Rise of the Bubblegum Princess

[Cobaltofdark]

Hey just got my first story published super excited if you have time cause it's long plz read I would love to hear what I could do to improve.
https://literotica.com/s/rise-of-the-bubblegum-princess

 

[Bramblethorn]

Advance warning that this feedback is going to be pretty negative.

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The story begins by giving a playlist of about 18 songs, and then gives musical directions throughout like so:

Cobalt glances over to the calendar, frowns at the loss of a week, grunts, and pulls her shirt off before stomping to the bathroom, tossing her shirt into the void of her room's floor. *let no rest for the wicked finish playing*

*Play: Long Long Way To Go, Phil Collins*

This approach is better suited to a movie than to a text story.

When I read a story here, I'm here to read a story. Not to take time out to go set up a playlist and then click through that playlist as I read.

Also, not everybody reads at the same speed. If I were to do the playlist-while-reading thing, I'd be switching tracks every twenty seconds or so, and I'm not sure the first twenty seconds of each of those songs is going to convey the kind of emotion you're aiming for.

---

You begin the story proper with an in media res approach: straight into the action without explanation, leaving readers to figure out what's happening as it goes. This can be a powerful technique, but it needs to be handled carefully or it just gets confusing, which is what happened for me here.

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Sabine sits at her desk in her room. Her purple spiky hair is cut in a pixie style, her blue eyes are that sky blue you see. She always feels self-conscious about her A-cup chest, you know, flat as a board.

But I don't see, I don't know. If you just mean "sky blue", just say "sky blue", but I don't know what "you see" is meant to add here.

Also: is "self-conscious about her tits" really the one thing I need to know about Sabine's personality? It doesn't seem to be relevant anywhere else in the story, and when it gets sexual she doesn't show signs of insecurity.

---

The story had a LOT of grammatical/formatting issues: tense shifts mid-sentence, random paragraph breaks mid-sentence, missing quotes and full stops. I'm not an English teacher and every story has a few errors, but too many and it gets hard to focus on the story.

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Sabine opens the door to Cobalt's room. To say Cobalt is stunning would be an understatement. Her long black hair is striped with baby blue streaks, somehow it's natural, and her green eyes are like emerald fire.

"Somehow it's natural" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

Let's not overlook the perky B-cup she's sporting. To say it is a mess is to grossly underestimate the mess. It is more like a wasteland of empty liquor bottles and pizza boxes with a sprinkling of clothes!

So... Cobalt's B-cup is a wasteland of empty bottles, pizza boxes and clothes?

That's not what you mean to tell me, but it's what you've said. Paragraphs are meant to contain related ideas. Here's one way to make it clearer:

Sabine opens the door to Cobalt's room. To say Cobalt is stunning would be an understatement. Her long black hair is striped with baby blue streaks, somehow it's natural, and her green eyes are like emerald fire. And let's not overlook the perky B-cup she's sporting.

But her room... to say it is a mess is to grossly underestimate the mess. It is more like a wasteland of empty liquor bottles and pizza boxes with a sprinkling of clothes!

---

A memory of her first time meeting Sabine bubbles up from deep in Cobalt's memory. It is foggy, not clear like other memories, as if it is, and yet isn't, her memory pushing through the fog. The memory plays out as she remembers it.

...

Her attire looks like a one-piece bathing suit adorned with a sash and different metal workings of her clan's art. Cobalt stands there, biting her lip, nervous that the person she will be aibo with is not going to be a good fit.

This is the bit where I thought "okay, maybe we're finally getting some context on who these people are and what they're about". But ... what is an "aibo"? The only "aibo" I know is the robotic dogs that were popular about twenty years ago. From that, I can guess that maybe this is a Japanese word for "companion" or something like that, but it doesn't need to be this much of a guessing game.

Also, the bolded sentence is really unclear.

As the young warrior stands by her mother, the Queen of the Kodachi, she catches her first glimpse of the purple-haired vixen named Sabine, and that day, Cobalt's heart skipped a beat that it never found.

At that moment, a spot in her heart was made for this purple-haired, blue-eyed girl named Sabine.

I like the imagery of "skipped a beat that it never found", but it's easier to appreciate that kind of thing without a random tense shift in the middle of the sentence: "stands", "catches" vs. "skipped".

You probably don't need to say "purple-haired [person] named Sabine" twice in two successive sentences.

Sabine groups Cobalt's soaped-up B-cup breasts and begins to gently massage and pinch her nipples.

I think you meant "gropes" not "groups" here.

Different readers have different opinions about this, but for me, describing breasts in terms of cup size makes me feel like I'm reading Letters To Penthouse. Maybe do it once, but after that look for some different ways to describe them.

The two buxom beauties saunter into the spa, much to Cobalt's trepidation, as if she were entering her worst nightmare come true.

I'm having real difficulty visualising how somebody can be "buxom" while also "flat as a board", or even a B-cup.

 

[Cobaltofdark]

Advance warning that this feedback is going to be pretty negative.

---

The story begins by giving a playlist of about 18 songs, and then gives musical directions throughout like so:



This approach is better suited to a movie than to a text story.

When I read a story here, I'm here to read a story. Not to take time out to go set up a playlist and then click through that playlist as I read.

Also, not everybody reads at the same speed. If I were to do the playlist-while-reading thing, I'd be switching tracks every twenty seconds or so, and I'm not sure the first twenty seconds of each of those songs is going to convey the kind of emotion you're aiming for.

---

You begin the story proper with an in media res approach: straight into the action without explanation, leaving readers to figure out what's happening as it goes. This can be a powerful technique, but it needs to be handled carefully or it just gets confusing, which is what happened for me here.

---

But I don't see, I don't know. If you just mean "sky blue", just say "sky blue", but I don't know what "you see" is meant to add here.

Also: is "self-conscious about her tits" really the one thing I need to know about Sabine's personality? It doesn't seem to be relevant anywhere else in the story, and when it gets sexual she doesn't show signs of insecurity.

---

The story had a LOT of grammatical/formatting issues: tense shifts mid-sentence, random paragraph breaks mid-sentence, missing quotes and full stops. I'm not an English teacher and every story has a few errors, but too many and it gets hard to focus on the story.

---

"Somehow it's natural" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.



So... Cobalt's B-cup is a wasteland of empty bottles, pizza boxes and clothes?

That's not what you mean to tell me, but it's what you've said. Paragraphs are meant to contain related ideas. Here's one way to make it clearer:

---

This is the bit where I thought "okay, maybe we're finally getting some context on who these people are and what they're about". But ... what is an "aibo"? The only "aibo" I know is the robotic dogs that were popular about twenty years ago. From that, I can guess that maybe this is a Japanese word for "companion" or something like that, but it doesn't need to be this much of a guessing game.

Also, the bolded sentence is really unclear.



I like the imagery of "skipped a beat that it never found", but it's easier to appreciate that kind of thing without a random tense shift in the middle of the sentence: "stands", "catches" vs. "skipped".

You probably don't need to say "purple-haired [person] named Sabine" twice in two successive sentences.



I think you meant "gropes" not "groups" here.

Different readers have different opinions about this, but for me, describing breasts in terms of cup size makes me feel like I'm reading Letters To Penthouse. Maybe do it once, but after that look for some different ways to describe them.



I'm having real difficulty visualising how somebody can be "buxom" while also "flat as a board", or even a B-cup.

Thankyou yes my first attempt had issues but I'm still proud and took the suggestions to heart. So thank you for taking the time to give such a detailed list.

 

[Cobaltofdark]

So part 2 and so we fight is up as well as the 3rd part of the main story line.
I've also written the first 2 parts of the prequel as well plz enjoy.