Your assistance needed for Alessandra's Gift

[LookingForMore]

Hello all. I am here to solicit your assistance in leaving comments about my first story.

A little background. The story is fiction - although my wife does have a cousin with the name of Alessandra and she is truly a beauty. Anyway, I realise that I made some grammatical errors - I apologize in advance for those. I wrote this in Word first and technically the words are not misspelled so I didn't catch the errors.

Also, a comment left regarding the story states that it is mis-categorized. It is listed in the Incest/Taboo area. I thought that given that it was my wife's cousin I was writing about - she is "in the family" and at the very least it had to be taboo to well read the story and let me know what you think.

With your feedback I will decide as to whether to continue writing or just read all of your wonderful stories. Thank you in advance for your help with this - I do appreciate it!

Alessandra's Gift

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

Okay, first of all, I've said this several hundred times: GET THE FIRST SENTENCE RIGHT and the readers will foregive a lot thereafter. Your first sentence:

My wife and her cousin were sitting at the bar as I walked in I noticed that they both looked half drunk already and it was only 6pm.

This is a "run-on sentence. It could be:

"My wife and her cousin were sitting at the bar as I walked in. I noticed..."
or
"My wife and her cousin were sitting at the bar. As I waked in I noticed..."

Later in your first paragraph you wrote:

Her cousin (Alessandra) was a bit younger and had made...

The parenthathetical Alessandra is incorrect. Alessandra should be enclosed with commas: "...cousin, Asessandra, was..."

From that point on, between the tense switches, mispunctuation and poor word choice, the story ambles along alright. As far as the catagory is concerned, it is pretty much correct since you are fucking you wife's cousin. Your plot is okay, but the technical's get in the way.

Find an editor. And I would suggest you go to the Writer's Resources and look for an article by KillerMuffin (I think) entitled Punctuate Like A Pro. Those two things will help you more than anything else.

 

[elfin_odalisque]

Hi Loooking for more.

I go with all that Jenny said.

What so many writers miss is that a first person POV where there is no plot/story/intrigue, call it what you will, is bland. What is there in your text - be it incest or non-human - that makes me care if the cousin goes through with the blowjob?

A couple of comments;

No before I go too much further please allow me to describe my wife's cousin. She is 5'7" about 135 lbs. She has light brown hair with slight highlights in them. She is very attractive and at 25 (I'm 33) something I could only wish to have -- even for just one night. She had beautiful green eyes, a tiny waist, thin legs, and a nice chest. Not that I paid any attention to her or anything.

Don't give so much detail or statistics - or use numbers. A simple, 'My wife's cousin is very attractive, a fair brunette eight years younger than me.' will sketch her out.

"I can't!" I proclaim. "You are my wife's cousin it wouldn't be right for me to do the things that I want to do."

This is stilted and not natural.

eg.try "I can't," I gasp. "It's,it's, just not right."

Word has a grammar checker too. A bit weird, but it makes you at least look at funny sentence construction.

 

[Anna_Malia75]

Be careful that you don't have narrative that's better spoken, and dialogue that's better as narrative. As elfie pointed out, your dialogue can be a little wooden. Another example is when Alessandra says "It was at Easter that I decided that I must try to have you at least once." If you say it aloud, you'll realize how odd it would seem to hear someone say it other than in a soap opera. On the other hand, little asides don't always seem to work very well in narrative; there are very few authors here, at least, who can get away with them. You write, "Not that I paid attention to her or anything" after you've spent a paragraph describing her in incredible detail. As written, it just rings false. If you're going for comedy, use elfie's suggestion, keep the sentence about the eyes and legs and chest, and then choose a better word; instead of "any," try "much." The more time you spend experimenting with different words, the more you can vary the effect of your writing and achieve the result you want.

 

[LookingForMore]

Thank you for your help! I am going to take your advice going forward and try and get better.

I must say that I was nervous while writing my first story as I wanted it to sound good - give the right amount of detail - but at the same time be interesting. I wasn't exactly sure how to accomplish this and went with how I remembered some of the other stories that I have seen on Lit.

I see that I have work to do but am thankful that all of you haven't completely thrown me under a bus. Thank you all again - keep the advice coming as I do want to get better at this.

 

[elfin_odalisque]

You're good to go. Just jumping into writing stories is a bit scary.

We all started somewhere and what little expertise we have , is yours to clamber upthe greasy pole.

You don't get scary feedback here and most people understand and try to help.