Would like feedback on my first story.

[Dominated432]

I was wondering if I could get some feedback on my first story, it's the first part of a pretty massive saga I've planned out and I would like to hear some thoughts on it.

My rating has gone down to 3 stars, and I'm not entirely sure why, since no one has commented to tell me.

The story is sci fi themed, with bondage and gay elements, the overall saga will be very very Bi.

https://literotica.com/s/a-slave-aboard-starship-zen-pt-01

 

[TheRedChamber]

Congratulations on your first story and don't be too discouraged by the score. Sci-Fi doesn't always get that many views, so it may take a while to get some comments. In addition, since you've only got 1.1k views so far, I'm guessing you haven't gotten many votes yet either - it's fairly common for stories I post to start in the threes and work their way up later. However, you asked for feedback, so here it is.

1. One reason you're getting down-voted may be that it is not at all clear to the reader that this is going to be a gay sex story until the sex actually happens - it takes quite a number of paragraphs to establish that the main character is male and then most of the characters he meets are female 'mistresses' until right at the end. My impression of Sci-Fi/Fantasy is that its pretty accepting of LGBT+ stories, but a lot of people would have been expecting hetero BDSM and some may have been annoyed by the sudden switch. It seems as though the character is gay/bi and comfortable with their sexuality, so this is a detail that could be dropped in somewhere earlier in the story to clue readers in (one of the executed crew members was a long-term/casual lover?)
2. I've been watching Brandon Sanderson's lectures about writing Sci-Fi/Fantasy recently on YouTube and one of the points he makes is that you should find one thing cool about your universe and introduce it to the reader as quickly as possible. I think at the moment the setting comes across as a bit of a generic - there are many Star-Trek/Wars alien races, but nothing particulary unique about it. Its hard to get the amount of 'telling your reader about your world' information right in a Sci-Fi story between too little and too much, but I think there's possibly too little here - a few slightly added details dropped in here and there might help - e.g whats the position of humans amongst the various alien races, are humans accepting of slavery, is this a particularly dangerous corner of the galaxy etc.
3. You start with a description of someone eating worms - this could definitely be a turn-off.
4. Your character comes across as very passive and a bit wet. You say the crew lost to the aliens, but its not clear what part the MC played in the battle. A cliche in BDSM writing would be to have them start as brave and be reduced to the sub position during the story - on the other hand their guilt about their crew's death could be increased if they had been cowardly or messed up in some way and they could thus think they deserved their treatment. At the moment the MC is humiliated by his situation, but no differently than anyone else would be. He does try to escape at one point, but this is practically only one line, more could have been made about it.
5. If this is going to be a massive saga, then you probably want your chapters to be longer than one Lit page (about 3,500 words) - there's not that much to get your teeth into here and it seems to stop just as it gets started.
6. The sex is far too short (this is an issue I had when I started writing), only three hundred words. It's risky to have your characters fuck within literal seconds of meeting each other, but you can get away with it - assuming the sex then shows some kind of bond forming between the characters and give the reader some more details about the partner. The actual mechanics of the sex are rushed as well, how did the MC come after his partner had finished?

 

[Dominated432]

Thanks for the feedback! Good criticisms, which I think Part 2 will address somewhat.

 

[Parhelical]

My ship had been attacked by pirates, who had quickly defeated my crew-mates and vaporized each of them one by one, all the while making me watch.

Is this necessary? It's a touch grim for the opening of a sex story.

My dick had shrunk down to a smaller size than usual from all the anxiety. I swear.

Then we have this, just a quick pull, but it's a tonal mismatch. Either it's a lighter story where a guy is worrying about his penis size or we have the vaporizations and he's sobbing in the corner.

Do we need to lead with his backstory? Opening on a guy held captive is strong enough for establishing peril. It's probably better to have him talk to someone at some point and tell it himself than to just expositionally lay it out. Or else you open the narrative on the capture in real time and we get to experience it directly.

As I was led through the space station, creatures of all shapes and sizes passed me by. I had longed to see more alien life for so long, and now I was surrounded by it. Unfortunately, I was either ignored by them or given mocking looks.

This is all we get? Show me the aliens, sell the setting; even just specify one creature glaring at him. But again, tonal mismatch, given what happened he would have his eyes down and be terrified, not letting a new place wash over him.

It feels like this is just better if its lighter. The setting is fundamentally silly: captured by aliens for sex on crazy space adventures? Great, plenty of room for story there, but lay off on the grimness and make it fun. Maybe its mistaken identity? Maybe he got on the wrong space bus? Maybe we open on our hapless hero losing a rigged game of space poker? Cue misadventure and fun.

Instead, we get absolute brutality and horror. Which can be done, but its a lot harder to execute and far less sustainable.

 

[Carnevil9]

I thought it was a good start to a story. But I agree with TheRedChamber that you need longer chapters. At least a longer first chapter, so that readers have more to get hooked on. I thought the level of description was good, and I liked the balance between description and dialog.

My main criticism would be the grammar and punctuation. There were far too many errors, which I found distracting. But since the underlying story is good and strong, you should be fine if you can get yourself a good editor to smooth out the problems.

Good luck! Keep writing. That's the path to improvement.

 

[Lifestyle66]

TheRedChamber gave you a good comprehensive review.

I read your story and would reiterate that if you don't describe the relevant content of the story, you'll bait people into reading it who don't want to read gay or anal sex stories. You have three tags for "Slave", but none for those descriptors of the sex. When you bait people to read it and hit them with something they don't like, your reward is more views, but a low rating.

 

[Dominated432]

To be honest, I think I underestimated how much that would matter. I've kept it in mind for future stories.