The Tragic Amours of Erysichton

[sanchopanza]

My story

I've finally finished the damn thing - some of it I rushed and some I took my time with. I've only just submit it to Literotica for approval so I've provided the link to the story on other page. Be gentle and remember I want feedback not criticism.

 

[Chicklet]

feedback, not criticism? I guess I don't really understand...

Feedback? uhm...well...I tried to read your story but I couldn't get into it. Maybe it was the format, but if I go into that I might be too critical...so, I didn't like it. That's my feedback.

 

[sanchopanza]

ah well, some you win some you lose - i sent it to a few people i know and they tend to be pretty critical but seemed to enjoy it


in light of what i just read from colly on another post - do your worst you mighty stallions of criticism - my ego can take anything

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Well,

The ending is about as grotesque as anything I could have imagined. Any erotic thrill it might have produced was lost , but that's just a matter of personal taste.

I am going to take a wild guess that Xena and Gabrielle are from the tv show, I haven't ever watched it, but have had fans request stories based on it. I will assume Herc is too and that your main character is a character from something else? I'm exceptionally pop culture challenged.

I am not qualified to give you critique on the mechanical and technical aspects, from your posts I think your knowledge far outstrips mine. I'll confine my feedback to impressions.

1. It's exceptionally difficult to read and get into. It reads like a discourse, delivered by someone who is subtly and not so subtly trying to make the point that they are more clever than the reader.

2. The erotic sequences are laced with attempts at humor. While you sometimes succeed in being funny, it is at the expense of being sexy. I can not tell if I am reading a parody, a campy romp through the tripe that passes as television programing today, or a serious attempt at humor and/or erotica.

3. The style of writing and the way you use language tells me know exactly what you are doing. Unfortuneatly, Like Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time you fail to let the layman in on what it is sometimes.

-Colly

 

[ButterflyLane]

I couldn't even finish it. The indiscriminate use of the word fuck sorta turned me off from the beginning, and the plot simply failed to captivate me.

 

[sanchopanza]

It was a bit of a mixed bag, Luke Hercules Judson and the Xena-Gabrielle scene were added by request. Luke Judson is a friend of mine - he asked to be put into the story and to do Xena up the arse. The quintet of sirens likewise were added by request - 5 girls asked me to write a story about them and so I compromised and just wrote a scene.

Ah yes and the grotesqueness, thats just me - been reading far too many books that were written with the attempt to offend. I think by the overall grotesqueness of the story I was simply trying to go back to the Greek myths - foul, depraved deaths and orgies galore. The plot was based loosely on the myth of Erysichton (not a pop-culture reference) but I don't think that is what made it difficult to get into - I take it that the language and the structure were perhaps a little over the top - I just like to play around with language and write pseudo-poetically.

The use of the word "fuck". This was a product of just how much young people use the word these days, most people are indiscriminate with the use of the word and so I thought why not see if I can use it too much, and I think I managed it. And the sex scenes - yes they were just attempt to make the whole story a romp, I got fed up with writing the same old crap over and over so wiped my sex scenes from the story and went for instead for ridiculous and over the top and indulged my obsession with bodily fluids.

"It reads like a discourse, delivered by someone who is subtly and not so subtly trying to make the point that they are more clever than the reader."

Well I wasn't trying to go that far, yes I'm told I'm good with words and I write well, but I'm also told that sometimes I alienate too many people from the way I write. When writing essays for school/college I've been told that I don't like to answer the question straight out and instead entertain the reader for a while beforehand. So while it all sounds nice it doesn't always make sense. The thing I was trying with the style used was to make it sound like a trashy novel written by someone who has read a lot.

I think the central point I should take on board from you Colly, is that perhaps I should simplify. I perhaps should have taken note of this a small while ago when I showed part of the story to a few of the girls who were to be written into the sirens scene; they read the story out loud but stopped every so often to ask what particular words meant and couldn't pronounce Erysichton so instead called him Derek. I think maybe the Shakespeare references were redundant as well then - a vague reference to Hamlet and a quote from King Lear.

P.S.
Look up the myth of Erysichton.

P.P.S.
This is an edit - the ending is more grotesque in the next story I'll be finished with.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

By 'feedback' I assume you just want our opinion on the piece without getting into a critical analysis.

