Story Discussion: 11/24/10 Accidental Delivery

[Acal]

Story Discussion: 11/24/10: "Accidental Delivery" by Acal

Before writing this I had this crazy idea flying around. You've likely heard of the situation before, where a private and often naughty message gets sent viral instead of where it was meant to go. Well here I have Marie she's got a major crush on one of her colleagues, absentmindedly she attaches the wrong file and emails it to him.

The file contains a very erotic fantasy of her tying him up and having her way with him. Instead of course the contract document he was supposed to have received...

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4
Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8

And I just want to know what everybody thinks, where it can be improved.

 

[kuellar]

Hi Acal, I enjoyed your story - thanks for sharing it! Let me preface this post by saying that I'm new to all this. I figure the best way to get involved is to jump right in and contribute, but please let me know if I'm doing something wrong or something that's frowned upon.

You ask for thoughts on the story, and where it can be improved: I've divided my thoughts into two sections. The "Technical" section deals with technical improvements that I think can be made; the "General" section deals with my general thoughts on the story and general improvements to the plot, etc.

===Technical===

- Speech tags.
I would suggest being stingy: for example, in the first page when Marie has just realised she sent the wrong file and calls on Kelly in a panic - every bit of speech ends in a "she said" or "she asked" or "she whispered". Some (most?) of these are really unnecessary and I think they disrupt the flow of the scene. I noticed this pretty much throughout the story. Then again, others may not notice this so much - it might be worthwhile getting a second opinion.

- Punctuation.
Several of your sentences seem to run on a little bit, and I think they could do with some punctuational pacing.

"She saw her best friend Kelly Torres walking past she needed to get this out before she had a meltdown"; and

"You murmur something I can't quite make out as you leave a kiss on my neck and wrap your arms around me before you slide off to sleep" are two examples.

- Sentence structure and description.
Compare:
"She grabbed her evening bag and purse off the kitchen table and walked out to the door and opened it. She just about drooled at the sight of him. He was wearing a black suit with a mocha coffee shirt that seemed to ripple in the light."

With:
"She snatched her evening bag and purse off the kitchen table, and hurried to the door. He looked amazing! Black suit, with a mocha coffee shirt that seemed to ripple in the light; his hair neatly combed, his eyes sparkling, and that smile... she just about drooled at the sight."

Okay, so my example wasn't great, and I probably used the semi-colon wrongly But hopefully you get the idea: rather than having all the sentences follow the same structure, I believe you can increase the impact by changing it up a bit, making things expressive rather than just descriptive.

- Capital"i's" (look ma, a pun!)
A small point: several times the letter "i" isn't capitalised when it should be, as in: "i'll silence you, seeing the dark look in my eyes you know i'll do it". Most of these seem to occur within the emails - and that's actually the only reason I'm mentioning it here. I'm curious as to whether you intended that to show how worked up they were while they were typing the emails?

===General===

- General plot.
I really like the overall progress of the story - slow start with the exchange of emails, then the passion gets ramped up until the night they spend together, and then their discovery by Michael: a logical step that provides a good bit of (non-sexual) tension. And then after that shock the initial explosion of passion shifts into a more considered relationship, followed by a holiday where the pace slows down - it's a very nice flow for the story, with all the rises and falls that keep a reader interested.

However, a couple of kinks in this thread jumped out at me. The first is Jessica. I'm not sure how I feel about Jessica suddenly coming into the picture: it's good because it's an impetus for them to consolidate their relationship, but it seems a bit sudden. I think it would have been much better to have introduced Jessica earlier - just a hint would be enough. That way everything would be more cohesive; as it stands Jessica just sort of comes out of nowhere. Of course I realise it's possible you hadn't planned for this to happen when you wrote the first few chapters... but I thought I'd mention it anyway

Also, it's not really clear to me exactly what Kelly sent to Michael from the receptionist's computer. Was it just the same file that Jessica had sent to everyone? But why did Kelly sound surprised that Michael hadn't received it? How would sending Michael that file make everything okay? And surely, if Jessica had sent the file to everyone, the "other boss" (other than Michael) would have received it. Surely Nick and Marie would have been in more trouble, now that Michael was no longer able to sweep everything under the carpet?

- Surroundings.
Personally - and this is really just my opinion - I would have liked more "concessions" to the surroundings in the sex scenes. They've done it in a supply closet, on a bed, and on a beach, but there was nothing particularly unique about those encounters. It might be nice to mention things like sand digging into skin as they lie on the beach, or mention the lapping hiss of the waves as they rock together, or mention them bumping into things in the supply closet, etc. Make each encounter unique, with an individual flavour provided by the surroundings, if you see what I mean.

- Physical description.
I can't help noticing a distinct lack of any real physical description of the characters. This wasn't a problem for me at all, but I'm curious whether this was intentional on your part

- Style of emails.
Again, this wasn't a problem - but I did think that Marie's emails and Nick's emails seem to be written in fairly similar styles. I think it would be interesting to try to make them different - say, have Marie's emails focus more on the emotions while Nick's emails are more about the action (to give one shamelessly stereotypical example). Just a random thought I had!

======

Well, that's about all I have. I did enjoy reading this a lot, I think it's a nice idea and you handled it well. The characters were real and acted believably, and I must commend you for really bringing out the passion between them - especially in Chapter 5, with the back-and-forth competition between them. I particularly liked Chapter 7 (the vacation) as well.

Sorry if I went on too long, but hopefully some of that makes sense and you find some of it useful.

All the best, and keep writing - I want to know what happens in those sequels you promised!

 

[Acal]

That was great thanks a lot of useful information there, I was planning go back over it and edit it again once I finish with the two other stories partly connected to this one.

I guess Jessica could go in earlier and yeah you picked up on my one definite flaw, i'm not particularly good at descriptions physical or otherwise lol. With the physical descriptions bascially I have no idea where to slot them in, but they'll make in there some how

 

[kuellar]

Oh, I didn't mean to suggest that physical descriptions of the characters are necessary! It didn't hinder my enjoyment of the story, I was just honestly curious as to whether you deliberately left them out.

You're welcome, I'm glad I could help

 

[Penelope Street]

Hi Acal,

The overall quality of your writing has really improved.

I thought your premise was a clever idea, but I'm not sure about deceiving the reader about the nature of the opening 'scene'. Did you consider opening with "Marie Pierce was in a panic..." instead? Also, would it have increased the suspence had she sent the errant e-mail to someone she didn't have such a crush on? His response may be a bit long, but "And I still need those files..." was super funny. When she replied again with more of the same, I began to find the entire trading e-mails idea tiresome and my interest waned. I skipped forward to the discovery chapter, thinking it would offer an increase in tension, which it did, but not for long. In the end, there's not enough conflict for my tastes, but the comments suggest you've reached your intended audience, which is the main thing.

Kueller's question about the English errors within the e-mails is a fine one I didn't see answered? If the errors are intentional, it's another clever idea on your part. Kuellar's idea for varying the sentence structure is a fine one, though I agree with him about his example being less than ideal.

If the character's appearance doesn't matter, you certainly don't need to include it- so don't feel compelled to include physical descriptions. If it feels awkward, it probably is.

Thanks for sharing your work with us.

Take Care,
Penny

P.S.
Thanks also to Kueller for contributing! It's always a pleasure when someone new joins us.