Ask A Woman

[elfin_odalisque]

Hemingways recommendation for rapport with female readers is, write as usual then change the gender of the pronouns to feminine. Its still good advice.

As a girlie, I concur with this.

 

[stlgoddessfreya]

Excellent, thank you for your thoughts!

It isn't often that I ask for an opinion and end up agreeing with said opinion so much, but I think you are right.

Cheers!

You took criticism with grace and cheerfulness, which means you'll get more and learn from it. Congrats! That's something no one can teach you how to do, but it's essential to improving your writing - at least, it's been essential to improving mine.

Anyone else have opinions about TheLM's story?

 

[stlgoddessfreya]

Since he was kind enough to join the thread, I think this is an appropriate place for a shout-out to soflabbwlvr's story, Deep Undercover.

http://www.literotica.com/s/deep-undercover-ch-01

On pages 3 and 4, he has one of the best descriptions of an experienced woman and an inexperienced woman having oral sex that I've seen on Lit. Really, really well done. Be forewarned, though, if Non-Con/Reluctance isn't your thing, you may not want to read much after that because there's a similarly detailed forced anal scene soon after.

 

[erotica_n_s]

What does "femininity" mean to a woman?

To a lot of men - "masculinity" = "machismo"...

How do women define "femininity"?

 

[soflabbwlvr]

Since he was kind enough to join the thread, I think this is an appropriate place for a shout-out to soflabbwlvr's story, Deep Undercover.

http://www.literotica.com/s/deep-undercover-ch-01

On pages 3 and 4, he has one of the best descriptions of an experienced woman and an inexperienced woman having oral sex that I've seen on Lit. Really, really well done. Be forewarned, though, if Non-Con/Reluctance isn't your thing, you may not want to read much after that because there's a similarly detailed forced anal scene soon after.

Thanks for the plug. I hope you enjoyed the rest of the story.

 

[AwkwardMD]

What does "femininity" mean to a woman?

To a lot of men - "masculinity" = "machismo"...

How do women define "femininity"?

I think that if there was one question where you would get a different answer from every woman you asked, this is it.

I think a lot of women externalize their happiness. They define themselves by how others see them, how others look at them, and what others think of them. They don't define these things for themselves, so 'femininity' is whatever steps their taking to be viewed as 'feminine'. I'm not sure that many writers, who intrinsically meet a certain level of intellectuality, fit this mode, but certainly a female character could be written that way.

Some women I've known use words like 'Sensuality', 'warmth', 'affirming', and the like to describe 'femininity'. They see the defining characteristic of women is that we are life-giving, and everything else sort of revolves around that idea. Nurturing, supportive, etc.

But what the fuck do I know?

 

[stlgoddessfreya]

What does "femininity" mean to a woman?

To a lot of men - "masculinity" = "machismo"...

How do women define "femininity"?

I think AwkwardMD hit this on the head with the first part of his comment. I'd expand on it by saying that, at least in my experience, femininity for women is a more fluid concept than masculinity for men, which I think is more rigidly socially enforced. Maybe I can illustrate:

I grew up in a very conservative religion with rigidly-defined gender roles in the church, in one of the more conservative regions of the United States. It was not unheard-of for girls who went to church with us to not own a pair of pants or shorts because their parents wouldn't let them wear them, but it was pretty rare. I was a loud, know-it-all, smart-mouthed kid (Surprise!) who learned to read early and devoured books, especially fantasy. As is the case with a lot of women I know who had similar interests as kids, when I was presented with the choice of identifying with the male knight who rode to the rescue with his flashing sword and the beautiful princess in distress, I identified much more strongly with the knight because he <i>actually got to do something </i>. I didn't think of myself as male, just as a female knight, elf, ranger, explorer, or whatever and both of my parents encouraged that. To my knowledge, nobody ever gave my parents any hell about me running around the playground with a stick "sword" in my hand, even at church. It might not have been within normal parameters of behavior, but it was at least within acceptable parameters.

I never saw a boy even pick up a baby doll. If it happened, I'm sure that poor kid's parents got an earful about his inappropriate play behavior that needed to be corrected. It's one of our society's greatest failings to men that we tell them compassion and nurturing are not what they're made for because women have a monopoly and the worst thing they can be is like women. Everybody loses.

