Okay, I feel like sinking my claws into something substantial, who wants feedback?

[KillerMuffin]

Shhh

I think that something that's very important for you to keep in mind when you're writing a story is that the reader is not there with you. I can't see your face, your body, or hear your voice. You write, I imagine, exactly like you speak. This is good and this is bad, too.

It's good in that you have your voice and your style already there. Your writing has that distinctive voice that makes things highly interesting and highly personable. You definately don't have a problem with word choice, colorful vocabulary, or bending the language to suit the needs of the story.

However, based on what I've read, you should get out of first person. You are, at times, completely incomprehensible. I had no idea what you were talking about or what was going on in the sentence. Quite frequently I found myself examining the words to figure out the meaning. The punctuation drew attention to itself, something that should never happen, and the grammar was, at best, haphazard.

This paragraph gave me a lot of trouble. "But breast size notwithstanding, nipples are the thing. Sensitive nipples. I love women with responsive, sensitive nipples and Mary's were, as I said, dramatic. She was only wearing a light tee shirt, so I was already aware that she was not wearing a bra. But when she saw my cock bulging inside my pants, I swear her nipples swelled visibly...I mean, I watched them swell...they began growing, puffing, swelling...call it whatever you want...and in the span of four seconds sand-dollar size areolas were standing out from Mary's small, firm breasts with eraser point nipples tilted skyward against the fabric. "

You start off with two incomplete sentences, then slogged through a slew of run-on. Why is this a problem? It's confusing. In a good piece of writing you never notice the words themselves. You never notice the punctuation. You never notice the grammar. You don't have to figure these things out to arrive at the meaning. Now, you're not as bad as all that, it wasn't too difficult to figure out what you were saying, but the fact is that I read it twice to completely comprehend it.

Writing is all about one thing, communication. You are communicating with a person that you don't know and never will know (theoretically). This is the only reason to use grammar and punctuation. The challenge is to keep your vernacular and still maintain perfect clarity. And yes, clarity must be perfect or your reader isn't into the story, s/he's looking at the words themselves instead. Is this the goal you're aiming for when you write? Somehow I doubt it.

What I find interesting is that the front half is difficult to read, but the back end isn't that bad. You get into the sex and you quit using run-on sentences. You keep your asides to a perfect balance of vernacular.

As far as the ellipses go, you'd be better off to lose them. They aren't words. They are, like capital letters and the long repitions of letters to indicate orgasm or moaning, a writer's gimmick. They are the lazy way of describing something. Why add words when using ... gets your point across, right? Why use adjectively phrases when a simple -ly word will fit? Why use a descriptive clause when a couple of adjectives will do the same job? Why bother with using a character's point of view when the narrator can impart information more efficiently? Ellipses have no feeling to them. There's no connotation, no meaning, no way to modify them with adjectives or adverbs, no sound, no feeling in them. They indicate omission. While you're at it, get rid of your dash as well. Use periods or remove the thoughts. You're doing them wrong and they're extremely confusing.

 

[KillerMuffin]

eroticfiction, it's all yours

There are essentially three things I'd like to discuss here. Sentence complexity, description, and pacing.

First, sentence complexity since it is, by far, your biggest problem. Here's a sample from your work:

He sits on the side of the bed and I stand in front of him. The desire in his eyes blows over me. Slowly and teasingly he pulls down the front of my sundress to reveal my breasts. My nipples are hard and plump like raisins. His hands take hold of them gently and fumblingly. His lips are wet with saliva and stare at my breasts as if they had eyes of their own. His warm lips and tongue meet them delicately, with alternating kissing and licking.

You have a predominantly simple sentence composition. Your sentences have one subject, one verb, and one object. There are no other clauses attached. On occasion you put two simple sentences to together. There is a serious problem with this. Juvenile fiction is written in simple sentences so the kids can wrap their minds around the concept. When simple sentences appear frequently in adult fiction the over-all effect is juvenile and it causes the mind to wander because it's too simple to hold a reader's attention.

Another serious problem with your sentence structure is the fact that all but one or two of your sentences start immediately with the subject. The subject is usually "I" or "he." The feeling this imparts: I did this, then I did that, then I did this. We have a list of activities that reads more like a grocery list of sex than like a story. It's hard to read and even harder to keep attention to. Ultimately this means that your reader either back clicks in search of an easier story to get into or just skips down to the fucking.

Description is a key issue in writing. You don't have much. Essentially you have two kinds of description available, static and dynamic. Static description comes from the narrator, all of yours pretty much did. Dynamic description comes from the characters. The character describe what's going on. Now, you've got a first person story so it seems relatively simple to use character based description and it can be. However, you need adverbial phrases and you didn't have any. An adverbial phrase is a descriptive phrase that modifies everything in the sentence but a noun. You've got adverbs, the -ly words, but no phrases. A very good word that you'll find in a adverbial phrase is a gerund, an -ing word. You limited your description to things that had no bearing on the story, or if they did they weren't adequately explained.

