Workshop: Champagne1982

[KillerMuffin]

Welcome to another edition of the Workshop! One of our fine authors and great reviewers has a story she'd like us to look over a lil' bit. For those of you just clicking into a Workshop, this is the place where we review stories before they've been posted to the site.


Author's Comments

1. I know the dialogue is cheesy. HELP!

2. Should I develop this guy a bit more? I see him as needing a shower, yet reluctant to leave his post at the computer to have one lest she log in.

3. Would describing the room as needing the pizza boxes and other trash taken out or the back garden as a little overgrown slow the story too much?

4. Is the ending too abrupt after the passion? I can always have him back at his computer when he hears the chimes and looks to see the pop up telling him that "Spectre of the Storm" has just logged in. What do you think?

Pixels of Desire

She was smiling at him from her pic, the resolution poor, the details shadowed. In spite of it he saw the depth of her brown eyes. He looked closer and made out the smudge of lashes beneath her brow, the round fullness of her bottom lip and the tiny mole on her neck.

He slid his mouse over the pad on his desk, clicking and holding the scroll bar, causing the rest of her photo to move up onto the screen. He enjoyed imagining his lips trailing down the shadowy cleavage of her breasts. How he wished that with a swipe of his mouse he could take off her clothes and have her pink nipples casting a shadow over his eyes.

He leaned back, feeling the tingle of desire nagging at his cock, deep in his groin. If he let himself, he could let her image take him to that place where he wants her so badly that he fucks her, hard and urgent, with no consideration for the delicacy of her flesh. He stretched and glanced at the screen again.

Chuckling to himself as he set this pic as his wallpaper, the Winzip icon ironically placed over her lips. He clicked on that tab, thinking of the file he saved her voice in. Thinking of her deep and silky voice with it's quirky little lisp as if the wetness of her words cannot be contained by her language.

As he waited for the file to load he became aware of the rain on his roof. The storm that had been keeping the air so cloying and humid had finally broke. He moved to turn off the a/c and open a window, letting in the rainwashed smell of the yard. He smiled and stayed a moment, leaning against the sash.

In his mind's eye he could picture her on the wet walk, with her hair dripping water onto the light fabric of her shirt. Where her brunette tresses rested against her body the rain first darkened and then turned the material invisible.

A bolt of lightening lit the yard and in that instant he blinked, opening them to see her again. He heard her singing, "Rain,rain. Go away..."

Sighing because he knew he was dreaming, he turned to go back to the screen. He shook his head, amazed at how vivid his imagination could be and was startled to still hear her voice chanting, "Rain,rain. Go away..."

Looking over his shoulder into the darkness of the evening he saw someone moving in the yard. It was too much to hope and he silently chided himself for having such juvenile fantasies, fantasies of her being there and wanting him. He ducked below the sash and squinted through the rain.

She was there, stopped on the walk. The wet concrete reflecting the lights at her back. His sweet spectre of the storm. As if his gaze gave her life she began to walk toward the side porch.
He hastened to that door and opened it. Stepping outside onto the covered deck.

Everything on this end of the house was in darkness but for the filtered, blue light from his computer screen. He saw her approaching him up the path, her fingers deftly unbuttoning her cotton blouse. As his pupils dilated in the dark more details of her person were exposed. He held his breath as she peeled the wet shirt open and off her shoulders.

She was exquisite, his imaginings personified. The rain seemed to encompass her in an aura of misty brightness and she was almost glowing from within. Her health and sexuality streaming forth into his soul. She stopped at the lower step to the porch and let her blouse fall to the ground. She drew her hands up along her ribs and cupped the round fullness of her breasts. Lifting them even higher to his gaze. His tongue flicked out to moisten his suddenly dry lips and his senses screamed for her to fill them.

His eyes focused on her perfectly round nipples and with the touch of his gaze her fingers glided up and caught the pink jewels. She pinched and rolled them and they stiffened in response. He heard her moan. She let them go and brought her fingertips to her lips. He watched their journey in rapture. The seductive capture of her bottom lip in her teeth as her touch moved over her jaw and neck entrancing him.

She let her fingers fall onto the edge of the low slung pants she had on. He watched as she trailed them up and down her tummy between the band and her belly button, finally hooking her thumbs into them and wiggling the stretchy things off her hips. She pushed her bottoms down her thighs and then, stepping on the hem with a dainty toe, slipped one leg out. Using the bare leg, she scraped the wet pants off the other shin and stepped naked from them.

As she'd promised, she was petite and trim. Every curve and expanse of her youthful body hinting at her ripeness. At last he stopped fighting his desire and let his eyes move to her pussy. She stood with her legs slightly apart. Her bald mons a testament to her truthfulness in her descriptions of her orchid. He watched, mesmerized, as her touch fluttered across her sex.

"Come up here out of the rain," he whispered.

"I dare not." was her quiet reply. "Come to me."

He approached her and heard a quiet hum. All of the microhairs on his body seemed to lift in response to her closeness. "You are electric," he murmured as his hands rested on her shoulders. He gasped at the current of feeling that first contact made. He was surprised at the perfection of her skin. Like silk, she flowed beneath his hands.

"Your touch is like a painters brush on my skin," she told him. "With every stroke you create my being in your world. Defining my boundaries as you dab a shadow here and there, building depth and shading clever nuances."

She sighed and he leaned closer, tilting his head so his lips could cover hers and take her breath into himself. He needed her so badly, that he wanted to devour her essence and mesh her soul so completely with his that they would be inseparable.

