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Steampunk Harlots

Well i do agree with your analysis. And honestly i'd have to say no to your question but you are neglecting the character of "Vile" a bit not getting her a client or two of her own. I mean honestly its been 2-3 chapters and while she gets it on with the other girls yet she hasn't a client of her own yet. I mean i do get it if you're trying to avoid turning it into a cliche character.

I do know one thing this story screams for but i don't want to spill the beans if i'm right
 
Ah, shes getting center stage in chapter 20 and will break into her new role soon enough, trust me. Its just that shes different enough from the other girls that I can just throw her into it the same way.

You can tell me about anything you want, I have many of the events detailed already so I doubt you will change anything.
 
Chapter 21 is a good chapter but i'd have to say the same thing about it as chapter 19. Though i kinda like how you got the photographer and vile together.
 
What would you like feedback on? Be specific, and remember that people who respond at this point aren't likely to have read all the chapters.
 
well i always like to know where spelling or grammar needs some fixing. any plot holes or logic gaps as well. but just general feedback or discussion is always welcome.
 
I just realized I promised to review this (or part of it, anyway) and never did, so here goes. The following is just my opinion.

The Art of Scope

So I read less than one half of chapter 34. It contained no steampunk, no harlots, and a whole lot of... I want to say... politics?

Consider the curious case of a show named Prison Break. Now, the show starts off with a good enough premise. Dude is wrongfully imprisoned. Brother wants to get him out. When the legal system fails him, you get... a prison break.

Titles are important things. It's the shortest name (barring an acronym) by which people will remember a piece of art. You want a good name because that's how people will remember you. When names are obtuse (The Beatles, by The Beatles), people will make up their own name (The Whire Album). When names are bad, you get stuck.

In the case of Prison Break, that meant successive seasons of a show where characters seemingly spent every waking moment focused on getting out of prison or running away to remain out of prison, and while that can be exciting in bursts, it wears thin. Your choices, when you extend something with a bad title, are to either go with it and risk stagnation OR venture elsewhere and risk alienation.

In the case of Prison Break, they chose stagnation.

Let's imagine I'm going to write a story called John Goes To The Store, in which the titular character performs the titular action. Afterwards, people clamor for more, so I write a sequel wherein John goes back for the ice cream he forgot in chapter one. How long do you think I could conceivably continue to hammer on that one note? Could I wring 34 chapters out of that premise?

This brings us to the real thesis here. Scope. From the outside looking in, Steampunk Harlots looks like a fun little idea. Fun little ideas are great in fun little stories. Fun little ideas are not well equipped to inform sprawling, sweeping epics.

In no particular order, I remember reading chapter 1 once and thinking "huh. Okay." I remember reading part of chapter 26 and finding it difficult to follow without the intervening chapters, while also being markedly more boring. Chapter 34 was intensely boring. Statistically speaking, that's a bad trend.

Here is what I think happened, and this is a pattern that occurs often for writers:

You, RedFirebrand, wrote something.
You liked it.
Readers liked it.
You liked that the readers liked it.
So you made more.
If Step 3 and Step 4 = true, repeat step 5.

This sounds like common sense. Let's go back to our example. John Goes To The Store. Obviously we have John, our protagonist. He has a great interaction with Susie the cashier. Readers love her. Susie makes appearances in chapters 1, 2, 4, 7, 10, 12, and 13, but you get bored of just writing Susie. So now here comes Dina. Smoking hot Dina over at register 4. She shows up a lot too , but eventually the same thing happens. So we... what? Eventually have John have sex with every employee, but then what?

Do we dare send John someplace other than a store? Like his work? Or... uh... to get some gas for the car he does all this driving in? The ideas are technically limitless, but in reality we're just stapling an idea on a piece of paper to another piece of paper that was stapled onto the previous piece, in a long chain of barely-coherent justifications to not have to write something new, or create a new world, or create new characters.

Because that's it, isn't it? Lit is lousy with writers who have one story that is 40 chapters long and has great ratings, views, and awesome comments, and then another 1 chapter story that was not received nearly so well (I'm looking at you, Tefler). The lesson so many learn, incorrectly, is not to stray from that one idea everyone loves. So John keeps going to the store, prisons keep being broken, and all the Harlots are... I don't even know. Still whores?

Take a risk. Write something new.

EDIT: I forgot one thing. The consequence. Inaccessibility. When one creates something that is infinitely long, one alienates potential readers. The longer something is, the less likely people are to give it a try.

In broad terms, the story of The Lord Of The Rings is immense in scope. Tens of thousands of years, and hundreds of thousands of actions and reactions leading to a singular event so powerful that it reshaped the future of a world. Tolkkein knew all of these things, in his head, but he also understood how to present something in a manageable scope. He gave you enough bits here and there to piece together the big stuff and he kept the narrative mostly on course.

