Anthy's Authorial Advice - The AAA Review Thread

[AlinaX]

I’d be grateful if you would consider reviewing my Valentine’s Competion story, Kinzi Young Rides Again.

Do me a favour. Get a wooden ruler and rap yourself on the knuckles every time you type ‘then’.

ETA: There’s a lot of introspective backstory to get through at the beginning. It would have been much more fun to make it dialogue. Kinzi talking to her agent on the phone, the Uber driver peering curiously at her in the mirror, obviously trying to listen in.

“How about a face-fucking?” Everyone wanted face-fucking. I missed the days of taking your time with a cock, playing it for seduction. Used to be when deep throat was impressive and not a basic requirement. “The money’s good.”

“I like being able to talk the next day.”

He laughed. “How about watersports?” I wrinkled my nose at the thought. The peeing was okay, but going multiple takes meant a lot of drinking water and waiting for it to work through the system.

“There’s always 'Kinzi Young's First Gang Bang',” he added. “That would bring in lots of viewers.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said, sighing.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Review for The Summer Fling by @Pooker87 part 1:

This is a nice summer fling/enemies-to-lovers story. It's very much on brand for this type of story. The evolution of the characters plays well, we get a good sense of Jackie's dislike of Connor pretty quickly, the in media res lets us know that things are going to change, and we get to see that change over the course of the summer. It is short, but it's definitely short and sweet and not "why wasn't this another 30k words?"

All right, let's jump in!

We start off in media res. It's nicely done. Not too detailed, not too long, with a great hook to set the story and a last line that tells us an awful lot about the entire situation very succinctly.

One of my biggest issues is how the story is framed. It's a first-person POV, but it's written closer to third-person limited. We don't get a ton of Jackie's personality and voice in the narration, which is one of the big draws of first-person POV: having the narration reflect the voice of the character, which colors the telling of the story. It reads flat and shallow; occasional dips into her head, but an awful lot of describing things happening outside herself, and primarily telling the reader how she feels, rather than showing us. I would've definitely liked to have gotten more of her voice and have been shown her thoughts more.

One of the issues with first-person is finding organic ways of describing the character. Generally, this is done by linking the description to something that happens, or using some events to prompt a thought that has the character thinking about their qualities. Mirrors are a good way to do this if you want a quick way to get a full picture, like you’ve done. Most of it actually fits pretty well with her character, but a few of the lines don’t really mesh with somebody who sees themselves constantly. The following isn’t anything somebody would think to themselves looking in the mirror, something to do all the time:

I was twenty years old, but could easily pass for younger. My hair was a little messy, like it always was when I came to the coast, and falling past my shoulders in loose waves. It always got lighter in the summer, a blonde, almost golden in the sun, and never really sat how I wanted it to. Maybe one day I'd learn to do it.

I was starting to tan a little, a product of spending a little bit of time on the beach. Come August, it would really set in, and I was already thinking of ways and places I could tan nude. I was of middling height, neither tall nor short. With a mostly flat stomach and skinny legs and arms, the reasons why I was going to the gym as much as possible.

My chest was on the smaller side, but that didn't stop me from running my hands over my breasts and giving them a quick squeeze. Always had been. They fit me, but there was a time I wished I had my mom's chest.

I turned slightly in the mirror and glanced over my shoulder. I loved it when a guy grabbed my ass, even if there wasn't much there. Another reason to go to the gym.

The parts where she links it to going to the gym, or a product of working on her tan, those are great. They’re qualities she’s noticing in the moment that make sense for someone to be thinking as they look in the mirror.

Obviously, this is a way to give the reader a roughly in-universe logical explanation for her describing herself. Mirror is a very common tool in first-person POV. But it should be handled carefully, describing things that the person would be thinking at the time of them looking in the mirror. Some of these other details: looking younger, her height, chest size, all of that can come out in other ways. A reader doesn’t always need a full, super-accurate picture of the character right off the bat. What they should get is at least a rough sketch so they can fill in the details as they will, with any pertinent details that are relevant to the plot coming up sooner rather than later. Also, if there are details that are unusual, that are mentioned later, it can help to bring them up sooner so the reader doesn’t have one image of Jackie in their head, but later you mention something like “My blue skin” that totally throws them off because they thought she had normal human-colored skin. Obviously, a weird example; Jackie does not have blue skin. But it demonstrates that details that come up later that might clash with how most readers picture her can be jarring to a reader, who has spent X amount of time picturing her a certain way, only to find out they were way, way off base. This is why I generally advocate for including only details that provide enough to give a rough sketch, that are plot-pertinent, and are unusual enough to require description so the reader has an accurate picture of the character for later down the road when/if an unusual trait crops up, the reader isn’t thrown by it.

One of my other issues is that I never get a sense of why she's initially attracted to Connor after a lifetime of hating him and never seeing him sexually. The best in-universe explanation seems to be that she hasn't had sex in a little bit, but that's a pretty low bar for turning to someone who constantly bullied you. It's okay if she doesn't quite understand it herself, but that confusion should've been leaned into a lot more than the story wound up doing. We'll touch on it a bit more later. For now, let's just go over things as they unfold. When he catches her naked in the women's showers, she initially hides, and she realizes he's still checking her out through the mirror:

Connor shook his head and tried to stammer out something else but I shushed him and said, "Do you like what you see?"

I briefly thought about stepping out, letting him see me naked, and could even feel myself already getting turned on. When he shyly answered yes, I said, "Good. Now get out so I can get dressed."

This feels weird, considering her dislike of Connor. The payout later of her touching herself and being surprised to be thinking about Connor would work better if she doesn’t have this at all. That way, it’s more confusing and ramps up the conflicting feelings of both really disliking him, but finding herself unable to help her attraction. Having this before that softens the confusion. If she does have that impulse, it should be incredibly confusing to her here, even if she is horny from not getting touch for a couple weeks, given how much she’s built up really, really not liking him at all.

I’d really like some better understanding of why Jackie has started seeing Connor this way. Is he good looking? Having her feel this way just because she’s horny and hasn’t had sex in a few weeks isn’t really a good reason for an enemy-to-lovers story. You don’t have to come right out and say why. In fact, having her confused helps as well. But it would be good to give the reader a few theories, especially offered by Jackie herself as she tries to understand why this guy she absolutely despises, who’s never been anything but an asshole to her, is suddenly looking very, very attractive.

In the beginning, her attitude is good from a sense of she’s teasing him one minute, and pissed off at him the next. It would be better if it was tinged with more confusion about her feelings to help justify the swings in how she’s talking to him.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Review for The Summer Fling by @Pooker87 part 2:

When she finally does invite him to the beach to have sex with her, she does a good job laying out that this will be on her terms. However, it's immediately undercut by her decision to blow him first. Considering she says she wants to do it on her own terms, and that he’s been a jerk to her her whole life, I would’ve expected more that she has him go down on her. Almost as a way of evening the score before they get into this summer fling, part as a way to show that he’s maybe not as bad a dude as he seemed (willing to forego his immediate pleasure to service her), and to give her a bit of control of the situation. Her blowing him first makes it feel more like she has less control initially and is more needy than he is, kind of a weaker position in terms of the initial dynamic, like he’s doing her a favor rather than she’s willing to overcome years of dislike in order to get what she wants.

"Your tits aren't very big, but fuck are they nice to grab," he said, slipping his hand inside my tank top and bra.
I took him out of my mouth, keeping my hand going on his shaft, and said, "If you want to fuck me, you better stop talking."

I really enjoyed her reaction to this. It puts the power balance back in her favor. This initial encounter is what sets the expectations of the fling, which is why who is doing what to whom is very important. This is especially true for an enemies-to-lovers story where we'll be seeing the evolution of the relationship. It serves as the benchmark to gauge how the rest of the relationship plays out.

Staying with this quote: His dialogue is a bit stilted here. It feels a bit flat and unnatural, more like giving info to the reader than something someone would say. We already got that information from the mirror scene, so it’s unnecessary. I like the general gist of what he’s saying, a bit of that bullying coming back in and prompting her to assert herself a bit, but rewording it so it has a more natural sound for an early 20-something guy would help a lot.

