Rip me to shreds!

[Devinter]

@StillStunned - Great description of a beautiful landscape, but one thing was clearly missing; A massive hotel, with balconies made out of glass - all connected, but with partitions separating each one from its neighbour - and each of them doubling as a swimming pool, full of soothing water. You could order yourself some room service, then just sit an relax, watching that majestic eagle. Now THAT would be something else.

 

[lovecraft68]

@StillStunned - Great description of a beautiful landscape, but one thing was clearly missing; A massive hotel, with balconies made out of glass - all connected, but with partitions separating each one from its neighbour - and each of them doubling as a swimming pool, full of soothing water. You could order yourself some room service, then just sit an relax, watching that majestic eagle. Now THAT would be something else.

And you left something out as well. It has to be haunted by gothic ghosts with a flair for erotic mischief.

 

[StillStunned]

@StillStunned - Great description of a beautiful landscape, but one thing was clearly missing; A massive hotel, with balconies made out of glass - all connected, but with partitions separating each one from its neighbour - and each of them doubling as a swimming pool, full of soothing water. You could order yourself some room service, then just sit an relax, watching that majestic eagle. Now THAT would be something else.

Dammit, I knew the farmhouse was too quaint!

 

[onehitwanda]

@StillStunned - Great description of a beautiful landscape, but one thing was clearly missing; A massive hotel, with balconies made out of glass - all connected, but with partitions separating each one from its neighbour - and each of them doubling as a swimming pool, full of soothing water. You could order yourself some room service, then just sit an relax, watching that majestic eagle. Now THAT would be something else.

 

[StillStunned]

@onehitwanda Devinter was apparently quite impressed by a hotel I described to him a bit ago.

 

[XerXesXu]

It reads as an attempt to imitate an evocatively descriptive passage written by someone else, but with no care for the positioning of prepositional clauses, temporal succession, pronouns, or the engagement of senses. Evocative phrases do not have to be nonsensical. A phrase that makes sense will serve as well.

 

[StillStunned]

It reads as an attempt to imitate an evocatively descriptive passage written by someone else, but with no care for the positioning of prepositional clauses, temporal succession, pronouns, or the engagement of senses. Evocative phrases do not have to be nonsensical. A phrase that makes sense will serve as well.

Fair enough.

 

[lovecraft68]

It reads as an attempt to imitate an evocatively descriptive passage written by someone else, but with no care for the positioning of prepositional clauses, temporal succession, pronouns, or the engagement of senses. Evocative phrases do not have to be nonsensical. A phrase that makes sense will serve as well.

See, I just can't do this.

That's not meant as a slight in anyway, but I just can't come in with all the big words and styles and technical talk.

I tell stories, I read stories, I like or don't like them.

That's about it. I'm a simple sort.

 

[StillStunned]

It reads as an attempt to imitate an evocatively descriptive passage written by someone else, but with no care for the positioning of prepositional clauses, temporal succession, pronouns, or the engagement of senses. Evocative phrases do not have to be nonsensical. A phrase that makes sense will serve as well.

Any specific examples?

 

[AwkwardlySet]

See, I just can't do this.

That's not meant as a slight in anyway, but I just can't come in with all the big words and styles and technical talk.

I tell stories, I read stories, I like or don't like them.

That's about it. I'm a simple sort.

You don't have to. I always felt that criticism is best delivered in simple words. His criticism sounds pretentious, and without actually explaining and giving examples of his claims, it's worthless, in my opinion.

 

[SimonDoom]

See, I just can't do this.

That's not meant as a slight in anyway, but I just can't come in with all the big words and styles and technical talk.

I tell stories, I read stories, I like or don't like them.

That's about it. I'm a simple sort.

What Awkwardlyset said. The best way to offer criticism is to think about what you bring to the table--your strengths, your perspectives--rather than to try to "sound like a critic."

Good criticism is hard, and it's why I gave up my intended project to have my own criticism thread, at least for now. I don't really want to tell people "You shouldn't write your story that way" or "This is how I would write your story" and I felt like that's what I was doing.