I didn't care for it. It's a modified version of the myth of Erysicthon (with an 'h'), right? I had to go look him up. He chopped down some trees in Demeter's sacred grove and was punished by eing cursed with an insatiable hunger for food. You changed it to an insatiable need for sex.

It's always tough criticizing humor because tastes vary so much, but I think you rely way to much on using "fuck" as the source of your humor. the rest of it, the parody of academic language and convoluted grammar wears thin very quickly.

No offense, but it really strikes me as the work of someone who is very impressed with their own cleverness. It assumes that the reader will be impressed too, but really, there's just not much here.

---dr.M.

 

[sanchopanza]

Impressed by my own cleverness? Oh shit I think I've finally kissed my arse one too many times. I think maybe if I had written the story maybe 2-3 years ago it would have been entirely different, now though it is a product of my colossal ego. Damn.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Impressed by my own humour? Oh shit I think I've finally kissed my arse one too many times. I think maybe if I had written the story maybe 2-3 years ago it would have been entirely different, now though it is a product of my colossal ego. Damn.

After I posted I went back and read what other people said, and I see that I'm not alone in this.

No, not so much impressed by your own humour, but by your own cleverness. It tries too hard. It feels like you're sitting next to me giving me the elbow, "How's that eh? Pretty clever eh?"

I know that the language is supposed to be over the top, but it's excessive and not especially amusing. And after a while it becomes old, like, okay, we get the point, now get on with it. And like Colly says, you play with language to the detriment of the story: you lose control of your material.

---dr.M.

 

[sanchopanza]

Yes I had to edit out humour to replace cleverness.

I know, I know, god knows I know. Its just who I am really - whenever I right something (not porn) and show it to somebody I'll say look at that, fucking work of art that, sure its only a birthday card but that is fucking genius, what is it? fucking genius of course it is. I only do that in jest but I think maybe you are right when you say I lose control of my material - I think I've let it control me.

Ah well, I don't think I am so egotistical in everything I write, just most of it. But bear with me my cavillous friends I will improve. On a related note I am working on another story that I don't think will be so egotistical and self-serving, all the main characters are based (very loosely) on people I know and so maybe that will act as a buffer to stop me going over the top.

Anyway I understand what you are saying and I accept your criticism, but as I say, you will have to bear with me. I am only now making my foray into porn . . . and its only porn anyway, its not art.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Hey, Sanch,

This is the second piece of yours that I've read, the first being the Shakespeare parody. I think it's safe to say that you're certainly ambitious. Do you ever write anything in a more conventional vein? I went to your site and saw only the two stories, and of course your epic poem .

---dr.M.

 

[sanchopanza]

By the by, Dr. Mabeuse I just edited my other post - but I was talking to someone while doing it so it didn't appear before your

I have written serious literature. Some of my best material I'd say is now lost. It was a series of letters written by me to my father a few years ago. Occasionally humourous, but often just very interesting, or so I'm told.

I tried writing something very serious in a non-porn vein but it was an absolute train wreck of a disaster. I'm not sure if I have anything in my house or on the internet that I've written that wasn't purposefully for my own academic studies or for porn's sake. I may try writing again - I may try to replicate some of the lost letters I wrote to my father but I think something deeply personal that made those letters what they were is now lost.

At one point I wrote a whole plethora of pointlessly trite poems - deleted them from my computer but I remembered how a few of them went, and I did help write some lyrics for a Russian band (they are surprisingly good). But the reason I decided to get into writing porn was because I had been told I had an excellent writing style and so I thought maybe I should write something but it turned into porn simply because there are too many regular writers.

I don't think I can do completely conventional. I can do unconventional porn but I don't think I can write conventional mainstream literature. I do have a slightly less egotistical idea for a story fermenting in my brain at the moment - I'll start writing in a few weeks ago, it'll make an attempt at introspection and a fully rounded character and perhaps a little more mature (the use of the word fuck in Erysichton was partly due to the people I knew were going to read it) and I'll see where I can go with it. But conventional porn, conventional erotica, conventional literature I don't think is my style.

 

[hiddenself]

Well, if you're going to be that clever...

Do try to get it right.

It is, as the good Doctor pointed out, Erysichthon. The spelling in Greek is with a chi ("ch" or rather a "h" sound, as in "hair"), followed by theta (a "th," as in "the").

