The Water's Fine

[petemgurk]

Newest approved submission by me, please take a look and vote and comment, if you will. As of this writing, there have been:

7928 hits
46 votes
1 public comment

Hm.....sense any discrepancy here? Don't be shy, folks, please read, vote, and let me know what you think. Click here to read, thanks!

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=332953

Pete M'Gurk

 

[mjl2010]

Newest approved submission by me, please take a look and vote and comment, if you will. As of this writing, there have been:

7928 hits
46 votes
1 public comment

Hm.....sense any discrepancy here? Don't be shy, folks, please read, vote, and let me know what you think. Click here to read, thanks!

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=332953

Pete M'Gurk

Well the first paragraph was good. Then they started to get tooooo long and I quit reading. as for your votes/hits counts. They seem about right to me. You might get more votes if you shorten the paragraphs.

MJL

 

[bingochalice]

Agree

Nice story, lots of good writing in it. I do agree with MJL that the paragraphs are a little long though.

 

[petemgurk]

You should have kept going

Well the first paragraph was good. Then they started to get tooooo long and I quit reading. as for your votes/hits counts. They seem about right to me. You might get more votes if you shorten the paragraphs.

MJL

There were lots of other, shorter paragraphs in the story, maybe you could have skipped the "long" ones and read those instead. How long is too long? I realize that's a loaded question on a site like this, but seriously? It's not a newspaper column, it's a story. Paragraphs are only as long as they need to be to contain a particular thought or part of the story.

But I thank you for trying, and urge you to sample the shorter paragraphs farther down, past the first one.

Pete M'Gurk

 

[tickledkitty]

Hey Pete,

FWIW, mjl is right about the paragraphs being longish. It's better to make them shorter for something that will be read online, as large blocks of text are a strain on the reader's eyes.

I read about 2/3 of the story, I think. Then I skimmed the rest. It's well written but not very interesting. There's no tension, no build up between Gavin and Nerissa. They meet, they fuck, they go home. I guess what I'm saying is that it was a little too easy. They were rubbing up against each other as soon as they met. There was no doubt, no competition from others in the bar, no guilt, nothing to overcome.

I did like the ending. But, again, maybe just a little too easy, a little too quick and neat.

 

[mjl2010]

Pete,

What I'm saying is, it becomes very difficult to read when the paragraphs get long. On a monitor, especially an older one like mine, we need the white space. Split up the paragraphs. Its a grammar rule here you have to break.

So part of what could be happening, is people are going along reading and just can't read it. So they back click to find a different story. Therefore, they never get to the voting. Lots of views doesn't mean your story is being read to the end.

Eight or ten screen lines is about the limit for paragraph length. And thats saying, OK in the middle is a paragraph that's eight screen lines long. The rest are between four and six.

I'll go along with what was said above. They meet, they fuck, they go home. Yeah, and?

MJL

 

[petemgurk]

So much to learn, so much to absorb

Pete,

What I'm saying is, it becomes very difficult to read when the paragraphs get long. On a monitor, especially an older one like mine, we need the white space. Split up the paragraphs. Its a grammar rule here you have to break.

So part of what could be happening, is people are going along reading and just can't read it. So they back click to find a different story. Therefore, they never get to the voting. Lots of views doesn't mean your story is being read to the end.

Eight or ten screen lines is about the limit for paragraph length. And thats saying, OK in the middle is a paragraph that's eight screen lines long. The rest are between four and six.

I'll go along with what was said above. They meet, they fuck, they go home. Yeah, and?

MJL

Forgive me, I'm new here. Not being familiar with how things get formatted, and since I wrote this story about two years ago, before discovering literotica, I submitted it without making any changes to the paragraphs.

Sure, they meet, they fuck, they go home. There's no competition because they already knew each other, had had a sexual spark between them for four years. At the end, there's a bit of cuteness, but it's a definite ending, which is what a lot of stories around here seem to be missing. Thanks for reading, or rather, skimming. See what you miss?

I'll see what I can do to my other submissions - since they've been pending for about 10 days, what's another few - cut the story up into nice, easy-to-digest tidbits. Thanks a bunch for your input - sincerely, thanks.