The rain seemed to fall harder as he unleashed the passion he'd been storing all these long months. She molded her slight frame to him. Her body built for his, a perfect foil. He stopped questioning his good fortune as he found her centre with his finger. He brought his lips down her chest and with a tortured groan sucked in one of her nipples as he slid his finger inside her dewy passage.

Her hands tangled in his hair and she pushed him lower. His mouth sucking at her skin. His tongue memorizing a map across her abdomen. He smelt the musk of her arousal. Mashing his nose against the cushion of her pussy, he snaked his tongue out to flick over the nub of her clit. She shuddered and he tasted her wetness, sweet and hot on his lips. He sucked and pulled the elastic tissues of her sex. She rolled her hips under his hands and fucked his tongue.

Her muscles seemed to draw him deeper into her. Her curves a spiral with her spirit at it's centre. A blackhole of immeasurable capacity for love and passion, for life itself. He was lost in the swallowing. He could drown in her and never feel the terror of his dying.

She seemed to expand in existence as the fury of the storm lashed at them. He felt her passion cresting, the wave a great tsunami of power as their coming together shook the earth they stood on. He welcomed the great wash of her release. It gushed over him but instead of dousing their heat, it drove the bellows that fanned their flames.

"Come into me, Lover!" He stood and kissed her with his lips coated in her juices. His prick unerringly piercing her sex. He sank into her nest of liquid honey and felt her surround him. Her vulva sucked at his cock, a vacuum of lust. He pounded her cunt and moaned as his balls tightened. Just as it seemed they could draw no tighter his passion cinched them tight against him and he felt the fiery agony of his ejaculate scald his passage.

While his cum spilled into her, drenching the mouth of her cervix, the storm lessened. She seemed to become ethereal in its passing. He cried out in pain as he watched her dissolve into millions of tiny bits of information, his reality a dark humidity that she filled no more.

The End


Carrie
My Scribbles

 

[CWatson]

K, lessee here...

Well, first off, I'd have to say it looks better than some of the stuff I've seen 'round the "Story Feedback" board. I mean, at least you've got proper spelling and punctuation. =/

> 1. I know the dialogue is cheesy. HELP!

Err, yeah, you got that right. At least you're aware of it and you haven't got that MUCH dialogue to tinker with. I don't think I can help you, unfortunately, because I don't have a good sense of the characters. But, then, it sounds like you don't either, which is why the dialogue sounds so unnatural. I mean, honestly, who actually SAYS stuff like that? And in the midst of a sexual encounter, to boot.
("Ugh. Ugh. UNHH! Oh, lover, you are like a paintbrush!"
("...What's THAT supposed to mean? I know I'm not that big, but you don't have to--")


A question on that specific line, though: what exactly IS the nature of this visitation? Is he hallucinating? Did he somehow "draw" her into this world? To put it another way: is the paintbrush line supposed to be taken literally? I can't tell if you meant it to be some sort of self-aware commentary or something. Because it's interesting if that's how you meant it.

> 2. Should I develop this guy a bit more? I see him as needing
> a shower, yet reluctant to leave his post at the computer to
> have one lest she log in.

That would be good. It'd also be nice to know something about her, or even how they met. Like I said, sense of characters. Right now these people are just bodies--we know what they look like, but we don't know anything ABOUT them. If all you wanted from this story are two people having sex, then congratulations, that's what you've got. If, on the other hand, you want us to really get in with the characters and be just as emotionally involved as they are... Well. The GOOD news, though, is that it seems like you have a pretty clear vision of your characters in your head, so all you'd have to do are put those details down on paper so that WE can read them.

> 3. Would describing the room as needing the pizza boxes
> and other trash taken out or the back garden as a little
> overgrown slow the story too much?

What back garden? I didn't see any back garden. Is that how they managed to get away with a standing fuck in the rain without being arrested for public indecency? I thought they were out on the front walk or something.

Re the pizza box detail, I don't think you'll need it if you tell us about the lack-of-shower thing. Tell us enough about the person, and his room comes into sharp focus; and the shower thing is a particularly aromatic detail.

> 4. Is the ending too abrupt after the passion? I can always
> have him back at his computer when he hears the chimes
> and looks to see the pop up telling him that "Spectre of the
> Storm" has just logged in. What do you think?

I think I'd like that. It DOES seem an awfully abrupt ending, in that We The People have no idea what just happened. Was someone testing out a new holographic projection system? Is he (at the risk of piquing svenska's ire) taking LSD? Has his long stint without showers finally overwhelmed him?

Don't worry, I'm just teasing you. Aside from the cliffhanger ending, you could probably submit this right now and I bet they'd take it. Now it's just a matter of deciding the details of what you're trying to say.


Some bizarre stylistic issues to address:

If he let himself, he could let her image take him to that place where he wants her so badly that he fucks her, hard and urgent, with no consideration for the etc.

What's with the tense change? I can kind of understand the wish to change tenses in order to emphasize something, but that particular change just grates on the ear. One gets used to it, eventually, so you can keep it... But you risk your reader abandoning the story because of this one tense change. The choice is yours.

Chuckling to himself as he set this pic as his wallpaper, the Winzip icon ironically placed over her lips.

Sentence fragment. You know what to do with it. (I looked at your other published stories and, according to them, you know what you're doing concerning grammar and mechanics.) If you want to keep it, fine--I noticed you have quite a lot of sentence frags littered around; maybe that's just your personal style. People have published books using a telegraphic, fragment-filled style. But again, you risk putting people off.

Thinking of her deep and silky voice with it's quirky little lisp as if the wetness of her words cannot be contained by her language/

'nother fragment. Also, it should be its.

She was there, stopped on the walk.