There are two lessons there. 1) If everyone who wanted to read through the Lord of the Rings had to read the Silmarillion first, nobody would know who Tolkkein is. 2) if you figure out how to frame your good idea (read: scope), you can become a legend.
 
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Chapter 34 had the airships in it, but everyone has a different definition of how to define steampunk. I get I might see things in my head and not convey it in the writing. How would you have made the Steampunk more prominent? As for the Harlots, they were all in it and they were by definition still Harlots, even if there wasn't any money changing hands. As for the politics, yeah, that's context for moving the plot forward.

For the record, I didn't even have the title till I was several chapters into the story. It was just 'Steampunk Erotica' until I used the word 'harlot' in dialogue and liked it.

I have never felt myself limited by the name of the story. If anything, I considered it the least important part. If I could have just named the story after it was finished Id have done that but Id probably still have chosen this one. If you take the story as a whole, it fits. Even if some chapters are a bit thin on one or the other.

If all I ever focused on was the harlotry on the airship, I would have stagnated. Instead, I had things happen that took them away from their work or their ship.

Not sure if you think I've stagnated but I'm not sure I see it at all.

I could absolutely write a lot about John going to the store. Maybe the earth opens up and the store is sucked into hell where they have to deal with succubi or other lust demons. Aliens show up and abduct him with the staff. That innocuous store can be the centre of a lot of things if you imagine it. But if he's already at the store, does the title get invalidated or does he need to go to the store in every single chapter?

Fun little ideas are the foundation for every epic ever written. If they are done right. I like to think I am doing something close to that.

Chapter 1 has been rewritten since I first posted it, once I got more confident and got some editing done. Not sure what version you read but probably the newer one. Either way, was it, and the others, not up to par because of the story? Or because it wasn't 90% sex? Maybe I don't write each chapter as if its a standalone story. Maybe not the best for online stuff like this, but writing novels is what I want to do. Short stories bother me, its never enough if I'm interested in the characters.

That pattern is accurate to start. If people didn't like my writing I probably would have given up or kept it to myself. But once characters became real to me, outside opinion became less important. Sure it's nice to hear from people, but even if nobody else read anything or I never post it online, I am still going to write Book 3. So the pattern becomes larger in scope, I write this whole story and if people have liked it, I will write another. That next story, I already have notes for, and will be totally different. Going for an outright sci-fi sports story.

Id have introduced the new girl a lot sooner than that, but maybe she likes the girl instead, maybe someone robs the place, maybe anything. Like I said before, I can see a lot of things for taking something mundane and making it big. Adding sex into it just makes it appeal to a certain group.

This assumes I am trying to avoid writing something new. I have a lot of stories on the go that aren't classified as erotica. I go to them when I want to write something new. I just do it under a different name on another site. Even if we just focus on my erotica, I need to finish SH first before I start something new. Id hardly consider anything I am writing as 'stapling on' for no reason. I have a whole list of pieces in my head and its a matter of finding out where they fit until I use them all. When it's done, I make a new story with new pieces.

Of course, they are still whores, that's all they really 'want' to be doing. But if that's all they did then Id have finished after chapter 4 or something. A harlot is a prostitute or promiscuous woman. and that hasn't changed. if it was just getting paid for sex then id have named it steampunk whores.

New stuff will come after. I am managing enough stories as it is. One erotica at a time though.

Yes, this is a lot longer than I ever planned. But I really don't get to decide that, it's up to the pieces of the story as they form. We shall see.

I'll admit I didn't plan my story to the degree of Tolkien but I am not flying as blindly now as I did when I started.

1) Maybe, but I decided against writing any 'fluff' chapters 2) I still think I am within the original scope.



Now, all that said and done, I know I have a lot to learn about writing and I am glad I have gotten feedback I can use. I will keep your examples in mind, even if I don't feel the same way. A good warning is always helpful.
 
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Don't agree with the criticisms

With all due respect to AwkwardMD, RedFireBrand makes a valid rebuttal here. And what's been integral throughout is the part Hannah plays. She is a harlot by choice. One of my favorite chapters thus far was Chapter 13, and it sums up Hannah perfectly.
===================
“Good to fight?” she asked quickly.

“I am. Thanks. I was honestly starting to think you had been lying to get good treatment or whatever.”

“Nope. Trained killer. Natural harlot.”
-- Hannah talking to Sergeant Grey, chapter 13, Catching the Fall
====================

Hannah is a harlot, but she is also a warrior, a veteran soldier.

As such, our writer here taps into some very old mythology. Ishtar and the later Astarte were goddesses of love and war - warrior harlots. There's some indication that the Kemer (Egyptian) goddess Sekhmet was a similar type goddess, as was Bast (Bastet). Even for our modern world, there are Kali and Durga from India.