You use a lot of the same word during your sex scenes. The problem is that reading the same word over and over again can cause the word to lose impact and meaning (semantic satiation). It’s something you really want to avoid when trying to write a sex scene, because the word “cock” starts to become rote instead of sexy. Varying the words you use for erotic parts helps to ameliorate that issue. However, given this is a first-person story, you also want to make sure that the words you use for those synonyms fit within the types of words that Jackie would use to describe them. She’d probably not use terms like “crown jewels, arse, spend, knockers, nether lips.” They don’t fit her character, and the narrative is an extension of her. First-person narratives should use the same voice and word sets as the character whose POV we’re in. Using words that don’t fit the character, like having extremely rare and high-literature words in a first-person narrative with a five-year-old, breaks immersion and ruins the best part of first-person POV: voice. This also holds true for which set of erotic synonyms they use. The terms someone use vary depending on age, gender, culture, and context. This is a pretty good guide, written way back when, for using synonyms that might fit better with the sex scene and Jackie's voice: https://www.literotica.com/s/erotic-synonyms

The sex scene is primarily a description of actions, with light telling of how she’s feeling. It’s more like reading choreography than actually experiencing the sex alongside Jackie. Again, the benefits of first-person POV is getting to experience the world as the character does, and sex scenes are a fantastic place to do so. The thoughts, feelings, sensations, all of these are key to making a sex scene shine, turning from a list of things the characters are doing to a vibrant scene that pulls in the reader. It’s what makes a scene go from sex to erotic. Listing off actions isn’t all that erotic. I could watch porn if I wanted to get that type of titillation. But what sets written erotica apart from visual porn is the fact we get to really get in there with the characters. What sensations she experiences, the different senses — not just sight, which this primarily is, but touch, smell, sound, taste. I want to hear the surf mixing with the squelch of his cock churning her depths, the scent of ocean and the heady aroma their fucking. Let us sit and stew in the multi-dimensional sexscape. The best erotic sex scenes transport us so we can’t help but feel, see, hear, smell, and taste what the characters are. Really dig into that, make it so vivid the reader can’t help but cross their legs. Especially, and I mean ESPECIALLY with first-person. I want to be able to close my eyes and feel the sand through the towel as he fucks me. That’s the goal. It’s not an easy one, but you’ve written nearly 200 stories on Lit, so I think you’re more than capable of conjuring that for us. Really imagine what it’s like in that moment, all the different physical textures that blur the lines between real and imagined.

I have a little bit of an issue with her letting him cum in her. There’s no condom, no mention of her being on the pill. It’s funny, we were just having this conversation in Authors’ Hangout the other day and there’s a wide range of opinions on this. But I think in this case, it’s better if she at least thinks about it, or offers a reassurance that she’s on the pill. Primarily because he asks her if he needs to pull out. Because he asks the question, we’ve entered the space where consideration ought to be put into pregnancy/STD territory. Pregnancy more than STD, since STD talk can make it less sexy, and the primary concern from him is getting her pregnant would be my assumption.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Review for The Summer Fling by @Pooker87 part 3:

We did have a few instances where I thought that Connor was the same old mean Connor. Certain words or phrases would slip out. Especially when I was giving him oral. He told me one day while we were at work that he was glad that I wasn't as annoying as I used to be. I wasn't too happy he said that, and refused to give him any that night. He wasn't too happy, but I kept reminding him that he needed to change if he wanted my body.

I would’ve really liked this as a scene. Part of the fun of enemies-to-lovers is the backsliding. Telling us about the backsliding makes it feel more real, and I always appreciate when it’s not just “we were mortal enemies, suddenly we get along perfectly well.” But I’d love to have been in one of those moments to see how it played out.

"Saying that, I really have enjoyed getting to know you better this summer. I know that most of it has been..," he paused for a second, lowered his voice, and briefly looked around the restaurant before continuing. "Physical. But, watching you at work, and the little talks we've had, and just being around you more, I've come to realize that you're a beautiful, talented, and amazing young lady. One that I have come to consider being very lucky to be around."

Another example of dialogue that really doesn’t fit an early 20-something guy (the “young lady” bit in particular). It feels easily twice that age. Dialogue doesn’t have to be very accurate, in fact, too much accuracy can impact readability. But it is a major driver of characterization. It defines a character’s voice, which defines them. It also serves to convey mood and emotion. When dialogue doesn’t match who the character is portrayed as, it creates a disconnect in the reader, or makes them suspect the character is being disingenuous. In a scene where it’s supposed to be heart-felt, that really undermines the mood and the character himself. We recently started a discussion dialogue, including tips and tricks. Might be worth a look: On Writing: Dialogue.

We finished our dinner while talking about our future goals and desires. As we walked out of the restaurant, we held hands, and Connor again surprised me when he took me home, and declined my invitation to come inside.

It would’ve been good to know what those goals and plans were, as it provides further characterization for both Jackie and Connor, as well as gives the reader a way to visualize where they may end up in the future.

The ending is solid. There is a lot of summarization of the last few weeks, which makes sense given story length and focus. I would’ve maybe liked to have seen just a normal date, instead of being told about it. Maybe have made that last date into a montage or longer scene rather than a summarization. It would help to serve as a nice cap off of their relationship, showing how things changed, how they are together, with the earlier scenes as contrast so the reader shows how they’ve both grown together and how their dynamic has shifted, rather than simply telling us it has.

All right, one thing, unrelated to the story. Purely craft:

You rely heavily on compound speech/action tags. These are generally good for more flowing pieces, but should be used in moderation. Most of the time, it’s better to pick either speech or action tag for a line and leave it at that, the choice depending on how you want to frame the dialogue. I personally find speech tags largely unnecessary; action tags can take a lot of the work that a speech tag does, and if you only have two people talking, sometimes you don’t need tags at all. Speech tags are best used when it’s unclear who is talking, or when the way in which a person is talking is particularly important and can’t easily be conveyed through the dialogue itself.

For example: “Get away from her!” he yelled, shoving the man away from his girl.

He yelled is implied by the exclamation point.
“Get away from her!” He shoved the man away from his girl.

Removing compound speech/action tags is good practice especially when the tag is “said.” Said as a speech tag is about as invisible a word as you can have. So pairing it with an action tag is extra unnecessary, because said doesn’t do anything other than point the reader at who is talking. It doesn’t convey anything about how they talk. In those cases, it’s better to drop “said” and switch purely to an action tag.

Some examples from your story:
I said, hoping I was doing the right thing. > I hoped I was doing the right thing.
I looked up at Connor as I hung up the phone and said, > I looked up at Connor as I hung up the phone.
I called out, no longer hearing any water flowing. > I no longer heard any water flowing.
Connor said a few minutes later, coming back into the room with a toolbox in his hand. > Connor came back into the room a few minutes later with a toolbox in his hand.

That’s not to say there’s no place for compound speech/action tags. They can be useful tools for breaking up repetitive sentence structures. However, like most more complex constructions, they’re best used in moderation. It’s generally advisable to have writing that is invisible to the reader. When they start noticing things about the structure of the words, or the words themselves, it pulls them a little bit out of the story.

“What?”

Yeah, that’s fair. Basically, you want the reader to take in the meaning of the words. The words themselves are almost incidental. Put another way, you want to convey the ideas and the story, and the words are just the way you happen to do that. Hence, the words and the way they’re constructed should generally not be something the reader has top of mind as they’re reading. They should be engrossed in what those words and constructions convey. When a reader is looking at how the words are put together, not the words themselves, they start to come out of the story. In some cases, that’s actually a great tool to plink at the reader’s subconscious or to instill a specific emotion in the reader. Like all tools designed to work on a meta level, they are better used with great intention and with an understanding of the impact they have, weighing pros and cons. Those pauses kill flow and break immersion, and the more of them you have, the less connected to the story the reader becomes. Most of the time, you want the reader to breeze through what you’ve written, not pause to admire the way you wrote it.

It's clear to me you have a good eye for erotic stories, which makes sense, given your extensive track record of them. For your next story, I think it would be good to either do a first-person POV and really drill down into the thoughts and feelings, showing us, rather than telling us, of your protagonist, or try doing it from a third-person POV. Your style fits better with third person at present, so if you want to try something different, maybe start with that while you digest some of my feedback with regards to first-person POV. First-person is intimate and fun, and the narrative is a messy mix of description, thoughts, feelings, and, mostly importantly, voice, where untangling those things from each other is nigh impossible. It can be messy, but it's a great POV for exploring characters and really giving the readers a sense of who they are at their most basic levels.

Thanks for sharing

 

[anthrodisiac]

Review for Summer at Still Lake Campground by @AStrangeDesire Part 1:

Mostly I'm looking for anything big and glaring that would improve my writing from your perspective @anthrodisiac . Or maybe the top 2 or 3, not nitty gritty.

I figure I can work on max one or two things to improve at a time anyway, so anything more detailed would probably be lost on me. Never took English beyond high school... for what that's worth.

Pfffffft, sure, kid, sure. You're getting a bit more than that. Tell me how to do my job...

This is a fun story. Short, sweet, sexy, well-written. The characters are interesting and likable, the setting offers a nice backdrop to the events of the story. The story was largely successful in what it set out to do, and clearly was well-received, as it ought to have been.

“Great, thanks! I’ll just take my gold star and-”

Nice try.

It was a good story, but there were a couple things holding it back from being a phenomenal story.

