reunion

[destinie21]

I of course am here to get feedback on my story Reunion



Any and all feedback welcome














If anyone wants all of my stories go here

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[Guest]

Reunion Feedback

 

[destinie21]

Re: Reunion Feedback

Destinie,

Overall a good story I enjoyed it. You establish an interesting plot and I anticipate how the whole brewing confrontation between Shelby-Ann, Nora and Lena is resolved (if indeed that's where you're headed) as wel las whatever Nora's problem is (ex-husband?). The sex seems quite natural and flows well, but that's my male POV.

However, there are a few spots where either grammar, syntax or punctuation errors forced me to reread to get your intentions. Capitalization to start sentences, missing commas, etc. Most of them occur at the lead in to the sex. Better proofreading would enhance, that's all (but it's one of my pet peeves).

Just for example you wrote,

While I did intentionally keep my sexual orientation a guarded secret I wasn't really one to go shouting it from the rooftops either.

While I believe it should be:

While I didn't intentionally...etc


Also,
My parents had moved to Florida shortly after I'd graduated and my brother and sister were strewn with their respective families all about the United States.


How can just two people of about the same age as Lena and their families be strewn all about the US?

Finally, Lena describes herself as having caramel brown skin, but later there is a snippy observation that Shelby-Ann's unnaturally tan skin? Am I missing something here? Is Lena african-american or just being catty? Maybe I'm nit picking, but it does gnaw at me.

Good luck on the next installment.

Lime in NJ

Thanks for the feedback. I think whagt I need is a good editor. Being the writer often causes me to overlook mistakes because I know what my meaning was. Also Lena is african american hence the catty remark,and if you recall Nora is dark as well (mediterranian skin. However when I say unnatural tan I mean that it is apparent when a white person goes to the tanning bed to often because the tan is so intense.

 

[Guest]

Reunion Feedback

 

[Hotcappucino]

Your story line is very good and I really enjoyed seeing it unfold. You built a good background for your characters and they seemed very real. At the end, I felt you could have drawn out the erotic scene a little more, but it was still satisfying.

As was pointed out in an earlier message, a little sloppy with some omitted words and punctuation. The biggest problem, however (in my opinion), is the large number of run-on sentences. The run-ons are very disruptive to the flow of the story because they make me stop and go back to see how the sentence really should read.

I was smart and I did my work I was even kind of pretty if a little chubby.

After thinking about it a few days I went ahead and RSVP'd it was months away after all and if I changed my mind I could always just skip it.

I paused at the window to take in the town, little had changed the tallest building in town aside from the hotel was still the bank.

Everything had seemed so paramount and important back then, but when I looked back years later I realized I hadn't loved her, I'd clung to her because she was the first person who opened herself up to me in a sexual way.

Then I saw her there was no mistaking who she was.

should be:

I was smart and I did my work. I was even kind of pretty if a little chubby.

After thinking about it a few days I went ahead and RSVP'd. It was months away, after all, and if I changed my mind I could always just skip it.

I paused at the window to take in the town. Little had changed. The tallest building in town, aside from the hotel, was still the bank.

Everything had seemed so paramount and important back then, but when I looked back years later I realized I hadn't loved her. I'd clung to her because she was the first person who opened herself up to me in a sexual way.

Then I saw her. There was no mistaking who she was.

All in all a very nice story. Looking forward to hearing about Nora's background in Part 2.

 

[destinie21]

Re: Reunion Feedback

I did not pick up on Lena being being African American. Is that somewhere in this story or is she a recurring character from other posted stories? (Sorry I have not read them).

Also sent a PM.

Lime

It's not a big part of the story Lena being black.
It's eallt mentioned only in passing and her skin is listed as "caramel" which is a light brown.

Other than that I will "bone" up on the editing

 

[Chicklet]

1,882 dumb opinions

Hello Destinie,

I'm going to try to get through this without mentioning anything that anyone else has already said = ) Let's see if I can do it... Also, I’ve gone back after commenting on everything and tried to group similar suggestions together so you don’t get a lot of similar information dragged out of six ms word pages of crap…so…if stuff is in a weird order in the end, that’s why.

The opening paragraph to your story is great - it's quite a good grabber, something to drag the reader in. It made me smile, which is excellent, and made me want to read the rest of your story. Bravo. (It did really remind me of Ellen though...)

I see that Lime mentioned there being a "did" instead of "didn't" - I think sometimes when we're writing we easily skip over things like that, leaving words out, putting the wrong word in, and then if we re-read it to ourselves we just skip right over it because, as the author, we know what it's supposed to say.

I wasn't what you'd an attention magnet.