Stopped? Where was she going that she stopped here? Another word might be appropriate. Standing?

Some of your similes / metaphors / descriptions I didn't quite buy. "Elastic tissues of her sex" comes to mind. I keep thinking stretchy Kleenex.

Oh, well. Please don't feel like you have to change any of these things; I don't know which of them you did deliberately and want to keep. I'm just pointing out what struck me as odd.

Anyway. Hope this helps. I look forward to seeing what you do with this story. And getting back to the main site to read your other stories.

 

[champagne1982]

CWatson

Thankyou for your ideas. Now, to answer some of your questions:

[...]what exactly IS the nature of this visitation? Is he hallucinating? Did he somehow "draw" her into this world? To put it another way: is the paintbrush line supposed to be taken literally? I can't tell if you meant it to be some sort of self-aware commentary or something. Because it's interesting if that's how you meant it.

Well, when the lightning flashed, our erstwhile unwashed one was faced with this image of the girl of his dreams in his garden. Even he is unaware of her true nature, she seems perfectly real to him. The girl, however, knows exactly that she is, indeed, a product of the storm and our hero's need. So, yeah, I meant it as "some sort of self-aware commentary", but I don't want the reader to ever be sure until she dissolves. Without giving away that she's an hallucination too soon, I am a little at a loss as to how to clarify the circumstances.

A note about the ending. It is supposed to be abrupt and more than a little sad but I think that if I put him back at his desk, waking with a start as she logs in it won't hurt quite so much and may even keep my voters happy.

You are so right about the sentence fragments, they are an unwelcome part of my style that prevails when I first draft a story. I am used to seeing them and I usually miss a few no matter how many times I proof a piece. Thankyou to anyone who points them out to me.

I am chuckling about the stretchy Kleenex comment. I'll keep that in mind. I love cliches when I'm dabbling in smut though, so don't try to edit all the corniness out of the vocabulary I use.

You really have given me some useful advice and there are some points that are fixed up already. I still don't know what to do with the "painter's brush" line though. It'll be interesting to see what someone else may come up with.

Take great care, Carrie.
My Scribbles

 

[Pearl_Prynne]

character development

Hi Carrie,

No questions here about what was going on! I’ve heard, wink wink, about a lot of people who develop elaborate and vivid fantasies while scrutinizing photos of people they have (or haven’t) met through the Net.

As far as strengthening the characters, I think that you, as the author, need to decide on their real-life relationship and make up a little story about them. Is she a Literotica author whose stories he has memorized but who never responds to his feedback? Do they email regularly but feel restricted by geography or both being married to different spouses?

You don’t have to tell “their story” in your story, just reveal details subtly through the thoughts he’s having or things they say. Maybe he wants to nibble on her neck (pull her hair?) because she told him how much it turns her on when they were in a chatroom. Or maybe he knows she’s wearing thigh high stockings (white cotton panties?) because she always does in the stories she writes. Focus on how their history (which may be entirely in his head, but if so, tell us) affects their meeting.

Part of their history is the reason why he feels so close to this woman. The dialog you’ve started with seems to imply spiritual connection. Why is this sex going to be so good? I assumed that he has a little bit more information about her besides her picture, but that their relationship is one-sided. If this is so, in the first few minutes of their meeting, he’ll want to demonstrate that he is everything she ever hoped for. How does he know what she wants? How will he communicate that to her? Why doesn’t she dare step out of the rain? What does he want out of this fantasy relationship that he can’t get from a real one?

I don’t think that cheesy dialog is necessarily out of place in this story but you should let readers know that the reason it’s unrealistic is because it’s part of his fantasy. Perhaps he has mentally rehearsed the paintbrush line and she uses it every time he imagines that they meet. Or you could go with more casual conversation, just don’t make it generic. like “I’ve dreamed of this day ever since I blank blank blank” “You’re even more beautiful than you described in your blank blank blank” “You’ll never be lonely (misunderstood?) again because I’m different from blank blank blank” Make the mushiness meaningful by using it to disclose details about the characters.

I thought the ending was abrupt because, in my mind, the sex was more than just sex, it was the beginning of a relationship (so I imagined some cuddling). Actually, I do like the idea of something interrupting his fantasy, maybe even a thought in his head. Perhaps it’s a thought in his head that contradicts something in the fantasy, unfortunately that’s what usually happens. (That’s what my friends tell me, anyway.) The email “chime” idea sounded a little too much like the elementary school stories where “I heard the alarm clock ring and it was all a dream.”

I hope someone else can help you with the sentence fragments because they are pervasive. I almost thought it was stylistic, but honestly, I don’t think it affects your story very much. Good luck, I’ve just gotta go.

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

champagne1982

An imaginative story that needs work but has a lot of potential. The question of expanding the characters and including some description of his room and the garden depends on what sort of story you want to write. For what it’s worth, I’d suggest giving it a try. Now’s the time to tinker.

For my taste (which many claim is all in my mouth), the sex scene narrative was, at times, so abstruse and over-the-top, I began noticing it, instead of the action.

As CWatson mentioned in a fine critique, frags are you. I’d also suggest you work at varying the opening words of your sentences. As is, a vast number seem to begin with “he” or “she”.

Now for your questions.

1. I know the dialogue is cheesy. HELP!
RF: Talk to yourself. Say the lines outloud (when no one's around). Actually, IMHO, there’s nothing “wrong” with her lines, IF, you’re trying to hint at her being a product of his imagination. However, I would have him make some sort of reaction to her "unique" word choice and phrasing..

