New writer, seeking feedback

[dadbod4u]

Hey all,

Occasional forum poster/lurker here who just dove into the story submission part of Lit. I was hoping for some feedback on my first submission, which you can read by clicking here. It's a cheating story in erotic couplings called The New Girl & The Christmas Party. I have the same handle there as here.

As a note, I am aware of the sentence fragment in the middle of the introductory office scenes and I'm kind of embarrassed that I did that and that it slipped through my editing process unnoticed before I submitted. So I know about that part. I do have other ideas for potential stories (including maybe following on to this one), so I thought I'd ask for some feedback in order to improve for next time. TIA!

 

[yowser]

Welcome

Dear occasional lurker/poster, welcome to the dark side of writing.

Your piece has promise, some nice descriptions, moves along, not too long.

Here are some things to think about for next efforts:

A lot of the beginning is long narrative sections, anything you can do to break it up into smaller chunks, or convey without a lot of wordage will be welcome. You have to set the scene, and you do that relatively well (although I missed having some idea of the company's real business, what they do, what the building, office, is like - even a quick hint of a visual will help.)

I would be really careful of glorified descriptions of your object of desire. (I personally have a gag reflex every time I see the adjective 'perky' applied to breasts.) Ditch the measurements, and if you can convey the 'emotional' reaction to someone's appearance, that is terrific.

Would your new project manager call you 'eye candy' to your face on first meeting? I think not. Flirting usually doesn't happen instantaneously without some more mundane preliminaries.

Generic advice (applicable to 95% of all stories on Lit): make it shorter. You could cut a quarter of this story down and it would be more effective.

Shorter paragraphs, more white space. Particularly when dialog is embedded in a paragraph - break it out and it will read better, and be easier on the eyes.

Well done, a first submission, and good reader response too. I hope for your continued success

 

[dadbod4u]

Dear occasional lurker/poster, welcome to the dark side of writing.

Your piece has promise, some nice descriptions, moves along, not too long.

Here are some things to think about for next efforts:

A lot of the beginning is long narrative sections, anything you can do to break it up into smaller chunks, or convey without a lot of wordage will be welcome. You have to set the scene, and you do that relatively well (although I missed having some idea of the company's real business, what they do, what the building, office, is like - even a quick hint of a visual will help.)

I would be really careful of glorified descriptions of your object of desire. (I personally have a gag reflex every time I see the adjective 'perky' applied to breasts.) Ditch the measurements, and if you can convey the 'emotional' reaction to someone's appearance, that is terrific.

Would your new project manager call you 'eye candy' to your face on first meeting? I think not. Flirting usually doesn't happen instantaneously without some more mundane preliminaries.

Generic advice (applicable to 95% of all stories on Lit): make it shorter. You could cut a quarter of this story down and it would be more effective.

Shorter paragraphs, more white space. Particularly when dialog is embedded in a paragraph - break it out and it will read better, and be easier on the eyes.

Well done, a first submission, and good reader response too. I hope for your continued success

This is all very helpful. Thanks for taking the time to read and go through it!

 

[yukonnights]

First impressions; 1) I like the pace, it clips along quickly which worked for me in this short scene. 2) I disagree with a comment above about the length being to long — at 3.3k words, it's not even a full Lit screen-page. I used the phrase "short scene" above as this really does jump into a day in the life of undeveloped characters. I'm not saying that's wrong or bad, and IMO, it think it served your intended goal. At some point I imagine you'll desire to write a more developed story.



2) "So they send in the eye candy as my first project, is that it?" What a ball-buster, I thought to myself, before she laughed and smiled warmly in my direction. "You must be Drew. The bosses let me know you'd be headed my way as the welcome committee. So far, so good, so you're off to a good start. Let's sit down and get acquainted, hm?" she asked, but I was pretty sure she had taken the time to survey me head-to-toe before speaking.

This above is crafted wrong. The term "head-hopping" applies when one character's dialogue is combined with another character's thought/interior dialogue — it's a point of view change without any clear indication, etc.