"You'd call an" or "you'd consider an" right? Just a missing word. Easily understandable, but absent nonetheless. Here's my suggestion (and I am a huge hypocrite in this way) while we read silently to ourselves, we read it how it's "supposed" to be, not how it "is" - if you try reading it out loud, maybe to your girlfriend, maybe to your cats, you find all the little mistakes you missed much easier.

In the end I decided to go to the reunion more out of curiosity than anything else does.

Huh? Does? = ) Just an extra word that needs chopping.

When I turned around I was face to face with one of the most beautiful woman I'd seen in a while.

women, right?

Another thing that I'm seeing consistently, not always a mistake, but sometimes annoying, are sentences that seem to need breaks but have none.

When Kylie Minouge still just wanted to do the locomotion Madonna didn't have her faux British accent and Alanis Morissette was still doing bubble gum pop instead of being all angst filled tormented.

This sentence seems very long and a little hard to read. Commas could help it out a lot. One after locomotion, one after British. Then you have a good, pausey sentence.

After thinking about it a few days I went ahead and RSVP'd it was months away after all and if I changed my mind I could always just skip it.

Nora like me had also been shy in high school.

Nora, like me, had also been shy in high school.

Her brown hair was cut just below her shoulder and her eyes, the color of warm chocolate were looking directly in to mine.

The words after the comma need to be their own disconnected little sentence...something that is relevant to the sentence you're writing but stands alone. "the color of warm chocolate." "Her eyes were looking directly in to mine." See, both parts work on their own. So what's the problem? Just the second comma...it's not there = ( You need a second comma after "chocolate" to complete the sentence.

I know HotCap already mentioned this little mistake. Just a jolt in the flow is all. He suggested a period, I just wanted to give you my two cents and say that even a semi-colon would have made me happy. Just some sort of pause in the sentence.

The first night there'd be a cocktail hour or some such thing at the Biltmore Country Club then a picnic the next day followed by a banquet that evening.

Instead of having the word "then" you could simply put a comma, making the sentence a list and giving it some pause. It's the last example of this I'm going to pull up, I promise = ) Again, these things would be best fixed by reading the story aloud. When you're not given a chance to read, you'll cross your eyes at your story and put in a couple commas.

I'd never really been in the closet, I'd always somehow known that I was a lesbian though I couldn't identify my feelings until I was in my early teens.

If the second part of this sentence dealt with the closet, then I would say the comma might be acceptable. As it is, the sentence sort of goes on an on-topic but still different turn. Therefore the comma should be a period.

She was my first "girlfriend"

Simple simple simple mistake - no period at the end of that sentence. I see this a lot in your story, places where the period was just accidentally left out. No biggie, I'm not even going to point it out again. You might want to go back and take a peek for yourself, though.

I looked back years later I realized I hadn't loved her, I'd clung to her because she was the first person who opened herself up to me in a sexual way.

That comma should be a period, the second half of the sentence should be a new sentence. Secondly, since you say "I'd" which is "I had" you need a "had" after who...it's about tense, I think...perfect, non-perfect, I don't really know. Feel free to ignore this suggestion since I don't know exactly what I'm talking about. She should have been the first person who "had" opened herself up.

Personal opinions: Sometimes I read something and I think “wow, that could have been so powerful if just worded differently.” So, I end up commenting on them. Here’s some examples of things I would * personally * have changed in your story - * you* don’t have to change them, it’s just something * I * would have done.

She had full lips that I irrationally wanted to kiss and dark Mediterranean skin that I wanted to run my tongue over.

I think that this sentence is extremely hot. Draw attention to the skin, draw attention to the mouth, draw attention to the lips and tongue. But I fear that the image of the tongue is lost in the last half...even though it's mentioned, it seems weak. Some ways you could work around it are to cut extra words out, cut bits out that don't need to be there, add words that make you think "yum." and dark Mediterranean skin that I longed to taste.

But she was also the daughter of a minister and the president of our senior class.

The "but" makes this sentence weaker. It could and should be a little eye-opening, make the reader go "uh-oh" and sort of feel for your main character. "Shoot, that main character's gonna be tiptoeing around her dad." Try it without the "but" - it's a lot more intense. "She was also the daughter of a minister." Let's even take it to another level. You can add lots of stuff to this. You don't mention the town except for how boring it is...make her the daughter of "the" minister. "She was also the only daughter of the minister, the president of our senior class, and the valedictorian." Okay now I'm taking it too far. Get rid of the "but."

The paragraph where the character is described hurt me, as well as the following description of her ensemble. I don't usually like such paragraphs because it seems like the author has to cram this whole description into a few sentences...and he or she always does. I don't like to get my information so quickly like that. I think it ought to be broken up, and I'm always grateful for the stories that leave some of it to the imagination. Your description is good, but it seems like too much. We don't need to know everything all at once...it seems so rushed, so crammed...I'm not going to go into specifics, just request that you re-read it and see what you think. Keep in mind that everything anyone ever tells you only matters if you agree.

