So you want feedback

[karmadog]

I'll take five stories to give feedback to.

Here are some of the rules:

If you didn't edit well, forget it. I won't bitch about the occasional error, but they better not be in the first para

No incest

No rape

No bestiality

No gay male (not that there's anything wrong with that. I just won't get it)

No scat or golden showers

No nonconsent or mind control

There may be more things I won't read, but if I won't, I'll say so.

What am I looking for?

Ambitious writing. If you think the average stroke reader won't like what you wrote, I might be interested. If you think that you wrote something that transcends erotica, well, there you go.

I will commit to critiquing five stories, and five stories only. Anyone who submits their story to this thread should expect harsh criticism. I may not be nice. Keep in mind that I'm a Red Wings fan and my team is in serious trouble. I am in a bad mood. I'd like to think that I won't hold that against the world, but I wouldn't bet on it.

In any case, I will not be gentle and whatever I say may be public. I haven't decided on that.

If you see five stories submitted for critique on this thread, don't bother to list yours. I'll ignore it.

Again, I am looking for a story, not a vignette.

Be afraid, be very afraid. I am.

 

[karmadog]

I should also have mentioned that no one should take an ugly review personally.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

As soon as I finish my first story I'm sending it to you. It's in one of your no-no categories but I don't care.

 

[Frederick Carol]

I'll give you a choice. Either I'll just borrow Matt, sweetheart or Widow, wet and willing

Feedback on both has been poor, especially 'Widow'. I'd be curious about your views on either, although I have a mild preference for 'Widow'.

FC

 

[jfinn]

I'll take five stories to give feedback to.

...Anyone who submits their story to this thread should expect harsh criticism. I may not be nice. Keep in mind that I'm a Red Wings fan and my team is in serious trouble. I am in a bad mood. I'd like to think that I won't hold that against the world, but I wouldn't bet on it.

In any case, I will not be gentle and whatever I say may be public. I haven't decided on that.

Be afraid, be very afraid. I am.

Sure why not. I'm feeling brave today and since I totally understand your pain about Yzerman and the boys, (Don't you wish you could do a little duck hunting right now?) I don't mind a bit if you use me to work off some aggression.

So do your worst. Chasing Fire .

Jayne

 

[johngalt47]

Feedback

I'll give you a choice. Either I'll just borrow Matt, sweetheart or Widow, wet and willing

I just read both stories and I much preferred MATT to WIDOW.

The difference is the story development and building tension. In WIDOW, the plot, as I see it, is
Boy: Let's Fuck
Girl: OK

Although many of my male friends, especially in high school, assured me that this happens all the time, I have been unable to verify this in over 50 years.

 

[oggbashan]

How about a nice long story ...

I would appreciate feedback on one of my longer stories which is 6 lit pages.

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=56410 Harold Plays the Hero

I wrote it to amuse a friend who was bed-ridden after an accident.

I have been reluctant to revisit it because I wrote it in a couple of frantic days.

I want to continue to use the characters but I think there is scope for improvement to the first story.

You wanted a challenge? I think Harold is a story, but not necessarily a Literotica story.

Og

 

[TheEarl]

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=85100 - From A Boeing 747

Publically abuse me away. My life's going well at the moment and I think I'm far too happy for everyone's general wellbeing. You really need to take one of my favourite stories apart to take me down a peg or two.

The Earl

 

[Frederick Carol]

Whoa!

In view of johngalt47's comment, make it I'll just borrow Matt, sweetheart.

I just read them both again myself. I think he's right!

FC

 

[karmadog]

I'll get started on those reviews/feedback in the next day or two. I haven't forgotten.

Og, yours will take longer. You were not kidding when you said it was lengthy.

Plus, if the Wings win tonight, I'll be in a better mood. On the other hand, they might lose, in which case I'll be in the depths of despair and rage.

 

[jfinn]

Plus, if the Wings win tonight, I'll be in a better mood. On the other hand, they might lose, in which case I'll be in the depths of despair and rage.

Let's all pray for the Wings.