You described the "I" character. I am five foot three, have dark brown chin length hair, dark brown eyes and am usually wearing an impish grin. I have full breasts and a plump round ass. I weigh about 125 pounds. I am wearing my pink and green flowered body-clinging sundress with spaghetti straps. This is bad description, it's rather like a police line up and no one cares. What's 125 pounds? Few people have a solid idea of what that looks like. 5'3"? Half of your audience adheres to the metric system and couldn't tell you how tall 5'3" is. The worst piece of description present is the dress. Read that sentence by itself and ask yourself how it effects you emotionally. Now read this description: "I wore my body-clinging, red, silk dress with spaghetti straps." What does this do for you? How does this piece of description arouse you? Did you even bother to try to picture the dress or how "I" might have felt in it? Did it spark your interest?

When writing a sex tale description is key. You have to give it the oomph that it needs to pump up the libidio of the reader. Try this one on for size: "The silk wrapped around me like a lover licking my skin. The way it clung to my ass made me feel as if everyone was staring at it. There's nothing quite like red to make a man think let's fuck." Did this particular red dress get you any more interested than the previous red dress? It's obvious that you've got some sexual investment in this particular dress because you spent a lot of adjectives describing it. Change the adjectives to adverbs and you'll get the reader invested in your description as well.

Adjective are important. A good adjective can change the entire tone of a paragraph, however, as your sole source of description adjectives run together blandly. It's not you, is the nature of the beast. See, nouns are passive and anything that describes them is going to have a slightly passive feel to it as well so it shouldn't be your main source of description.

Speaking of passive, your tense is killing you. In your story the present tense was mostly carried out by versions of the word "be." This is the most passive word in our vocabulary. I'm sure you've heard it before, active voice! Am, is, are, be, was, have, had, anything considered "linking." Your first three paragraphs are positively littered with passive voice. Human beings are attracted to action, which is why you need active voice. Take "I am wearing...." Change it to "I wore...." or some derivation thereof to make it active.

Pacing is a big thing as well. In short, you went too fast. It never seems like it when you're writing something, but it always comes out that way when it's read. Your build up took as long as the sex scene and your build up was description.

Something that may help you-- I don't know because I don't know how comfortable things like this make you feel-- is to pick someone that you're highly attracted to, but don't know (celebrities, the guy who changes your oil, the lady behind the counter at the pharmacy, anyone). It's very important that you not know this person. If you do you shouldn't know them well at all. Then write your stories to seduce this person. Your goal is to use your writing to make this person orgasm and then want more. Do not write in second person to accomplish this, you don't want your writing that personal and second person is generally a dismal failure in anyone's writing.

This is going to help you because it's going to make you slow down a lot. You're going to pay attention to things that are obvious to you and your lovers, but the rest of us don't know. Like why your sundress is sexy. You'll pay more attention to the characters and their feelings because seduction is a mental game. People love being seduced and people who read erotic fiction love it even more than normal. Now, there are those who want a quickie, but they will be satisfied with a hot groping that has almost no build-up far more easily than a quick description of tab A getting stuck into slot B.

I hope this helps.

 

[queenbea339]

Feedback? Please?

HI!

I'm new to your site & posted my first story about 3 weeks ago. I have to admit, I had no idea you had volunteer editors or this forum to give feedback. (blushing in embarrasment) Anyway, I received some very nice responses but only one with constructive criticism.

I had just posted my 2nd story online, when I finally read about your volunteer editors. To one of these very generous, wonderful people; I have sent a continuation of my original story in hopes of receiving editorial tips.

So Killer, I was wondering, if you could spare the time (ahem - suddenly rushing) if you could read my very second post? It's called 'Forced Partnership'. I'm hesitant 'cause I played being a very bad writer with this piece. I purposely just gave hints to the sex of the main character. Now I know this is a no-no, but for some reason the character seemed to demand it.

In addition, I've changed my first story around some. It was simply two long as is, so I shortened it here and there - then finally realized I could simply not shorten 23 pages down to 12. I cut it in half instead. Sooo-Can you tell me how I can edit my own work? Yes, I finally looked at the writer's resources but still could not find an article of editing on this site. I would like to redo the original into a chapter one and the second half into a chapter two.

Thank you for your time and words of wisdom.

 

[KillerMuffin]

Chantal Marchon - trite it is not

I didn't find anything trite in it. It was vaguely formulaic, as porn stories go, girl gets mad a boy, girl is rescued by handsome stranger she can't resist. But that's okay because there really isn't anything new under the pornographic sun.

The pacing was the biggest problem I had with it. It moved at a herky-jerky pace. The main culprit was unnecessary description and an uncomfortable voice. Do you remember when your teacher told you to never use contractions when writing? Forget it completely. That only applies to formal writing in a non-fiction setting, such as writing a letter to Congress, a thesis, or some other sort of term or research paper. Use contractions because not using them is uncomfortable to read as well as write.