Numbers in writing: Numbers are always a pet-peeve for me. People who use the symbols 1 and 2 etc instead of writing one or two or three...I've searched long and hard for different opinions and I've come up with a couple of my own. Any numbers under 100 should be written out - twenty-four. Six. Ninety-seven. Any over 100 should be symbolized - 124, 106, 197. Dates should always be symbols, addresses should always be symbols, and percentages I haven't decided but I think they should all be symbols. So there are a couple places where you break my imaginary rules! Damn you for not studying my version of english! = )

I couldn't decide what to feel She looked good in a Barbie doll kind of way but I didn't feel that sexual pull that I'd always acquainted with her.

First, probably just a typo - looks like there was supposed to be a period between those words. Even though every author makes that mistake at least six times in their story, you shall not be forgiven <kidding...in a silly mood...must be the hay fever> Secondly, I didn't feel that acquainted was the right word here. I could be wrong, my vocabulary leaves much to be desired, but I thought "associated" sounded a lot more natural.

Okay, the sex scene. It's hot, it's exciting...it's rushed. The paragraphs during this scene seemed quite long, quite large, quite full. Quite unnecessary. Imho, you could go through and make this scene a bit longer and easier to read by cutting those large paragraphs up. Keep in mind how hard it is to read those large paragraphs on literotica. Hurts the eyes, hurts the head...a lot of times I'll skip over the paragraphs that are hard to read, and in this case I would have missed the action!

Dialogue: A lot of authors make mistakes in dialogue. Sometimes people don't know what they're doing, sometimes they're too excited about getting to the action. Sometimes it just slips their minds, like it always does for me. In your story, you consistently miss the punctuation at the end of the spoken sentences.

"You don't look half bad yourself Lena, although I always thought you were pretty just the way you were"

Period.

"Thank you. You've always been sweet" I replied

Comma.

"Don't cry" I said.

Comma.

Curiosities: Lime mentioned confusion about brothers and sisters being strewn across the country - I sort of understand, but I'm curious about it. IMHO, comments of a mysterious nature like that should be left out unless there is a reason for an explanation. I would have advised you to refrain from mentioning any siblings at all unless they become important in the rest of the story. But I'm curious to understand, and hope you'll explain here = ) What's going to happen with the ex-girlfriend? I'm dying to know! AHHH! Where's the sequel!? = )

Very, very, very good story Destinie. Thank you for sharing it with us, and I hope that you're happy with the feedback you've been getting. The story is very well written, very in-depth, very interesting, and it's really left me on the edge of my seat. Good luck!

-Chicklet

 

[CrazyyAngel]

Ok ... now my two cents .

First of all ... very good story. Nice, slow start with a heated end. I can't wait to read the sequel.

Opposite to chicklet I liked the description part, but I can see her point.

The people before me have already pointed out a lot of mistakes, such as missing words. The punctuation or sometimes the lack of it is one of the bad points of this story. When read carefully you will find a lot of it, unfortunately. But I don't want to point out every single one of them right now, as some have been already pointed out.

But I have two points I don't quite understand.

RSVP'd

What exactly does that mean? I haven't heard that before.

She'd ended up dumping me and breaking my heart.

Doesn't this have to be She ended up dumping me and breaking my heart. ??

Apart from the mistakes it is a great story and I guess we are all waiting for the sequel.

CA

 

[destinie21]

Thank you all I'll be editing and resubmitting the story in a few days.

pS: CA rsvp stands for reservation protocol.

 

[CrazyyAngel]

pS: CA rsvp stands for reservation protocol.

Thanks for clearing this.

CA

 

[champagne1982]

[...]pS: CA rsvp stands for reservation protocol.

Actually, where I come from it is the initials for the request, in French, for a reply to the invitation.

RSVP = Respondez, S'il Vous Plait.

You generally RSVP to wedding and formal dinner invitations. It is a courtesy to the hosts, allowing them to plan the number of seated guests and purchase the appropriate amount of wine and servings.

 

[destinie21]

Actually, where I come from it is the initials for the request, in French, for a reply to the invitation.

RSVP = Respondez, S'il Vous Plait.

You generally RSVP to wedding and formal dinner invitations. It is a courtesy to the hosts, allowing them to plan the number of seated guests and purchase the appropriate amount of wine and servings.

Oh cool. We're saying the same thing but I like your version better. In the Us reservation protocol is to respond in the given amount of time. If you don't respond it is taken to mean you wont be in attendance.