Young Female Writer In California

[AudreyHepburn]

Hi I've just taken up writing for Literotica and hope to be published someday. I write romance novels, historical fiction, literary fiction, short stories, etc. I'm under the pen name "AudreyHepburn" on Literotica and a few submissions have been published online - "Hotel Heiress:Cancun", "Romantic Novelist: Las Vegas and Romantic Novelist: Beverly Hills", "Manny Ch.1" and two poems. I would greatly appreciate more feedback, critiques and criticisms, advice on how to improve my writing, what's good about it, what's not, what I should be writing to get more readers, etc. I'm not heavy on graphic sex or dirty sex. Literotica can get very dirty but I like some of the more romantic or soft-core erotic stories. I also prefer strong plots and great characters. The sex is an extra spice but there's got to be a strong story with plots and twists and al that. I love to read, I'm adventurous and I want to be more recognized. My writing is not of the "porn script" quality that I see a lot here on Literotica. I love porn but when it has a story and it's not just anatomical body parts in motion and stories that don't make any sense and are mere excuses for sex to happen. Anyhow, email me, private or otherwise and or post a reply here. Thanks

 

[jomar]

Hi Audrey..and welcome to Lit. Provide a link to your stories and you will get some feedback. The running joke is that we're way to lazy to find them on our own.

 

[drksideofthemoon]

Hi Audrey..and welcome to Lit. Provide a link to your stories and you will get some feedback. The running joke is that we're way to lazy to find them on our own.

Damn straight on that!

 

[AudreyHepburn]

Link To My Stories Under The Name AudreyHepburn

http://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=825293&page=submissions

 

[MarshAlien]

Your major problem, in a word, is credibility. I just don't believe that these are real people, and when you're populating your own little fictional world, you need to make the people as seem as real as you possibly can.

It starts in the first paragraph (I read the most recent, your Beverly Hills novel), where Audrey apparently gets an agent to read her first novel simply by walking into the woman's office. Um, yeah... We all wish. "'How long should I wait before I write my next novel?'" "'They are printing my new novel in a month's time?'" I think you need to do some serious research before you pick a subject, like writing, to write about.

Your descriptions are much too wooden and trite. Gabrielle was "an executive-looking woman" tells us nothing about her, and is incredibly flat. "They sat outside on a white linen table with a view of the street" is just silly. A white linen tablecloth maybe? Don't all outside tables have a view of the street? "'I didn't know you had it in you,' she said, in a way that although appeared half-insulting, made it appear casual and somewhat innocent." Everything after "said" is redundant. We know this from the dialogue itself.

And then there's the actual dialogue. I don't think real people use words like "plethora" in ordinary conversation, or say things like "I have to take frequent flights across the world for some of them." I think it would help if you said each line of dialoge aloud before you committed it to paper, and asked yourself, "can I really hear somebody saying that?" In your case, most of the time, I couldn't.

 

[drksideofthemoon]

Here are my thoughts on your Las Vegas story, I thought it would interesting to read, as that is where I live.

The technical part of your writing seems fine. Remember to use words instead of numbers.

I think it would have been a good idea to italicize the story that Audrey is writing, it was a bit confusing at times reading the story, and the story that Audrey was writing. I like the idea though, a story in a story sort of thing.

The problem with the story is that it just isn't very interesting. You've set the story in Las Vegas, other than dropping a few names of shows and casinos, I never get the feeling that you are in Las Vegas. It could have just as easily taken place at the Motel 6 in Barstow.

You don't make me "care" about the characters, nothing really stands out, and makes me want to know more about them.

The story that Audrey is writing is equally uninteresting, it reads like a 1950's fanfic. The characters are too trite, she's fabulously famous, extremely successful, gorgeous and he is equally too perfect.

She's turned down Gable, Grant, and Holden, but immediately goes to bed with this gambler. This is the 1950's, an indiscretion like this could sink her career like a pair of Bugsy Siegel's concrete dress shoes.

You've submitted this story into the Romance category, and quite honestly, I don't feel the slightest spark of romance in the story at all.

I think your idea is good, but just poorly executed.

 

[Varian P]

Hi Audrey, and welcome.