 

[Lumiere_Amie]

My behavior when reading tends toward that of Bamagan, I'll generally skim over a passage like this. HOWEVER, I did write a story for the Romance category that included many descriptive passages that attempted to evoke emotion. Like you, I find writing this way to be very challenging. I'll write a 3,000-word sex scene with barely a pause, but struggle to describe the events leading up to it, and the motivation of the characters.

My input on yours is that my mind cannot reconcile some of what you wrote. In the beginning, I envision a very desolate place, almost desert-like; but then the character spent the night at a farm, with fields and a stream. Without some description of him coming across this "oasis", the transition is very jarring to me.

The scene with the farmer's wife seems to be a throw-away, a gratuitous bit of cleavage that leads to nothing. Does the MC come back and ravage her later in the story? Is it the start of a progression that leads up to the MC becoming sexually frustrated? Without more of the story, I can't tell.


Anyway, here's my snippet, from "The Museum Piece", my Romance story.

It was another sexless Friday night and Miranda Douglas was wandering the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She could have been out with friends, probably should have been out with friends, but she wasn’t. She was tired of the hunt, regardless of whether she was the hunter or the hunted, and when she went out with them they always turned it into the hunt. For some reason, she could not get them to understand that she did not want another man, that she was happy with her life without one. Well, mostly happy.

It hadn’t always been that way, but her ex-husband Rick had put her off relationships. They had been great together. Rick worked in finance, she owned a private investigation firm, and New York was their playground. They were “living the high life” as her parents back in Iowa would say. A penthouse apartment, parties where they rubbed elbows with the New York elite, they were loving life. Everywhere they went, Rick was attentive and gracious, treating her as if she was a trophy wife. And the men flirted with her, they offered to take her away for long weekends in Paris, or Madrid, or wherever she wanted. It seemed every powerful man in New York was looking for a mistress, and a lot of them seemed to want Miranda. Their attention always gave her a rush, her heart would beat fast and she would feel flushed. She never took them seriously, but sometimes she’d think of the latest proposition as she touched herself at night.

The sex was good, but not great. Rick pleased her and brought her to orgasm, but he was not very imaginative or open to exploration of their sexuality, he always seemed preoccupied with something. Turns out that something had been money. She yearned for a man who would take her and use her for his pleasure. She wanted to be dominated, not in a BDSM context, but just thrown down on the bed and fucked like a whore. Rick was not capable of that, though she repeatedly hinted at her desire. One would think that with the number of empty rooms in the mansions they frequented that he would have fulfilled her desires.

 

[StillStunned]

My input on yours is that my mind cannot reconcile some of what you wrote. In the beginning, I envision a very desolate place, almost desert-like; but then the character spent the night at a farm, with fields and a stream. Without some description of him coming across this "oasis", the transition is very jarring to me.

This could be a difference between hiking in Europe and hiking in the US. In Europe, it's common to walk from village to village. It doesn't lessen the sense of isolation: a dozen steps and you're in nature. Also, farms are probably much smaller.

The scene with the farmer's wife seems to be a throw-away, a gratuitous bit of cleavage that leads to nothing. Does the MC come back and ravage her later in the story? Is it the start of a progression that leads up to the MC becoming sexually frustrated? Without more of the story, I can't tell.

I like cleavage. But the whole scene was tossed in to inject a little action before the lyrical description.

Anyway, here's my snippet, from "The Museum Piece", my Romance story.

I'll take a look in a moment!

 

[StillStunned]

Shall we say that my snippet is closed for feedback now? That way we can concentrate on @Lumiere_Amie's fragment.

(If anyone still has comments on my bit, send them by DM.)

 

[XerXesXu]

You don't have to. I always felt that criticism is best delivered in simple words. His criticism sounds pretentious, and without actually explaining and giving examples of his claims, it's worthless, in my opinion.

I'll leave you to sort the nonsense phrases from the infelicities. How many did you fail to spot?

Examples:

1.There’s a place in Spain

2.your only companions are

3. The sound of this place is the soft wind

4. harsh contours, unsoftened by any thickness of the air.

5. when I set out on this particular day

6. I’d spent the night at a small farm perched midway up a slope

7. The full moon painted the fields

8. I made my farewells

9. regular salvos of speech

10. I tried to be polite and keep my gaze away

11. enjoying the movement as she waved back

12. The birds that populated the farm and its fields soon fell silent in the morning’s heat, and I left the place behind as I put one foot in front of the other, again and again and again, and let my mind wander.