 

[sanchopanza]

I couldn't give a rat's arse (not ass) how it is spelt by some people, other transliterations have shown it spelt the other way.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I think the central point I should take on board from you Colly, is that perhaps I should simplify. I perhaps should have taken note of this a small while ago when I showed part of the story to a few of the girls who were to be written into the sirens scene; they read the story out loud but stopped every so often to ask what particular words meant and couldn't pronounce Erysichton so instead called him Derek. I think maybe the Shakespeare references were redundant as well then - a vague reference to Hamlet and a quote from King Lear.

P.S.
Look up the myth of Erysichton.

P.P.S.
This is an edit - the ending is more grotesque in the next story I'll be finished with.

I don't know that simpliying is the answer. Everyone has their own style of writing and I think that style is often as important to the author's "voice" as their subject matter. It really depends on who your audience is supposed to be. Someone as euridite and knowledgeable as Perdita might get many of the in jokes and references that someone less educated like myself misses. In the end it depends who you are writing to. I think for your works the audience is different than the one I write to and thus much of what you do that dosen't work for me as a reader may resonate with your target audience.

-Colly

 

[sanchopanza]

Thank you very much for that Colly. You have unwittingly unleashed a monster. My ego was taking a pummelling and slowly deflating and now you have inflated it again - you are right, I'm not shit its just people outside my audience don't like it (which actually makes sense).

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Sanch,

People who don't like my storytelling style don't like my stories. From the highly original ones to the more basic have fun kinds, it isn't the subject matter, it's the way I write and no idea, no matter how well I articulate it is going to change their mind. It just isn't what they are looking for. Conversely, people who like my writing style often enjoy my works even though they are quick to point out that they don't usually like lesbian themed stories. In fact I have recieved a few feedbacks where people enjoyed the story IN SPITE of the sex. Who you write to is oft times as important as what you write.

If you can separate yourself personally from your work and take the feedback in the nature it is meant you can vastly improve yourself. I am far from sure of myself as a writer, but I screwed up my courage and had a story workshopped. I listened to what some of the same people posting on your work had to say, like Doc M and Hiddenself. I submitted it and for a short while it was the top story on the site with over 60 votes and a 4.9 rating. As much as the story was mine, written by me, it was listening to those who know and liberally taking their advice that earned it such high marks and I am grateful to them one and all. No one can help you improve your craft like the guys here, you get so many different perspectives and a wealth of experience and knowledge you simply cannot tap into anywhere else I know of.

Don't let your ego take a beating, they are not attacking you, they are deconstructing a piece of your work and in doing so they can provide you with incredibly valuable advice and insight on how to make it work better.

-Colly

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Thank you very much for that Colly. You have unwittingly unleashed a monster. My ego was taking a pummelling and slowly deflating and now you have inflated it again - you are right, I'm not shit its just people outside my audience don't like it (which actually makes sense).

Keep your ego out of this! What you write is not you; it's something you made and as such it's subject to opinions and analysis. But that says nothing about you personally. You wrote one thing, you can change it, you'll write another. You'll write this way, you'll write that way; you'll write good stuff, you'll write bad stuff. Don't ever take it personally. I'm sure no one intended it that way.

I know: all that is easy to say, and I think writers as a whole take criticism a lot more personally than other artists do, because it's just us and our ideas and words. But I think that learning to take criticism is part of learning to write. God knows it's the only way to improve: either external criticism or internal criticism.

When I'm criticized I'm just like you. Despite all my brave words I tend to take it personally, especially when it's a piece that I think is especially fine. But I've learned to just sit on those feelings for a while, and then usually I decide to either reject the criticism, or, grudgingly, I learn from it.

Just don't take it personally.

---dr.M.

 

[sanchopanza]

I think it is almost human nature to take criticism of your creations personally. But it doesn't really bother me because I know that some people will like it. Even the worst, trashiest novels ever written have fanbases, and even the greatest novels ever written have people who can't bear to read them. On this note I have to retire for the night but just by the way did anybody here read and like and not object to Nabakov's Lolita? I thought it was wonderful but I know some people deplore it because of the subject matter.

 

[sanchopanza]

Well obviously nobody wants to answer my question but doesn't matter. Anyway in my profile I've still got the story on pending - whenever I've submit something before it gets accepted the next day or the day after . . . oh and by the way, surprisingly I've had over 500 people read the story (or at least click on it) already.