Even if there was little sexual activity going on in Chapter 34, the characters from the ship were working together to save a duchy and end slavery. Not much time for whoring and playing around when lives are on the line. The women are in the trade to have fun and make money, but they won't stand by and let abuse happen. (I suspect there is yet a reveal as to why Trixie Liddy felt so strongly about Emberborn from the get-go.)

The women of the airship live in a steampunk world, but are not necessarily amazed and overwhelmed by a love of steampunk tech. They make use of it, and it's the milieu of the story, but it's not the driving force. They are harlots, not inventors. There's a place for whiz-bang inventors and mad scientists, but most people who live in such a world will use it for their own ends and not fuss about the "gee-whiz" factor.

That said, there is the emerging use of photos and film to capture the harlots in action, spreading their fame ahead of them by the photographer Caster (Chapter 20). Hannah's meeting with Rayvon Dexx, and Hannah's suggestions in turn lead to his invention of a portable vibrator, and the sudden wealth it brings to him (Chapter 8 and later). His gratitude is such that he uses his newfound wealth and nobility to help the harlots in their efforts to end the slavery of mutated humans, repaying Hannah's friendship. Liddy makes an agreement with Lord Captain Mason Ralia in Chapter 30 to help spread Ralia's clockwork automatons to replace the freed Emberborn.

Expecting the same type of story over and over... well, there's a market for it. But characters that grow and learn, well, for me anyway, that's what makes a good story better. I'd recommend that you finish Chapter 34, and see what happens.

Chapter 34 makes Chapter 22 have greater significance, where Hannah executes both the sheriff and Leira's father for the attempted murder of Leira as an infant, and the sheriff condoning the act. And gave warnings to the townfolk that she would return one day to make sure they remembered the lesson. And again, in Chapter 29, Hannah casually kills Lord Moulton when she realizes he will always hurt women. RedFireBrand has shown us that Hannah is capable of carrying off her new role - generally acting for the greater good, but being ruthless when necessary.

In my own case, my chapters tend to vary in length, often toward being very long, so a summary helps. But in the case of Steampunk Harlots, the chapters are 20-30 pages each, so a summary isn't really needed. Most people will see the high ratings, and since the chapters aren't overly long, may start the series from the beginning and catch up, just to see what the fuss is about. And thereby most likely be pleasantly surprised. That said, maybe a very short recap of the crew of the Lucky Harlot at the start of the new book wouldn't be amiss.

That's my two bits. Slainté
 
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Two brief rebuttals, and then I'll stop so as not to belabor the points.

1 Hanna sounds like a Mary Sue. It sounds like she's great at everything she does, and since your story involves constantly adding new dimensions to the plot, I would not be surprised to find out that she continues to excel in everything she attempts. This is a bad pattern, but it sounds like it has more to do with the story not already being over than with any original flaw in the way you designed your character. She has to be good at all these new dimensions you add (ad infinitum) or else thr story gets weird.

2 This whole "I'm not lost, I'm enjoying the journey" argument sounds hollow. Concieving and executing a satisfying conclusion to a character arc, or a story arc, is hard as hell. I get that, but standing on the bunny slopes and trying to sell me on the joy of a hill with a 5° downward angle while I'm trying to check out a black diamond just doesn't cut it.

Now, to be fair, I didn't read a lot of this. My sample size was not extensive, and that leaves a LOT of room for me to be way off base. WAY off base. And honestly, only you really know where you're going and how you're getting there. The best I can hope for is that you'll take a hard look inwards and be honest with yourself about your own motives and plans.

And now I'll shut up on the matter.
 
1) She actively seeks the aid of others to take care of the things that she cant do. A Mary Sue would do it all herself. Shes also almost been killed a few times. Shes good at seduction, managing peoples emotions, and combat. Beyond that, she needs help. Thats why the cast has gotten so big. All that said, I will keep it in mind so I dont fall into that trap. Just because I dont think Ive done that yet, doesnt mean it might not happen if im not careful.

2) Hallow? Based on what? I know things are hard and I am learning. It may be a bunny hill or a black diamond, but I am going to own that hill to the best of my ability and when its done Im going to try a new one.

Im glad you accept you might be wrong, and I feel that you are, but you have been helpful. I am being honest with myself, and your advice about scope and such applies to one of my other projects better so I am taking your advice on that. My motives are simply to tell stories and get better at it. Erotic or not, the story is what matters.
 
Are you volunteering to read 34 chapters of someone else's work or just taking passive-aggressive pot shots?

I read chapter 1, part of chapter 26, and part of chapter 34. Feel free to read more than that and offer your own informed opinion. Everyone wins when there are more opinions and stories are more widely read.
 
Defensive is my default state. You probably couldn't have avoided that if you tried.
 
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