The Lonely Student

[Friendly_Canuck]

Considering that this was one of the first times that I have published one of my works, I am just curious if anyone has read it yet and if so, what are your comments on it?

Have a great day!

 

[*Catbabe*]

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=115045

It helps people if you include a link to your story in your post.

I can tell from your author notes, you are very enthusiastic about your writing and that is great. However, I have no idea if you want an in depth reaction to this story so I will just point out a couple of things that probably would have made me back click off it, if I had been reading just for pleasure.

A line early in the story says, "My given name is John but everyone but my mother calls me Bill who calls me Billy".

I bet when you read that line now out of context you can see that it is confusing. I think you meant:

My given name is John, but everyone calls me Bill, except my mother, who still calls me Billy.

The second mistake was in the next line. It said, " Not that I don't mind being called Billy..."

I think you meant for your line to read, "Not that I mind being called Billy..." or "I don't mind being called Billy but.."

Yes, those two examples may seem like little things but little things make all the difference in whether a reader can get immersed in your story or not. If you are serious about improving your writing, it would be worth having an editor look over your future stories to iron out any difficulties before you submit.


Good Luck,
Cat

 

[damppanties]

Friendly_Canuck,

I'm not going to talk about missing commas or confusing sentences here (there are lots of both). You can fix that easily by sending your story to the Literotica Volunteer Editors as Catbabe suggested.

A couple of points about how your story looks. The first thing I do with any story on Lit. is scroll down to see the whole of the story and whether it goes into page 2,3, etc. While I was scrolling down in your story, I noticed that you have big blocks of text which are in the same paragraph. This is not a good idea. Most readers have difficulty reading long paragraphs on screen. It has something to do with losing the continuing line as the eyes shift from one corner of the text to the next line in the other corner. I go by the average of four lines per paragraph. Sometimes it's less than four, sometimes more.

Most of your story is made up of sentences which were consistently too long. Most of them deal with two or more bits of information. It gets confusing after a while. It also gets boring. Your sentences lose their importance if you say everything in the same style. Try varying the length and structure of your sentences.

For example - a random instance from your story -

"Julie, I realize that you are wanting to go to University in the future which I wish to all my students, however for the last couple of weeks, I am confused, you have not been doing as well as usually do. You must realize that the average that you require for your future school will not be met if you continue to receive the same scores on your tests."

This is made up of two sentences. It could be distributed into four as I've done below:

"Julie, I realize that you want to go to university in future. I wish all my students did. However, for the last couple of weeks you have not been doing as well as you normally do. Do you realize that the average you require for your future school will not be met if you continue to receive the same scores on your tests?"

I just rephrased some of it and deleted the 'I am confused' remark but tried to keep to the original as much as possible. IMHO, it makes for much better reading.

It's a sweet little story you've got there but it needs work. Good luck.

Keep writing.