Jayne

 

[DurtGurl]

Tryeing for feedback and voats

None of my storeys have been poasted yet, but this is what I put at the bottom:

__________________________________
Don't forget to send nice comments and votes to get your name in the hat for the monthly drawing for a blow job. DurtGurl gos both ways so lady's are welcome too.

___________________________________

If any of my storeys ever gets poasted; Il'l let you know how it works.
DG

 

[DurtGurl]

Re: Tryeing for feedback and voats

Don't forget to send nice comments and votes to get your name in the hat for the monthly drawing for a blow job. DurtGurl gos both ways so lady's are welcome too.

Gosh, why didn't I think of that?
MG

 

[MathGirl]

Oops.........

Oops, wrong persona.

What I meant was, "Gosh, why didn't I think of that?"
MG

 

[oggbashan]

I'll get started on those reviews/feedback in the next day or two. I haven't forgotten.

Og, yours will take longer. You were not kidding when you said it was lengthy.

I never kid when I describe my stories. Harold, although long, is only the beginning of a projected trilogy that is nested inside my chef d'oeuvre "The Silverbridge Chronicles".

The Chronicles are now projected to run to more than 100k words of which only about 60k exist. They will be a challenge to write comments on and an endurance test for the two readers that I am writing them for.

Og.

 

[jfinn]

Plus, if the Wings win tonight, I'll be in a better mood. On the other hand, they might lose, in which case I'll be in the depths of despair and rage.

Final
Red Wings 2
Mighty Ducks 3


Uh oh.

Jayne

 

[Just-Legal]

[B...Publically abuse me away. My life's going well at the moment and I think I'm far too happy for everyone's general wellbeing. You really need to take one of my favourite stories apart to take me down a peg or two... [/B]

Earl, you just know you're life's gonna nosedive when you make comments like that...

*nicks a few of Earls pegs anyway*

*is still editing stuffies...* I'll get something up for you to read Karma Dog... Just might not be any time soon...

 

[Ginger_grl]

I'll take five stories to give feedback to.

Here are some of the rules:

If you didn't edit well, forget it. I won't bitch about the occasional error, but they better not be in the first para

No incest

No rape

No bestiality

No gay male (not that there's anything wrong with that. I just won't get it)

No scat or golden showers

No nonconsent or mind control

There may be more things I won't read, but if I won't, I'll say so.

What am I looking for?

Ambitious writing. If you think the average stroke reader won't like what you wrote, I might be interested. If you think that you wrote something that transcends erotica, well, there you go.

I will commit to critiquing five stories, and five stories only. Anyone who submits their story to this thread should expect harsh criticism. I may not be nice. Keep in mind that I'm a Red Wings fan and my team is in serious trouble. I am in a bad mood. I'd like to think that I won't hold that against the world, but I wouldn't bet on it.

In any case, I will not be gentle and whatever I say may be public. I haven't decided on that.

If you see five stories submitted for critique on this thread, don't bother to list yours. I'll ignore it.

Again, I am looking for a story, not a vignette.

Be afraid, be very afraid. I am.

Seems I poked my nose in to this thread just a tad too late, as I see 5 stories already queing for your attention. I shall pop my story on the next time you're feeling generous.

Cheers

 

[TheEarl]

Ginger grl: The next time he's feeling generous? Good luck. <sees KD's slamming of his story go up another notch>

The Earl

 

[karmadog]

One dog's opinion

Well, the Wings let me down something fierce, so I let some time go by before I started these things, but here goes.

First up is I’ll Just Borrow Matt, Sweetheart by Frederick Carol.

Mr. Carol was in a bit of trouble from the start as I had a no incest clause listed above. While no family members actually have sex in this story, there is some remarkably foolish behavior between a mother and a daughter.

Setting that aside for the moment, let’s look at the first couple of paras:

Anne Evans looked across at her daughter Kathy, sitting at the other end of the couch. "Anything that you actually want to watch on TV?" she asked.