3) I told her this was a great company both to work and to play, and casually mentioned that This was like an out-of-body experience.

This is just a nit-pick, but I include it to bring up the mention of proof-readers. Most of us need a new, fresh pair of eyes to catch the little typos and inconsistencies like the missing sentence you mentioned and that capital T in the sentence above. Often this "proof-reader" / "beta-reader" is another author here who you can befriend and share in helping each other.

4) Not long before quitting time, Sophia strolled past my desk on the way to her office. I was putting out a last-minute fire that had popped up between a couple of contract negotiators in Vancouver, and as soon as I wrapped up the phone call and started to fire off an email, her voice broke the relative silence. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, hm?" I hadn't expected to be interrupted, so I jumped, startled by her interjection. That, of course, made her laugh at my jumpiness.

More head-hopping. "Head-hopping" is the practice of switching point-of-view characters within a single scene/paragraph. This should look like this;

Not long before quitting time, Sophia strolled past my desk on the way to her office. I was putting out a last-minute fire that had popped up between a couple of contract negotiators in Vancouver, and as soon as I wrapped up the phone call and started to fire off an email, her voice broke the relative silence.

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, hm?"

I hadn't expected to be interrupted, so I jumped, startled by her interjection. That, of course, made her laugh at my jumpiness.

4) "Oh, fuuuuuck!" Sophia squealed as I continued to suckle her love button and drove her toward climax. Her hips bucked against my face, spreading her juices all over my lips and chin. She screamed again as I felt her reach her orgasm, her hips thrusting wildly against me as I continued to lick and suck her clit as she went over the edge. "Oh, God, I need you inside me NOW!" I needed no second bidding as I pulled my face away from her pussy and readied myself for what was next. I didn't spare a thought for anyone or anything else. There was no going back now. Sophia turned over onto her hands and knees and backed toward me, achingly begging for me to fill the void inside her tight, spasming cunt.

I think you can see the issue here I used the colors as it seems to make it more obvious that it's two different people.

The good news is that you still managed to make this a fun read. Now I want to know how it all plays out. He's got himself into a bit of a pickle! The technical issues will resolve pretty fast as you keep gaining experience. There's a wealth of information online, and now that you're writing you'll probably be paying closer attention to the stories you read here too.

 

[dadbod4u]

First impressions; 1) I like the pace, it clips along quickly which worked for me in this short scene. 2) I disagree with a comment above about the length being to long — at 3.3k words, it's not even a full Lit screen-page. I used the phrase "short scene" above as this really does jump into a day in the life of undeveloped characters. I'm not saying that's wrong or bad, and IMO, it think it served your intended goal. At some point I imagine you'll desire to write a more developed story.



2) "So they send in the eye candy as my first project, is that it?" What a ball-buster, I thought to myself, before she laughed and smiled warmly in my direction. "You must be Drew. The bosses let me know you'd be headed my way as the welcome committee. So far, so good, so you're off to a good start. Let's sit down and get acquainted, hm?" she asked, but I was pretty sure she had taken the time to survey me head-to-toe before speaking.

This above is crafted wrong. The term "head-hopping" applies when one character's dialogue is combined with another character's thought/interior dialogue — it's a point of view change without any clear indication, etc.

3) I told her this was a great company both to work and to play, and casually mentioned that This was like an out-of-body experience.

This is just a nit-pick, but I include it to bring up the mention of proof-readers. Most of us need a new, fresh pair of eyes to catch the little typos and inconsistencies like the missing sentence you mentioned and that capital T in the sentence above. Often this "proof-reader" / "beta-reader" is another author here who you can befriend and share in helping each other.

4) Not long before quitting time, Sophia strolled past my desk on the way to her office. I was putting out a last-minute fire that had popped up between a couple of contract negotiators in Vancouver, and as soon as I wrapped up the phone call and started to fire off an email, her voice broke the relative silence. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, hm?" I hadn't expected to be interrupted, so I jumped, startled by her interjection. That, of course, made her laugh at my jumpiness.