2. Should I develop this guy a bit more? I see him as needing a shower, yet reluctant to leave his post at the computer to have one lest she log in.
RF: It might set-up the events and help readers identify with the guy. But your story is in the garden with the girl.

3. Would describing the room as needing the pizza boxes and other trash taken out or the back garden as a little overgrown slow the story too much?
RF: See answer two. As for the garden, I had no idea where they were. You referred to a yard but also mentioned a walk. I visualized a late night, front yard setting. A sentence or two might help set the scene and aid readers in visualizing the events.

4. Is the ending too abrupt after the passion? I can always have him back at his computer when he hears the chimes and looks to see the pop up telling him that "Spectre of the Storm" has just logged in. What do you think?
RF: The current version is okay. Your suggestion might work better. Try them both.

Hope some of this helps. Good luck and keep us posted.

Rumple Foreskin

--

She was smiling at him from her pic, the resolution poor, the details shadowed. In spite of it he saw the depth of her brown eyes. He looked closer and made out the smudge of lashes beneath her brow, the round fullness of her bottom lip and the tiny mole on her neck. (IMHO, YOU MIGHT COMBINE THE LAST TWO SENTENCE. “IN SPITE OF IT (, COMMA) HE SAW THE DEPTH OF HER BROWN EYES, THE SMUDGE OF LASHES….”)

He slid his mouse over the pad on his desk, clicking and holding the scroll bar, causing the rest of her photo to move up onto the screen. (THAT’S A LOT OF EXTRANEOUS DETAIL ABOUT COMPUTER OPERATION WHEN THE KEY ELEMENT IS THE REST OF THE PHOTO COMING INTO VIEW.) He enjoyed imagining his lips trailing down the shadowy cleavage of her breasts. How he wished that with a swipe of his mouse he could take off her clothes and have her pink nipples casting a shadow over his eyes.

He leaned back, feeling the tingle of desire nagging at his cock, deep in his groin. (HIS COCK IS DEEP IN HIS GROIN?) If he let himself, he could let her image take him to that place where he wants her so badly that he fucks her, hard and urgent, with no consideration for the delicacy of her flesh. (AWKWARD, PLUS “…HE LET HIMSELF, HE COULD LET HER…”) He stretched and glanced at the screen again.

Chuckling to himself as he set this (THE) pic as his wallpaper, the Winzip icon ironically placed over her lips. (SENTENCE FRAG.. MIGHT REPLACE THE FIRST “AS” WITH A “,” COMMA) He clicked on that tab, thinking of the file he saved her voice in. Thinking of her deep and silky voice with it's quirky little lisp as if the wetness of her words cannot be contained by her language. (ANOTHER SENTENCE FRAG. MIGHT RE-WORD THE OPENING.)

As he waited for the file to load he became aware of the rain on his roof. The storm that had been keeping the air so cloying and humid had finally broke (BROKEN). He moved to turn (OMIT “MOVED TO” JUST “HE TURNED OFF…”) off the a/c and open a window, letting in the rain( )`washed smell of the yard. (MIGHT ALSO LET IN THE RAIN.) He smiled and stayed a moment, leaning against the sash.

In his mind's eye he could picture her on the wet walk, with her hair dripping water onto the light fabric of her shirt. Where her brunette tresses rested against her body the rain first darkened and then turned the material invisible.

A bolt of lightening lit the yard and in that instant he blinked, (PICKY, BUT A “BLINK” INVOLVES CLOSING AND OPENING AN EYELID, THEREFORE “OPENING” IS REDUNDANT.) opening them (TECH. PT. - WHILE IT’S OBVIOUS “THEM” REFERS TO HIS “EYELIDS” THEY AREN’T MENTIONED SO GRAMMATICALLY, IT REFERS TO NOTHING.) to see her again. He heard her singing, "Rain, rain. Go away..."

Sighing because he knew he was dreaming, he turned to go back to the screen. He shook his head, amazed at how vivid his imagination could be and was startled to still hear her voice chanting, "Rain, rain. Go away..."

Looking over his shoulder into the darkness of the evening he saw someone moving in the yard. It was too much to hope and he silently chided himself for having such juvenile fantasies, fantasies of her being there and wanting him. He ducked below the sash and squinted through the rain.

(STYLE PT., IMHO, THIS MOMENT CALLS FOR SOME SORT OF EXCLAMATION OF SURPRISE.) She was there, stopped on the walk. The wet concrete reflecting the lights at her back. His sweet spectre of the storm. As if his gaze gave her life (, COMMA) she began to walk toward the side porch. He hastened to that door and opened it. Stepping outside onto the covered deck.(SENT FRAG)

Everything on this end of the house was in darkness but for the filtered, blue light from his computer screen. (MIGHT WORK BETTER AS A POSITIVE STATEMENT. “THE FILTERED, BLUE GLOW OF HIS COMPUTER SCREEN WASTHE ONLY LIGHT IN THIS PART OF THE HOUSE.) He saw her approaching him up the path, her fingers deftly unbuttoning her cotton blouse. As his pupils dilated in the dark (, COMMA) more details of her person were exposed. He held his breath as she peeled the wet shirt open and off her shoulders.

She was exquisite, his imaginings personified. The rain seemed to encompass her in an aura of misty brightness and she was almost glowing from within. Her health and sexuality streaming forth into his soul. She stopped at the lower step to the porch and let her blouse fall to the ground. She drew her hands up along her ribs and cupped the round fullness of her breasts. (COMBINE THE SENTENCES. AS IS, THE SECOND ONE IS A FRAG..) Lifting them even higher to his gaze. (PROBABLY SHOULD INCLUDE THIS SENTENCE WITH THE NEXT PARA.) His tongue flicked out to moisten his suddenly dry lips and his senses screamed for her to fill them.