To me, femininity is still being that lady knight in a lot of ways. Yesterday in a client negotiation for work, my client wanted to give in on a point we thought was already settled, late in the negotiation. I was tired of my client acquiescing to the other side, so I held the representative from the other side's feet to the fire until I got what my client originally wanted and had joy in my heart when he had to go back and have a hard conversation with his client about it. I can see how people would see my forcefulness as masculine, but to me, it's an essentially feminine trait I've always associated with being a woman.

Today, I write the check for the mortgage, which is part of taking care of the household business, which I think of as feminine. Last night, I had friends over and fed them mounds of roasted chicken and mashed potatoes and basked in their compliments of my cooking, which I also think of as essentially feminine because I grew up watching my mother and grandmothers turn love into food. The more I think about it, the more I think my idea of femininity is based around the behavior and personality traits the women in my immediate family modeled and encouraged in me rather than on some larger, platonic ideal of femininity.

 

[AwkwardMD]

I think AwkwardMD hit this on the head with the first part of his comment. I'd expand on it by saying that, at least in my experience, femininity for women is a more fluid concept than masculinity for men.

/grumbles and trudges off to get her membership card renewed.

I was more trying to explain generic tropes that an author might use for character development, but on reflection, that's not really the point of this thread, is it? My apologies.

Perhaps what I should have said was "I'm a career recovering-nutjob with a laundry list of acronym conditions. For me, femininity is something I aspire to in the same way that I aspire to have red hair. Which is to say, it's already there."

 

[stlgoddessfreya]

/grumbles and trudges off to get her membership card renewed.

Aww, hell, I didn't mean to dude you, Doc. I thought from the way you posted before about what women had told you and your "But what the fuck do I know?" sign-off that you were male.

 

[AwkwardMD]

Aww, hell, I didn't mean to dude you, Doc. I thought from the way you posted before about what women had told you and your "But what the fuck do I know?" sign-off that you were male.

No worries. It's probably no surprise then that nearly all of my stories fall in the transgendered and crossdressing catagory.

 

[erotica_n_s]

To stlgoddessfreya and AwkwardMD - as always, thanks for your comments.

 

[LaRascasse]

In case Incest/Taboo especially the sibling kind, isn't a squick factor, I'd like to solicit your advice regarding the following stories (especially with respect to female audience engagement)

http://www.literotica.com/s/lucid-ending

http://www.literotica.com/s/echoes-6

http://www.literotica.com/s/a-letter-to-my-sister (warning - some non consent at the start)

My writing is largely experimental, so I don't have too many similar stories to use as yardsticks. I'm looking forward to your opinion as to how I relate to or engage the female readership.

 

[stlgoddessfreya]

Squick Factor

Not at all - my two stories up now are in both your warning categories. Give me some time to read all three so I can see if there's a pattern or good comparison points and I'll respond to each in an individual post, but taken together, if that makes sense.

 

[stlgoddessfreya]

Echoes and A Letter to My Sister

LaRascasse, after reading, I thought I'd do these two together in the same post since they're short and are essentially the same story.

First off, I admire you for asking for additional comments on stories that have been submitted for some time which got high ratings and a lot of positive comments. Asking for criticism on something that obviously worked well for your audience the first time around shows a real dedication to improving as a writer. If everyone on Lit had half of that, we'd be cranking out powerful stories left and right.

Second, I'm just going to go ahead and tell you, your writing style in these stories is not to my taste. I haven't had a chance to read any of your others and I take you at your word when you say they're all very different, so don't take that as a blanket statement on your writing. I prefer stories with a more realistic nuance. I don't mean I only want to read about Jane and Jim and the sex they had with the lights off in their bedroom in their house in the suburbs on Friday night. I like fantasy, sci-fi, non-human, etc. but I identify more strongly with characters who are more realistic than archetypal. Other people obviously have different taste than I do as you can see from all the people who commented and favorited these stories and, as always, I welcome other opinions on the thread. If you want to connect to readers who are more like me, though, here's what I see in these two stories.

Nuance of Plot

As I said above, these two shorter stories have essentially the same plot. Brother and sister abused and neglected by their parents; strong older sister gets herself and brother out of the situation; brother turns out to be creative genius; brother and sister have joyfully consensual, no-consequences sex and don't feel bad about it; brother has amazing early success, sister dies tragically before they can enjoy it; brother never loves again.