Kathy raised her eyes from her magazine and shook her head. "Not for me, Mom. Switch it off if you want."

Anne rummaged for the remote and switched off the TV, then picked up her photography magazine again. She sat for a while, aware that Kathy was getting increasingly fidgety. Eventually Kathy took a deep breath.

I’m not interested in this story. If I hadn’t promised to read this story, I wouldn’t have. There is no hint of imagination or interesting character traits, or interesting dialogue. Just a couple of females sitting around watching television and reading magazines. Try to grab your reader in the paragraph if not the first line.

By contrast, in Mr. Carol’s other story there is a character named Phillippa, or Flip for short, in the first or second para. Now that interested me. I think that nickname is clever. It makes me think that the author might take me somewhere interesting, might show me something new.

Then we have this bit of dialogue. Kathy has just informed her mother that she has lost her virginity.

"Well, I'm glad it was good, but did you use protection?" she asked. "A grandchild at thirty-nine I do not want!" she said, laughing.

Kathy grinned at her mother. "Yes, Mom, we did. I would have insisted, but Matt was ahead of me. Mom, can I go on the pill? It's got to be better without a rubber!"

"It is. And yes, you can. I'll make an appointment for you to see Doctor Quinn, I know you like her."

Now, I’m not one of those people who thinks that condoms are a necessary part of erotica, in fact, I’m fairly indifferent to the question, but if this passage is supposed to convince me that Anne is a responsible mother, well that’s going to be a tough row to hoe. She’s thirty-nine but seems completely ignorant to the possibility of disease? Consistency in your characters is a crucial part of making them seem believable.

Better to have left the birth control issue out entirely. Particularly since when Anne sleeps with Matt, she seems completely unconcerned with the possibility of getting pregnant herself. Nor does Matt seem to have the consideration to use a rubber with Anne as he did with Kathy. Again, no consistency. These are not characters, they are simply puppets being maneuvered into various sexual positions.

I’ll leave out the fact that I cannot picture a mother and daughter having some of the conversations in this story, let alone the shaving scene. Perhaps they could have been pulled off if the characters had been believable.

Often a writer has his characters and scenes so well imagined that he forgets that his readers are meeting these people and exploring these places for the first time. This may be what happened here.

Another difficulty is that the dialogue often rings false. Matt, an eighteen year old boy, describes Anne as ‘one of the most desirable women he’ knows. Does anybody know an eighteen year old who would say that? I don’t.

Having said all those horrible things, I’ll also say that there are few grammatical errors, no spelling errors that I noticed, and in places the writing flows very nicely. Mr. Carol did a fine job of varying his sentence length and structure so that the writing does not get dull.

There were other difficulties, but from reading comments on the boards, I'll assume they're just my personal peeves or maybe the result of that fucker Giguere getting in my head.

Next up is 'Chasing Fire' by jfinn.

 

[jfinn]

Re: One dog's opinion

Next up is 'Chasing Fire' by jfinn.

And here I thought this was going to be a good day.

Jayne

 

[karmadog]

Looks like jfinn got lucky. The Pistons won tonight! Woo hoo!

Seriously, I’d already read the story, so my impressions were already set.

On to Chasing Fire by jfinn.

The finn opens with a couple of nice paras to set the scene. Look at this:

San Francisco is a city obsessed with fire. It has good reason. It's a town made of wood. Building after building of frame crowd close to each other. Up and down steep hills they jostle for space. When one of them burns it's not just a question of whether you can save it, but whether you can save any.

I got a real sense of what the place was like. I can picture the houses crowded together in the rolling hills. This is a nice way to pull the reader into the story.

The finn also gives unexpected details about her character, Anna.

After rescuing a pair of shoes from her dog :

He'd already destroyed one pair this week. Sure they were old, but they'd been Caovilla's for god's sake. Bought in the good old days when crowding six roommates into one small apartment had been hell on your nerves, but great for your budget and the occasional splurge.

I don’t know exactly what Caovilla’s are, but I can assume that they are expensive shoes. Just this short paragraph gives us some insight into Anna’s past, but does so in a subtle way.