There are two primary issues:
1. The POV is shallow
2. The incest angle comes out of nowhere

This is a first-person story. I banged this drum on the last review, and I’ll bang it again here. First-person is great for exploring interpersonal dynamics, and in an incest story, especially one where the daughter didn’t talk to the father for almost a year, those interpersonal dynamics are crucial. The incest crowd isn’t just about the taboo nature of the sex, but the family dynamics providing the most intimate of connections, deeper than sex: blood, love. You did a decent job of them bonding and reconnecting after a year apart, but because we rarely dipped deep into Frank’s head to see his thoughts and feelings (both emotional and sensory), we really missed out on a real sense that the reconnection meant much to him. Obviously, it did, but I didn’t feel it all that viscerally. We skimmed the surface of Frank’s mind, but we never really dove in. We got glimpses of his relationship with Keira, but we never saw or felt its impact in a meaningful way. Because of this, the story reads more like third-person in a first-person wrapper.

I kept waiting for a bit more exploration into the father-daughter dynamic, rebuilding their relationship, the awkwardness of hooking up with a woman younger than his daughter and semi-sharing her with his daughter, and the emotional turmoil of his sexual feelings for his daughter. I don’t think I would’ve had this issue if it’d been in third-person, so it does bear thinking about audience expectations when a story is in first vs. third. Some people who are just here for the strokers won’t care, but for those looking for an intimate exploration of the bond between a father and daughter will feel the lack of depth and not feel that much of a connection to the characters, which is where first-person excels. After all, what is more intimate than experiencing the world through someone’s eyes, their thoughts? Lean into the immersion a little bit more with your next first-person POV.

Let’s get an example of something:

Heather was the tallest, long legs, little athletic skirt, t-shirt and a bandana wrapped around her head. Impressive chest stretching the t-shirt. Wendy was short, dark and also well built, with strong legs peeking out of her board shorts, her black hair pulled into a pony tail. Keira was in between, at 5'6". Her feet in flip-flops, her standard summer footwear, toes painted black, long tanned legs, tight jean shorts and a halter top. Her blonde hair pulled through the back of her ball cap. I wonder when she dyed it, she was a natural brunette.

In first-person, I usually like to see something attached to noticing details about somebody. Not just noticing details, but why notice that detail. Later, it’s clear he thinks he has a shot with one of the girls, so play into that here. He’s not just idly noticing, he’s checking them out. But for his daughter, the motivation is different, so you’d want to pull out her description into a second paragraph, unless you wanted to tie in his attraction to his daughter now (as opposed to presumably later.) These are the kind of things to think about when writing first-person. How does X tie into the character? Why are they thinking about it? Why do they notice it? And, on that last point about his daughter, how do they distinguish certain thoughts from one another?

All right, second issue. The incest theme. The whole incest element kinda comes out of nowhere. She’s standoffish, shows zero indication of attraction to him, he shows no interest in her sexually at all. The only even small hints we get are once she’s naked and in bed with him, and he has a hard-on, which also kinda comes out of nowhere. We got a little bit of him looking at her, but none of the shame or taboo nature. In fact, he doesn’t seem particularly bothered or even mildly conflicted about his body’s reactions to his daughter: whether it’s his wandering eyes or his hard-on. The entirety of his resistance is “This is a bad idea,” and she agrees and keeps going. He gives one more half-hearted roadbump, but rolls over pretty quickly. Given he has access to Heather, and potentially Wendy, the reason for him having sex with his daughter can’t simply be the fact that he’s sex-starved. He literally just had sex with Heather the previous night. There has to be something else that gets him past the taboo, but I never really get a sense of what that is. In essence, it feels like he’s just being directed to have sex with his daughter, rather than something he’s organically choosing to do as a character.

We should have been seeding the incest angle from jump. As early as noticing the young woman whose face he can’t see, thinking she’s attractive, before realizing it’s his daughter. Then the “oh shit” of realizing he was checking out his daughter. At the latest, I would’ve really liked to have seen more into Frank’s head when he catches his daughter naked. Especially as a T/I piece, this is probably the first time he’s really gotten a chance to see his adult daughter nude, and it feels very underwhelming to not have any indication that’s where it’s heading. Given it was submitted in the T/I category, obviously, that’s where it’s heading, but without that, the scene really doesn’t serve much purpose, except to create an inciting incident where he might start thinking about her a bit more sexually, just without any indication of how he feels about that moment to actually give us that indication.

Essentially, this story should’ve been riddled with the evolution of thinking about his daughter more that way. Not just so the scene where he finally has sex with her makes sense, but because the dance is what taboo is all about. It’s not just the payoff of it happening, it’s about the slow erosion of societal and moral concerns as they inevitably draw closer. When Frank and Keira are making out with Heather, having a couple glances between them, him being aroused watching his daughter make out with another woman, things of that nature help to erode the high bar that most people have for wanting to engage sexually with their blood relatives.

I would’ve also liked to have seen more indications of Keira’s leanings toward being jealous of her dad. Obviously, it’s a bit tricker to do, since we’re in Frank’s POV, but having him notice little things that the reader can tell are her thinking about him sexually, while he’s in the dark because it’s such a taboo thing that it doesn’t even occur to him that she sees him that way would’ve been great foreshadowing to her revealing she was jealous of Heather. Something as simple as her touching herself as she watched them, a lingering touch on his arm, tiny things that a character wouldn’t pick up on, but a reader, knowing that this is a T/I story, does. That way, it’s not out of the blue, like it is now.

I like the detail that he’s waiting for the guilt and regret to kick in after they have sex, but it never did. Hallmark of a T/I story. It could’ve paid off more if it had been built up in the previous scene, though.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Review for Summer at Still Lake Campground by @AStrangeDesire Part 2:

All right, this was meant to be an aside, but it turned into a gigantic monstrosity. Let's talk dialogue!

Thisisn’t an issue with the story, but an observation about your writing more broadly. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I do want to point it out all the same. It’s a combination of a few things, so we’ll build up the suspense a bit before the reveal. I know, I’m a tease. We’ll get a small tangent on one of the examples (maybe not so small), because it’s worth highlighting on the way to the larger point.

Large reliance on speech tags. They come up a lot more frequently than they need to. Speech tags are best used when it’s unclear when someone is speaking, or if the quality of how they’re speaking is important. Otherwise, action tags or no tags at all (when there are just two people, or using other techniques to indicate who is talking, like direct address) keeps the flow a little smoother, and the writing feeling a bit more natural, especially in a back-and-forth style scenario like this where not much else is going on.

"Sure," she said.

<snip>

"First time in a while that I could take the time to have one," I said as I passed Keira a can.

"Not easy to run the place all alone," she said.

"Nope. I'm glad you're here, hun," I said.

<snip>

"I guess you've got questions," she eventually said.

"Sure do. You and mom have a fight?" I asked.

"Ha!" she exclaimed, and there was no joy in it. "I don't think fight is the right word."

"OK."

"More like a giant freakin' blow-out," she was still looking at me. There was something in that look. After a short pause, she said, "I broke all those stupid plates of hers."

<snip>

"Jesus hun! How come?" I asked.

"Because I found out that she's been sleeping with the neighbour for the last three years," Keira said.

How it reads trimmed down:

"Sure,” she said.

<snip>

"First time in a while that I could take the time to have one.” I passed Keira a can.

"Not easy to run the place all alone.”

"Nope. I'm glad you're here, hun.”

<snip>

"I guess you've got questions," she eventually said.

"Sure do. You and mom have a fight?"

"Ha!" she exclaimed, and there was no joy in it. "I don't think fight is the right word."

"OK."

"More like a giant freakin' blow-out.” She was still looking at me. There was something in that look. After a short pause, she said, "I broke all those stupid plates of hers."

<snip>

"Jesus hun! How come?"

"Because I found out that she's been sleeping with the neighbour for the last three years.”

Given the heaviness of the emotion of this scene, and the implications, having leaner narrative during the dialogue helps to provide contrast to the pauses. Stripping down tags and unnecessary bits keeps the reader focus on the dialogue and information, which is then broken up by Frank processing this. Implicit cues! (Whoever had that on their Anthy Review Bingo card, that’s basically a free space at this point.)

Okay, tangent time: Frank’s reaction is kinda muted, honestly. Not only was his wife sleeping around, it was with a woman, and before he’d cheated on her. That’s a hell of a lot, and unless he is the chillest dude on the planet, his reaction doesn’t match the bombshell. Even if it’s just numb and he processes later, or he’s holding it in for his daughter, that would be good to know. That's where things like not just getting direct thought, but the actual physical sensations of his emotions as well. All we get is open mouth, and “holy shit.” There is this later on, which is good: “Three fucking years! Plus she used what happened last summer to drive a wedge between our daughter and me!” But it’s immediately dissipated with a breath out and a smile at his daughter calling him dad. Honestly, there’s a lot going on there, let’s unpack it a bit.

1. He learns his wife was cheating on him.
2. He learns his wife was cheating on him with a woman.
3. He processes, starts to get angry.
4. Kiera calls him dad.
5. He blows out a breath and smiles, dissipation of anger.