His eyes focused on her perfectly round nipples and with the touch of his gaze her fingers glided up and caught the pink jewels. She pinched and rolled them and they stiffened in response. He heard her moan. She let them go and brought her fingertips to her lips. He watched their journey in rapture. The seductive capture (PROBABLY BEST NOT THE HAVE “…RAPTURE. THE SEDUCTIVE CAPTURE…”) of her bottom lip in her teeth as her touch moved over her jaw and neck entrancing him. (FRAG-NO SUBJECT)

She let her fingers fall onto the edge of the (CHANGE “THE” TO “HER” THEN OMIT “SHE HAD ON.”) low slung pants she had on. He watched as she trailed them up and down her tummy between the band and her belly button, finally hooking her thumbs into them and wiggling the stretchy things (THING) off her hips. She pushed her bottoms down her thighs and then, stepping on the hem with a dainty toe, (IS SHE BAREFOOT?) slipped one leg out. Using the bare leg, (FOOT?) she scraped the wet pants off the other shin and stepped naked from them.

As she'd promised, (WHEN) she was petite and trim. Every curve and expanse of her youthful body hinting at her ripeness. At last he stopped fighting his desire and let his eyes (REPLACE “EYES” WITH “GAZE” ODDS ARE THEY STAYED IN THEIR SOCKETS.) move to her pussy. She stood with her legs slightly apart. Her bald mons a testament to her truthfulness in her descriptions of her orchid. (“HER” USED FOUR TIMES IN A SINGLE, FOURTEEN WORD, SENTENCE.) He watched, mesmerized, as her touch fluttered across her sex.

"Come up here out of the rain," he whispered.

"I dare not." was her quiet reply. "Come to me." (DOES HE WONDER WHY SHE “DARE NOT”?)

He approached her and heard a quiet hum. All of the micro(-)hairs on his body seemed to lift in response to her closeness. "You are electric," he murmured as his hands rested on her shoulders. He gasped at the current of feeling that first contact made. He was surprised (WHY) at the perfection of her skin. Like silk, she flowed beneath his hands.

"Your touch is like a painters brush on my skin," she told him. "With every stroke you create my being in your world. Defining my boundaries as you dab a shadow here and there, building depth and shading clever nuances." (HOW DOES HE REACT TO THIS ARCANE ANNOUNCEMENT? DOES IT SEEM “NORMAL” TO HIM?)

She sighed and he leaned closer, tilting his head so his lips could cover hers and take her breath into himself. He needed her so badly, that he wanted to devour her essence and mesh her soul so completely with his that (OMIT “THAT”) they would be inseparable.

The rain seemed to fall harder as he unleashed the passion he'd been storing all these long months. She molded her slight frame to him. Her body built for his, a perfect foil. He stopped questioning his good fortune as he found her centre with his finger (EITHER “A FINGER” OR “HIS FINGERS”). He brought his lips down her chest and with a tortured groan sucked in one of her nipples as he slid his finger inside her dewy passage.

Her hands tangled in his hair and she pushed him lower. His mouth sucking (SUCKED) at her skin. His tongue memorizing (MEMORIZED) a map across her abdomen. He smelt the musk of her arousal. Mashing his nose against the cushion of her pussy, he snaked his tongue out to flick over the nub of her clit. She shuddered and he tasted her wetness, sweet and hot on his lips. He sucked and pulled the elastic tissues of her sex. She rolled her hips under his hands and fucked his tongue.

Her muscles seemed to draw him deeper into her. Her curves a spiral with her spirit at it's centre. A blackhole of immeasurable capacity for love and passion, for life itself. He was lost in the swallowing. He could drown in her and never feel the terror of his dying. (JUST A FEW THOUGHTS ABOUT THAT PARA. EITHER HE HAS A LONG TONGUE OR SHE HAS SOME UNUSUAL MUSCLE DEVELOPMENT. THIS MAY BE A GENERATIONAL THING, BUT “BLACKHOLE” JUST DOESN’T WORK FOR ME. “HE WAS LOST IN THE SWALLOWING”-WHAT?)

She seemed to expand in existence (OKAY, SO I’M CONCRETE, MAYBE EVEN A BLOCKHEAD, BUT TO ME, “EXISTENCE” IS ONE OF THOSE EITHER/OR DEALS, LIKE “VIRGIN.”) as the fury of the storm lashed at them. He felt her passion cresting, the wave a great tsunami of power as their coming together shook the earth they stood on. (METAPHORICALLY SPEAKING, RIGHT? WHAT ABOUT, “…TOGETHER THAT SEEMED TO SHAKE THE….”) He welcomed the great wash of her release. It (INSTEAD OF USING “IT” TWICE, YOU MIGHT GIVE IT A NAME OR DESCRIPTION, EVEN IF ONLY, “HER WARM ESSENCE…”) gushed over him but instead of dousing their heat, it drove the bellows that fanned their flames.

"Come into me, Lover!" (OMIT “LOVER” – PLEASE – AND ADD A DIALOGUE TAG DESCRIBING HER VOICE AND/OR MOVEMENTS. AFTER ALL THAT, BEGIN A NEW PARA.) He stood and kissed her with his lips coated in her juices. His prick unerringly piercing her sex. He sank into her nest of liquid honey and felt her surround him. Her vulva sucked at his cock, a vacuum of lust. He pounded her cunt and moaned as his balls tightened. Just as it seemed they could draw no tighter his passion cinched them tight (“TIGHTENED, TIGHTER, TIGHT” IN THE LAST FIFTEEN WORDS) against him and he felt the fiery agony of his ejaculate scald his passage.