Then you have a problem with description. Take this example, "My green eyes reflected in the rearview mirror." First of all, unless she's applying make-up, she can't see her own eyes in the mirror. Why? Because the rear-view is always aimed so that the driver see behind him or her. Secondly, when you think of your eyes, do you qualify that with color? No one thinks of their eyes with color. The sun shining in my eyes hurts. The mascara makes my eyes look more luminous. These are natural. People think of the color of their eyes in specific situations and that usually applies in areas of attractiveness or drivers' license applications. My green eyes are my best feature. I'm, er, 105 pounds, yeah, and I have green eyes.

Most of your static description is unnecessary or detrimental to your plot. It creates pacing problems that really affect the way people understand your plot. Static description is, essentially, adjectives. They describe things with motion inherent in them. Adverbs can be static as well because the description they accomplish is essentially motionless. People are attracted to dynamic description. Phrases instead of words. Adjectival phrases are wonderful things.

As Will Strunk was so utterly fond of saying, "Delete all unnecessary words." Of course he was a college professor so he was inundated with students writing papers that had to be three pages long. If you stick in enough "wheretofors" and "It is a fact thats" you'll meet the requirements. It does, however, apply very well to fiction. When you cut, do it mercilessly. The interesting thing about English is that when you use less words you make a stronger impact. Here's a sample:

Your original: A tall man with long, dark hair entered the room from an open doorway carrying a steaming bowl. "You are awake, good. Take this and drink it." He held out the bowl to me. Concerned, dark brown eyes that were almost black looked straight into my green ones. A small thrill of excitement fluttered in the pit of my stomach. Gracefully, he sat down by the fire. The firelight played across his bare chest, his bronze, toned skin begging to be stroked. His muscles rippled beneath his skin as he moved. The strength of his beautifully sculpted body would be obvious to even a casual observer. He had a dangerous animal magnetism that left me spellbound. I could not look away, my breath felt caught in my throat.

After a visit to the barber: A tall man came into the room with a steaming bowl. "You're awake, good. Drink this." He held out the bowl to me. Concerned eyes that were almost black looked straight into mine. A small thrill of excitement fluttered in the pit of my stomach. The firelight played across his chest; his bronzed skin begged to be stroked. The strength of his beautifully sculpted body would be obvious to even a casual observer. He had a dangerous animal magnetism that left me spellbound. I could not look away; my breath caught in my throat.

You have a lot of repitition in there and things that were obvious already. He entered a room through a door. People normally do it that way and unless they're doing it oddly, no need to explain the obivious. You used skin too many times. Eyes, too. In general, don't use the same noun more than once every other paragraph or so. It seems important to highlight that his chest is bare, but you do it more effectively in the second clause.

Another problem you run into with some of your description is its passivity. Take this one "The strength of his beautifully sculpted body would be obvious to even a casual observer." This is an ugly sentence. The subject is receiving action, which is complete passive and not the kind of connotation you want to give to him or his body. Another problem with it is you bring in a "casual observer." This is, in my opinion, a no no. Why? There is no reaction to it. If you, personally, see a man with a body like this, what is going to happen to your body? What are your reactions going to be? The reactions of your female character are for more important because they develop plot and they develop story. "The strength of his beautifully sculpted body drove the electric butterflies in my stomach a few hand-spans lower." Or something. In this piece of description you have a statement of fact and a reaction. The audience does not care about casual observers. The audience, theoretically, cares about her.

Power in description comes from it's link to the character's emotions, thoughts, and reactions. You make description three dimensional when you tie it in with "humanness." You can have a dark barn full of moldy hay and cobwebs. Or you can have a sinister barn, full of resentful hay and invading cobwebs. A barn cannot physically be sinister and hay cannot resent anything. Cobwebs can't invade either. The spiders that make cobwebs don't invade, they just move in. Sinister, resentful, and invading are adjectives that turn a barn into something humans react to. That's what you want to do with description. You don't want to simply describe it, you want your reader to react to it with your characters.

Motivation is a big issue here, as well. I simply don't fully believe that she would just up and have sex with a stranger. The attraction described wasn't compelling enough to be fully believable. Then she went onto get emotionally involved and I didn't see that either. It's very difficult for a person to fall in love with a stranger in the space of five or so paragraphs. Your backstory, I think, killed it. Most of that was unnecessary and brought a certain shallow light to your character. I had trouble going from a woman who really didn't care if her boyfriend screwed half of the country to someone who felt such intensity. It's a stereotyped shallowness, true, but the fact is that when readers are presented with characters they will automatically generalize them into a "type" and then get upset or disbelieving when the characters don't stay with that "type."