It’s a good progression, really good, great even. But it could do with some heightening. Getting the actual physical sensations: blood pressure, heart pounding, face burning, balled fists, the physical reactions that underpin the thoughts, his base reactions. Then, as he starts to spiral, she calls him Dad, and suddenly that small thing pulls him out of it and instills a new emotion, a new set of sensations: lightness, relaxing, that little tender plink of the chest. What does that say about him? He cares about his daughter — a lot. He values his relationship to her so much that this most intimate betrayal is softened by his daughter treating him like Dad again.

First-person drum time. We don’t get the feeling, the emotion. We get the thought, and from the thought of “Three fucking years! Plus she used what happened last summer to drive a wedge between our daughter and me!” we can derive the emotion from what we’re being told, but we don’t experience it. First-person is all about feeling and emotion, it lives there, and it’s precisely for moments like this, so we can experience that betrayal alongside Frank. We should be getting the sensations, the physical reaction alongside direct thought, both conscious and unconscious. At present, we’re sorta more like, “Aww, that sucks.” We should be, “WHAT THE FLYING FUCK?!”

All right, back on track. The larger point is that you have a tendency to overwrite, especially around dialogue. A few examples:

• "No Heather and Wendy tonight?" I asked, deciding to broach the subject. > Obviously, he decided to broach the subject, otherwise he wouldn't be saying anything.
• "Oh." I had no idea what to say. > It's clear he has nothing else to say, because that's his only line of dialogue.
• "Will do. Maybe this whole you being my scout thing'll work out after all," I thought out loud. > Nothing wrong with "said"; no need to overthink a speech tag. The only times not to use "said" are when the quality of the way the person is saying something is important. Otherwise, "said" or action tag or nothing at all are better. Avoidance of "said" is pretty common, but it leads to overwriting and makes the speech tag more noticeable to the reader. Speech tags are meant to be invisible, the reader only notices them inasmuch as it reminds them who is speaking, or to clue them in to how the person is speaking when important.

Part of it might be that you seem to have an aversion to naked dialogue. Now that I’ve noticed it, it’s becoming very obvious that there seems to be a need to dress it up instead of letting it stand on its own. Whether that’s through a bit extra on the speech tags, adding an action, or thoughts, there seems to be very little dialogue that is left more or less to its own devices. I’ve noticed this with quite a few writers over the years, who don’t like how “naked” it looks and feel like they need to add something more to it. But it’s perfectly fine to have sections that are primarily dialogue. In fact, those tend to have better flow, because the dialogue isn’t cluttered with miscellaneous actions, thoughts, and narrative.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Review for Summer at Still Lake Campground by @AStrangeDesire Part 3:

While we’re on the topic of dialogue, let’s touch on a couple more things.

The first thing is action tags. They have a specific formatting distinct from speech tags.

Speech tag: <person> <speaking verb>
Ex: “That’s nice,” I said.

Action tag: <person> <non-speaking verb>
Ex: “That’s nice.” I smiled.

Speech tags use commas, action tags use periods. You’re formatting your action tags like speech tags, giving them commas when they should be periods.

"Hope you don't mind," she tipped her head towards the girls. > "Hope you don't mind." She tipped her head towards the girls.

"OK. Hell, I'm just glad you're here. And that we're talking," I looked at the blond hair. > "OK. Hell, I'm just glad you're here. And that we're talking." I looked at the blond hair.

Second item: You have a tendency to sometimes mix multiple character actions into a single paragraph, particularly around dialogue. Generally (note the generally) it’s better to keep character actions in separate paragraphs. It helps keep ideas and actions together for ease of reading. It helps box things together more neatly and helps with the flow. If it’s just a small thing, it’s not so big, but sometimes it can get more complicated, which definitely impacts readability.

"Hey," Keira said, and I waved. "Hope you don't mind," she tipped her head towards the girls.

In this example, it’s unclear if the second piece of dialogue belongs to Keira or Frank without doing at least a couple readthroughs. Either splitting this up or simplifying would make it clear. It’s not impossible to parse, but you generally want to keep your writing as smooth as possible, with as few re-reads as you can manage. The clearer the writing, the easier it is for the reader to immerse themselves. Every time they have to stop to re-read something, it pulls them a little bit out of the story, and it takes them a moment to settle back in. Those little plinks can add up over time, especially if there are multiple in a small window, to the point where they’re yanked almost entirely out of your world. It’s why pairing like with like is good, it makes it a little bit easier to read and digest so they can keep moving along without interruption.

Was:

"Sure. Like I said, I won't judge. Just be safe," I said, as she rolled her eyes.

"I'm 21 dad!" she said, as if that explained everything.

Clearer:

"Sure. Like I said, I won't judge. Just be safe," I said.

She rolled her eyes. “I’m 21 dad!"

Was:

"OK, but if it starts to feel wrong, it stops. Not worth screwing up stuff between us again," I said, and this time she reached over and took my hand.

"Deal. Don't worry, it'll be fun," she looked at her watch.

Clearer:

"OK, but if it starts to feel wrong, it stops. Not worth screwing up stuff between us again," I said.

This time, she reached over and took my hand. “Deal. Don't worry, it'll be fun," she looked at her watch.

Was:

"Nope. First time I said it this year," I grinned at her as I said it, and her face brightened.

"Really? Huh..." she said.

Clearer:

"Nope. First time I said it this year," I grinned at her as I said it.

Her face brightened. “Really? Huh..."

Final thing, and I’m so excited to finally broach this...

Direct address!

It’s not a term that pops up a lot in AH or Story Feedback. It’s when, in dialogue, somebody talks directly to someone else. Directly addresses them. Pretty straightforward. So why am I talking about it?

Direct address should be paired with commas in dialogue. Both at the start and the beginning of the direct address. I’d venture to say most people on Lit don’t know/follow this grammatical rule, so this is by no means isolated to you at all. I didn’t learn this convention at all for probably close to seven years, because I hadn’t noticed it or knew it was a thing. Now you do! And anyone else who reads this. It makes the writing clearer. There’s an old example: “Let’s eat, grandma” and “Let’s eat grandma” are two VERY different sentences.

Helpful infographic:


Take your sentence here: “I didn’t know dad.” Technically means “I didn’t know dad” as in I didn’t know the person I call Dad, instead of what you meant, which is telling her father that she didn’t know.

All the ways direct address ought to be written (after, before, middle):
“I didn’t know, Dad.”
“Dad, I didn’t know.”
“Well, Dad, I didn’t know.”

Note the commas around the person being directly addressed, both before and after. I didn’t learn about direct address for over five years, and I’d wager more than half of the stories (probably higher) on Lit don’t correctly format their direct address, so this is by no means an amateur mistake. It’s a pretty common one among sites like Lit, where not everyone has taken several creative writing courses. It’s one of those things that’s easy to overlook unless you know about it. Thanks for being my (meat) vehicle for talking about it!

 

[anthrodisiac]

Review for Summer at Still Lake Campground by @AStrangeDesire Part 4:
Okay, sex! Bow chica bow wow!

Both sex scenes read a bit more choreography than immersive. But let's just take part of the first one for illustrative purposes:

Things were moving fast, and I wanted to slow down a little. I took my dick in my hand and rubbed it across her wet lips, pushing against her clit each time I reached the top, watching her reaction.

She made the most beautiful sound every time I touched her button, a kind of needy whine. Eyes closed, she reached for her nipples, squeezing and pulling them as I teased her wet lips. Finally she hooked her heels behind my butt to pull me forward, and I let her, sliding ahead and inch or so, getting the head inside before stopping.

"You sure you can handle more than the tip little girl?" I asked, grinning down at her.

"You're such a fuckin' tease, Frank! You want me to beg? Huh? OK then," she paused to make sure I was looking at her. Staring up at me, she said, "Please daddy, I've been such a good girl. I've stayed away from boys and only fucked other girls. Don't I deserve a special treat, daddy? My little pussy is so wet I can't even think straight. And I need a man, not a boy. A big, strong, hard, experienced man." She whined a little more.

"I can't keep this up Frank, just fuck me please!" she said.

The 'daddy' thing had made me flinch just for a second, but I ignored it and pushed forward, slowly sinking into her wet pussy. Her hips twitched up at me, and her legs were working overtime trying to pull me forward. Once I bottomed out, I leaned down and kissed her.

"Feels alright?" I asked.

"Less talking, more fucking," Heather grunted, trying to pump her hips and get me to move.

I wrapped my arms around her back, grabbing the top of her shoulders with my hands, and once I had her locked in, started fucking her. It had been way too long, and I stopped holding back, going at it hard, drawing little yelps and moans from her as we got into the groove. She tried to match my rhythm with her own, her hips lifting up as I pushed down into her, making each stroke more intense.

It’s more actions and summation than it is the more immersive sensory elements and first-person perspective that really make sex scenes spark. Since we’re in first-person, we should also be getting how Frank feels, the pleasure sensations, so it’s less like reading a description of what they did, and more like we’re living it alongside him.