Even the description of the onlookers at the fire is well done. Each individual described is easy to picture and even understand, in a small way.

A young man and a woman holding a sleeping toddler stood close together as they strained to see what was happening. An old lady with curlers in her hair stood in a quilted pink silk robe clutching a snakeskin purse. Her glasses reflected the fire and her lips trembled as she licked them excitedly - it was obvious it wasn't her house burning.

Little details like this help the reader to inhabit the story and show that the author thought carefully about what she was doing.

The plot also has a pretty good twist, but I won’t give that away here. All in all, a good story.

But there are problems.

For instance, there are probably too many heat, fire, flame metaphors going on. These are pretty stale to begin with, but when we have sex at a fire with a fireman… Well, it can be a bit much.

When Anna uses the word ‘spunk’ it feels a little off to me, but who knows? The author is female and she used it, so why not?

And there are a couple of times where a word is repeated in successive paras. Another edit might have caught that. But with the exception of the overused fire metaphors, these are quibbles.

Great job, jfinn.

TheEarl is next.

 

[jfinn]

Looks like jfinn got lucky. The Pistons won tonight! Woo hoo!

I don’t know exactly what Caovilla’s are, but I can assume that they are expensive shoes. Just this short paragraph gives us some insight into Anna’s past, but does so in a subtle way.

Little details like this help the reader to inhabit the story and show that the author thought carefully about what she was doing.

The plot also has a pretty good twist, but I won’t give that away here. All in all, a good story.

But there are problems.

For instance, there are probably too many heat, fire, flame metaphors going on. These are pretty stale to begin with, but when we have sex at a fire with a fireman… Well, it can be a bit much.

When Anna uses the word ‘spunk’ it feels a little off to me, but who knows? The author is female and she used it, so why not?

And there are a couple of times where a word is repeated in successive paras. Another edit might have caught that. But with the exception of the overused fire metaphors, these are quibbles.

Great job, jfinn.

TheEarl is next.

All I can say is thank god for the Pistons.

No seriously thanks KD, I appreciate all of your comments, especially the critical ones. After all, that's how you get better at this stuff, right?

Caovilla's are incredibly expensive shoes by the way. A pair can easily cost 500 bucks. If I were Anna that dog wouldn't have had any teeth left after using them for a chew toy.

You're right about the editing, even though I think I did about seventy rewrites before I posted and I had an alpha reader look at it a half a dozen times. It's amazing isn't it how you can overlook things even after all that. What I should do is put the thing aside for a couple of weeks and then go back for a final edit, but I have no willpower. Once it's done I want it posted.

Using the word spunk was a mistake too. I should have picked up on that. I write male/male stories as well as male/female and those stories are a little more raw than this should be. The term would be perfect for those, but not here. I'll probably change it to cream or something.

As for your biggest complaint. I see your point, but at the same time the fire is the allegory for the story. I'll look through it though and see if I can tone it down or at least see if I can't come up with some fresher material.

Finally thank you so much for the compliments on the descriptions. Personally I've always liked them in a story myself, but I'm never sure if I go overboard with them and it's good to know they worked here.

Jayne

 

[Frederick Carol]

Ouch, that stung!

Many thanks, karmadog, for a thoughtful and thought-provoking analysis of my tale. Suitably chastened I slink away to lick my wounds.

Your points are well made, particularly that of the characters being well known to me. They are, Matt and Kathy having already appeared in the five parts of Change of Plan. That is, of course, no excuse for not fleshing them out in a separate stand-alone story and for that I must apologise. The point will be borne in mind.

I have no argument with your other comments. In fact, I will cut-and-paste them into the folder with my other hints, tools, analysis and criticisms in the hope that one day I might become the writer I'd like to be.

Thanks again.

 

[Guest]

I should also have mentioned that no one should take an ugly review personally.

lol, well, writing is personal for most authors.
btw, are you planning to annex more rules as to what you will or wont review, like no lesbian sex, no threesomes, no older women, etc.?