Your plots are like lightening bolts, zigzagging from the lows of abuse to the high of perfect love and success down to the low of death and deprivation. They're almost like a plot out of a condensed Victorian novel or a country music song. Without middle ground between the extremes, I don't see who your characters are as people - only who they are at their worst and their best. It also cuts out what, for me, is the most compelling part of an Incest story, which is the character's struggling with the taboo nature of their attraction before and after they have sex.

I also found "A Letter to My Sister" particularly problematic. What you described as a "non-con scene" at the beginning was what I would describe as gang-rape leading to extreme on-going forced prostitution and sexual abuse of both characters. You can see be what I've written that I'm a fan of both the Taboo and Non-Con story types, but the fact that they both go through some pretty extreme sexual abuse at home and then have sex with each other read as a lot more fucked-up and broken to me than sweet. Now, I kinda like finding the sweetness in things that are fucked-up and broken, but it's just treated as sweet and natural in your story, which cut the eroticism of it for me a good bit.

Nuance of Character

The only characters in these two stories are angels or abusers, no middle ground. Some of that is due to the limited first-person perspective of the brother looking back on his love and their life together, but nothing you put in points to him being an unreliable or even particularly biased narrator. I find it hard to relate to your main characters because while they have problems that come from external sources, they have no flaws. They're beautiful, intelligent, resourceful, perfectly in love, morally upright (other than the incest which, again, isn't treated as any kind of problem), and blameless.

This made it particularly difficult to identify with your main female character in each story, since she was either perfect or dead in the narrator's recollection.

Nuance of Dialogue

Again, I understand you were limited in these two stories, particularly, by the format of a letter and a first-person confessional, but I saw this in your other story, too. You mix very formal dialogue with no contractions and strong declarations with dialogue that is more naturalistic and uses contractions, slang, and cussing, often in the same interaction of the characters with no reason for them to switch from formal to casual or vice versa, which can be jarring. I don't think you have to be consistent with everything a character says during a story because real people aren't consistent with the way they speak - otherwise everyone's wedding vows would include promises "not to bag on your skanky sister in front of your mom" - but they speak in different ways in different contextual settings, not two different ways in the same contextual setting.

Nuance of Description

This is where you probably lost me the most. You have a broad vocabulary, especially for Lit, but you tend to keep everything at the extremes. Every pleasure is the greatest ever known, every sadness is a devastating loss. Instead of a rising tide lifting all boats, I think you're decreasing the impact of key scenes and emotions by making everything superlative. When you have something that's less emotionally important or a more vernacular description, it strikes a stranger note of contrast than I think you intended. I think of it as Superlative Fatigue. When it goes too far, it can come out looking more like this:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/you-will-know-love,16213/

You're not in danger of *that*, but I hope you can see what a ridiculous example of intentionally taking it too far for comedic effect can show about the effects of a much milder form.

This is completely an aside, but it was something I noticed and I wondered if I was right. From some of your word usage, it's clear to me you didn't grow up in America (you made a reference to Obelix in "Lucid Ending," so I'm guessing you're originally from France), but the three stories you asked me to look at are set in New York City, which I thought was an interesting choice. Perhaps that's where you live now or you've lived there before, there were certainly plenty of place and street details. What's the deal?

 

[LaRascasse]

Wow, thanks for the incredibly detailed feedback.

LaRascasse, after reading, I thought I'd do these two together in the same post since they're short and are essentially the same story.

In retrospect, I get that feeling too. I have a weakness for dramatic monologues.

Your plots are like lightening bolts, zigzagging from the lows of abuse to the high of perfect love and success down to the low of death and deprivation. They're almost like a plot out of a condensed Victorian novel or a country music song. Without middle ground between the extremes, I don't see who your characters are as people - only who they are at their worst and their best. It also cuts out what, for me, is the most compelling part of an Incest story, which is the character's struggling with the taboo nature of their attraction before and after they have sex.

You do make a fair point that a character should be more nuanced rather than swinging from one extreme of the literary spectrum to the other. The point of these two stories were to see if I could build emotional appeal without dialogue.

I also found "A Letter to My Sister" particularly problematic. What you described as a "non-con scene" at the beginning was what I would describe as gang-rape leading to extreme on-going forced prostitution and sexual abuse of both characters. You can see be what I've written that I'm a fan of both the Taboo and Non-Con story types, but the fact that they both go through some pretty extreme sexual abuse at home and then have sex with each other read as a lot more fucked-up and broken to me than sweet. Now, I kinda like finding the sweetness in things that are fucked-up and broken, but it's just treated as sweet and natural in your story, which cut the eroticism of it for me a good bit.