Pete M'Gurk

 

[sr71plt]

There were lots of other, shorter paragraphs in the story, maybe you could have skipped the "long" ones and read those instead. How long is too long? I realize that's a loaded question on a site like this, but seriously? It's not a newspaper column, it's a story. Paragraphs are only as long as they need to be to contain a particular thought or part of the story.

But I thank you for trying, and urge you to sample the shorter paragraphs farther down, past the first one.

Pete M'Gurk

The publishing industry standard is no more than 20 lines and then not very often that long. On that basis, your story looks fine on paragraphing. ((I didn't read the story; just did line counts on paragraphs.) If readers think they are having trouble reading the story because they get lost in the paragraphs, there may be something else intruding--but it's not the paragraph lengths. (Maybe not everything in the paragraphs serves the story and readers are being sidetracked? I don't know that's the case; it just often is the case when readers think they are getting lost in paragraphs.)

On paragraphs being as long as they need to be to "contain a particular thought or part of the story," this really isn't necessary in the world of publishing. It's a concept drilled in students in school--for a good reason: to get them organized in their presentation of ideas. Publishing goes for readability, though, which often means cutting paragraphs into smaller chunks and not every paragraph having its own topic sentence or separate idea to develop.

 

[tickledkitty]

Sure, they meet, they fuck, they go home. There's no competition because they already knew each other, had had a sexual spark between them for four years. At the end, there's a bit of cuteness, but it's a definite ending, which is what a lot of stories around here seem to be missing. Thanks for reading, or rather, skimming. See what you miss?
Pete M'Gurk

Yes, your story had a beginning, a middle, and an end. I did say it was pretty well written. And you did make it clear that these people already knew each other and that he had the hots for her. All I was saying was that her dancing with other guys, him maybe dancing with one of her friends, both of them having doubts about how the other one was feeling and about whether they really wanted to cheat on their respective spouses would have made it that much more interesting.

Don't take any of this personally. We all make similar mistakes, and people on this forum are only imparting what they've learned along the way. They're trying to help. Honest.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

Hey Pete,

FWIW, mjl is right about the paragraphs being longish. It's better to make them shorter for something that will be read online, as large blocks of text are a strain on the reader's eyes.

I read about 2/3 of the story, I think. Then I skimmed the rest. It's well written but not very interesting. There's no tension, no build up between Gavin and Nerissa. They meet, they fuck, they go home. I guess what I'm saying is that it was a little too easy. They were rubbing up against each other as soon as they met. There was no doubt, no competition from others in the bar, no guilt, nothing to overcome.

I did like the ending. But, again, maybe just a little too easy, a little too quick and neat.

Yeah. TK pretty much says it all. There are things that could have been done to make the story more readable - shorter paragraphs and such. But the real problem is this is a zippless fuck story and not much more. What we and the readers like to see is: ar the characters changed because of the tryst? Do they somehow become better or worse? Does the fuck really mean anything beyond a simple "Wham-Bam-Thank-You-Ma'am"?

What you need to do in your stories is get in the heads of your characters and give them genuine feelings and motivation. Make them act and react and feel like real people.

 

[tickledkitty]

Yeah. TK pretty much says it all. There are things that could have been done to make the story more readable - shorter paragraphs and such. But the real problem is this is a zippless fuck story and not much more. What we and the readers like to see is: ar the characters changed because of the tryst? Do they somehow become better or worse? Does the fuck really mean anything beyond a simple "Wham-Bam-Thank-You-Ma'am"?

What you need to do in your stories is get in the heads of your characters and give them genuine feelings and motivation. Make them act and react and feel like real people.

JJ - You rawk.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

JJ - You rawk.

Love you too, TK

 

[petemgurk]

zipless fuck

Ooooh, I'm old enough to know about the zipless fuck, old enough to have read Erica Jong when her stuff was brand new.

OK, once again, thanks. I appreciate all of your feedback. Thanks to sr for going and counting the lengths of my paragraphs. Was that a little perverted? hehehehe.

TK, and JJ, both of you rock, seriously. As I said, I wrote a bunch of stories back about 2, 2-1/2 years ago hoping to one day get them in the big boob magazines, but one of them that I sent out (with SASE and such) was never even acknowledged by the mag, let alone rejected. So...they've been sitting in my computer all this time with nobody to read them but myself. Until now.