You have to make sure that a character's motivations are clear and understandable. Your backstory should focus entirely on making her assignation with her wolf-man a reasonable thing. Once the decision to have sex is perfectly reasonable, it will take the burden off of making the emotional involvement more reasonable.

To make the emotional involvement a reasonable thing is simple, you just have to give the guy a more dimensional character. Right now his character is underdeveloped. Whatever emotions he has are out of view. He does nothing that gives the reader, and consequently "I," any idea that he has an emotional stake in this. Emotional involvement on her part requires some kind of feeling from him. He states it in the end, yes, but his nothing prior to that. These days, particularly in a place ruled by porn, sexual involvement and passion does not equate with emotional involvement. When a man is emotionally affected by a woman he does things that give it away. The trick in first person is to have him give his thoughts and feelings away to the reader but not to "I."

First person is very hard to write, contrary to how it seems to flow onto the paper. Why? Because it's hard to think of "I" as a character and not as yourself. It's hard to make "I" behave in ways that you wouldn't, even though s/he would. It's hard to give yourself any distance from "I." You need that distance to develop a plot and to develop other characters. "I" does not know what's going to happen in the future or what other characters are thinking or feeling. "I" cannot foreshadow and cannot put in the things that readers need to see others as three dimensional characters. "I" is caught in whatever moment "I" is at in the story. The author not only knows what other characters are thinking and what's going to happen, but the author must foreshadow and must fully develop other characters to make them well rounded. A certain author-"I" distance is needed for that.

In the next part, back off from "I" a little bit. Don't be her or let her be your fantasy of you unless you can keep yourselves separate. People are incredibly good at seeing only what they want to see, use that to your advantage. Have her see only what she wants to see, but have him show the reader what he's really like. This, I think, is going to particularly important when you get around to exploiting that he's a werewolf but she doesn't know it situation.

I hope this helps you.

 

[KillerMuffin]

Here you go, bigblue

The first thing that needs mentioning is paragraphing. We have these conventions for a reason and it's not just to plague hapless writers with a bunch of rules to memorize. It's there so that communcation channels between reader and writer are absolutely clear. Here's a few rules and assorted reasonings:

Every speaker gets a new paragraph. It doesn't matter if that speaker only says one word or if that piece of speech is monumentally unimportant. New speaker-new paragraph.

Each new subject gets a new paragraph. The story has a thesis or theme to it. It has a subject that is very broad. The subject of your story is a man who gets laid by two women in a D/s relationship. That subject is explained by a series of mini-stories or subjects. We call them paragraphs. Each paragraph has a theme or subject that ties into the main subject of the story. Each sentence has a subject as well, but you don't have problems there.

It is imperative that you learn to paragraph. The lack of delineation of your story made it extremely difficult to read as a story. I kept finding myself skimming down to look for the sex and move on.

Once you fix your paragraphing issues then you can work on your sentence structure. You have some run-ons, several fragments, and a lot of passive voice. Run-ons are just too many sentences slapped together as one sentence. Fragments are partial sentences that look like real sentences. Passive voice is where the subject of the sentence either receives the action from the predicate or is in a state of being. Look for conjugations of the word "be," particularly linked with action verbs.

One thing I noticed is that all your speech is tagged with a "said" word. The only time you need to use a "said" word is when there is no other way to clarify who is speaking. Use of props or action. "Hey there." Max scratched his nose and smiled sheepishly. You know Max spoke, but I didn't have to say that Max said it.

 

[DRxBlue]

The doctor steps into the line of fire

i admit that i am in fear right now, but my curiosity is much stronger than my fear. You have knowledge i need so i must ask for it.

Let the record show: He was ASKING for it!

Could you try "Nobody Becomes Somebody Ch.3"?
http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=39732

It's pretty much a standalone story and part of a much larger project. i'd like to try and correct my bad habits before they become too ingrained.

i know that the narration often dips into the female's thoughts and not the male's; there is a reason for that, which will become apparent if you don't shoot me dead.

Having read a number of your critiques i've realized the inadequacy of my punctuation. Semi-colons in particular are something i've never considered. (how about the one in the last sentence/paragraph?)

When you get some time, i'll be waiting.i'm the one with the blindfold on.
Fire Away!

 

[dv8tor]

feedback - 3 on a webcam

Although self-flaggelation isn't my forte', I am never-the-less anxious to receive some feedback from my most recent attempt at erotica, for how else is one to learn what pleases the reader, not to mention improve one's skills.

Before you castigate me for not including character descriptions, this was deliberate. Since so many people have fantasies along these lines, I preferred to let the reader put his/her own faces, etc. in the story. Other stories I have written do not overlook this important aspect of characterization and I probably won't do it again.

Feedback from this story will determine if I will continue it or post some of my other writings.

Thanks

Mike

 

[KillerMuffin]

Lauranathias

I'm going to go out on a limb here; you're a gamer?