Yeah, I caught a fair amount of flak for that scene and even had my story taken off for a few days before I convinced Laurel that the rape is meant to be abhorrent, not gratuitous.

Nuance of Dialogue

Again, I understand you were limited in these two stories, particularly, by the format of a letter and a first-person confessional, but I saw this in your other story, too. You mix very formal dialogue with no contractions and strong declarations with dialogue that is more naturalistic and uses contractions, slang, and cussing, often in the same interaction of the characters with no reason for them to switch from formal to casual or vice versa, which can be jarring. I don't think you have to be consistent with everything a character says during a story because real people aren't consistent with the way they speak - otherwise everyone's wedding vows would include promises "not to bag on your skanky sister in front of your mom" - but they speak in different ways in different contextual settings, not two different ways in the same contextual setting.

Dialogue is another place where I have a lot to improve on. Looking back, a lot of my dialogue seems stilted and overly-formal, simply because that's the way I really speak IRL (weird but true).

Nuance of Description

This is where you probably lost me the most. You have a broad vocabulary, especially for Lit, but you tend to keep everything at the extremes. Every pleasure is the greatest ever known, every sadness is a devastating loss. Instead of a rising tide lifting all boats, I think you're decreasing the impact of key scenes and emotions by making everything superlative. When you have something that's less emotionally important or a more vernacular description, it strikes a stranger note of contrast than I think you intended.

Yeah.. I do have a habit of letting the words run away from me. It's not like I sit down with a thesaurus, I swear. It just.. happens.

This is completely an aside, but it was something I noticed and I wondered if I was right. From some of your word usage, it's clear to me you didn't grow up in America (you made a reference to Obelix in "Lucid Ending," so I'm guessing you're originally from France), but the three stories you asked me to look at are set in New York City, which I thought was an interesting choice. Perhaps that's where you live now or you've lived there before, there were certainly plenty of place and street details. What's the deal?

Good eye, although I guess "flavour" and "colour" tend to be giveaways. Sorry to burst your bubble but Je ne suis pas français. If you want my ethnicity, it's Indian (both sides of my family). And yes, I do currently reside in the Big Apple.

Anyhow, thanks for taking the time out to give the feedback. I look forward to your opinion of Lucid Ending, which is different from the other two.

 

[stlgoddessfreya]

Yeah, I caught a fair amount of flak for that scene and even had my story taken off for a few days before I convinced Laurel that the rape is meant to be abhorrent, not gratuitous.

Good eye, although I guess "flavour" and "colour" tend to be giveaways. Sorry to burst your bubble but Je ne suis pas français. If you want my ethnicity, it's Indian (both sides of my family). And yes, I do currently reside in the Big Apple.

Woo, yeah. I did not think that scene was for any kind of titillation at all. It definitely served its intended purpose in your story, but served it perhaps too well because it was hard to let go of it for later interactions.

Actually, it was "pub" and "flat" in the first part of "Letter". That's how I knew you weren't Canadian. I forgot Asterix and his buddy get around all over the place (except the US).

I cannot believe I didn't think of this before when I was trying to compare the plots of those two stories to something - they remind me of good Bollywood dramas, if you could actually get some of those themes into them. True Fact: There are plots and dialogue I will not put up with in a story or a US-made movie that I will happily watch as a Bollywood movie. I don't know why. Women are complicated, I guess.

I'm really taken with the idea of these stories being an exercise in not using dialogue. How do you think "Letter to My Sister" would have turned out as a back-and-forth of them sending letters to each other? Obviously the timing on their deaths would be different, but I wonder if that might not have opened them both up more as characters. What do you think?

 

[stlgoddessfreya]

Lucid Ending

This was much more successful with me than the other two but, I've got to say, I've got exactly the same complaints about lack of nuance preventing me from identifying with the characters. It's got a warmer and more naturalistic feel to the relationship between Adrian and Karen because you had time and dialogue to show their interactions, but it still read more like a Victorian parlor drama than like a modern short story to me.