More head-hopping. "Head-hopping" is the practice of switching point-of-view characters within a single scene/paragraph. This should look like this;

Not long before quitting time, Sophia strolled past my desk on the way to her office. I was putting out a last-minute fire that had popped up between a couple of contract negotiators in Vancouver, and as soon as I wrapped up the phone call and started to fire off an email, her voice broke the relative silence.

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, hm?"

I hadn't expected to be interrupted, so I jumped, startled by her interjection. That, of course, made her laugh at my jumpiness.

4) "Oh, fuuuuuck!" Sophia squealed as I continued to suckle her love button and drove her toward climax. Her hips bucked against my face, spreading her juices all over my lips and chin. She screamed again as I felt her reach her orgasm, her hips thrusting wildly against me as I continued to lick and suck her clit as she went over the edge. "Oh, God, I need you inside me NOW!" I needed no second bidding as I pulled my face away from her pussy and readied myself for what was next. I didn't spare a thought for anyone or anything else. There was no going back now. Sophia turned over onto her hands and knees and backed toward me, achingly begging for me to fill the void inside her tight, spasming cunt.

I think you can see the issue here I used the colors as it seems to make it more obvious that it's two different people.

The good news is that you still managed to make this a fun read. Now I want to know how it all plays out. He's got himself into a bit of a pickle! The technical issues will resolve pretty fast as you keep gaining experience. There's a wealth of information online, and now that you're writing you'll probably be paying closer attention to the stories you read here too.

Thanks for all of this! I hadn't thought of the head-hoppijg aspect of it, but I guess I expected folks to understand as quickly as I did, which is obviously not realistic, ha.

Point 3 was one I spotted after it posted, and yeah that's kind of an embarrassing miss.

I appreciate the good and specific feedback. Definitely plotting as to where this can go and I have a few other ideas kicking around as well. We shall see...

 

[8letters]

* Your story has a very good rating for a one-page story. On average, a longer a Lit story is, the better it does in terms of rating, comments, etc.
* My standard advice is start your story with an interesting scene. As other have said, the story would have been better if you had started with paragraph five and supplied the information from paragraphs one to four as you tell the story
* Things happen too quickly for me, but in a one-page story things have to happen quickly. I wish you had spent more time in the flirting stage of the story

 

[dadbod4u]

* Your story has a very good rating for a one-page story. On average, a longer a Lit story is, the better it does in terms of rating, comments, etc.
* My standard advice is start your story with an interesting scene. As other have said, the story would have been better if you had started with paragraph five and supplied the information from paragraphs one to four as you tell the story
* Things happen too quickly for me, but in a one-page story things have to happen quickly. I wish you had spent more time in the flirting stage of the story

Thanks for this! Definitely taking notes for next time.

 

[JJA122]

It was good. But just good.
I agree with the other poster that you could of started with paragraph five.
Also describing in detail before we get to any dialogue their body proportions was long winded. I'd prefer to read something where she looks up at the main character while talking, or she comments on how tall he is, rather than a logbook entry about the guy's height. You know, making it read like they are compatible for each other.
I didn't understand how the woman figured out his wife was giving him the cold shoulder, or any inclination that she wanted to fuck him besides looking him up and down.
The sex scene was actually pretty good.
I gave it five stars for the effort.

 

[dadbod4u]

It was good. But just good.
I agree with the other poster that you could of started with paragraph five.
Also describing in detail before we get to any dialogue their body proportions was long winded. I'd prefer to read something where she looks up at the main character while talking, or she comments on how tall he is, rather than a logbook entry about the guy's height. You know, making it read like they are compatible for each other.
I didn't understand how the woman figured out his wife was giving him the cold shoulder, or any inclination that she wanted to fuck him besides looking him up and down.
The sex scene was actually pretty good.
I gave it five stars for the effort.

Thanks for the detail and for the rating! I can definitely see now how I told rather than showed on certain descriptions and rushed ahead in spots I shouldn't have.