Sorry! A request for feedback

[emisweetie]

Hello all,

Sorry to be a pain, but the feedback given in here is always very insightful and interesting, so I'm back again. I have a new story up which is doing fairly well, "A rainy day in Rosaton".

www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=152434

It's in the mature section, is a little dark, and the description of actual sex is fairly minimal. If you're one of those people who enjoys giving feedback please take a look, I'd be grateful for any advice.

Thank you muchly,

Emisweetie

 

[MLyons]

Hello there, emisweetie,

I read your story.

This is a tricky one for me, and I'm afraid a lot of what I say is going to come down to personal taste, so you can take it or leave it.

The writing was fine, and you did an admirable job with the first person when it came to describing Philip and his reactions in the first half of the story. I was certainly wondering and trying to figure out in my head what he might be thinking, but as the story progressed, I found it more difficult. The fact that I was able to come up with some theories without you blatently telling me meant you did a pretty good job there. 1st person can be a little tricky that way.

Given that, the first quarter of the story was a bit confusing, but the events unfolded as they should. As a reader, you're supposed to be a little confused and become less so as the story progresses, but to tell you the truth, it might have been a bit too much. If I wasn't reading it for the purpose of giving feedback, I might have stopped after the first couple paragraphs out of lack of interest. I wanted some more intrigue right off the bat, but again, I'm sure others will have differing opinions about that.

Once the conversation between the characters got into full tilt though, I started to really get interested. For me (as an incurable leg man) this was, by far the best part of the story. I was shivering at this point:

I rolled over onto my stomach, reached across to the coffee table stubbing out my cigarette on a tray. My long legs stretched out over the sofa, muscles tight, held together. The tiny skirt had ridden up, only just covering the space where tight thighs became firm, swollen cheeks. I knew Philip's eyes would be lying somewhere between there and my little white socks, somewhere on my long, deliciously slender white skin.

That just got me where it hurts! It's very nice description, and although a TINY bit of license was taken there with the 1st person point of view, I didn't care. That just drove me wild. It's not too blatant, leaving enough to the imagination, and it's not overly flowery where the language can get in the way. There's a promise of things to come there. I really liked it, and that is only one example of several that I could cite.

Then, however the story took a bit of a unsavory turn for me. I DO like dark stories like this, but for some reason, it rubbed me the wrong way anyway. First of all, there is some believability issue with her being a virgin. If she really was a virgin, and hadn't had sex, or at least a felt a dildo, I really have a hard time believing that she would be so willing to give it up to this guy, without at least SOME thought given to how he would feel inside her. I did like the idea of her discovering her power over men, and that was one of it's most interesting aspects, but the whole story just seemed to race along so quickly-only glancing past the best parts, and then settling on a rather unsatisfying outcome.

Overall, I was a little disappointed, because even though its a dark story, and meant to be that way, aside from her great teasing, there didn't really seem to be any celebration of sex here. I'm not saying that both characters have to like what's going on, but I didn't get the impression that EITHER of them did... so they were basically both just going through the motions. What I was missing as the reader was something that indicated the writer's PASSION for what they were writing about. Non-consentual themed stuff can have that just as much as erotic couplings can, and it's not so much a matter of happy happy joy joy for all the characters... it's a matter of what is Philip, for example, getting out of this. He just seems like a very bitter and nasty person. I'd be ok with that if I felt like he was at least enjoying his power over these women, but to me it just comes across as empty, and without a reason--almost as if he could just as easily be fucking the ugliest woman on earth--it's just something he has to do, and he gets no satisfaction from it.

Now mind you... I'm not saying that's what you intended to do, and there are certain clues in the writing that suggest that Philip does enjoy what he's doing to her and her family, but I guess I just don't BELIEVE it.

All in all, I was wishing for much more. Much more story, much more tease, much more context and much more character. That is probably just a personal preference, but this one had interesting potential to me, and I wouldn't have spent the time to give you feedback if I didn't feel that way.

One last thing is that I felt some of the dialogue was just a tad stiff. Dialogue is very difficult to write, and you did a good job. It just seemed a little flat in places to me.

Again, take it or leave it. You had your own reasons for writing it and I don't want to belittle that at all. It's just the thoughts I had while I read it, and they won't necessarily be true for... almost everyone else I dare say.

Hope this was in some way helpful.

 

[MLyons]

I also forgot to mention another thing I liked about her teasing and such. It created tension. To me, tension in erotic stories is paramount, and too few stories actually have it. By the time the true nature of Philip was revealed though, the tension in the story had practically ebbed away to nothing, which I suppose might be a more accurate justification for my overall disappointemnt in it.