Second sex scene was sweet, but kinda lackluster. For the Big Event, it felt more glossed over than anything. I mean, it's him and his daughter having sex, it should be a Big Fucking Deal (heh). I would’ve liked to have seen a bit more of it, their reactions to each other, rather than paraphrasing that it was a slow thirty-minute fuck, they came, she falls asleep. After all, this is the culmination of the story, the full embrace of his daughter after a year apart, both breaking their bond forever and forging it anew with this taboo encounter. It should feel a lot more momentous and impactful. Its current state makes it feel on par in terms of importance with the first sex scene, which is not even remotely true, and it shouldn't feel like that at all. It should feel momentous.

Okay, one last thing:

Really nice characterization here:

There's something about a fire... I often think the world would be a better place, if only we could have all the important conversations around a campfire.

That’s it. I just really liked it. Says a lot about Frank in a way that I wish the rest of the story had.

-----

Aaaand, hey, look at that, we’re done! You still with me? I know you (very naïvely) said just a couple things, but you really, really don’t know me if you thought that was going to deter me from giving you a full review anyway. Was it a lot? You betcha!

But here’s the thing: you don’t have to do all of it at once. I’ve had mentees tell me it was too much to do at once, and that’s kinda the point. It allows you to select the things that feel easiest to do, implement those, get a feel for them, then move onto the next thing. YOU get to choose what information to absorb now, what to wait on, what to try, all of that, rather than me trying to parse what I think is best for you, because, frankly, I have no clue what advice is best for anyone at any given time, and I don’t feel like guessing and hoping I’m right. So, read it over, take some time to digest it, and figure out what you want to focus on first. I wouldn’t’ve thrown all that at you if I didn’t think you could handle it. (Okay, maybe I would’ve… But I don’t think that’s the case here.) You’re clearly a gifted writer with a good sense of story and characters, and as you learn and grow, you’ll start to incorporate more tools and tricks and tips and really polish your stories into something truly enviable. It takes time, grit, application, and effort, but you’ve already shown to be open to learning, and open to better yourself. Really, that’s the most valuable skill any writer can have.

Keep up the good work!

 

[AStrangeDesire]

Wow, @anthrodisiac , that was thorough! Some of it I was aware of and didn't know how to fix, some of it I'm actively working on, and some that I need to park and think through.

But mostly, I want to say thanks for both the extensive review and criticism (in the best connotation) and the positive comments. Plus, obviously, the amount of time you put into this.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Wow, @anthrodisiac , that was thorough! Some of it I was aware of and didn't know how to fix, some of it I'm actively working on, and some that I need to park and think through.

But mostly, I want to say thanks for both the extensive review and criticism (in the best connotation) and the positive comments. Plus, obviously, the amount of time you put into this.

They don't call me "Oh My God, Shut the Fuck Up" Anthy for no reason

 

[AStrangeDesire]

They don't call me "Oh My God, Shut the Fuck Up" Anthy for no reason

You mind if I ask a follow up question based on your post in the background thread: https://forum.literotica.com/threads/on-writing-backstory.1654452/post-102836893 ? If so, just say "You're had your turn! Now serving #3,258,322"

If not, the question is:
I tried to 'meter out' just enough backstory at the beginning to have people keep reading a bit more into Summer on Still Lake. Specifically with the two girls checking in and it becoming apparent that they were a couple--even though it turned out they weren't really--and had one comment that the person felt it was 'too much like their work' and drifted off. I did reveal it very slowly, it was an experiment for me and I'm curious if you think it was too slow?

Overall, I've had more engagement on this story than any others, in terms of votes and favs. So I'm trying to make sense of that and wanted to see if you had thoughts.

 

[anthrodisiac]

You mind if I ask a follow up question based on your post in the background thread: https://forum.literotica.com/threads/on-writing-backstory.1654452/post-102836893 ? If so, just say "You're had your turn! Now serving #3,258,322"

If not, the question is:
I tried to 'meter out' just enough backstory at the beginning to have people keep reading a bit more into Summer on Still Lake. Specifically with the two girls checking in and it becoming apparent that they were a couple--even though it turned out they weren't really--and had one comment that the person felt it was 'too much like their work' and drifted off. I did reveal it very slowly, it was an experiment for me and I'm curious if you think it was too slow?

Overall, I've had more engagement on this story than any others, in terms of votes and favs. So I'm trying to make sense of that and wanted to see if you had thoughts.

What specifically is your question? The only slow thing right now might be me

 

[AStrangeDesire]

What specifically is your question? The only slow thing right now might be me

In the post of yours I quoted you said "You only have a few paragraphs to grab the readers attention"

Do you think I took too long?

 

[anthrodisiac]

In the post of yours I quoted you said "You only have a few paragraphs to grab the readers attention"

Do you think I took too long?

Gotcha, gotcha. I wasn't sure if you were worried about too much backstory or something specific. It was fine, no issues on that front. I would've dinged you on it if I felt it was too cumbersome and/or uninteresting.

My comment in the other thread is more for frontloading the backstory. If you start with a scene, it's much less a problem. But if you're going into backstory for more than a few paragraphs, unless it's really interesting backstory, you're probably going to lose the reader (specifically on Lit, considering there's no cost to simply moving onto a different story vs. someone who paid money to read the story) wondering when the everliving fuck we're getting to the actual story. It's why, especially when the reader has no sunk cost in the work, you want to get to the scene as quickly as possible. Doesn't mean you gotta jump straight to the action, but it does mean avoid having a ton of exposition up front. The exception being Sci-Fi & Fantasy, where you have much more leeway with readers that have worldbuilding expectations.

Of course, there are ways to do it to make it interesting; like almost everything with writing, these things are more guidelines with the expectation that there are ways to do it well even though "conventional wisdom" says to avoid it. I can't think of any real "hard" rules besides basic grammar and spelling (and even those have exceptions) when it comes to writing. Always remember that when somebody tries to tell you something is objectively "wrong."

 

[AStrangeDesire]

Thanks @anthrodisiac !

 

[anthrodisiac]

Thanks, @anthrodisiac !

Fixed it for you. It's almost like I just taught you about direct address or something...

 

[AStrangeDesire]

Fixed it for you. It's almost like I just taught you about direct address or something...

Now you're just nitpicking

Just for that no comments for you Anthy!

 

[anthrodisiac]

Now you're just nitpicking

Just for that no comments for you Anthy!

Try to teach somebody something... *grumble grumble*

 

[env789]

Try to teach somebody something... *grumble grumble*

Your audience goes beyond your interlocutor.

I love reading your advice and reviews. They're so instructive, and I feel like I'm getting better at my own craft through osmosis.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Righty-o, time for Kinzi Young Rides Again by @DirtyPollyAnna, Part 1:

I really enjoy the premise of this story, a more truthful look at the porn industry from the eyes of an industry pro dealing with anxiety around feeling too “old” to really be able to succeed. The writing is technically proficient and professional. The length was good, and it very clearly hit the Valentine’s Day sweet vibe you were going for. And, crucially, it’s very hot.

However, given your intention, which you shared with me was to "find the regular humanity of the sex workers. It’s meant to be saying, 'Sex workers are just like us.'" Also, to "look behind the scenes of a porn shoot." (Eagle-eyed viewers might notice that this language is not in her ask; I ask all my review thread participants in private what sort of things they're looking for, so I know where to focus the majority of my feedback.) I took this to mean your goals were to show us a bit of how the porn industry operates, and, more importantly, show the common humanity of people in the porn industry. You also wanted the sex to be hot, which you did a wonderful job on, so good job there.

But for the behind-the-scenes of the porn industry and showing these two porn stars as "just like us," I feel you didn’t hit your goals as well as you could have.

Okay, before we get started, this is probably my biggest review to date. The reason for that is I think you have something really special here, and you're clearly a very talented writer. After all, the score on this story is outstanding, and you earned kudos from some of the big names in the forums for your work. I'm acutely aware this puts me at odds with most people, but you wanted honest feedback, and you gave me clear instructions on what your goals were. Take a deep breath. No need to read all this in one go. Take some time to let it digest, sit with it for a bit. I'm going to be blunt with you, that's just how I am. Do not take it to mean I think the story was terrible, sucked, anything like that. Like I said, the main reason for the absolute fucking deluge you're about to get is because there are several key areas that I want to highlight, per your ask. I wanted to both provide something that will be useful for you, but also have applicable lessons more broadly.

I'm also an overexplainy lil' dino, so there's that. All right, you ready? Let's do this!

Let's start with the first thing: the realism of the porn industry. I want to say, you actually hit most of your marks on this one. You did a great job revealing some of how the sausage was made (insert sausage joke here), highlighting some of the secrets and realities of the set-up, shooting, that was well done. We got some key insights into how some of the people behave and some of the dirty secrets.

For example, stuff like this, this was marvelous:

indeed some industry guys cheated, using a concealed device with a pump for the money shot.