13. all I heard was silence. It was like a constant whisper in my ear

14. the sounds of the water also grew bolder.

15. lay across the stream like the dolmens that stood scattered across the landscape.

16. The stream had come awake with the climbing sun

17. It sang and chortled its way over its rocky bed, hemmed in by steep sides above and below me

16. An eagle. For a while I watched it: king of the morning’s warm air.

There you go.
I only sound pretentious because I know what I'm doing. It happens.

 

[Lumiere_Amie]

This could be a difference between hiking in Europe and hiking in the US. In Europe, it's common to walk from village to village. It doesn't lessen the sense of isolation: a dozen steps and you're in nature. Also, farms are probably much smaller.

I'm familiar with several areas here in the U.S. where this could take place, but again, the transition was a bit jarring to me. If it's important to describe the MC's journey, then include it all. Describe the transition to a more lush landscape, the change in the air, the welcoming landowners, et cetera.

 

[shelleycat1]

On Miranda.
This broke it for me: Everywhere they went, Rick was attentive and gracious, treating her as if she was a trophy wife.
It gave impression that even though attentive and gracious he was demeaning and condescending to her.

Also, I don't get enough in this to figure out why she got together with Rick in the first place. What's her motivation for someone who doesn't do it for her? she doesn't need the money. status? love?

I don't feel involved with her yet, even though it's from the start of the story.

P.S. Are we doing this one snippet at a time then?

 

[lovecraft68]

I only sound pretentious because I know what I'm doing. It happens.

This just doubled down on the pretentious.

 

[StillStunned]

Let's move on to the new snippet, shall we? Before we get into arguments over opinions.

 

[lovecraft68]

My behavior when reading tends toward that of Bamagan, I'll generally skim over a passage like this. HOWEVER, I did write a story for the Romance category that included many descriptive passages that attempted to evoke emotion. Like you, I find writing this way to be very challenging. I'll write a 3,000-word sex scene with barely a pause, but struggle to describe the events leading up to it, and the motivation of the characters.

My input on yours is that my mind cannot reconcile some of what you wrote. In the beginning, I envision a very desolate place, almost desert-like; but then the character spent the night at a farm, with fields and a stream. Without some description of him coming across this "oasis", the transition is very jarring to me.

The scene with the farmer's wife seems to be a throw-away, a gratuitous bit of cleavage that leads to nothing. Does the MC come back and ravage her later in the story? Is it the start of a progression that leads up to the MC becoming sexually frustrated? Without more of the story, I can't tell.


Anyway, here's my snippet, from "The Museum Piece", my Romance story.

It was another sexless Friday night and Miranda Douglas was wandering the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She could have been out with friends, probably should have been out with friends, but she wasn’t. She was tired of the hunt, regardless of whether she was the hunter or the hunted, and when she went out with them they always turned it into the hunt. For some reason, she could not get them to understand that she did not want another man, that she was happy with her life without one. Well, mostly happy.

It hadn’t always been that way, but her ex-husband Rick had put her off relationships. They had been great together. Rick worked in finance, she owned a private investigation firm, and New York was their playground. They were “living the high life” as her parents back in Iowa would say. A penthouse apartment, parties where they rubbed elbows with the New York elite, they were loving life. Everywhere they went, Rick was attentive and gracious, treating her as if she was a trophy wife. And the men flirted with her, they offered to take her away for long weekends in Paris, or Madrid, or wherever she wanted. It seemed every powerful man in New York was looking for a mistress, and a lot of them seemed to want Miranda. Their attention always gave her a rush, her heart would beat fast and she would feel flushed. She never took them seriously, but sometimes she’d think of the latest proposition as she touched herself at night.

The sex was good, but not great. Rick pleased her and brought her to orgasm, but he was not very imaginative or open to exploration of their sexuality, he always seemed preoccupied with something. Turns out that something had been money. She yearned for a man who would take her and use her for his pleasure. She wanted to be dominated, not in a BDSM context, but just thrown down on the bed and fucked like a whore. Rick was not capable of that, though she repeatedly hinted at her desire. One would think that with the number of empty rooms in the mansions they frequented that he would have fulfilled her desires.

