Request for Feedback

[estragon]

My story, The Way It Should Have Been, a Celebrities Fan Fiction piece, posted two days ago. 393 views, no votes, no comments, no private feedback, no men left on base.

Here's the link:
http://www.literotica.com/s/the-way-it-should-have-been-2

What I'm looking for is two kinds of feedback. The first is general. Is the writing adequate, without reference to the author I'm trying to imitate?

The second, of course, is specific, and is addressed to Dick Francis fans, especially those who read Come to Grief: I know I can't write like DF, and it would be silly to pretend I could come close. But how bad was it?

 

[sethp]

done. well written. Way too short and the catheter reference turned me off before I even got started. I felt like I was thrown into the middle of the story and by the time I got my bearings It was over. My opinion...which isn't worth much...is no genital pain before sex and slightly more build up. I did recognize...or guess the author you were emulating, but that could be because he's the only "horse" author I know. You are a better writer than me though.

 

[polynices]

I've never actually read a celebrity fiction story before, and I only have hazy recollections of Dick Francis's stories, so I come to this with a couple of handicaps (no horse-racing pun intended).

I saw it as a writing exercise rather than a full-fledged story, and I was comfortable with that - though I doubt I'd have stayed with it if it had been a longer piece. For that, I'd need a complete free-standing story. Taking the piece simply as an exercise in style, however, I was generally impressed. I can't judge how close you got to Francis, but - aside from a minor point I'll mention later - I thought it was successful as a piece of prose.

I also found it surprisingly sexy in its later stages. I sympathise with sethp's point about the catheter - it's decidely unerotic - but it didn't actually put me off and I wouldn't say it's out of place here. When I came to it, I just winced a little bit and read on. I found India exciting - so you conveyed your own enthusiasm to me there for sure. And, going back to style for a moment, I also liked this snippet from your description of her:

Her abdomen was firm, the muscles gently defined without being a body-builder's project.

There's a certain wittiness to the way that ends - ... without being a body-builder's project ..., which, I imagine, is a trick you picked up from Francis. It's also there in other places, of course - e.g. in the introduction:

Several batches of medical students were walked through my room to peer at me. Their professor lectured them about my speedy recovery. If they were impressed, they didn't show it.

That downbeat tone has the authentic ring of hardboiled fiction from Hammett and Chandler onwards. I think you got it right.

Here's the minor quibble I mentioned earlier:

She kissed the stump of my left arm. She said, "Hush, dear Sid, hush."

She took the stump of my left arm in her right hand, kissed it again with her mouth open, and turned around. I admired her firm, curved buttocks as she moved the stump against them.

I think there's too much repetition of the phrase I've underlined. I'd just use 'it' on the second occasion. But that, of course, is just an editing issue.

Generally, I found this an interesting exercise. In a way, all writing is pastiche to some extent; that is, every writer feeds off and interacts with other writers s/he has read - the infamous 'intertextuality' of fiction. And writing direct pastiche is 'freeing', I find. It allows one to arrive in fictional worlds one might not otherwise have attempted to enter.

I also liked the chutzpah of your 'homage' to Francis here - the fact that you went so far as to extend a scene from one of his actual novels. I wouldn't like to read too many pieces that are this close to their originals, but it was an interesting experiment. It would be nice to see you apply the style you've imitated and developed here to an original story of your own.

- polynices

 

[estragon]

Thanks

Poly and Sethp, I'm grateful for your comments. They were extremely helpful and constructive. Of course, this little piece is a one-off (I don't dare try to write like Dick Francis again, and I wouldn't ask anyone to read it if I did). This was strictly an homage to a great writer. Many thanks.

 

[PennLady]

Well, I unfortunately am not familiar with Dick Francis -- I think I've read one book -- but this was well written. I wish I could give you more, but like I said, not being able to "compare" this to Francis has me at a disadvantage.

 

[estragon]

SA Penn Lady, thank you. I have been a fan of Dick Francis' novels for more than thirty years. I admire him enormously. "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," I know, but sometimes the besotted admirer's imitation of the Master falls miserably flat. I'm glad I avoided the worst; that was the best I could hope for.

 

[Guest]

I enjoyed it but . . .

deleted

 

[estragon]

Estragon,
I enjoyed the story, but like so many others I couldn't fully engage with the characters because I was unfamiliar with the context of the story. The final line hints of the beginning of a profound relationship, and I wanted to understand those dynamics more completely. If you are contemplating a re-write, I might suggest that you consider adding some of the back story and tension through his thoughts. I was so caught up in his injuries that I was distracted by wondering what had happened to him to cause such physical trauma. Then when you get to the sex scene, I might suggest that you take more time. It became a little mechanical at that point, and I wanted to know more about what he thought. The woman he always wanted was before him, enticing him, yielding to him. You do a wonderful job in describing her reveal, and I think you can do the same in building the suspense of their union. Since it is a first person narrative, you have the perfect vehicle for exploring these elements more completely.

Surely, thanks for your perceptive comments, and for taking time away from The Perils of Plagiarism, to the rest of which I look forward (never end a sentence a preposition with).

I really intended this story for fans of Dick Francis, who had read Come to Grief. My dilemma was, by deciding not to compress the 300 pages of novel that came before this scene, I would confuse anyone who hadn't read the novel; yet if I tried to summarize it, people would give up before reading my stuff-- too much windup for very little baseball. Ad Dick Francis wrote it so much better.

No, as I said, I'm not going to try to rewrite this for publication, only to try to improve my own writing skills. By trying again, publicly, to ape a World Class Grand Master of our Craft I'd only make myself look sillier.