Story Discussion 8/26/10

[nerk]

The story I am offering for discussion is "The Window" which is for the most part pretty straightforward. It deals with a guy watching a girl through her window. I'm mostly looking for general feedback and response, but the particular questions I have are:

1. His character: most of the story takes place in his head. Is that a comfortable place for you as a reader?

2. Her reactions: seem a little far-fetched, but I attempted to create a logic within the story and the character that makes her a bit more than just the object of his lust.

3. Neither character are given any explicit life outside of their interactions, but is there any implicit sense of them as actual people with actual lives?

4. The hope was that it would flow quickly from scene to scene without being disjointed. Is there anywhere the story seems to bog down or jump too much?

Many preemptive thanks.

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=486880

 

[talismania]

I was waiting to see what others said because, well, I'm a newbie here, but . . . here goes.

Simply put, the story pulled me in not because of the subject matter--I usually hunt in different categories--but because it had some nice things going for it that cross category boundaries. I read initially with intention of providing helpful feedback (if I could) and really got into the story. I enjoyed it very much!

Here's what pulled me in: interesting characters with an intriguing relationship. There's a sweetness to the way Tom respects the object of his lust, and a hopefulness to Natalie's encouragement of her peeping Tom. As the story developed, I wanted to find out if Tom would attempt to make a more up-close-and-personal connection with Natalie.

In response to your questions, I'll give some reader response feedback. Hope it helps!

1. Tom's lust doesn't come off as one-dimensional and his admiration for Natalie displays a charming protectiveness. That made being inside his head comfortable for me. I'm not a frequent reader of voyeur fantasies, so have no basis for comparison. Tom's thoughts have an emotional tug as well as a physical immediacy. He is, in his own way, relating to Natalie, albeit from a distance. I wasn't satisfied with that relationship and wanted him to do something about it, like get to know her in person.

2. Natalie's reactions DO seem a little far-fetched. I assumed by some of the descriptions of her actions in the first few paragraphs that she's known for a while that she's being watched. That there's ample evidence of her consent, indeed encouragement, of her admirer's behavior informs me that she doesn't feel threatened. She may even be pleased or turned on by Tom's scrutiny. My initial thought from the first three paragraphs, because she was at a computer, was that someone--perhaps the voyeur--was telling her what to do, then watching her obey. When I found out that was not the case, my interest actually got stronger.

3. I think the story works well enough without more details about their lives. If the fuller picture doesn't contribute anything to the story, then there's no need for it, in my opinion. Lack of those details does force me to make certain assumptions, such as that neither character is married or living with parents. In that sense, the picture is a bit soft focus. Not a bad thing. They do feel like real people, but only marginally as people with actual lives.

4. I don't think it bogs down any more than any other story that delivers a lot of sexual description, which is part of what makes it an easy, sensual sort of ride. A couple of the transitions raised questions that made me stop, ponder, then wave a metaphorical hand and move on with it.

The first "Huh?" moment was where Tom jumped out of the tree, then later said he's a washed up middle-aged man. Washed-up middle age men don't climb into trees, much less jump out of them. Not without thinking twice about it. I was just having a talk with my son about that. He thinks twice now about throwing himself onto the ground in soccer. Swears the ground is harder now than it was five years ago.

The second moment was when Tom places a blindfold with his rose. There's mention of him finding a florist for the rose... but not about how he finds that pretty blindfold. Did the florist happen to have one? Does Tom know where to find the local naughty but nice boutique? I kind of wanted to know where he got that blindfold, how he picked out the perfect one. A missed opportunity for a perfect bit of detail.

My only other comment will be that Natalie deserves to have her name used a bit more often. Her name is used right up front (unlike Tom's, whose name only becomes clear at the end, quite fitting for the story), but afterward Natalie is referred to only as "she". Perhaps Tom could use her name more often as he begins to feel closer to her, both physically and emotionally?

Thanks for writing a fun and thoughtful story!

 

[PacoFear]

Howdy Nerk,

I thought this was a clean, tight little piece. You’ve taken a relatively simple ex/voy plotline and delivered a thoughtful interpretation. A few typos here and there, but within the realm of us mere mortals. Most of the thoughts I have for you I would lump under the unsavory category of “Monday morning quarterbacking.” That is, I suspect you’ve considered some of these things and consciously gone the other way.

The Perspective Reveal
If I were a betting man (and I am), I’d say that your delay on revealing that Tom is perving from a tree was an intentional one. The newb way to start this story would have been “I watched as… .” So I give you credit for recognizing, then hurdling, that pitfall. You also showed remarkable restraint by merely alluding, from an intellectually safe distance, the obvious Peeping Tom gag.