Nuance of Plot

Great opening and I liked the framing device of memories of them in better times interwoven with the reality of his deteriorating condition. What I didn't like was that in all that time and page length being married, all they did was fuck and say how much they loved each other. They have no fights, no cross words, no disagreement over whether or not to have children, no regrets, but they do have castles, luxury hotels, and chalets. Their major interpersonal obstacle, his father and her mother, get disposed of, permanently, almost immediately upon becoming a problem. There were some basic things that I thought could have been more effective.

1) Adrian goes into the hospital and dies in what seems to be the span of a week. That means he was either very, very sick when he got there and Karen didn't know or his aggressive treatment was a death sentence or both. I kept expecting some kind of plot point for him to be estranged from Karen to explain why she somehow didn't know he was sick enough to be dying of cancer before she saw him in the hospital.

2) People in the story keep calling Adrian and Karen brother and sister. They were step-siblings from shortly after his 18th birthday to a few weeks after the confrontation with their parents. You don't say exactly when that was in your story, but it doesn't seem like it could have been more than a year. They've been married for more than ten years. Yes, that's the kind of scandal nobody's likely to forget, but people continuing to call Adrian Karen's brother instead of her husband is just downright rude and she never corrects them or seems to mind.

3) You killed the parents off entirely, removing any ongoing personal conflict. Like the abusive and neglectful parents in the two shorter stories, the ones in this story disappear and never cause another problem after they serve the purpose of pushing the two protagonists together. When I first started to read the sentence about the "accident" I thought you were implying that Adrian and Karen had them *killed* - which, in retrospect, would have made them characters with some flaws and cast some ongoing conflict over their relationship, but no. It actually was an accident.

4) Putting Karen in the role of having to fight against Bryce to let Adrian die is a great plot point, but he deteriorates quickly, even with treatment, and you emphasize several times that the press is camped out in the hospital itself. How can they not know he's dying to the point of a story impacting the stock price if he's progressively losing feeling, going blind, etc. This is something I think makes sense if you clarify that it's stretched out over a longer period of time, like 3 or 4 months. It's less immediately dramatic, but it gives Karen and Adrian time to get so tired of fighting the losing battle to let him go and makes Karen's ultimate decision carry more weight and consideration. As it is, it seems like she goes from "a one percent chance is a chance we have to take, he's a fighter," to "he's in too much pain and not going to get better, I have to sit back and let him die" in a few days.

5) Karen inheriting Adrian's shares in the company is a...surprise? She's his wife. Why would anyone expect his blood relatives to inherit instead of Karen? Again, I kept expecting there to be a scene where they had a huge blow-out fight and became estranged, since that's what the surprise of that seemed to indicate, but it wasn't there.

Nuance of Character

Again, these are two people with lots of problems to overcome, but they're all external. You do a much more effective job with this story showing that they had some internal conflict before expressing their feelings for one another but there don't seem to be any residual consequences to them marrying after, other than everyone knows they were once step-siblings. It doesn't seem to effect anything with Adrian taking over the business, none of their anniversaries get interrupted by paparazzi, they're not turned away at any social functions.

The biggest bone I have to pick with you about this story, though, is that there are four female characters named in it: Adrian's mother, Karen, Karen's mother, and a news anchor. Adrian's mother is an angel and dies. Karen is an angel. Karen's mother is a terrible slut. The news anchor is a terrible slut. You see the issue here, particularly for a female reader? One who's not an angel? It's not as if any of the male characters who aren't Adrian come off all that well, either, except, perhaps, the lawyer, but the only one who gets called out for sexual misbehavior is Adrian's dad. Oh, and he's kinky, too, which is only brought in to show he's contemptible. Remember your readers. Some of them read fiction here because it portrays the things they like and want in a positive light that's hard to find in mainstream fiction and entertainment.

Nuance of Dialogue

Overall, I thought the dialogue was well done, if a little stiff compared to natural speech and sometimes over-dramatic. More dialogue in this story meant more places where you could have a serious mismatch between slang and more formal pronouncements. The one that stands out as the best example in my mind is when Adrian and Karen are talking about his cousin, Kurt and have this exchange:

"Pompous douche. Can't wait for me to kick the bucket before he gets my majority stake. At least that's what he thinks."

"What?" blurted out Karen, "He is your closest blood relative."

"In truth, I am sick of my blood. It's time someone else took charge. My greatest regret about dying is not seeing his face when my will is read."