So, I'm learning, getting guidance, paying attention. I've already gone thru my pending stories and shortened the paragraphs. I can't do anything about the plot-lines, or lack of them.

Face it, everybody, they're ALL zipless fuck stories, escapism in the extreme, and not a single Freudian thought in 'em. There is humor, and sex, and witty dialogue, and correct spelling, and proper grammar, for the most part. You have been warned.

Maybe Lit should create a new category, Zipless Sex?

Pete M'Gurk

P.S. One thing: there was very little tension in the bar. Why should there be? I think I established that she and her friends were sitting there bored until Gavin came along, and there was obviously no competition in Nerissa's eyes. If I'd added the tension in the bar it would have been someone else's story and not mine.

 

[sr71plt]

OK, once again, thanks. I appreciate all of your feedback. Thanks to sr for going and counting the lengths of my paragraphs. Was that a little perverted? hehehehe.

You think counting a couple of eyeballed long paragraphs is perverted? Not sure that's good advertising for reading what you would then think erotica is.

 

[tickledkitty]

P.S. One thing: there was very little tension in the bar. Why should there be? I think I established that she and her friends were sitting there bored until Gavin came along, and there was obviously no competition in Nerissa's eyes. If I'd added the tension in the bar it would have been someone else's story and not mine.

The tension would keep people like me interested enough to finish the story. Then I'd think you were a pretty cool dude and would send you e-mail saying how hot your story made me.

Really, it's about standing out in the crowd here. There are thousands and thousands of "zipless fuck" stories on Lit. Why not make yours one of the better ones? You're certainly capable of doing so.

 

[Guest]

Poop chute?

 

[petemgurk]

double entendre, or play on words

You think counting a couple of eyeballed long paragraphs is perverted? Not sure that's good advertising for reading what you would then think erotica is.

Making light of a situation is either a failing or a gift. It's clear that a pun or a play on words won't get me very far here.

PM'G

 

[petemgurk]

I'll get there

The tension would keep people like me interested enough to finish the story. Then I'd think you were a pretty cool dude and would send you e-mail saying how hot your story made me.

Really, it's about standing out in the crowd here. There are thousands and thousands of "zipless fuck" stories on Lit. Why not make yours one of the better ones? You're certainly capable of doing so.

Kitty,
Again, thanks. There is wisdom in your words. Future stories will reflect that.

Pete

 

[elfin_odalisque]

Kitty,
Again, thanks. There is wisdom in your words. Future stories will reflect that.

Pete

They only will if you really understand what TK and JJ are saying. I think they were being gentle with you.

I agree with all the comments - you must shorten your paragraphs, use more dialogue to 'tell' the story, and decide what you are writing.

More seriously, your characters could come off the back of cereal packets.

Despite my criticisms, I thought 'The Cat and the Collar' was well written, and it is clear you have talent. This story is , quite frankly, pathetic. To explain what I mean, can I put it in a series of questions.

- What erotic story has ever been improved with references to near-natal pregnancy and menstrual cycles?

- Why has he been thrown out, why doesn't he care - does he love his wife, is it first child, does he want a family.

- Why is he fucking Nerissa? Because he's a shit/ hates his wife/ dick leads brain?

I could go on. When TK talks about tension, you misunderstand. Any good story requires tension (conflict, misunderstanding etc.) to develop the characters. People only read if they want to know what happens to the characters. You don't have characters, just cardboard cut-outs.

Sorry to be so harsh, but I think you can do so much better. Leave this old stuff behind.

 

[petemgurk]

good christ

Much as I'm feeling like a man who was pissed on AFTER he was kicked after he was knocked down, I'm "listening", OK? I'm listening.

And I thank you.

 

[EveAnna]

I read your story and stuck with it

It can be the hardest thing to do to go back and edit and reread stories that you think you've finished two years ago but many of us do it. I have stories written a few years ago that wouldn't be good enough to get published on here but I haven't got the heart to go back and rewrite all of them.

Lit critics might seem harsh but its all constructive criticism. Looking forward to reading other submissions from you.