Back to the reveal, the delay on it has some “ta-da” value to it (even though this is in Ex/Voy) so you might want to consider swinging its dramatic weight a little harder by setting it off as a short punchy paragraph. This is a nifty, if unsubtle, trick. Compare:

Original
She looked out the glass sliding door into the dark backyard. The light spilling out from the living room made the lawn a patchwork of green and black, but didn't reach the high fence that enclosed the yard. It didn't reach the branches of the sprawling maple that grew in the ravine behind her house. It didn't reach me, perched on a wide limb, leaning back against the trunk, squeezing my cock through my jeans as I watched the pretty blonde teasing.

with

Tweaked
She looked out the glass sliding door into the dark backyard. The light spilling out from the living room made the lawn a patchwork of green and black, but didn't reach the high fence that enclosed the yard. It didn't reach the branches of the sprawling maple that grew in the ravine behind her house.

More importantly, it didn't reach me.

I was perched on a wide limb, leaning back against the trunk, squeezing my cock through my jeans as I watched the pretty blonde teasing.

Tense
For me, the emotional meat of this story is composed of Tom’s vicarious thrill, the anticipation of Natalie’s nudity, his fear of being caught, his jealousy of Natalie’s guest, and the surprise of Natalie’s ultimate cooperation. I think there’s a common thread to this mixed bag of emotions: there’s an immediacy to them that makes me think that this story might be even more compelling in the present tense.

A Hair More on Natalie
There’s a clean simplicity to your treatment of Natalie that makes her an effective Everywoman. Still, I was craving just one detail more, or two, about her. It could be as droll as what she does for a living. Or her hobbies. Something simple and a little endearing might make for a deft touch. Tom could chuckle in his tree when he spies Natalie stealing a drink of milk straight from the carton.

Yearning
I’m not an ex/voy guy, but my barely informed suspicion on the genre says yearning is probably one of its underpinnings. As in “Ooh look at the pretty girl. I want to touch the pretty girl. Smell her. Taste her. Hear her moan.” Tom’s a middle-aged guy salivating over a young hottie that he can see, but then again, only see. Surely he’s wondering what she sounds/smells/tastes like. It would take the form of wistful speculation from his tree and I think it would be entertaining.

Bit of Genius Here
No comments on the paragraph below other than, “nice!”

I hadn't dared admit to myself until that glance that this was for me. The panty-thief, the peeping tom, the watcher. She swayed her hips as she slunk the few steps to her couch. She sat down, facing the window, and spread her legs wide. I didn't dare touch myself, knowing I would explode instantly.

Hold on a Second, Back Up to That Last Part
The end of Natalie’s second show includes the apparently throw away moment:

She squeezed her bared breasts, lifted them and let her long pink tongue flick at her nipples, one after the other.

Since when is a woman licking her own breasts a non-event? Seriously, what percentage of woman are sufficiently equipped to make that an option? And what subset of them would do it? The further subset, and actually enjoy it?

Yes, yes, you point out afterwards that Tom’s mouth is a desert, but in my book that’s a “sweet mary mother of god” moment not a “my tongue’s kinda dry” moment. IMHO, he should be digging his fingernails into the tree bark as he watches her slowly lift her breast to her own mouth, then stifle a groan when her tongue snakes out to twirl around its nipple.

Bump in the Ride
The only off-kilter moment in this story comes at what was, for me, the turning point of the story: Tom’s recognition that Natalie is interested in moving things along with him. Part of Tom’s internal monologue includes a line that struck me as odd:

Things were still broken, but she wanted them fixed.

"Broken" is the new black. Everything is broken. But describing something as broken presupposes its existence. Tom and Natalie have no relationship, not a complete one anyway, so describing it as broken threw me out of the story.

I think what Natalie wants is better described as “more.” Riffing of the “prop for the play” metaphor in the sentence before, you could dig in deeper with something like “But our play had only had two acts and clearly Natalie was craving a third.” Okay, not sure I love that either, but this is the sort of thing I’d obsess over in my own writing until I got something I liked.

The Story of the Pink Silk Blindfold
I’m with talismania on this. A quick paragraph detailing how Tom works up the courage to go to a local naughty-but-nice shop would be entertaining. More importantly, I think it would be a nice foreshadowing of Tom working up yet more courage to dare the final actual contact with Natalie.

Two Nitpickies
#1 Tom talks when they have sex. She doesn’t recognize his voice?