I had a look at chapter one of "Manny."

The idea you have is rich and interesting, and you have a fine grasp of language. Still, the execution of the story could use a bit of work.

There's a tense problem in the second line of your story:

They had been 18 the night the terrible car accident occurred.

It should be, "They were eighteen..." Past perfect (they had been) is used for actions that get interrupted, so for instance you might say, "They had been eating dinner when the accident occurred."

Also, you should spell out numbers (eighteen, not 18).

I pick this one little sentence apart because it's essentially the opening line of your story, so it's crucial to hooking the reader. You've got an exciting event--the accident. It would be a shame to turn the reader off with the little mistakes.

You've painted a pretty thorough picture of Manny in that first, long paragraph. This line doesn't add anything:

With his huge physique, he could have easily passed for an ox.

In fact, it detracts. People might say "big as an ox," but being able to pass for an ox is not an attractive quality.

People differ in the amount of physical description they want on characters. For my tastes, you dwell too long on the physical, going on too long about how huge and muscular and ox-like the guy is--you can sprinkle mentions of his powerful body throughout the story, in more character-building ways, such as, "His powerful arm swept up the heavy tool box with such grace, it might have been a lunch pail." (lame example, but hopefully it makes my point).

This is the sexiest thing we learn about Manny in that paragraph:

Oddly enough, it was his modesty that drove women absolutely crazy. Manny was shy and quiet, but strong and resourceful, taking care of business when it needed to be done. He took care of his folks and little sister, and worked the ranch during the day. He had wanted to go to college but his father needed him at home, and had no choice and therefore stayed.

I'm not as bothered by long paragraphs as some, but you have a lot of long ones that stretch over several trains of thought. When action or POV or anything else shifts, break and start a new paragraph.

Here, you have some rather complex human interaction:

He intended to take advantage of her in this state and told her to drive down an unknown road off the main highway and into a secluded region in the desert. But they never made it more than half a mile out of town when the car struck a smaller vehicle. Its driver, an old woman, died instantly. That was the last time they had seen each other. Before long, the family of the elderly woman pressed charges against Manny, who took the blame, out of love for Jessica.

So, he gets the woman he loves drunk, plans to lure her to a seclude area to date rape her (that's my interpretation based on the narrative), but takes the fall on the manslaughter charges out of love for her. Wow.

I'm not saying people aren't weirdly complex, but this is pretty heavy stuff to lay down in a couple sentences. We never really get inside Manny's head, to get a sense of the moment-by-moment thoughts and feelings driving these behaviors. Delivered in a brief summary as they are, he just comes of kind of schizo. I think you could do the dynamic between them more justice by slowing down and showing us their interactions, letting us hear their thoughts, let us see some dialogue, how they engage with each other instead of quickly telling us.

New York City, 1986

Years passed. They were both of them now twenty six.

We already know years have passed, because you just told us it's 1986. However, six years have past, and they've gone from eighteen to twenty-six?

Are they the same age? At the opening of the story I thought they were, but then much was made of her being underage at the bar, and I thought I'd been wrong, that he was older than she. Just something you might want to make more clear.

Hmmm... Once we're in 1986, I'm really having trouble.

She heard that Manny Meza had been released from prison on good behavior. He was now a free man, and he would not go home. He'd look for her. She knew she wouldn't sleep for the rest of the long hot night.

It was as if a nightmare was unfolding into intense and frightening reality.

If Manny selflessly took the blame for the accident out of love for her, why is his release a nightmare? You've given us no idea why she should be scared of him.

Then:

He was in black slacks and a white dress shirt rolled to the elbows looking relaxed and very menacing. But god in heaven did he look delicious. Prison had changed him. He was even more muscular than when she had last seen him. No longer possessing a football player/jock's body, he was a huge, threatening thing. There was a small scar above one of those gorgeous brown eyes, and his smile had become lopsided, teasing and malicious. He had grown facial hair. This was a dangerous man.

So her version of delicious is a guy who's menacing, a threatening thing, malicious and dangerous?

"Please, Manny, I'm a -"

Ethan stopped cold. She was a virgin.

Um, who's Ethan?