Let's get down to the nitty gritty. Grammar. Don't leave the wordprocessor without it! Seriously, though. You've got a real problem with grammar. I've heard it before that no one likes to be tied to rules, particularly when one is a free-spirit or thinker. However, there is a purpose for those rules. You, the writer, are communicating with me, the reader. In order for that communication to be effective we need to have a sort of standard to put the words together with. You wouldn't dream of sending this out in swahili when the predominant language is English. Neither should you just send it out with disregard to convention. I need to understand you to get into the story.

Your main problem is a love affair with the run-on sentence. Essentially, too much information in one sentence. Your first sentence would normally have been an automatic back click from me. It's several sentences mushed together to make one. I think I've written about four dissertations on the run-on already.

To get to the problem, not just the symptoms, you're having difficulties with your voice. You've got a dark ages fantasy story and modern English usage doesn't fit it. One of the primary mistakes that beginning fantasy writers use is voice. You write in the flowery style that you imagine they used. You've probably read it in books as well or have seen a few Renfair commercials. In a word, don't. If you've got it, then get that little Renfair commercial voice out of your head when you write because it doesn't really work well.

Let's take apart sentence #1.

The foul weather outside blew and shook the shutters along the walkway as citizens tried to get to their destinations without being blown off and tossed to the ground far below, for such storms were not unusual in the small town of Solace, known as the crossroads of Kyrnn.

The two main problems are run-on and voice. Maybe that's one main problem all together. At any rate, I took a few moments to do a quick re-write.

The foul weather blew and shook the shutters along the walkway. Citizens tried to get to their destinations before the wind tossed them to the ground far below. Such storms were not unusual in the small town of Solace, also known as the crossroads of Kyrnn.

I picked up two sentences and chopped off several words. It has the same "feel" I think, but it's not nearly as confusing or long winded.

Two things to do that will keep your medieval voice and still give you something to work with is to not use contractions in the narrative. Just use them in speech. The use of contractions is more informal and feels more modern than without. Make the narrator a character for a sort of storybook feel. I've been preaching not to do this so it seems odd to say it, but if you've got the narrator as a character you're going to have some informational telling that has a fairy tale voice to it. You know, once upon a time. That comes across as medieval to the common reader. A scholar will laugh in your face, of course, but you aren't writing to those anyway.

There is a lot of difficulty in making the narrator a character. Essentially each character whose POV you touch should tell their side of the story from their view. The narrator should never tell a primary character's piece of the story. The narrator should discuss things that affect the characters as a whole and can't be better told from one POV. Such as the description of the town.

The reason narrators as characters is bad is because it leads to telling, not showing. Telling, not showing, leads to a great deal of lazy writing and an inability for the reader to indentify with the characters themselves. A narrator does not draw the readers into the story, the characters do that themselves. A narrator does, in fact, put a lot of distance between the reader and the story. While the narrator is in charge of the narrative, the reader's attention will wander. You must be careful when you use this technique if you aren't comfortable with it. Also bear in mind that when you are writing a short story you shouldn't use the narrator as a character. You just don't have enough room to do that.

In this part of your story there was too much narrator POV and very little character POV so I didn't see much actual development. Even in Lauranathias's bits it was mostly the narrator describing how she felt rather than Lauranathias doing it herself. I must also note that there just isn't enough story to do a good evaluation on character development or plot.

If you're getting low ratings right now, the problem may lay in the audience itself, not necessarily the story. Part one has no sex in it.

After visiting your listed webpage and reading this, I get the impression that you'd like to, someday, possibly see your writing in print in an actual book. I highly recommend that you do three things, sign up for some sort of grammar course or buy a textbook to teach you grammar, buy Strunk and White's Elements of Style even thought it's available free online, and read award winning novels in that genre. Skip things like the forgotten realms series, skip books based on games, and skip things that probably have never seen hardback. There are some seriously good only in paperback fantasy, but that's a lot of chaff to sort through first. When you're reading these books, read them critically. What worked. Why did it work. What didn't work, why didn't it work. Why did you like or dislike the characters. Did the author get you to feel anything, how did s/he do that? How was the plot constructed and then used? Was the narrator a character? Pay particular attention to the way language was used. Did it feel particularly modern or archiac? How was slang used? Was there a difference between the narrative and the speech? Disect your favorite book.

Of all the How To Write books I've ever read, Michael Seidman's Fiction: The Art and Craft of Writing and Stephen King's On Writing are my two favorite.

 

[Ravenswing]

KM, oh most generous of reviewers, I've got a new short story that's just gone live.

Now while the great huge tome that was Magic Lessons was pretty well received, your comments were dead on the button and if I ever live to see the day that I have the time to do the rewrites I'll be following your advice.

On the other hand, my only short story to hit Lit was not so well received. Is this one better?

Here's the link: http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=41261

Please give it look and pass on your valued judgement.

PS. It really is a short story. You won't need a week to read it this time... honest.