#2: She let out a long, wailing kind of moan and then I attacked her clit, sucking and licking, flicking my tongue at it, the scent and the taste flooding my senses as she writhed and moaned.

I felt a little cheated as a reader by the paragraph above because you didn’t describe the scent or taste he must have been fantasizing about while holed up in his tree.

One of my favorite writing chum’s bad habits is a phrase like “my breath caught at the sound of her skirt hitting the floor.” Wait, what was that sound? Was it a muffled thud? A whisper? A rustle? I give her hell about it. Now I’m giving you hell too. Honestly, it’s a mark of my respect for you both.

Do carry on,

-PF

 

[LingerieRobot]

Good stuff. I really liked how the reveal of the watcher was done in the second paragraph, it surprised me in a good way. You also did a good job of escalating the sex in each scene. I actually didn't realize that Natalie was blindfolded during the sex scene until partway through, but that's probably just me being a sloppy reader. As for the sex itself, the description was a bit plain, but functional, and it worked for someone without a lot of E/V interest.

As for your specific questions --

1. His character: most of the story takes place in his head. Is that a comfortable place for you as a reader?

I was definitely comfortable with the first-person perspective, and you did a good job conveying the basics of the character without flat-out stating them. Tom's not quite a fully developed character, but he's developed enough to make the sex mean something, which is enough.

2. Her reactions: seem a little far-fetched, but I attempted to create a logic within the story and the character that makes her a bit more than just the object of his lust.

Well, if she reacted like a normal person, this wouldn't be porn, would it? Kidding, kidding. I don't think her reactions are a problem -- it's unusual, sure, but that's why you're writing about it. The issue is that we never really get inside Natalie's head to see why she's doing it, and she ends up being a bit flat as a character. Not sure how you could address this without cluttering up the ending, though.

3. Neither character are given any explicit life outside of their interactions, but is there any implicit sense of them as actual people with actual lives?

4. The hope was that it would flow quickly from scene to scene without being disjointed. Is there anywhere the story seems to bog down or jump too much?

Gonna tackle these two together. The one part of the story that didn't really work for me were the scenes with Tom and Natalie meeting while Tom was walking his dog. I understand that you wanted these two to know each other outside of the e/v thing, with Natalie being oblivious to this, but we didn't really learn anything about the characters in these scenes. I think if you had these two know each other another way it would be more effective and make them seem more like real people. Since Tom hides in a tree and doesn't see her through his bedroom window or whatever, they don't neccesarily have to be neighbours.

Well, that's my two cents. I enjoyed this story a lot, thanks for writing it.

 

[Penelope Street]

Hi Nerk,

I enjoyed the brisk pace and lack of unnecessary detail.

Partly because I knew the category, I realized at once that Natalie wasn't the protagonist and then I tried to imagine who was watching her and from where. I had a hard time picturing how Natalie's ogler might be able to see her breasts, her ass, and her computer screen at the same time. Later, he can see genital details when she has her back to the light. Maybe I'm being a little nit-picky, but this is the opening to a voyeurism tale and I think visual precision is important.

For just a moment, I was curious why Natalie would suddenly step out into her backyard and disrobe, but then I decided she not only knew she was being watched, but by whom- otherwise she ought to be quite frightened. After accepting she knew her admirer and enjoyed exhibitionism, I didn't find her actions far-fetched at all- except maybe being at her computer in the first place when she could have been teasing him in oh so many other clever ways.

I would have liked it just fine had the story ended with the narrator returning Natalie's panties. I thought she'd offered and he'd accepted and that was pretty much all there would be to it, so it was quite the pleasant literary surprise for me when the other man showed up. After she did something so seemingly mean-spirited, I expected the tale would go down a darker path- but then it veered right back where I thought it would go in the first place, which was kind of let down. I was never able to reconcile her desires with her behavior in this scene

Something else I couldn't reconcile: I'd imagined the narrator to be college-aged, so it was jarring for me to learn he's meant to be much older. I never really believed it, both because of his actions and because I don't think Natalie is interested in a washed up old man.

Thanks for sharing your work with us.

Take Care,
Penny

 

[Amontillado]

1. His character: most of the story takes place in his head. Is that a comfortable place for you as a reader?

No. The guy is a self-described broken-down middle-aged man, pining for a girl he considers way out of his league. Her date could, in his opinion, squash him like a bug.

He has a negative opinion of himself, and your story never attempts to correct that. Sure, he gets the girl, but we don't really know why she went for him. Only that she considers him "special," which, depending on how you take it, could do more to reinforce his low self-esteem than to challenge it.