His hand was inside her wet open pussy

A bit much for a virgin, don't you think? Maybe just a finger?

Faster and faster, she cummed violently on her hand, moaning Ethan's name again and again

Ethan again? "Came" rather than "cummed" is traditionally the past tense of "cum."

And...okay, the twelve-inch ramrod that's all steel just made me giggle.

I feel like you started to write a story with a fairly complex plot and some depth of psychology and emotion, and then suddenly you started writing this shallow hard-core virgin rape fantasy.

If you want to write something other than formulaic stroke, my main suggestions would be to carefully flesh out your characters. Let their personalities come through in dialogue, in actions. And second, just slow down and take time writing and proofing and editing the piece. The final third felt like you wrote it in a rush and never looked at it again. Noticeably different from the rest.

Hope that's helpful.

-Varian

 

[ninefe2dg]

Yo, Hep...my thoughts on Cancun...

It's like opening an envelope of dirty photos you don't want anyone to see.
Maybe a little unclear, I think I know what "it" is, but as written "it's" subject to interpretation (do as I say not as I do lol!)...an eyecatching opening nontheless.

When I look back on the summer of '93 when I was twenty-one and drinking for the first time in Cancun, Mexico, having the time of my life with friends

"having the time of my life" may be redundant! Also, was Valerie drinking for the first time, or first time in Cancun?

I think it's difficult not write about people without making them charicatures. How is Fernando distinguishable from say, Rico in Manilow's Copacabana, or Carlos from the Flying Nun (who we all know was doing all the sisters in the Convent San Tanco, well, maybe not the Reverend Mother)...he just struck me as one gold chain or gold tooth away from the perfect stereotype. I think you could make him a bit more interesting/different.

I don't buy that Valerie would forget some of the details. I'm sure every detail is etched firmly in her mind forever (whether or not they had breakfast, why he looked at her the way he did).

Might be better done in the third person...it's OK for Valerie to be beautiful, rich, entitled, and know it, but when she tells it, it just comes across as conceited (and again, it's even OK for her to be conceited)...just seems a little putoffish.

Like this line...His eyes could not have been fixed on my dress at any rate...while Valerie's hair/face may have been a distraction, I didn't hear enough to know why he would have taken his eyes off her dress/legs...

I think there was a bit too much "explaining", I think we could figure out that "virgen" means "virgin", and that Valerie could figure that out, too.
I think "oral pleasure" is unintentionally funny. Butch's girlfriend in Pulp Fiction calls it that, and it's meant to be tongue in cheek, or at the very least innocent and charming, to bring out the tender side of a man who'd just killed someone in a boxing ring.

Some of the sexual descriptions could be made more vivid, perhaps. I'd like to see Valerie let her guard down and get a bit nastier...is "fuck session" better than "session of intimacy" perhaps? I know she says "fuck" quite a bit, but I think, if she's really letting loose, that we'd hear some uber "nasty talk" from her...

I had always heard that Latino lovers were among the best, along with the French and Americans of course.

Americans? C'mon, we watch too much TV and fart and fall asleep too soon after sex. We're selfish boors whose idea of foreplay is "pull my finger"! OK, maybe we're not that bad, but you do mention Fernando makes Valerie feel as no other American boyfriend/lover ever has...

To the others who had seen us hand in hand traversing the lobby we must have appeared like a couple in their honeymoon or a pair of lovers, just one of the many lovers who frequented this beautiful, palm-filled, tropically designed hotel.

Hmmm...dunno about that, I imagine he looked like a "dirty old man" who'd picked up a drunk tourist on her last night of vacation. Maybe, if you want them to look a little more married, maybe he holds her purse to free up her hands to do something, like take a phone call, fix her makeup, anything to make them appear more familiar perhaps? Something to take Latin Lover Guy a bit out of character.

So there he was.Hispanic? Of course. He was not a "gringo" tourist which is what locals called white American tourists

I would think Hispanic could be definitive. Also, do Mexicans REALLY call Americans gringos? I've only been to Mexico a couple times, we have a number of Mexicans where I live, and I've never been called a gringo.For the record I've also never been called "yanqui, honkey, or cracker", and am starting to think these terms don't really exist in practice.