 

[dvlinblue]

hey I know it's old...but there isn't a better one

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=39949

I've read your posts and I like the fact that you can express how the literature speaks to you. Sometimes you get feedback and it's...yah thats good...or wow that was hot. Not I thought that this particular part......

So gimmi a read and let me know......if you are even answering this post.

 

[Guest]

nothing to say, except....

I wonder if people realise what a great service they are getting from this thread. All sorts of invaluable tips and advice totally free. The wonderful thing is, the rest of us can sit on the side-lines and soak it up.....
Thanks KM for all the work you put in to this site. Thanks also to the questing authors.
GP

 

[KillerMuffin]

Just when I think I'm about to get caught up

Don't worry, I will get to you and give you your critique. Just gimme a little while to catch up.

Hey, Christophe, I'm getting backed up again here, if I ever get caught up again I'll give your second request a hollar. Until then you may want to consider participating in the Story Discussion Circle and sticking your work up for a once over there. The trick is that in the SDC you have to participate or you don't get the feedback.

 

[lovechild27]

I have three stories here....I would like to know what you think. I write for fun, not really for others, but it is cool to post....I would like to have your opinon tho....

 

[dvlinblue]

link??

I have three stories here....I would like to know what you think. I write for fun, not really for others, but it is cool to post....I would like to have your opinon tho....

without the link we can't do that Lovechild27

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

KM,

I realize you're busier than a one legged native American at an all-night butt kicking, but my latest attack on the English language has just seen the light of day. If and when you get the chance, I appreciate your critiquing "Cindy's Sex Seminar" (I'm a back-sliding member of Alliterator's Annoymous) at:

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=41555

--

I'm reading the new Elmore Leonard book, "Tishomingo Blues." Part of the plot involves reports of a lynching which occured near Tunica Ms in 1915. One of the main character has a photo of the event, taken in daylight, showing kids present. Thought you might want to check it out.

Rumple Foreskin

 

[KillerMuffin]

Living Unicorn...? All yours!

I'm a month behind. Yeeeesh.

Okay, this one was a toughie. I had to read it several times over the last few weeks, though last week doesn't count cause I wasn't near a computer. Anyway.

The language was both the story's charm and its pitfall. Though I can't actually describe what it is, I liked the method you used to make the English seem more archaic, or more oh, "middle earth" for lack of a better term. You did it without making it out of reach of the reader or making it feel stilted or unnatural.

The problem with it is that it was also bland. The descriptions were mostly adjectives and the verbs were quiet ones. When it came to your main character and her apprehensions and fears, I didn't feel them. It didn't move me. You used a lot of passive voice through the story. I think it feels like it's more elegant, but it's really not. Passive voice is boring. It also breeds description that's understand and equally passive. I noticed that you use most adjectives, a few adjectival phrases, and some adverbs. Static description.

I wasn't really comfortable with some of the paragraphs either. I think a few of them were actually two in one, particularly in the beginning. I think I picked out at least two different subjects in the first paragraph alone.

The narrator was a character in this story, something that's usually a no-no; however, I'm of two minds on that. In most short stories I don't like to see the narrator. Shorts are usually a lot better off when everything is from the character's POV because that's the way you develop a bond between the reader and the characters. However you do have a fairy tale-ish story. In fairy tales the narrator is the primary speaker. Additionally this narrator didn't editorialize, there was no "slant" towards the characters or actions from the writer so it felt more natural. Generally it's better to have the characters "show" what's happening rather than the narrator "tell" what's happening, but in this case it worked out pretty well so I don't think it's a problem. In other stories you'll want to consider the narrator as a character, make sure that's how you want to develop things.

As she came into the village proper she was greeted by all the elves she met and she stopped and talked to each of them, careful to show the proper respect and sharing the day's news or just being pleasant. This highlights your main grammar problem. You have issues with run-on. Essentially there's too much information in once sentence. It's difficult to digest and it leaves the reader feeling slight breathless. It's passivity doesn't help any. Run-on is, at best, confusing. At worst people just skip it. The main trouble with a run-on is that the reader is pulled from the story itself long enough to notice the words involved with it. They look at the words and try to fit them together so they make sense. You don't want a reader to do that, you want them to never notice words, sentence structure, or punctuation. When thy do that, they're not involved in the story and they are irritated by it.

I don't remember any specific instances of it, but comma splices usually walk hand in hand with run-on. A comma splice is when you incorrectly join two independent clauses with a comma. For instance: I enjoy reading erotica, I edit the stories sometimes. These are actually two separate sentences and you can't connect them with a comma alone. You have to use a conjunction or a semi-colon. I usually use a semi-colon, but I'm bad at doing the whole comma splice thing myself. I don't remember if you do this or not, but a little heads up is usually helpful.

I didn't say any problems with your punctuation or grammar beyond the whole run-on bit.

