Newbie looking for feedback, first posted story

[TheThoth]

Thanks so much for even getting this far. As the thread title says, I'm a first time author looking for a little feedback on his first story. I wrote it as an exercise to write something completely out of my comfort zone and personal taste in erotica (the non consent/reluctance/rape genre) ...so I tried to force myself to write without changing the "helpless" concept with anything as silly as the "damsel in distress" device, but did want to putting my own spin on it.

http://www.literotica.com/s/a-secret-victoria

Any feedback is appreciated!

T

 

[PennLady]

Okay, I'll try some feedback, although I don't care for non-con stories. Still, I know what it's like to want some feedback, so...

First off, you need smaller paragraphs. Eight lines or so is good on-screen; larger paragraphs tend to be big gray blocks and harder to read. You had some that went twenty lines or more, and those make me want to skip them entirely. The worst offender is the paragraph in which Victoria meets her attackers -- it just goes on and on.

I think you also spend too much time describing Victoria and her clothes, and also, it seemed you back-tracked a lot in the description. You'd say that she did something, then kind of take half a step back and add more detail before going on. That slows everything down. Then you go on a whole thing about her and her body image and -- ugh. A general rule of thumb, although not a hard-and-fast one is that less is more.

Plus, we don't need every single detail of what Victoria did to get ready for her evening out.

Things that struck me, in no particular order --

Your dialogue punctuation is mostly incorrect, and you overuse ellipses. You don't have a lot of dialogue, but that's generally okay, I guess, as you're telling this from Victoria's POV, and this doesn't seem like an event that's going to result in a lot of talking. Still, speech lines should generally get their own paragraphs, but it also goes back to the issue of your paragraphs being too long.

However, generally a statement should be like this:
"Just be quiet and you won't get hurt," he said.

Comma before the close quotes, and a lower case "he." Sometimes you don't have the comma at all, and I believe in a few places you had a period instead, and then the tag -- he said or she said -- was capitalized, and that is wrong.

Also, when addressing someone, there should be a comma before the name or term of address -- so, silly as it sounds, it should be "Now listen, bitch," he said.

You wrote that Victoria usually had a sense of her surroundings -- well, don't we all? We may not know where every item is, but we have a general idea. Naturally when she doesn't know where she is she's scared, but again, wouldn't anyone be? This just didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, although I think you were just going for her being scared and alone. However, you have her stalked by men, knocked out, and then waking up gagged -- do you need more than that for fear?

(Aside -- did her attackers all have to be black and Latino? Very... cliche and stereotypical.)

A little anatomy issue:

The two hands on her legs moved to the knees, pushing pressure on the inside pushing her thighs and calves up off the floor – her knees moving toward her shoulders, she could feel the bare cold cement floor against her vaginal lips.

No. If this is happening, then her vagina is being lifted up/away from the floor, so she is not going to feel the bare cement floor. If her legs were being pushed apart, that might work. She's already felt the cold cement floor on her butt, and that's probably enough.

For the end, the fact that she wanted/enjoyed it is going to make it all right within the category but I imagine some won't be happy. Then they never are. I have to wonder why -- if what Victoria said about Derek breaking up with her 17 months ago is true -- he waited so long to set this up. That feels like something you tagged on at the end to make it more palatable, and it's fine but doesn't quite fit.

So there you go. Good luck with future efforts.