Rising Storm Feedback, s'il vous plait?

[thicktimber]

I have enjoyed literotica for some time thanks to the stories you guys have contributed here. Awhile back I thought it was time to contribute something myself. Recently I posted the beginning of what may evolve into a multipart story. It's entitled I. Rising Storm, by thicktimber (me), and can be found here.

I would love to get some feedback from anyone, but especially experienced readers and writers more adept than I. I think I need to develop the characters more, which is my plan after the initial mostly-sex opener, but any feedback would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance for your time and consideration!

 

[driphoney]

I'm not experienced, so I'm not really who you want to hear from, but I read it.

I had to smile. You do a bang-up job on the part I struggle with. You had an entire Lit page crammed full of it.

I'm a horrible predictor, but I fear you might get a bit picked on for this dialogue:

"Oh my God . . . "
"Fuck!"
"Fuck!"
"Omigod . . . omigod . . . omigod!"

Now, my sex dialogue isn't much more verbose, I'm afraid, but that is your entire dialogue. The dialogue hounds are gonna get you.

The other thing they might not like is that you immediately jump into sex, then you spend all your time on sex with little in the way of character development.

But now for what I, personally, liked. I thought you had some really great bits of narrative. I'm not joking when I say you seemed to be able to create the graphic parts I struggle with. Some parts of your narrative were confusing, but nothing an editor couldn't fix.

Have you read any of the How To's here on Lit? You might want to give them a try. Here's a good one:

Writing Quality Sex Scenes

Hmm. I saw good ones while looking for that one that I need to go read . . .

Happy writing. It's a growth process (at least that's what I tell myself!) and as long as you enjoy, keep working on it.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

Yep. Driphoney pretty much covered it. You need to learn to build your story up to the fuck scene, spend some time letting the characters talk and tell their own story so we get to know them. That builds life into your characters and allows the reader to get to know and empathize with them.

But you made a good starte. Keep trying, you'll catch on.

 

[thicktimber]

Thank you very much for your thoughts. I agree with your point about the dialogue; that is a challenge for me. I have to laugh, though, thinking of my own real-life "dialogues" under those, er, compromising circumstances: I can't make any personal claims to being Shakespeare in bed! The link tip is great, too. It is nice to find such aids and to learn my way around literotica. I envisioned this as a multipart story from the beginning, and wanted to sort of explode into the sex for reasons to be developing in the second, more character-driven installment. But you're quite right: a few more kernals of indirect characterization might serve to satisfy the reader's mind more. Thanks again!

 

[angiefuch]

The initial description mixing singular and plural, Mouths and Kiss gave a poor start but it ws a good read, however it was too short, a vignette rather than a chapter, and I would find five or six of these frustrating

I would like to read the how and why in the next section, but would have preferred this to have been page two not Chapter two.

 

[thicktimber]

Useful comments all. My thanks! I have another question, though. I have extensively revised, adding dialogue as a means of indirect characterization, creating more of a narrative that establishes a basic situation and also--through thoughts and dialogue--reveals disparities between the characters' surfaces and their inner selves, eliminating the worst of my bad, almost non-existent dialogue. Is there a way I can update my story? Post my revision elsewhere for additional feedback? Or am I just relegated to submitting it as a new story (which, really, is what it has become).

 

[driphoney]

Um, there is a way to edit it and not submit as a new story. I've read how dozens of times and never have gotten my nerve up to do it (and I desperately need to!), but give it a day or two and someone will eventually drop by and 'splain it. I think it's also explained in the submission faq.

Have you looked for an editor? They're invaluable.

I'd read it for you, but I'm no editor or professional writer. Just pm me and I'll give you my email if you're that desperate for a reader you'll take anyone!

 

[poppy_cock]

Go here for the full gen. http://www.literotica.com/faq/05235347.shtml#05313767

Here's what it says though, to save you the trip.

I've re-edited my story and want to replace the posted version with my new edited one. How do I do this?

No problem! Simply submit the new version as you submitted the old one, only adding the word "EDITED" to the title (ex. "My Sexy Firefighter Ch. 03 - EDITED") so that we know to replace the old text with the new text. We will then replace the original text with the new text. Your story will retain its previous voting score and views.

But I'm wondering whether you might not be better off deleting the original and posting the edited version as a new story. You might get the odd "I've seen this before" comment but probably not. If you just edit the story, it's likely that few people will revisit the story to see the changes, at least, not until you upload another story and people go to see what else you've written.

So if I were you, I'd delete it, and then repost the story. To delete the story, you do the same as you do to edit it - except that after the title you put the word - DELETE (so as in the example above, you'd put "My Sexy Firefighter Ch. 03 - DELETE"). Just for good measure, you can put the words 'please delete' in the notes field.

It takes the same length of time for a story to be deleted or edited as it did to get approved in the first place, generally about 3 days.

Hope this helps.

 

[poppy_cock]

Um, there is a way to edit it and not submit as a new story. I've read how dozens of times and never have gotten my nerve up to do it

It works, honest. I've done it. You get to keep the number of reads and your votes, just as promised.

 

[Darkniciad]

If you delete/resubmit one story, or two, this might be okay. If you start reposting every story that you edit, people will start complaining -- and they're loud enough to make a difference. I've seen it happen.

It isn't really the people who've read the thing that you're worried about anyhow. It's the new people who go to the story upon finding something else of yours.

If it's fixing something because you need to for later chapters of a multi-part, then a note pointing back to the changed chapter in the new one is sufficient for previous readers. Always best to have the story finished before you start posting, but... ( guilty )

As to the timing for edits/deletes, that is accurate, but if you're established, you can see some quicker changes. I had six edited chapters ( word choice, etc ) of a story all go live at once, two days after I clicked the submit button on them. Stories were taking 5-7 days to go live at the time, too. I've seen similar day-early and multi-story turnarounds on edits.

If it's just a title/description edit or something, and you make that plain in the note section, I've seen those even turn next day. Probably a "rest my eyes for a minute while still being productive" thing for Laurel while approving stories. It's hardly anything to expect, but it's always a pleasant surprise when it happens.

One thing that I always bring up when the subject of editing existing stories pops up:

Go to the first page of your story on the site. Copy the number at the end of the url in the browser address bar. That is the unique Lit ID# for your story/chapter. Adding that to the notes section leaves no question about what story you're editing.

My suggestion on the "Help us improve!" tab on the site was to allow us to click the "approved" link and bring up all the information for the story, as it currently exists, and then automatically generate an "edited" submission upon making changes and clicking submit. That would be a nice little feature when you find one lousy missing word/letter in the story that needs changing. Go to the text, fix it, hit submit.

Much quicker than the current method, and far less confusing for those who aren't familiar with the process.

But I'm wondering whether you might not be better off deleting the original and posting the edited version as a new story. You might get the odd "I've seen this before" comment but probably not. If you just edit the story, it's likely that few people will revisit the story to see the changes, at least, not until you upload another story and people go to see what else you've written.

So if I were you, I'd delete it, and then repost the story. To delete the story, you do the same as you do to edit it - except that after the title you put the word - DELETE (so as in the example above, you'd put "My Sexy Firefighter Ch. 03 - DELETE"). Just for good measure, you can put the words 'please delete' in the notes field.

It takes the same length of time for a story to be deleted or edited as it did to get approved in the first place, generally about 3 days.

Hope this helps.

 

[thicktimber]

Many thanks again; you guys are awesome. Here is my extensively revised v2. Have I made any progress?