Remember, active voice, make the subject of the sentence do the action. Don't forget to look out for conjugations of the word "be." Those are always passive. Watch your description as well, try to make it more active and meld it with the character's thoughts or emotions. That makes it more interesting.

 

[LivingUnicorn]

You are the bomb!

KillerMuffin you are the bomb! Thank you so very very much for taking the time to help me. Your comments struck chords of honest truth in my mind. I hope that I can now take your wisdom and use it to improve my writing. All I can say is WOW! You are the bomb!

LU

 

[KillerMuffin]

QueenBea? Your turn.

This one was a toughie. What country are you from? We used to truck drive ourselves and the jargon didn't jibe with what I'd always heard.

As for the sex of the character, it's obviously female. Now, I am aware that there are men who are as pricklish about going to the bathroom, but they are enough out of the mainstream "stereotype" that any description of delicate bathroom habits will be applied by the reader as "this is a girl. Beside male truck drivers can use the big mouth pepsi bottle trick when the bathrooms are dirty. There were several other references that built up my firm believe that Sam is female.

Onward!

Mechanics first. A dash has two hyphens-- someone had to point this out to me once-- not one. You are also using them incorrectly. You're more substituting them for commas and semi-colons. "I started to push my hands down my pants when the smell hit me – I was still covered in diesel." This should be: "I started to push my hands down my pants when the smell hit me; I was still covered in diesel." Dashes are used when a phrase or clause inside of a sentence has very little to do with a sentence. See my second sentence in this paragraph.

"Look at me." He muttered. is wrong. "Look at me," he muttered. is right.

That brings me to speech tags. Heheheh, I'm starting to feel like a broken record.

He ran his other hand through his hair and shook his head. "Are you ok?" he questioned.

Do you see the redundancy? You know who is speaking because he just played with his hair and shook his head. You know know he's asking a question, the ? is a dead give away. Even if it weren't the sentence structure is.

Never use a tag word unless there is absolutely no better way to modify speech. Tags are lazy writing. Let's look at the first ripped bit.

"Look at me," he muttered.

There's just enough description to know that he's using a low tone of voice. Not nearly as interesting as a piece of narrative that would show us his tone, his feeling, and what Sam is thinking about all this.

"Look at me." The intensity in his low voice made me squeeze my eyes even tighter.

Which is more attractive to you? Tag words have one purpose, to identify the speaker. Strunk's rule is to never use anything but said. I would suggest you follow that until you're comfortable enough with your writing to do otherwise. After that you'll probably never use anything but said and then only rarely.

If you haven't read it, you could do with a trip through Elements of Style. www.bartleby.com/141/

You've got a good voice and you've got a really good method of character development. Most of what turned me off of this story was the hyphen situation and the jarring truck driving stuff. Most of your Lit readers shouldn't notice it. When's part two coming out?

 

[p_p_man]

Re: nothing to say, except....

I wonder if people realise what a great service they are getting from this thread. All sorts of invaluable tips and advice totally free. The wonderful thing is, the rest of us can sit on the side-lines and soak it up.....
Thanks KM for all the work you put in to this site. Thanks also to the questing authors.
GP

They know alright!

KM does a great job.

 

[Guest]

Killer.......what about the dvlinblues story?? It's me I'm not logged in....didn't know if you had a chance...or were going to...just checking.....not wanting to rush you as I do appreciate how much response you give. Detailed and precise.

 

[KillerMuffin]

You're still in line. It takes time to give a good thoughtful critique. You'll get it, it just may take a while. First come first served.

 

[queenbea339]

Thank you!

Killer,

Believe it or not I'm right here in the states, and yes, I have hauled loads. However, as I'm independent and don't talk to other truckers, I'm not familiar with the jargon. Also, I was told previously to either keep the jargon to a minimum or make it more self explanatory for ones' readers; if that makes sense.

I actually changed this story some to give hints of the character's gender. Don't boo me but I post elsewhere and had gotten yelled at for being a very bad writer in not physically describing my character. I didn't want to do that so I decided to try and meet the critic half way by giving out a few hints.

Ok, note: I did not use one dash above. It's hard for me but I am determined to overcome the habit of my pinkie reaching up that keyboard! Thanks for pointing the difference in punctuation out to me, I'm quite lousy at sentence structure.

Ohhh, the sentence tags! What a wonderful tip and I do clearly see the difference in your version.

Next chapter was finished...WAS...because now I'm going back through it and implement your critiques. Looking for those sneaky dashes and boring sentence tags will probably take me a few weeks, so you'll hopefully have time to catch up on your postings before I'm knocking at your door begging for another reveiw!

I really appreciate all your time and the editing tips you've given me. This is only the second story I've written; so hopefully, I will improve enough to not make you wince when you hit those horrible grammar errors!

Was the above sentence done correctly? hmmm...

Thanks again!

 

[KillerMuffin]

Okay, that makes sense.

Blah on description. Read this, it's the newest one I've stuck up in the lists and the most popular one. When you're done come back and answer these questions.