Anyway, I thought that was important to add.

 

[eric shawn listo]

Your writing is very good here. (clothes spelt cothes, typo) I too liked the tease she had in the beginning. And I enjoyed the twist in the end (so to speak) The condom took me out of it a bit--any time we're dragged back into reality is tricky. I think maybe if you had extended the end--maybe made the second time they screwed more explicit it would have helped. Or switch to oral sex. Maybe Philip forcing her to fellate him. Just a suggestion--its your story and works well the way it is!

esl

eric shawn listo's erotic stories listed

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I thought it was a great story, one of the better things I’ve ever read on Lit. The plot was wonderfully diabolical while seeming very plausible, and a brilliant twist on the usual mother-daughter happy threesome that’s the standard on literotica. Best of all, these people had feelings and motivations and weren’t just a bunch of mindless fuck-dummies. You rarely see characterization of this depth on Lit, and it was a pleasure.

Not to say it didn’t have its weak points (or what’s a critic for?):

I think her motivation should have come out right at the start. Since she’s telling the story, she certainly knows why she went over there in the first place, which was to seduce him, so we should have been in on it at the start. If it was just a spur-of-the-moment decision on her part, then that should have been made clearer, but it looks to me like she went over there with the sole purpose of seducing him. Either way, hiding her initial motivation under the story she tells us of being locked out of the house makesthe beginning seem muddy and confusing and gives the story it’s most unbelievable moment: her sudden switch from innocent neighbor to seductive vamp. It’s just hard to believe that she was really seeking shelter from the rain one moment and rolling around like a cat in heat the next.

Having her motives laid out at the start would have helped clarify the action at the beginng too. The start of the story seemed kind of shaky to me, the action being spaced out too widely by the demands of presenting her background information. Also, you know how at the start of a story you're reading and asking yourself, "Okay. Now just what's going on here?" Well, in this story it takes a little too long to answer that question. She knows why she's there. We should know too.

I think it would have helped too if you’d painted a clearer physical picture of him from the start. For some reason, I had the feeling that he was an elderly neighbor. (Maybe it was the way he looked nervously up and down the street when she knocked, or his tidy, almost spartan room.) But because I thought he was a geezer, it wasn't until she talking about the gray in his hair that I realized his age. I’d thought he was some sort of senior citizen.

Personally, I find confrontations like the seduction among the hardest things to write. It’s very hard to get the pacing and the interplay just right, and I don’t think you quite got it here. She turns it on way too fast, especially for an inexperienced 19 year-old. I understand that a lot of readers find that very sexy (I read the comments) and it is, but I just had a hard time accepting a girl taking command of an older man with such self-assurance and confidence.

The last thing I missed was a stronger ending. This is basically a fade-out, and I couldn’t help but wonder about what changes this encounter had caused in this girl. It seems to me that she would have either come away either very much empowered, or been made a kind of slave to this man. I could buy either one, but one thing is certain: she’s not going back to the same house that she left in the morning. Things have changed and radically.

But I thought it was a very good story. Very impressive.

---dr.M.

 

[Rainbow Skin]

very well done. I'd agree with much of what's been said: the introduction a little too secretive, though re-reading it does show that there were lots of ambiguous clues in it. Dialogue a little stiff. The pace of it very slightly too fast. But these are details of shading in a masterly and sure story-telling.

I like realism and think condoms should be in there if that's what really happened, but this one just appeared in his hand from... the back of the sofa? Next to the lighted stick of dynamite à la cartoon? It struck an odd note that it wasn't seamlessly explained.

 

[emisweetie]

Thankyou

Thankyou to all four of you, each piece of feedback was again very helpful and very fair I think. She did go to his house to seduce him, but having re-read the story I guess that point wasn't as clear as it should have been.

I'd also agree the background information at the start did slow the story down, there were probably a lot of people who stopped reading after the first few paragraphs. Originally, there had been much more dialogue but it was all a bit stale so I dropped it.

As for the thing about the condom, I threw it in at the end because I've been getting a lot of nasty feedback about how I deserve to die from aids for not making the sex safe. I'm not sure how I feel about it. The stories are of course fantasies and a condom does bring an unwelcome shot of reality into them, but a lot of people seem to feel quite strongly that they be included. I made a mistake by just throwing it in, it should have been more detailed, or left out entirely, I'm just not sure which.

Anyway, thankyou again, I think each of your advice will help me with the next story I write.

Emisweetie