For some reason Miranda Douglas sounds familiar to me? Is there an influence involving that name?

First thing I noticed is a contradiction of sure, I'm fine without a guy, but the rest is lamenting what she wants and never had. That might be seen as inconsistency. or maybe that's your intent? She's doing the "I didn't want to play anyway, but...yeah, I did." and that's the point?

It plunges kind of quick into an exposition dump of her walking around a museum thinking she could be out doing something more fun and then into the history of her last relationship. I guess she could just be reflecting as she wanders around, but it seems to go really deep, really quick.

The comment about her parents in Iowa I figure is a quick shot at "Small town grounded girl origin" but she is coming across as a total elitist traveling in wealthy circles. At this point, its too small of a snippet to know who you really want her to be, but my gut reaction on this is "Here's another high class powerful woman looking to be used and explore her submissive side (even in a non direct BDSM way this is the message I pick up) and if that's the case, this sets it up.

On a last note, and again, you know your intent, I don't, but she's coming across as a little unlikable for some reason. "He was a great guy, but didn't know how to fuck me so..." and I am not saying that isn't a real thing as real people do tend to be shallow and self absorbed, but in the realm of erotic fiction I'm thinking stuck up self centered and better than.

Maybe that's exactly what you're going for?

 

[SimonDoom]

There you go.
I only sound pretentious because I know what I'm doing. It happens.

Res ipsa loquitur.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

There’s a place in Spain where you can walk all day and never see another human being. Where your only companions are the snake gliding through the brush, the ibex clinging to the cliff, the eagle soaring overhead.

The sound of this place is the soft wind as it mourns an abandoned farmstead or a shrine to a long-dead pilgrim. <em>Iago Blas, obit. 1458.</em>

The landscape is drawn in harsh contours, unsoftened by any thickness of the air. The moisture has been sucked out of it by a sun so greedy that it’s leeched the colour from the rocks and plants.

It’s a hard land, and lonely. The rocks beneath your feet are the very bones of the mountains. It’s a bleak place, where the spirits of nature feel very close.

It was still early when I set out on this particular day. I’d spent the night at a small farm perched midway up a slope, with stone walls so thick I had to lean out of the window to get any signal on my phone. The full moon painted the fields below a glowing silver and softened the hard lines of the day.

I made my farewells to my landlady, responding to the words I recognised in her regular salvos of speech and nodding and smiling through the rest. Her husband’s tractor stood in the distance, perched at an impossible angle on the slope, but the man himself was nowhere in sight. I tried to be polite and keep my gaze away from the valley of cleavage that was on display, but I promised myself to revisit the memory later.

Stuffing the lunch she’d prepared for me in my pack and waving one last time – and enjoying the movement as she waved back – I stepped onto a narrow path uphill. It led me over the crest, then down into a gorge. The birds that populated the farm and its fields soon fell silent in the morning’s heat, and I left the place behind as I put one foot in front of the other, again and again and again, and let my mind wander.

Besides the occasional crunch of gravel under my feet and the low murmur of the stream further below, all I heard was silence. It was like a constant whisper in my ear, growing louder, somehow, as the sounds of the water also grew bolder.

By midmorning I’d reached the point where the path crossed the river. Ancient stones, of a bluey-grey that seemed alien to these mountains, lay across the stream like the dolmens that stood scattered across the landscape.

The stream had come awake with the climbing sun. It sang and chortled its way over its rocky bed, hemmed in by steep sides above and below me. Far off in the distance, a dark spot moved in lazy circles against the full blue of the sky. An eagle. For a while I watched it: king of the morning’s warm air.

It's all poetic and fine and it does a good job of setting a place and a mood. The missing evidence required for the verdict is the context. Whether this works or not within a story depends on what it leads to (and/or or where it came from, but it sounds like an introduction). If there's a point to this solitude then it's quite good but if whatever follows is merely semi-related to rural Spain then it's probably kinda pretentious and a waste of time.

 

[StillStunned]

It's all poetic and fine and it does a good job of setting a place and a mood. The missing evidence required for the verdict is the context. Whether this works or not within a story depends on what it leads to (and/or or where it came from, but it sounds like an introduction). If there's a point to this solitude then it's quite good but if whatever follows is merely semi-related to rural Spain then it's probably kinda pretentious and a waste of time.

