritual itself - and that is all done as 'mind speak'.


Should I include that she had nearly died the day before as had Jonathain that afternoon - that there was a tremendous battle during the night - and at last - the last chance for keeping the Sidhe and Humans worlds conjoined has arrived???

In point of fact - this whole scene is rather anti-climatic with what has happened up until this point...

Should I up the ante with the sex? Make it steamier? More Torid?
I think the sweet sensuality of it - and the fact that its her first time - would lose something in the translation if it were to to do so.... I just don't know -


I am still struggling with it - you are the third person to complain that my wording is too florid for most readers. I don't know as that I can change that - but I can work on using more impactful words and less of them...


Thank you for taking the time to read and comment. It is sincerely appreciated.

 

[christabelll]

bumped

 

[christabelll]

Just submitted an edited version of this story so that it reads smoother...

learning how to <i> </i> the mind speech was invaluable to the flow...and suspension of disbelief...

Thank you to the one's that helped get this one ironed out further...

GO read either now with the goofed up version or the edited version in a couple of days!! Thanks!

 

[christabelll]

NEW EDITED VERSION Now available for your viewing pleasure.

IT reads a lot better IMHO....