See the disparity in language in Adrian's two lines there? The first one sounds very natural, if not terribly poetic, and the second is more like an actor reading a script.

 

[LaRascasse]

A lot of valid points as always. Thanks for that. I wrote this story 2 years back (in my infancy as a hobbyist writer).

Another thing I should mention here is that English is not my first language (or my second or third for that matter). I did not grow up speaking English in my household, therefore my knowledge of it is mostly from school teaching/reading. Would you say it is more needlessly formal or stilted because of that? I say this because I have heard from my editor quite often "Write dialogue like you actually talk" and am at a total loss to explain "I actually talk like that!"

I also agree with your point that my characters are the extreme ends of the literary spectrum, either angels with halos or irredeemably bad. In lieu of that, I have been writing a few more complex multi-layered characters over the past year or so. One of those characters has good and evil, light and dark, and suffers from intense self-loathing because of the dark she has to do in her job as a lawyer.

Would you like to see some of those stories and form an opinion if I am progressing well towards making more realistically fleshed-out characters?

Anyhow, I wouldn't want to monopolize your time giving out reviews on this thread. As you probably guessed, I am every inch the unworldly wise, barely in his twenties dude with an interesting side hobby so I will check back in once in a while to pose more questions. I know my writing is amateurish at best, especially when it comes to the discerning reader.

That's all the incessant rambling I can do at the moment. Thanks again for taking the time to offer your feedback.

PS - I see from your sig line, you've written something too. I might just look into it when I get some free time.

 

[stlgoddessfreya]

A lot of valid points as always. Thanks for that. I wrote this story 2 years back (in my infancy as a hobbyist writer).

Another thing I should mention here is that English is not my first language (or my second or third for that matter). I did not grow up speaking English in my household, therefore my knowledge of it is mostly from school teaching/reading. Would you say it is more needlessly formal or stilted because of that? I say this because I have heard from my editor quite often "Write dialogue like you actually talk" and am at a total loss to explain "I actually talk like that!"

I also agree with your point that my characters are the extreme ends of the literary spectrum, either angels with halos or irredeemably bad. In lieu of that, I have been writing a few more complex multi-layered characters over the past year or so. One of those characters has good and evil, light and dark, and suffers from intense self-loathing because of the dark she has to do in her job as a lawyer.

Would you like to see some of those stories and form an opinion if I am progressing well towards making more realistically fleshed-out characters?

Anyhow, I wouldn't want to monopolize your time giving out reviews on this thread. As you probably guessed, I am every inch the unworldly wise, barely in his twenties dude with an interesting side hobby so I will check back in once in a while to pose more questions. I know my writing is amateurish at best, especially when it comes to the discerning reader.

That's all the incessant rambling I can do at the moment. Thanks again for taking the time to offer your feedback.

PS - I see from your sig line, you've written something too. I might just look into it when I get some free time.

I read and critique stories, in whatever stage, for anyone who asks politely. I grade on a curve - someone new to writing needs to be held to a totally different standard than someone with insight and experience. I held your stories to the high standard I do for writers with experience who have English as a first or primary language, because that's exactly how they read. Don't take your other languages as a hindrance, think of how much they enrich your metaphors and allusions.

English is my first language, and I'm glad for it. I'd hate to have to learn this cobbled-together junkheap of colliding grammar, nonsensical spelling, stolen words, and turns of phrase so esoteric that everyone can tell you when to use them but nobody remembers where they came from. I'm really looking forward to reading some of your other stories.

As for dialogue, if you're having difficulty with it sounding natural to you (a more formal style) and also sounding natural in your setting (modern vernacular English) then I can think of two things that might help. As always, if anyone else has another idea, please chime in.

1) Write in settings where more formal dialogue is the norm or where you can set it as the norm. I see from your list of stories you've got some sci-fi/fantasy. Those settings and historical settings may work better for you to write dialogue that flows naturally for you but doesn't make the reader pause.

2) Ask an editor to specifically help with making your dialogue more evenly conversational, rather than telling you to do it.

 

[LaRascasse]

English is my first language, and I'm glad for it. I'd hate to have to learn this cobbled-together junkheap of colliding grammar, nonsensical spelling, stolen words, and turns of phrase so esoteric that everyone can tell you when to use them but nobody remembers where they came from. I'm really looking forward to reading some of your other stories.

In case you're still interested in seeing my experiments with character development, here is a set of stories you might be interested in.

