Please give feedback on my story.

[BholahForSoup]

Hello, I’m Daisy. I’ve just posted my first story at long last. I was wondering and hoping that some of you fine folks might read it and tell me what you think.

It does end abruptly but that’s because there is another part on the way.

The surrogate

Not including spelling and grammar mistakes, those I can try to edit out.

Thanks in advance x

 

[TheRedChamber]

Congratulations on your first story. The first one is always the most difficult. You have an interesting premise and I'd would like to know what happens next.

I did have some problems with the style it was written in. The following might sound a little harsh, but its intended as constructive criticism.

- The story starts with a lot of background information about your life and your foster family. One issue is that you spend time describing your siblings who don't really appear in the story. The first time I read through it, I initially thought David was one of your foster-brothers (getting confused with Daniel) - partially my fault as I was reading while eating my lunch, but the point is that there is a quite a big information dump at the start of the story. The story really starts with 'Then one day David came home' and if you started with that, and explained the details that are relevant as they become relevant, the story might be more engaging at the outset.
- However, the story also doesn't really have any what I would call scenes - the nearest you get is a three paragraph description of sex followed by two lines of dialogue. This means its hard to get to know the characters and also quite hard to get any enjoyment out of the sex scenes. You have a lot of scenes where you ask a question and get an answer from the character and that is that.
- This raised a problem that the whole story feels quite detached. Actions are taking, including the action of the MC sleeping with her foster-father, but there don't seem to be any decisions made. There's no internal life for any of the characters. Does Daisy feel guilty towards her foster-mother for sleeping with her foster-father? Why is she doing it? There doesn't seem to be any pleasure involved. What about boys her own age? We also get hints at the emotional states of the non-POV characters but we don't really get to know them beyond a very strict A to B set of emotions - I can't have another baby -> I'm sad.
- The character mention that they have learning difficulties. It's not clear if the characters emotional detachment is due to this. There have been books written about Neuro-Divergant MCs which have been very successful ('The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime' being perhaps the most famous). Parts of the writing style remind me of this, except that the hero of the Curious Incident makes sense on his own terms. He may not think like other people, but as we come to read more about him we understand how he does think. In this story, there's kind of a Daisy-shaped hole where she's doing things but we don't really know why.
- This kind of comes to a head at the end of the chapter. I think finished with 'We want you to be our surrogate' is a perfectly good way to end a chapter. The problem is that I know so little about Daisy that its hard to make any kind of guess as to what her reaction will be (She'll go along with it, I guess...). There's also kind of an unnerving subtext to it (at least for me) - David is trying to get his wife pregnant and at the same time talking about not using a condom with his 18-yo foster daughter. As noted above, we don't have clues to David's character, but this is disturbing. There are also potential issues of using your 18-yo foster-child (who again has learning difficulties) as a surrogate. Maybe these will be investigated in chapter two, but at the moment, the idea that David and Sarah are nice people with a strong emotional bond to Daisy seems questionable.
- Having written all this, I'm not sure if the above are concious choices trying to mimic the voice and thoughts of the MC and if the subtle wrongess of it is intended and will pay off in chapter two, or if its just a case of you not having looked deeply enough inside the character or not. I hope this makes sense. Please don't feel that I'm being unduly harsh, this is just what I felt reading through it.

 

[yukonnights]

I politely disagree with some of RedChamber's comment. The description of the family and the family's home was important to create the setting — a setting with a number of hard edges and difficulties. The way I interpreted the step-father's attempt at unprotected intercourse came off as his misguided attempt to secure the new child the wife and he wanted — an attempt thwarted by the stepdaughter and a gentle retreat by her step-father.

Overall, I enjoyed the story and since I very rarely read the incest category, a story there has to stand out in just the right way for my taste — I look forward to more from the author Daisy.

 

[FelHarper]

I agree with much of what TheRedChamber said. The exposition at the beginning is a bit much. You can get away with more exposition in a first-person perspective, because you can color the events with the voice of the character, but I think you would have grabbed my interest more quickly if you tucked some of that exposition into the real start of the story, when the relationship between the narrator and David begins to change.

To further expound on the “Daisy-shaped hole” that TheRedChamber mentioned, consider the paragraph that starts with “This evolved very quickly....” There is a passivity to the phrasing here that characterizes much of the narrative. I want Daisy to describe what she is feeling and thinking. Don’t simply tell. Show the reader through dialogue, or through physical responses like blushing or arousal.

When she sleeps in David’s bed for the first time, that’s a significant step. Some dialogue here might help. At least one of them should be hesitant or concerned, even if it’s just “are you okay with this?” Similarly, they start kissing, and that feels like a huge missed opportunity. Kissing can be extremely erotic and overflowing with emotion. How you portray it can tell you a lot about what the non-viewpoint character is feeling. If I were writing it, I would make their first kiss the point at which it becomes obvious to them both that their relationship is no longer that of father and daughter. It would be the point at which curiosity becomes a craving for much more.