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=41849

What race are they?
What hair color do they have?
What eye color?
What are their physical characteristics?

 

[KillerMuffin]

Paging Dr. Blue...

Punctuation. Ouch, bubba.

It's "Hello," he said. NOT "Hello." He said.

Ellipses are my big thing. The . . . which are used incorrectly. They aren't words, don't use them as such. Indicating a deep breath or a long pause between two sets of ideas that the narrator or character is using qualifies as a word. The purpose of punctuation is to signpost to the reader. You want him to read your sentences easily. The ellipses may seem to accomplish that, but they don't. They mean, quite simply and only, an ommission. That's why they are used correctly at the end of a sentence to indicate that speech has trailed off or faded. Don't use ellipses because it's lazy writing, you aren't getting the point across to the reader, you can't modify them, and you aren't telling a story with them.

Punctuation is NOT a part of the story.

"Said" words. Another big no-no. I just discussed them a few posts up. Heck, you can pretty much blindly pick a page on this thread and find a discussion on why not to tag speech. Don't use said words. Find another way to do it. Here's an example:

"I always thought my lips were too fat and... flubbery." she said, putting her finger between them and wiggling it to make a ridiculous noise.

"I always thought my lips were too fat and flubbery." She put her finger between them and wiggled it to make a ridiculous noise.

For the most part the less words you use to write with the better off you are. For practice, pick out any story in the lists that you've thought as being mediocre, paste it into a word processor, and then cut it to pieces. Take out any word that impedes the flow. Verbiage is usually excess in stories in these parts.

We're trained in high school to use description and to not use contractions. Forget all of that because it doesn't apply to creative writing. It applies to formal writing that's going to be dry as day old bread no matter what. Good description uses the least amount of words and the least amount of detail to full impact the reader. The less you have the more involved the reader is in the description. If she smiles wickedly with flashing eyes, the reader gets to apply the word mischevious to it. It involves them in the story line. You have to be careful though, not enough detail and the reader won't like it either.

One way to deal with detail is to look over a paragraph of it and decide where the detail is coming from, the narrator or the character.

The sun had set but it was still blue in the western sky, stars shone in the east as Ralph and Rose approached their cabin on Blue Lake. The humming of their little Evinrude made them both feel a little drowsy. They were also worn out from running errands and shopping all day, but a bit elevated by the beer they'd had with their supper. The light on the front porch had been turned on to guide them to the dock.

Who is speaking here? Who is the narrative coming from? The narrator. Who should it be coming from? Either Ralph or Rose. If not, then you don't actually need this interlude. If you need it for transition from the previous story, then you should give a flow of continuity by keeping it in the character. You aren't writing a fairy tale here.

How is the sun blue anyway? Caught ya! You've got to watch your use of pronouns, particularly "it."

POV shifting is something of a problem, but not too much. Generally, your transition from one character to another is a little on the weak side. Pay attention to when you shift from one character to another and put a little deliberation into it. You don't have to put much, just ask yourself if the story flows with it.

Your biggest problem, by far, is the narrator. Your main POV in the story is from you, yourself. No offense, but I don't really care about your opinion in this story, it's rather distracting. You "feel" like a kindly uncle describing his two favorite little neices and nephews playing innocently in a sandbox. "The opportunity to touch and feel every part of the other feeding powerful emotions neither had experienced before." This is sugary sweet and puts me out of touch with your characters.

You aren't in this story and you aren't actually there. If this is a very close fantasy of yours involving people that are very real to you, then you need to get a lil' bit of distance from the story. Try writing something that's not that near and dear to your heart. If this is not that close of a fantasy of yours, then you should take a step back after you finish-- not in the middle of the story-- writing a story and judiciously look for yourself in it.

Hope this helps!

 

[DRxBlue]

That helps immensely!

Whew! As you correctly deduced i AM describing this from the point of view of a "kindly uncle describing his two favorite little neices and nephews playing innocently in a sandbox."

You see, i am Lucy's biographer, that's why i can dip into her thoughts at will. She has told me this tale again and again for thirty years, and now i'm transcribing it.

When i did the first two installments i had not read any of your stories or educational treatises, or much of the other work here at Lit. i'm still "at war with the English language", but i thought i ought to try and learn the rules before i break them.

You, Whispersecret and others here have taught me a great deal in a few short months, and it's gradually coming "on-line".

My biggest frustration has been the imprecision of punctuation. As a musician i can clearly define rests and pauses. In language, you've said it yourself, people don't know how to react to punctuation.

By the end of this month, i hope to begin the section of the story i actually play a part in. First Person-Past Tense! (for that i will capitalize my i's)

i'll get the hang of writing, i have to. i've already stopped using ellipses as "rests", and i almost know what a semicolon is for. i can almost spell punkshwation.

Thanks for all you do here at Lit. You are a treasure. i hope to plunder you further!