This, too, is part of the magic.

Again, "this" was a bit ambiguous. Bigger issue, though, and "this" (there I go again not taking my own advice!) is one example from your story, don't tell us that it's magic, use the all the senses to create the magic so we can decide for ourselves.

Try to distinguish/differentiate your characters a bit more. How can you make me, a totally straight American male, want to hop in the sack with Fernando myself? (It can be done, just ask VarianP about my man-crush on Galen Ross!)

I wrote my first short story about five months ago, so first, take anything I have to say with a grain of salt. I've dashed off about a dozen since and, given I had gotten some affirmation before I posted any of them, I thought "hey what's the big deal, this isn't so hard". Now, after having posted a couple stories for feedback I see that the first draft comprises, I dunno, maybe 10% of the effort (we can quibble over what that number is but you get the point). I've rewritten one, which for me was painstaking but very satisfying...and I think that's where you'll see the "heavy lifting" is. I hope you stick with it.

Heed the advice of the people on this board. It's a learning process. Read other people's work and don't shy away from commenting on it. Smart writers accept constructive criticism from anyone, even from noobophytes like me, and you'll learn more about styles and unique ways of expressing stories/ideas/characters. I wish I had more time for it, myself.

You put a story out there for comment, and that takes guts. I know of people who have posted, gotten feedback, get discouraged, and either leave or stop writing. Take the passion you clearly have for writing stories, stick around, and see what you can learn to continuously improve. That's what everyone on this board is trying to do.

Good luck!

 

[WinterJasmine]

hi Audrey,
I haven't read any of your other stories but I think the Manny story has real potential, if you take on board the comments the others have said it could be a really hot series. Good luck,
Jasmine

 

[mjl2010]

OK lets see here, I'm opening up Hotel Heiress: Cancun. I'll comment as I go along. You asked for feedback so don't take offense. I'll say what I think is good and not good. While not the most experienced writer here, I've taken a few lumps and begged people to read my stuff and criticize it.

Ouch. First paragraph you've got an ellipse outside the quote marks and its more than three dots long.

Second paragraph is very long for a story on screen. Long paragraphs are hard to read on a monitor for most people. Oh there's a whole bunch of dots right in the middle of it.

It was after a single look............ He stared at me No no no Senorita, so many dots are bad.

In fact the first three paragraphs are very long and I'm already regretting opening this story. If it's a good story I'll miss a lot of it just because my eyes have trouble following sentences in long paragraphs on a monitor. If I was browsing stories, looking for something to read, I'd be hitting the back button now to find something else.

I just reached the point where he tells her to lay down on the bed. I've had at least a half dozen instances where there was no space between words. I've encountered more long paragraphs too.

Where did the rope come from please?

Early on you say he's in his forties, later you call him a dirty old man and and older man. It detracted from the story to some degree for me.

I'm not sure why you mention his asking if she were a virgin. It didn't fit. I mean she'd just let him tie her up right? Not something many virgins would do.

In one paragraph, this sentence jumped out at me.

On he went, ready to complete the session of intimacy.

Sorry but that just doesn't fit.

In Summary

I'd say the story has good potential but some technical problems. The long paragraphs should be broken up into shorter ones. Proof read and read and read it again. A lot of words have no space between them.

I liked how you wrapped up the story in the last paragraph (which should have been four probably, sorry to keep harping on that).

I think you have good potential. Either find a helpful editor or learn to proof yourself. That was hard for me, proofing my work and I still make mistakes. Wish I could find an editor Read your writing slowly and force yourself to read every word. The mind will play tricks on you for sure. Use that preview feature when you paste it in and read the whole thing again. Then use the Make Changes button to break up those long paragraphs.

I thought perhaps that some things were out of place in the hotel room. Noticing things that were going on outside the room pulled my attention from the hot sex that was taking place. Those things could have been brought into the story before the sex started or after it was finished.

Anyway. A good story line and for the most part, well told. Some technical errors but nothing awful. That last paragraph was a good way to end it. I'll go back and vote now. You got my comments here so no public comment from me. Giving you a four by the way.

Keep writing.

MJL