Dirty secrets. Kinzi is our lens into the industry, and even though this is a stroker with heart, we're seeing this extra side of things as well, to help buoy the fact that these are, in fact, real people, who don’t always have gigantic jizzes, squirts, hour-long boners, etc. There are off days, goofs, accidents, issues, squabbles, all that. I would've liked to have seen a bit more of it when they were shooting the anal scene, but it wasn't so absent that I felt you didn't hit your mark on showing us the realities of shooting porn.

However, your goal of "pornstars are real people" was greatly undermined by introducing very clear story-level porn logic (as in, normal erotica porn tropes that do not reflect most people's lived realities around sex) into the sex scenes, turning the characters from real people back into porn tropes.

Normally, for a stroker, I wouldn’t mind the porn logic. She squirts for the first time with him, normal porn trope. However, it is pretty strange for someone who’d been in the industry for 11 years to never have experienced a squirt in all the years she’d been having sex on and off camera. I get that it’s meant to imply that Matt is something special, but she just met him, and if it’s just the quality of his cock and how he fucks her that makes her squirt, I’m incredibly incredulous that not a single other cock, dildo, or toy did this for her. If it’s something unique about him as a person… Well, we’ll get that later.

Then, as they keep fucking, not only does she squirt, she’s basically just a fountain of non-stop squirting:

Suddenly there was warm liquid between our bodies and a wet-sounding slap as Matt continued to fuck me.

The event wasn't lost on him either, and as he slowed his rhythm, Matt said, "Fuck, Kinzi, I didn't know you were a squirter."

"First... time..." I panted. "Want... to... try for... number two?"

<snip>

But my mirth was short-lived replaced by surging and excruciating excitement as Matt began to plow me with even greater gusto than before. I'd never come close to anything as intense, I lost count of my spraying orgasms, and felt like I might even pass out, when Matt finally gushed his warm semen into me.

This flies in the fact of how most people experience squirting, so she'd have to be in the very top percentile of people who squirt for this to hold up under scrutiny, and most of those people have been practicing for a while (really fun Science Vs episode about squirting). So, unless she had a very full bladder (squirts are largely diluted urine, with a small amount of other fluids from the Skene’s gland, sorry to ruin the illusion for all those people who thought/hoped/prayed it was super-special magic fairy femcum), she’s not going to keep “spraying” more than a couple times. They’d taper off pretty quickly, with the majority of the fluid released the first time. There are actually industry tricks to make it easier for a woman to squirt, such as douching or using a syringe to inject water/lube into the vagina, which is then pushed out with pelvic floor muscles; drinking tons and tons of water beforehand to get the bladder full; sometimes, the woman is just straight-up peeing instead of squirting; camera angles to make it seem like more squirt than usual. Those industry techniques are all just from a very quick search I did. I would’ve loved to have seen that info come out. Maybe Kinzi had done some porn shoots before where they used a couple of these tricks, given the high demand for squirting videos, but this is the first time she’d legitimately squirted from pleasure because of a partner instead. So the fountain of squirts is porn logic, which cuts against the "they're just like us" goal.

In my experience cock size and spunk volume were not correlated, indeed some industry guys cheated, using a concealed device with a pump for the money shot. But, with Matt, the word flood was for once not an exaggeration. I lay on the couch cum flowing freely from my pussy and in a pool of my own ejaculate, feeling like a rag doll, but a super satisfied and happy rag doll.

The first part of this, I really enjoyed. It's an interesting fact, especially when paired with the fact that some guys use hidden devices to make it seem like they’re just a literal fucking geyser. But after this big cum, he has a similarly large ejaculation during the shoot, without any extra devices. He’d just ejaculated “a flood,” so to then have him have a decently sized cum during the shoot, within what feels like under an hour (we don’t get an exact amount for how long between him fucking and cumming in her before the shoot and the shoot itself, but it didn’t really feel like any time at all; I would’ve been surprised it if it over 30 minutes) again, stretches credulity. It also implies his refractory period is pretty quick, when in most cases, it’s between 30 - 60 minutes, and sensitivity decreases (which to be fair, seems to be implied during the shoot, which was good), and the amount of seminal fluid would be less; you’d also expect less force. But later...

It took a while, and I had to offer some encouragement, before poking my tongue out again. But at last a ribbon of sticky white shot toward my face and was followed by several more. Matt's cum was in my eyes - never the best feeling - and hair, and all over my face. The last couple of spurts he had delivered directly into my mouth and I now gargled for the camera before swallowing in an exaggerated manner.

We get “a sticky white shot … followed by several more… The last couple of spurts.” I do like that we get “spurts” but “shot” implies he’s still ejaculating with a decent amount of force, and quite a number of times, which would put him somewhere in the heavy cummer territory that borders on porn logic. Not as porn logicky as Kinzi's squirting, but it still plays into the "man have big cum all time" trope pervasive in erotica (of which I am guilty as well). Although reminding us that not every woman enjoys a faceful of cum was a nice touch that I appreciated.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Review for Kinzi Young Rides Again by @DirtyPollyAnna, Part 2:

Damn, I was hoping to get all the porn logic stuff in one go. Close...

There are a couple comments that also play heavily into the porn logic trope:

I'd developed a reputation in the industry for cock worship. I'd taken some of the largest guys around in each of my openings and loved every minute of it. But Matt? Matt was different. The thing with a big cock is that it needs a lot of blood to get it stiff and keep it that way. Some well hung guys never got past being three quarters erect.

Matt's cock was long and thick and - importantly - totally rigid. As his bulbous head parted my pussy lips, even someone with my lengthy experience of length just had to gasp.

And as he started to rock in and out, filling me like I had never been filled before,

For someone who just a few lines earlier said she’d taken some of the biggest cocks in the industry, and who’d been in that industry for 11 years, she’d never been filled like this? Someone who’d probably been DP’d a number of times? Stretches credulity. Even if it's hyperbole, it's hyperbole that undermines your goal. And it's such an overrused hyperbole that readers don't pay it any mind, because it's lost all meaning, as is the case with most overused clichés.

With respect to "I know big cocks don't always work fully, but Matt's does," this is putting him in the superhuman category in a way that undercuts a couple vital things. Firstly, he’s not like “some guys” and he can get really hard despite being both lengthy and girthy, which means we’re veering into porn logic land again (it actually wouldn’t have even been on my radar had you not lampshaded it, so it's self-inflicted). Second, you wanted to show pornstars are people too, more than the sum of their parts, and all this, if not outright contradicts, then at least diminishes the impact of your stated goal by making his cock so good that "even someone with my lengthy experience of length just had to gasp." Magic dick porn trope.

I know these probably feel like nitpicking, and in 99% of cases, it wouldn’t have drawn any real critique from me, but you explicitly stated that you wanted to show that pornstars are people too, and this makes Matt seem superhuman in his abilities, not really something I’d expect from someone who’s decently above average, which would’ve been a better fit for his character given what you were trying to accomplish. Same with Kinzi. If you'd portrayed them as having sex that, to someone reading erotica, actually felt somewhat tame, I think you would've really hit your mark from the "porn industry people are people like us, not gods of sex" angle.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Review for Kinzi Young Rides Again by @DirtyPollyAnna, Part 3:

Okay, now for the second main issue: Kinzi herself.

At the start, you did a good job showing us someone anxious and insecure about being a washed-up old hag at the decrepit age of 30. Feeling like she’s done, worrying about her future, trying to navigate the new realities of Covid. That was great. I was sold on that. But that aspect disappears pretty quickly once we get past the introduction. It pops up briefly a couple times, but that self-consciousness, the doubt, it’s swept aside in favor of the story, except for a few times when you explicitly tell us her feelings, but we never really have it shown to us in any visceral way that makes it feel real to her. Because we’re in first-person POV, that viscerally is crucial.

So, who is Kinzi Young? Honestly? I really don’t know. Beyond “aging” pornstar with flashes of insecurity, I get no real sense of her. Partly because we don’t get a ton of background info, which is fine in a short story that’s primarily a stroker; that’s normal character loss that I account for in these situations. But the main reason I really don’t feel like I know who she is, or connect with her at all, is because her voice is very sterile. Not just her dialogue, but the narrative. She’s a 30-year-old pornstar, who’s been in the biz for 11 years, living in Los Angeles, with some pretty severe anxiety issues and existential dread. Instead, the voice is detached, formal, and prone to big words, or, as I like to call it: literary.

This more literary voice is really preventing me from feeling any semblance of who Kinzi Young actually is. Instead, it feels like an author wrapping a story in the veil of first-person, but not actually letting the character tell the story. This story is meant to be about showing us that pornstars are people, but the level of distance from the character makes her feel very, well, distant. As a first-person story, it should be told using her voice, so having the voice and style the way they are push the voice way out of sync with the character. They don't mesh for the reader, so the authenticity, the humanness, it's not being done as effectivey as it could.

Let me give you some concrete examples of what I’m talking about. For a 30-year-old pornstar who’d been based out of Southern California for the last 11 years (presumably, since we weren’t told otherwise), her vocabulary feels very odd.