How To Catch A Falling Star
The Day The Music Died
Moira
Edge of Reason Part 1 and Part 2

If you notice, these stories are not successive chapters, even though they center around the same protagonist. They are essentially different stories, with a faint overarching thread. I have tried to strike the difficult balance between keeping each of them an independent story in their own right and keeping just enough references so that someone who has read the others can join the dots.

As always, thanks for sparing the time to do this public service on Literotica.

 

[Erochic]

I'm going to go with "Why do women have so many shoes?" Remember, you asked.

...........................

Theory two, which is complementary to theory one, is that women's clothing generally needs to send a different, broader spectrum of social signals than men's and shoes are an integral part of that. In societies where women have largely had to signal their receptiveness to sexual advances passively, signals are important. There's a reason that the ways flappers did their hair and dressed in the 20s was as scandalous as their drinking and smoking. An example:

It's Friday, business casual dress code day at the office. A woman is wearing a black button-down shirt and jeans.

She's not dressed in biz cas if she's wearing:
tennis shoes
flip-flops
cowboy boots

She is in biz cas if she's wearing:
flats
pumps
non-cowboy boots

If she's getting drinks with a cute co-worker, she wants to wear pumps to show it's a date. Unless that will make her taller than him, so she wears flats. Unless it's cold, so she'll wear boots. If he's tall, she can wear the ones with higher heels. If he's shorter, the ones with short heels, etc., etc.

It's Friday, business casual dress code day at the office. A man is wearing a black button-down shirt and jeans.

He's not dressed in biz cas if he's wearing:
tennis shoes
flip-flops
cowboy boots

He's in biz cas if he's wearing:
virtually any other type of men's shoe

When he goes out for a drink with that cute coworker after, he just wears some goddamn shoes.

This is a great thread.

I am a woman, but unlike the stereotype I hate buying shoes. Every time I go to a shoe store and have to do that search for something that fits me and is appropriate for the purpose it is the greatest stress.

Unfortunately, due to the wider variety of styles of women's clothing combined with different social situations I *need* quite a variety of shoes.

I really wish I could get away with just 2 or 3 pairs if shoes as men seem to do. As it is I buy shoes in very boring colours (black usually) so I can wear them with as many things as possible.

I really want there to be multipurpose shoes that suit every occasion and outfit

So I hate stories where the women have shoe obsessions.

 

[erotica_n_s]

What was/were:

• the most beautiful description of a female orgasm you ever read?
• the most accurate description of a female orgasm you ever read?

I realise they may be the same...






.

 

[AMoveableBeast]

Oooh. Excellent question! *grabs popcorn*

What was/were:

• the most beautiful description of a female orgasm you ever read?
• the most accurate description of a female orgasm you ever read?

I realise they may be the same...






.

 

[AwkwardMD]

What was/were:

• the most beautiful description of a female orgasm you ever read?
• the most accurate description of a female orgasm you ever read?

I realise they may be the same...





.

Personally, I've always been a "the journey is more important than the destination" kind of gal. As long as the sex scene that gets you there is well done, you could write "and she came" and I'd love it.

What makes a sex scene well done?

That is a hell of a question! Very astute! First of all, there is no such thing as perfect. Second of all, there are only so many combinations of body parts and places they can go. In theory, some time around submission 100, everything on Lit became a clone of something that came before it. No one is reinventing the wheel.

Personally, I need a scene to be A) longer than two paragraphs, and B) to involve more than just the sense of touch. What it tasted like (a salty distillation of ny lust for her), what it sounded like (his penetrating gaze made me quiver, and every thrust was punctuated with a loud squick ), what it looked like (Her breasts heaved with each labored breath, and I couldn't look away), etc.

On top of that is the who/what/where/when/ and why. The more of those boxes that get checked off, the happier I am.

EDIT: Just realized I missed answering your second question. For me, they can be pretty varied depending how I get there. I'm not sure that accurate vs inaccurate is a good way to try and score them. But I also can't think of a better way.

 

[erotica_n_s]

I remember describing my female character's orgasm once as "a cataclysm of other-worldly pleasure [or "other-worldly euphoria"] flooding into her soul"...

Another one as "a furious [..."and terrifying"?] pyroclastic flow of a dark energy that threatened to sweep her away into another world"...



Go on, you can laugh if you want to...




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