Thanks. I like to think the rest of the story justifies it, but that's really beyond the scope of this thread.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

It was another sexless Friday night and Miranda Douglas was wandering the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She could have been out with friends, probably should have been out with friends, but she wasn’t. She was tired of the hunt, regardless of whether she was the hunter or the hunted, and when she went out with them they always turned it into the hunt. For some reason, she could not get them to understand that she did not want another man, that she was happy with her life without one. Well, mostly happy.

It hadn’t always been that way, but her ex-husband Rick had put her off relationships. They had been great together. Rick worked in finance, she owned a private investigation firm, and New York was their playground. They were “living the high life” as her parents back in Iowa would say. A penthouse apartment, parties where they rubbed elbows with the New York elite, they were loving life. Everywhere they went, Rick was attentive and gracious, treating her as if she was a trophy wife. And the men flirted with her, they offered to take her away for long weekends in Paris, or Madrid, or wherever she wanted. It seemed every powerful man in New York was looking for a mistress, and a lot of them seemed to want Miranda. Their attention always gave her a rush, her heart would beat fast and she would feel flushed. She never took them seriously, but sometimes she’d think of the latest proposition as she touched herself at night.

The sex was good, but not great. Rick pleased her and brought her to orgasm, but he was not very imaginative or open to exploration of their sexuality, he always seemed preoccupied with something. Turns out that something had been money. She yearned for a man who would take her and use her for his pleasure. She wanted to be dominated, not in a BDSM context, but just thrown down on the bed and fucked like a whore. Rick was not capable of that, though she repeatedly hinted at her desire. One would think that with the number of empty rooms in the mansions they frequented that he would have fulfilled her desires.

First, this is 95% exposition. The last two paragraphs in particular are 100% telling and zero showing. You also provide no originality in this character so far. She's sexually unfulfilled in an otherwise good marriage, just like 100,000 other subby wives on lit. She's perusing the art gallery yet we don't get to see the art or what she thinks of it. So the gallery is simply a device to tell us that she is cultured, high brow or at the upper end of the wealth scale (confirmed by the mansion that she lives in) so we have no choice but to respect her. Again, this characterization is all too common on lit. We know exactly what is going to happen to her already. She is going to find a man (who is not her husband) who can fuck her properly. So either you're going to have to twist that plot onto its head (Rick actually learns to fuck her proper, for instance) or you're going to have to add something unexpected on the side to hold my interest.

 

[Devinter]

@Lumiere_Amie - I am going to have to agree with @lovecraft68 that the character comes across as unlikable. I think he's being kind by saying "a little", too. Don't get me wrong; I think a character ought to have flaws, and that it adds to the realism of the story if and when there's a healthy dosage of those included. Furthermore, it sets her up for a redemption arc, if that's what you're going for. But so far, the person you're describing is coming across as a spoiled, materialistic, "I'm better than you" snob. Certainly not someone I would root for in a Romance story. Seems more fitting for Erotic Coupling, BDSM, Fetish, or Loving Wives.

As for the exposition, I am of the opinion that a few paragraphs can be healthy for moving the story along - especially during the opening sequences - but best paired with something that grips at you first, perhaps. That makes one invested in the story. It also feels a little thick. Why not have her exchange in some dialogue with a fellow museum patron in between of the reflections? Or study a piece of art that could be foreshadowing of something important to the story? Something to cut the exposition up a little bit.

As for this part:

Rick was not capable of that, though she repeatedly hinted at her desire. One would think that with the number of empty rooms in the mansions they frequented that he would have fulfilled her desires.

Definitely suggest you take one of these "desires" out and replace it with a different word. A synonym is fine, but using the same powerful word twice in such rapid succession just reads strange to me. Also, this could just be a me thing, but whenever someone "hints" at something instead of speaking plainly, and then gets annoyed when that subtle hint isn't being understood, it's extremely hard for me to feel any sort of sympathy for the person in question. Communication is crucial to any functioning relationship and removing that from the equation makes the character come across as immature and/or problematic. Which, again, could be a good thing if the whole point of the story is for the character to have some sort of redemption moment.