While his cum spilled into her, drenching the mouth of her cervix, the storm lessened. (FRAG) She seemed to become ethereal in its passing. He cried out in pain (MAYBE ‘ANGUISH?) as he watched her dissolve into millions of tiny bits of information, his reality a dark humidity that she filled no more.

 

[Chicklet]

1. I know the dialogue is cheesy. HELP!

There is definitely some cheese going on, but check it out, cheese isn't always so bad. Look at romances...every friggin scene is cheesy, and those books make millions! I figure, cheese has its place, but pick and choose. Small suggestion - go back through your dialogue and cut out half of each sentence:

"Come up here out of the rain," he whispered.

Choose one action for him to request. Two seems like too much cheese. "Come up here with me," he whispered. or "Come out of the rain."

"I dare not." was her quiet reply. "Come to me."

"I dare not" sounds very, very cheesy...I would never say this to a man. A simple shake of the head, maybe, using only the second part of the dialogue: She shook her head and quietly replied "Come to me."

2. Should I develop this guy a bit more? I see him as needing a shower, yet reluctant to leave his post at the computer to have one lest she log in.

Hmm...this is a toughie. Your story is a quickie, a good fast read, and I'm afraid that any more developement might hurt the style. Maybe one or two sentences here or there could develop him, maybe a mention of dry, bloodshot eyes...like you get when you've been staring at a computer screen for twelve hours straight. I don't think that you need to come right out and say that he needs a shower, but hint that maybe he's gone a little overboard in his obsession over this woman.

3. Would describing the room as needing the pizza boxes and other trash taken out or the back garden as a little overgrown slow the story too much?

Yes. I don't think that your story needed any room description, I for one liked it a lot as it was. Also, in a story that flows so well and stays pretty serious, a comment like that seems fluffy and a little silly. Out of place, basically. If you want to lighten the mood here and there you could add that comment, and if you did that I would suggest to go over your dialogue a little and make it flirty, silly, teasing, rather than hot and speedy.

4. Is the ending too abrupt after the passion? I can always have him back at his computer when he hears the chimes and looks to see the pop up telling him that "Spectre of the Storm" has just logged in. What do you think?

You've already revealed to the audience that the fantasy was a figment of his imagination...adding that she's signed on might be rubbing it in a little bit. I personally really liked the abrupt ending, it shakes the reader, it left me with a bit of a chill.

Alright, so, in all, I really liked your story. I notived minor problems that people before me have mentioned, problems you probably would have noticed if you hadn't written the story (personally I never catch all my mistakes!) As for the fragmented sentences...In most places I think that they fit like they were. It's very stylized writing, maybe it takes the right kind of person to enjoy it, and I thought that for the most part it worked.

-Chicklet

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I liked it a lot. I liked the idea, I like the way you wrote it as a fantasy without patronizing the reader with explanations and rationale.

But still, there's something worng with it. I'm not quite sure what, but adding pizza boxes won't help, nor, in my opinion, will adding character identity.

I'm going to make a leap of conjecture and say that I think the tone is somehow wrong. I know what you're trying to do: you're trying to make her (and the story) real through the use of concrete detail, which is standard operating procedure and which you do very well, but for some reason it doesn't quite work here. I kept on feeling that I was getting caught up in all this descriptive minutiae. It's a shame, really, because your use of detail is really excellent and your imagery is striking and original. But somehow the focus seems to slip off what's important and dwell on the detail.

I think that's important that you establish what's going on right at the start. Who is she? I thought she must be an old girlfriend, and it still wasn;t clear to me at the end whteher she was someone he knew or not. Does it even matter? Which is spookier: that she's someone he knows or someone he doesn't?

The story's essentially about a guy making love to a spectre or virtual woman. So how do you underscore how profoundly strange and spooky this is? I don't think visual imagery is the way to go. Seeing isn't believing in this case; she's a virtual image, she's easy to see.

Maybe if you concentrated more on the tactile aspects: the warmth of her skin, the softness and pressure of her body. I noticed that once she showed up there wasn't much mention of the rain. Too bad, because I think the image of her standing there with the cold rain steaming off her warm skin or with the rain splattering off her would have given her more presence.

I also think it would help if you played with the focus of the piece. By focus, I mean the amount of detail and time you spend on each part of the story: him at the computer, him seeing her in the rain, the love-making. The usual way we make imaginary things real is by attention to sensory detail, making them perceptable, decribing what it feels like to perceive them and how they react to the mundane world. But in this case my gut reaction is to make her less than real. Make her more a subjective experience to him, a feeling in his arms, a taste. Describe her in terms of his feeling.

I also think you have to do something about the pacing. To me at least, the sex was great but it lacked the change in tempo of real sex: the passion and frenzy. The sentence style is similar through out the piece, I think, and that leads to a kind of emotional flatness. I think that accelerating the tempo of the prose can be very effective in any sex scene, or in any moment of high drama.

Dialogue? Yes, it's it's pretty turgid. But then what does a virtual woman say?

"Your touch is like a painters brush on my skin," she told him. "With every stroke you create my being in your world. Defining my boundaries as you dab a shadow here and there, building depth and shading clever nuances."

Does she have to say that? Couldn't he discover on his own that the more he touches her, the more real she gets? Do spectres even speak? If they do, I don't think they'd say anything like that.

Is it necessary to have dialogue at all? Does she have to speak?