What it looks like is that the protagonist is a loser who only gets the girl because you've got your hand up her ass and are jerking her hither and thither as suits your plot. I'm supposed to identify with him?

He's an implied insult to your reader. I would suggest either dialing down the negativity, or leading your protagonist to discover something positive about himself. Because at present, his reluctance to reveal himself to Natalie is justified. Kudos to him for taking the risk, but if Natalie were permitted to act autonomously, I see no reason why she wouldn't slap a restraining order on the broken-down creep.

2. Her reactions: seem a little far-fetched, but I attempted to create a logic within the story and the character that makes her a bit more than just the object of his lust.

You accomplished that. I think it would help if you went a little farther, though, and showed the reader why Natalie's into your protagonist. Some dramatic irony there would read beautifully as a counterpoint to his negativity. Him popping within two seconds of penetrating her has the opposite effect.


But other than that I thought your story was very well written, and I hope to come back to it when I get some more time. The one issue I mentioned was the only one that bothered me.


-Amontillado

 

[nerk]

First, I want to thank you all for the time and thought you've given here. I've been intending to wade in and try to respond to your comments with some hint of the same substance and attention that you've given my story, but life has not permitted me that consideration the last week or so.

I will try to get to this in a bit more detail when time permits, but there are a few things I know I want to respond to off the bat.

First, the blindfold: I had actually written a scene of him shopping for it, that I had cut because it seemed to bog the story down right before the (ahem) climax. I'm still sure that the scene I had written didn't work, but that Paco and Talismania both remarked on it suggests to me that it needs to be worked in, in some way.

Second, the middle-aged narrator. There seems to be a general consensus that his age as written seems out of keeping with both his actions and Natalie's reactions. An easy enough fix, as he only describes himself in a few phrases, though it does raise the question of who he is, if not that guy. Something that will likely emerge in revision, I suppose.

Third, yeah, Natalie. A bit too blank a slate, perhaps. One of the nuisances of writing in first person and trying to have your reader know what your narrator doesn't. LingerieRobot's suggestion that they know each other in some other way than being neighbor's is one of those things that as soon as I saw it, I was kicking myself for not seeing it earlier.

Last, to Penelope's comment on the visual precision of the opening scene. You're quite right, he does see too much. That you're the only one who claims any familiarity with the ex/voy genre (myself included) makes me think you're probably right. Funny that in a story of this nature I gave more thought to her eye than his.

Overall, What you've all given has been a lot of encouragement, a lot of fresh perspective, and some really excellent suggestions for ways to improve the story. I had thought I was more or less done with this, but now I'm seeing another draft in its future. Again, my thanks and apologies for not responding more promptly.

Nerk

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I read the first paragraph and stopped. It aint my cup-o-tea. So I stuffed the paragraph into my grammar checker to see if its me or the writing. The grammar checker awarded the writing a respectable '92' score after deducting for spelling and punctuation errors. But I still dont like it.

My problem is the shopping list flow of actions. She did this, she did that, she did this other.

 

[AmberMoore]

I read the first paragraph and stopped. It aint my cup-o-tea. So I stuffed the paragraph into my grammar checker to see if its me or the writing. The grammar checker awarded the writing a respectable '92' score after deducting for spelling and punctuation errors.

James, what program do you use? I use to use Writers Workbench when I worked for the college, but since I left I don't have access to that anymore so I'm in the market for something else.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

James, what program do you use? I use to use Writers Workbench when I worked for the college, but since I left I don't have access to that anymore so I'm in the market for something else.

Grammarly. BUT! It pinched me for plagiarism cuz I inserted a couple of quotes from Scripture. AND! It likes to ding you for misspelling proper nouns that seem like common words....Byrds = birds

 

[AmberMoore]

Thanks James.

I just tried it out on the story that I submitted Friday and it pointed out plenty of errors. I made a 77 out of a 100. And it pinched me for stealing a sentence, well six words describing a dance floor, from a short story that I've never read. You'll be pleased to know that I did alright in the whole Passive Voice thing, only six uses and they were all regarding my use of the word was.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Thanks James.

I just tried it out on the story that I submitted Friday and it pointed out plenty of errors. I made a 77 out of a 100. And it pinched me for stealing a sentence, well six words describing a dance floor, from a short story that I've never read. You'll be pleased to know that I did alright in the whole Passive Voice thing, only six uses and they were all regarding my use of the word was.

I have a hunch auxillary verbs started life stouter than they are now. Or they evolved into conversational short-cuts. Etymology is a wunnerful thang.

Seventy-seven is pretty good for the 1st run thru the grammar mill. Most of the samples I checked scored in the 40s.