Words out of sync with voice (not a full list, but some of the worse offenders in my view):

parsimonious, dispiriting, situated, utmost, secretions, vaginal intrusion, yelled incoherent syllables, mirth, innumerable, rivulets, bald genitals, bereft, some ejaculatory Rubicon, shamefacedly

These fit with the more literary tone and style that you cultivated here. Excellent for a highly educated academic or third-person omniscient, not so good for conveying the voice of Kinzi’s actual character. I’m not saying she has to be the perfect stereotype of someone from SoCal, or that she can’t be well-educated, but when you have a character whose voice is out of sync with the reader expectation, they take note, and it breaks the spell of immersion that makes first-person POV so powerful. So you either need to lean into that dissonance and explain why she’s different to offer an interesting angle on who she is, so that way future things that might feel off actually mesh with the character the readers now know, or make her voice match expectation. In essence, the voice should match the character on the page.

What I would have liked to have seen is a first-person story where we’re experiencing everything through her eyes, where we’re deeply embedded in her head, where SHE is the narrator. For a first-person POV (just realized this is the third first-person story in a row with the same note), I really want to get a sense of the person through their narration. This lacks the emotion that would really have benefitted making her feel more real. Not just “this is what happened” but some more of her emotion about how it impacted her.

Here’s a good example of what I’m talking about:
We don’t ever get that good a description of Matt, other than good looking and big. In an industry where looks are important, I would’ve expected this to have been something she noted with interest (perhaps even more so given he exclusively does POV videos), even if it was something along the lines of, “People rarely applied the same beauty standards to men,” which would’ve been a good observation, especially as someone in the industry despondent about her future and “old” at 30. Noting his clothes, how he dressed, comparing it to how she was dressed, all the things where she’s appraising him. Is he dressed more SoCal dude? Relaxed? Or did he dress up a bit? In fact, it would’ve been a nice touch if he had been, since he’s meeting someone he personally and professionally admires, if he’d put in extra effort to make himself look good; something she could’ve noticed, foreshadow how he feels about her.

One of the big things I was missing was any real idea of her emotions or thoughts beyond the superficial after the beginning. She doesn’t have a lot of reactions to things, she’s not overly expressive. It could work for someone who is trying to play things cool, not tip her hand about her anxieties to a stranger, but because we’re in first-person, we get to front-row seats to those anxieties and things she bites back because she doesn’t want to show how desperate she is. Her reactions can be muted in the real world, but they should be screaming in the narrative to help show us her pain and angst.

This is one of the biggest examples of something that really, really deserved some actual reaction from her.

[Matt's line] “Talk about teaching your grandmother to..."

Suddenly aware of what he was saying, Matt abruptly stopped and a worried look crossed his face. "Didn't know you had a grandma fetish," I said deadpan.

This has got to be a HUGE slap in the face for someone so worried about her age in the industry. It’s a gut punch, even if it’s unintentional, even if she feels he's special, it doesn't diminish its impact one iota. It’s a reminder about her limited shelf-life that she has been agonizing over for months. So for her to literally have no reaction other than to deadpan a joke, it really doesn’t mesh with her character at all. We get zero indication how she feels about the joke, which makes it seem like it glances off of her, and it’s actually more uncomfortable for Matt than it is for her. If she’s trying to play it cool, fine, but like I said, we have access to her inner world, and that inner world should be pissed, despondent, depressed, something, anything, human, as one would expect from a comment that strikes at the very heart of her angst and anxiety. No reaction is stiff and robotic, unbelievable given what we know, which puts Kinzi in cardboard-cutout territory instead of personhood.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Review for Kinzi Young Rides Again by @DirtyPollyAnna, Part 4:

Also, it isn’t just Kinzi whose voice is stiff, Matt’s is overly formal as well. I would’ve liked at least one “dude” or “bro" from one or both of them. Neither character felt authentically SoCal. I’m from the area, so believe me when I say these feel like generic characters with very generic ways of speaking. They didn't sound at all like early 30-somethings from SoCal. He could be a recently transplant, sure, that’s fine. But if he’s been in the industry for a bit, he might have been in the area for a while, and throwing in local dialects and terms add more texture and depth to characters. If he's from somewhere else, you could highlight that by throwing in some slang or verbal cues to let us know where that region is.

For example:

"There is no hurry," Matt said, "clean yourself up, I'll make you a sandwich. Is tuna OK? I don't know about you, but I need some down time."

“There is no hurry” is not something anybody his age, or from the area, would say. Dialogue tends to be lazy, and especially so in SoCal. We're chill speakers, we drop stuff, we mash stuff together. Even “There’s no hurry” is too long. “No hurry” would be most authentic.

SoCal version:

"No hurry," Matt said. "Clean yourself up, I'll make you a sandwich. Tuna OK? I dunno 'bout'chu, but I need some down time."

Yours:

"Now go shower, the head is adjustable if you want to avoid getting your face and hair wet."

SoCal:

“Go shower. Head’s adjustable if you wanna avoid gettin' your face and hair wet.”

The porn dialogue is good, it has a bit of that stiff quality, the overacting. It would’ve stood out even more if the characters were speaking more naturally out of the scene. An extra way to highlight that pornstars are people too, they talk like us, they don’t talk overstiff and formal, like they’re in the middle of a porn shoot 24/7, which is honestly kinda how their dialogue felt at times.

One of the best tools you use in giving us a bit of Kinzi’s voice is the cursing. You wouldn’t want to overdo it, but it’s a great example of usage that feels more authentic and natural to her voice. I’d expect cursing from someone this age, in the area, and especially in the porn industry. Lotta people in that age group love to curse. You might’ve thrown in a bit more of that gen-Z adjacent slang, just a touch. You don’t want to overdo stuff like that, because it really stands out and can be obnoxious. But you want to give the impression of someone from that cohort, if not necessarily the fidelity. It’s something we discussed in the On Writing: Dialogue thread (I’ll link at the end).

Okay, beat that to death and then some. The reason is because it’s incredibly important for what you’re trying to do. Humanization requires voice, it requires feeling like these people are more than generic stand-ins for the people they’re meant to represent. We get flashes of that in this story, and when it pops up, it’s really well done. If it were applied throughout, this would’ve gone from a good story to an absolute gem.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Review for Kinzi Young Rides Again by @DirtyPollyAnna, Part 5:

All right, one more big-picture item before we get a bit more nitty gritty. I know I said two, but apparently I can’t count, so it’s three now.

What’s the deal with Matt?

Kinzi’s “connection” with Matt feels like it’s happening way too fast, and she doesn’t question it at all. There’s a very real chance that it’s simply she feels desirable in a way that she hasn’t in a while, especially with all the underlying self-doubt and uncertainty about her looks and age in the industry. There are times in a woman’s life where she feel like her best years are behind her, that she’s never going to be as desirable as she used to be, and it can be incredibly distressing. For Kinzi, it’s not just that she’s not desirable for a partner, but this is her livelihood, so that feeling is extra painful, because it’s destroying the only job she’s really ever had. This connection she feels with Matt, him saying he’s had a crush on her for a while, she’s his fantasy girl, reassuring her that she’s still beautiful even at the on-death’s-door age of 30, that has to be playing into the connection she’s feeling, and I really don’t get a sense of that. I actually have no idea what it is about him specifically that is so different or special compared to the many people she’s had sex with on and off a porn shoot. This “best years are behind me” feeling is a painful thing that can be nearly all-consuming, and finding someone, anyone, to validate you when you’re in those real low points can really make you feel special, and make what you feel you have with them feel special, too — transference. And if it’s not that and something about him specifically, we never get an actual sense of what it is.

Her feelings toward him are very much “author said I had to like you and that you’re super magical and perfect for me” not “I’m a real person and I actually found something special about you that, even in this small window of time, really makes me feel some connection.”

In other words, her motivations and reasons for liking him weren’t internally motivated, they were externally motivated. Which makes her a… anyone? anyone?… that’s right, a meat vehicle! Characters should be working on internal logic, not forced into actions and attitudes at the behest of the author. It’s what makes them feel more real, when it feels like whatever they’re doing or feeling is authentically coming from them.

Let’s get an example:

I knew we were putting on a show, I was fully aware that I was being paid for my performance, and yet Matt's cock was taking me to places no other man had managed to. Part of it was his undoubted length and girth, but I knew that part of it was also the person his massive member was attached to.

Why? What’s so great about this guy, other than some light flattery and magic dick? It makes it seem like all she really cares about is he has a great cock, which, again, pornifies him and makes him seem like less of a person. We’re in her head, we should have some idea about what exactly is so appealing about him. She explicitly says “it was also the person his massive member was attached to.” but that quality of specialness about Matt, the person, not Matt, the magic dick, is never quantified. It would've said a lot about both Kinzi and Matt if we'd specified his specialness. That would've given both characters that more human touch you were hoping to cultivate.

*****

Okay, thems was the big takeaways. Let’s get a bit more nitty gritty now.