As for the ending, I don't know how you would make it less abrupt. Have him find himself standing in the rain with his pud out, I guess. That might be fun. Don't know

I don't know. As I say, I have trouble putting my finger on just what bothers me about this story, what I think is off. These are just top-of-the-head kinds of things.

But I liked the idea. You write very well. Your imagery really impresses me. I might steal some of it

Best

---dr.M.

 

[champagne1982]

Thankyou all so much!

Your help in this is extremely appreciated. Here's a look at what I've managed so far:

Pixels of Desire

She was smiling at him from her pic, the resolution poor, the details shadowed, yet, in spite of it, Dan saw the depth of her brown eyes. He looked closer and made out the smudge of lashes beneath her brow, the round fullness of her bottom lip and the tiny mole on her neck. A fast left-click caused the rest of her photo to move up onto the screen. He enjoyed imagining his lips trailing down the shadowy cleavage of her breasts. How he wished that with a swipe of his mouse, like a paint brush, he could take off her clothes and have her pink nipples exposed to his eyes.

Dan leaned back, feeling the tingle of desire nagging at his cock, while deep in his groin the knots of need churned. He allowed himself to wander through a fantasy of their fucking. He'd take her hard with no consideration for the delicacy of her flesh. His sweet ghost woman was everything he'd dreamed. She'd told him, in their private, whispered, script chats on-line, that he was "her artist", her painter or sculptor. Dan liked that since it sure beat the reality of going to the office every day.

He stretched and glanced at the screen again, set the pic as his wallpaper and chuckled when he noticed the Winzip icon ironically placed over her lips. He clicked on that tab, thinking of the file he saved her voice in and sighed. Dan loved her deep and silky voice. Its quirky little lisp slipped off her tongue as if the wetness of her words would never be contained by her language.

As he waited for the file to load Dan heard the rain on his roof. The storm that had been keeping the air so cloying and humid had finally broke. He turned off the a/c and opened a window, letting in the rain-washed smell of the yard. He smiled as the drops kissed his face and stayed a moment, leaning against the sash.

In his mind's eye he could picture her on the wet walk through his back garden, with her hair dripping water onto the light fabric of her shirt. Where her brunette tresses rested against her body, the water soaked through and first darkened, then turned the white cotton invisible. A bolt of lightening lit the yard and in that instant he blinked. In disbelief Dan gasped, her image was there like it was burned into his retinas. He heard her singing, "Rain, rain. Go away..."

Sighing because he knew he was dreaming, he turned to go back to the screen. He shook his head, amazed at how vivid his imagination could be and was startled to still hear her voice chanting, "Rain, rain. Go away..."

Looking over his shoulder into the darkness of the storm, Dan saw someone moving out there. It was too much to hope and he silently chided himself for having such juvenile fantasies; fantasies of her being there and wanting him. He ducked below the sash and squinted through the rain. She was out in his garden, standing on the walk with the wet concrete reflecting the streetlights at her back, a sweet specter of the storm. His gaze seemed to give her life and she began to walk toward the side porch.

Dan hastened to that door and opened it, then stepped outside onto the covered deck. Everything out there was dimly lit in the filtered blue light of his screen saver shining through the window. The ghostly image approached him up the path, her fingers deftly unbuttoning her cotton blouse. His pupils dilated in the dark and more details came clear, as if she were solidifying in his presence. Dan held his breath as she peeled the wet garment open and off her shoulders.

She was exquisite, his imaginings personified and the rain seemed to encompass her in an aura of misty brightness. Dan basked in her glow, her health and sexuality streaming forth into his soul. She stopped at the lower step to the porch and let her blouse fall to the ground. Her hands drew up along her ribs and cupped the round fullness of her breasts and lifted them to Dan's gaze.

His tongue flicked out to moisten his suddenly dry lips and his senses screamed for her to fill them. Dan focused on her perfectly round nipples and with the touch of his gaze, her fingers glided up and caught the pink jewels. She pinched and rolled them and they stiffened in response. He heard her moan. She released her nipples and brought her fingertips to her lips. Dan was entranced by the seductive capture of her bottom lip in her teeth as her touch moved over her jaw and neck.

Her fingers fell onto the edge of her low slung pants. He watched as she trailed them up and down her tummy between the band and her belly button, finally hooking her thumbs into the elastic and wiggling the stretchy fabric off her hips. She pushed her bottoms down her thighs then, stepping on the hem with a bare toe, slipped one leg out. He willed that her opposite foot lift and scrape them off the other shin. Dan smiled when her dainty foot lifted to his bidding and trembled as his dream girl stepped naked towards him.

As she'd promised in all her descriptions, she was petite and trim. Every curve and expanse of her youthful body hinted at her ripeness. At last, he stopped fighting his desire and stared at her pussy. She stood, with graceful legs slightly apart, showing her shaved pussy to him, a testament to her truthfulness when she'd described her orchid.

Dan's cock twitched thinking about the first time she'd had cyber sex with him. "Tell me what you see," he'd begged.

She'd responded, "My outer lips are pale pink, like the flesh of a maturing peach. My wetness beads on the frilly, scalloped edges of my inner ones. They fold like petals covering the well of nectar in an orchid and my clit hangs, pendulous, over my slit, like the pistil structure of the blossom. It's waiting to slide a grain of pollen onto the creature's back who's wily enough to drink, yet, not fall in and drown."

With the memory of her poetry still dancing in his head, Dan watched, mesmerized, as her touch fluttered across her mons. "Come out of the rain," he whispered.

"I can't leave the storm, it sustains me," was her quiet reply. "Come to me."

"Why are you here?"

"You called, the storm answered," she looked into his eyes and held her hand out to him.

As he approached her, Dan heard a quiet hum and all of the micro hairs on his body seemed to lift in response to her closeness. "You are electric," he murmured as his hands rested on his shoulders. He gasped at the current of feeling that first contact made. He marveled at the perfection of her skin, she seemed to flow beneath his hands, like water colors she gained substance each time he touched her.

"Your touch is like a painters brush on my skin, my darling." she told him. "With every stroke you create my being in your world. Defining my boundaries and as you dab a shadow here and there, building depth and shading clever nuances."

He smiled, it seemed every statement needed to be couched in an image with this girl. She sighed and he leaned closer, tilting his head so his lips could cover hers and take her breath into himself. He needed her so badly. Dan wanted to devour her essence and mesh her soul so completely with his they would be inseparable. As he kissed her he could smell the ozone of the lightning and with each rumble of thunder he could feel her throb in answer.

The rain seemed to fall harder as he unleashed the passion he'd been storing all these long months. She molded her slight frame to him. Her body built for his, a perfect foil. He stopped questioning his good fortune as he found her center with his fingers. Dan brought his lips down her chest and with a tortured groan sucked in one of her nipples, at the same time, he slid his finger inside her dewy passage. He sensed a current flowing within this beauty, an energy almost frightening in it's potential to hurt him. He wanted to love her, hopefully, harnessing the power she had over him.

Her hands tangled in his hair and she pushed him lower. His mouth sucked at her skin. His tongue memorized a map across her abdomen. He smelt the musk of her arousal. As he mashed his nose against the cushion of her pussy Dan snaked his tongue out to flick over the nub of her clit. She shuddered and he tasted her wetness, sweet and hot on his lips.

He sucked and pulled at her sex, stretching her pussy lips and clit, then releasing them to spring back in place. She rolled her hips under his hands and fucked his tongue. Dan felt he was captured and every part of her was holding him there. He felt he could drown in her and never feel the terror of his dying.

She seemed to increase in energy as the fury of the storm lashed at them. He felt her passion cresting, the wave a great tsunami of power as together, they seemed to shake the earth they stood on. He welcomed the great wash of her release. It gushed over him but instead of dousing their heat, drove the bellows that fanned their flames.

"Fuck me!" She begged. Her fingers tangled in his hair as she pulled him up.

Dan kissed her with lips coated in her juices. His prick unerringly pierced her sex and he sank into her, wet satin surrounding him. Her vulva sucked at his cock, a vacuum of lust. He pounded her cunt and moaned as his balls contracted. Just as it seemed his skin could draw no tighter, Dan's passion cinched it all close up against him and he felt the fiery agony of his ejaculate scald his passage.

While his cum spilled into her, drenching her womb, the storm weakened in intensity. She seemed to become ethereal in its passing. He cried out in anguish as he watched her dissolve into millions of tiny bits of information. His reality became a dark humidity that she filled no more.

 

[janus40s]

I think your original questions are well answered by the previous posters.

On a different note, there are a lot of personal pronouns in the story. It might be more vivid if you could remove some of them. Examples:

In his mind's eye he could picture her on the wet walk through his back garden, with her hair dripping water onto the light fabric of her shirt.

In his mind's eye she stood on the wet walk through the back garden, with her hair dripping water onto the light fabric of her shirt.

As he waited for the file to load Dan heard the rain on his roof.

As the file loaded, rain began to pelt the roof.

I'm not suggesting that you remove all or even most of the he/his/she/her. Leaving a lot of the he/his pronouns keeps the focus on the fact that this is his creation. However, maybe you could reserve the pronouns for times when someone is doing something.

How about a little varriation in sentence structure:

His tongue flicked out to moisten his suddenly dry lips ...

His tongue flicked his suddenly dry lips, moistening them.

Her fingers fell onto the edge of her low slung pants.

Her fingers fell to the edge of her pants, already low slung and read to fall.

As it stands, there is a "newspaper" feel to the story. Adding some texture to the sentence structure would allow the thoughts to roll around in the reader's imagination, tantalizing and teasing him before yielding their images to his mind's eye.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Hey Champagne,

I had a hard time getting into the flow of this story because the main character is so nebuous. He seemed like Everyman or Mr. John Q. Public to me, I think some definition would help. For a short story I didn't find a quick "hook" in it. I continued reading because I wanted to give a critique rather than because it drew me in at first. As it went along I did get into it, but a lot of readers will give up on a story if it dosen't grab them in the first few paragraphs.

As the storm is the principle element in his dream state I think you might grab readers more quickly if you started off with it in full swing with lightning flashing and pounding rain. Perhaps even having the electricity go out and restart his machine as a reson to have him rise and go to the window while it wa booting back up? Since the end of the storm presages his lover's dissappearance you could set the encounter in the waning part of the storm rather than the waxing part. Perhaps using the lessening intensity of the storm to carry into the softer more ethereal mood of the sex.

I don't think the abrupt ending hurts, but timing it with the end of a storm that started basically moments before the characters get physical either makes it one heck of a short storm or the end all be all of extended quickies. Even the thunderboomers we get here on the mountain last longer than the span of time the story seems to take up in the sex. Of course, you have been going for the time out of place to add to the mystery of the story.

I have a suggestion for your dialogue. Since your female character is a spectre why not give her an old world accent? Using thee and thou with archaic constructions would make her seem as old as time, i.e. as old as storms and at least to me, it would go a long way towards seperating her from the "virtual girl" theme without having to explain exactly what she is.

Just some thoughts, good luck with the story

-Colly

 

[champagne1982]

It's posted

The finished product is up for good or bad.

Pixels of Desire

Don't forget to vote!