First off: “Then.” @AlinaX is spot on, the use of “then” really stood out in the opening. The current usage feels very off, unnatural, stiff. Running into that voice inconsistency again there. I definitely noticed it a bunch, even without Alina's comment. Things like this plink at a reader's attention, and that's something you want to avoid right out of the gate unless you intend to do so, when you're doing your damnedest to make the best impression you can, because you only have a few paragraphs to convince the reader to stay and read your story. After all, they can just easily hop to another story if this doesn't work for them. They have no skin in the game, nothing invested, no cost to swapping out, so you need to hook them and hook them well.

I sat in the back of the Uber doomscrolling; then there had certainly been enough doom to go around in recent months. My driver wore an N95 and I wondered about the wisdom of not masking up myself. Then I had paid a lot of money to my cosmetician, a woman I had regularly used pre-pandemic, and I didn't want to ruin her work.

Then it had been tough times for most people.

Then it was just me and I had my own shit to deal with. I had dealt with it, I told myself firmly. I'd now been clean for eighteen months. Back in the day, I'd always partied hard. Then it got out of control. In a way the lockdowns had been my salvation.

Then that had already started to happen before COVID.

It was a Sunday, then shooting porn videos didn't adhere to normal office hours

Takes us a while to actually get to the current scene. I get the instinct for wanting to show us the harder side of being a pornstar, but we probably could’ve trimmed about 20% of that and still gotten the idea. Those other details, the insecurities, those could’ve come out more as they popped up. Like, for example, her noticing something about Matt and how beauty and age standards apply differently to women than men in the industry. Or when he makes the casual reference to her age that she doesn’t react to, the dread and fear that what he said is true, that she really is too old for the industry, it doesn’t value her anymore. Not all of this needs to be frontloaded for the reader, it can come out more naturally throughout the piece, and would work well to interweave her thoughts throughout the piece, rather than dump them all at the front and shift to a more nature documentary observer style.

Lot of people get this wrong, but it’s:
Blond > hair color
Blonde > a woman with blond hair

Compound modifiers. These are word pairings that form a single adjective, or modifier. They should have hyphens between them to be formatted correctly:
thirty year old pornstar > thirty-year-old pornstar
three quarters erect > three-quarters erect

“Went on” shows up 4 times in just in the first page (it’s a very stiff way of saying “continued”). The instinct to avoid “said” is very common among newer writers, who believe they need to avoid repetition of the word “said,” but "said" is a perfectly fine word. It’s invisible. Check out @AStrangeDesire’s review for more of my thoughts on that.

Lots of adverbs, especially around “said.” It’s another instinct, to let the reader know exactly how the person said something. But that to me indicates the dialogue isn’t strong enough to convey that on its own. The words of the dialogue should convey how it’s said, and unless it’s absolutely critical that the reader know exactly how it’s said, it’s best to leave off the adverb. Most readers can read between the lines and figure out subtext, and, frankly, in most cases it isn’t actually important.

Some examples:
"Er... thanks," I said a little hesitantly, > You have the ellipsis, it’s obviously hesitant.
"What are you going to wear?" he asked enthusiastically. > Do we really need to know he’s asking enthusiastically? Probably not.
"Don't be," I said with certainty. > I don’t even know what this means or sounds like.
"You OK, Kinzi?" he asked, concern in his voice. ? Obviously, there’s concern, he’s asking if she’s OK.
"Well what?" he asked, puzzled. > Puzzled is heavily implied here.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Review for Kinzi Young Rides Again by @DirtyPollyAnna, Part 6:

Okay, final stretch. You got this

Since we’re on the topic of speech tags, I’d like to point out that it’s okay to have dialogue sans speech or action tags. In fact, for sequences like the following, it reads smoother, more like two people talking, an earnest back and forth, which is exactly the kind of vibe you’d want in a first-person story where you want a natural quality to come through. The minimalist tags make it feel less like something written, and more like something experienced; in essence, it enhances immersion, which makes the characters feel more real. Readers are smart enough to figure out which dialogue belongs to which character when there are only two and you initialize who is speaking.

Example:

"Ex-boyfriend," I said.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Matt mumbled.

"Don't be," I said with certainty. "I'd never have gotten clean with him around. And... well, I think maybe the content we made together..."

"It was pretty bad," said Matt. "Yeah, I subscribed," he added, a little shamefacedly. (Anthy Note: We’ll get to this in a minute)

"The worst, right?" I laughed. "I never realized just how bored he was fucking me, until..."

"Until you saw it on film?" Matt offered.

"I think he just got off on telling his stoner friends he was fucking Kinzi Young to be honest," I admitted.

"His loss, fucking clown," Matt said with surprising vehemence. "And my gain," he went on more brightly.

"Let's forget about him, OK?" I said.

Streamlined:

"Ex-boyfriend," I said.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Matt mumbled.

"Don't be. I’d never have gotten clean with him around. And... well, I think maybe the content we made together..."

"It was pretty bad.”

"The worst, right? I never realized just how bored he was fucking me, until..."

"Until you saw it on film?"

"I think he just got off on telling his stoner friends he was fucking Kinzi Young to be honest.”

"His loss, fucking clown.” Matt said. "And my gain.”

"Let's forget about him, OK?"

A lot smoother. More like experiencing two people talking instead of reading about two people talking. It's a funny distinction to make, but this harkens back to how people read and process prose; the prose itself is more invisible by dint of not being there, so it increases the level of immersion. Now it reads as a back and forth between two people, talking about something a little heavy. Let the dialogue breathe, let it speak for itself. Sometimes, the best thing an author can do is get out of the characters’ way and let them talk to each other, only intervening when it might not be clear who’s talking, or it’s important that some action or way of speaking is conveyed to the reader. I particularly like to do this in moments of high emotion, because the characters can carry that emotion better than the narrator. It’s more direct, more heartfelt, coming from them rather than from you. So sit back and let them do their thing. Corral them if necessary, but let them sing and use their voice, it gives them depth and lets the reader connect to them more directly.

Okay, remember a minute ago when I said we’d get to “this”? We’ll we’re here:

shamefacedly

There are adverbs that are acceptable, then there is this. It’s such a rare and unusual word, one so out of character for most people, that I would only expect to see it as a joke or… Actually, I can’t think of another reason to use this besides as a joke or ironically. Words like this are about as immersion-breaking as you can get, because they’re so rare, so unusual, that the reader stops and has a visceral reaction like I’m having right now to it. At best, you get an eye roll and a “really?” This harkens back to the out-of-sync quality of Kinzi’s narrative voice with her character. Those other words I put before? “Shamefacedly” gets gold medal for word that Kinzi would never say.

Last thing, kinda minor. You might want to look at better separating paragraphs to keep like with like. Distinct concepts and groupings flow better when they aren’t crammed into the same paragraph. Bit of reader psychology, as paragraphs are natural units of ideas, and cramming too many ideas into a single unit leads to that paragraph being overstuffed, which can make it harder to follow, vs. more discrete paragraphs containing one or two distinct ideas/characters, which are easier to digest and preserve flow.

Your example:

Matt was very proud of his photos, and when he showed me them I had to admit I looked pretty good. Almost Manet's Olympia but without the hand of modesty, and with rather more cum. "I told you you're beautiful," said Matt, back in puppy dog mode. But, looking at the screen, it was hard to argue otherwise. I was glowing and the shiny black ink of my tattoos gleamed in the sun.

Cleaned up:

Matt was very proud of his photos, and when he showed me them I had to admit I looked pretty good. Almost Manet's Olympia but without the hand of modesty, and with rather more cum.

"I told you you're beautiful," said Matt, back in puppy dog mode. But, looking at the screen, it was hard to argue otherwise. I was glowing and the shiny black ink of my tattoos gleamed in the sun.

This does two things:

1. Better separates out the him taking the picture and her interpretation of it and him talking. The distinction? We have her thoughts and reactions to his photographs in the first, and his dialogue in the second. First paragraph = the picture, her comparison. Second paragraph = what he says about her, and her reaction to him saying that.
2. It accentuates the comparison to Olympia, which is now no longer buried in the middle of the paragraph, but is at the end, where it’s more prominent. Why is that important? Her referencing Olympia sheds a key insight into her character: that she has some knowledge of art. It’s super subtle, but it does give us a little bit of character depth, which makes it worth highlighting instead of burying.

Let's do one more, real quick, simple:

I was in my element, I loved sucking cock and it seemed most guys loved what I did to them. There was some professional pride in my approach, but this also once more felt personal. When I eased Matt's large head between lips, I winked at him, and his eyes widened as my tongue rolled around his tip. "Fuck, Kinzi, that's incredible," he murmured.

To better distinguish between her actions and his dialogue:

I was in my element, I loved sucking cock and it seemed most guys loved what I did to them. There was some professional pride in my approach, but this also once more felt personal. When I eased Matt's large head between lips, I winked at him, and his eyes widened as my tongue rolled around his tip.

"Fuck, Kinzi, that's incredible," he murmured.