Trying to get better

[subversivesex]

Hi,

Improving my craft is something I'm trying to take seriously, since I'm working on my eighth novel already. And since half of my stories fall into erotica collections, I would like help improving them as well. I do have to admit that I'm a little envious of the quality of some of the works by authors on this site. I know I shouldn't get hung up on ratings, but I'm astonished how some authors can average 4.8 for some stories when I only have a single story over 4.5 stars.

Now I know I rushed to publish some of them, and I still think some of my stories are quite quirky and fun, but I want feedback from someone who can point to what glaring tendencies I have that consistently keep my stories under 4.5 stars.

Personally as a reader I prefer 5-10k story lengths, and hate starting in the middle of a sex scene because I want the characters to develop first. So this is the style I try to emulate. Most of my content is light taboo romance, and I enjoy some comedic elements as well.

The only story with a "hot" tag (over 4.5) I feel like isn't even my best, but just scratches a common itch for readers:

Teenager Gets Detention

The next two I'd like to work on editing are the following:

Grand Champion (a battle of the sexes)

Date Night (light taboo romance)

If anybody could find the time to read and make some comments, it would be greatly appreciated. I am also a voracious reader, so a swap is not out of the question. -subversivesex

 

[anthrodisiac]

Is there anything in particular you want someone to focus on? Like flow, word choice, character development, plot, tension, dialogue, etc? Or just generally look it over and provide feedback? Do you have ideas/suspicions/guesses about what might be holding your stories back?

 

[anthrodisiac]

Grand Champion

You have a good base for a story here. Ping Pong game with high stakes, we all know where it's going to go, given it's on Lit, and it goes pretty much where you'd expect it to. The writing itself is pretty decent, as in the grammar and spelling, not a lot of mistakes. But there is a lot of room for improvement.

The opening is kinda clunky and not grounded. We start with a proposal, but no idea what it is, who offered it. A better start would be his line where he offers her the proposal. Something like: “Want to try me at ping-pong?” (Not a great line, but just giving you an idea what I’m talking about). Then that leads into “May’s eyes lit up.”

We’re not really sure where they are, who this man is, what prompted him to talk to her and make this bet. You’ve essentially dumped the reader into the middle of a scene blindfolded, which can work in some cases, but it doesn’t work here. You’ll want a bit more building out of the place and people so the reader can feel more connected to the story.

We don’t really have descriptions of the characters. We don’t even have the guy’s name. It’s hard to connect with them without even a basic description. Given it’s third person POV, you have pretty free rein to do a fairly basic description of each.

How long has it been since she last played ping-pong? She’s terrible at it. Truly awful. She should have at least some skill if the tournament wasn’t that long ago. If it’s been 10+ years, maybe, but given that she had planned to train and (perhaps) play professionally, you’ll need to establish that she hadn’t picked up a paddle in a long time. That way, her confidence is at odds with the realities of her atrophied skill. This ties back to the grounded note, giving us background on the players, pieces of information that turn them from cardboard cutout into an actual person.

May barely speaks during the game. You can show her frustration slipping out with a couple snappy lines from her to show her frustration.

You use speech tags for every line of dialogue, but it’s not necessary. You can mix it up with action tags.
Speech tag: May said/repeated/asked (basically, verbs relating to speaking).
Action tag: May action verb (May bounced on her feet. May gripped the paddle tighter.)
Speech tags use commas, action tags use periods.
May said, “Best of three?”
May gripped the paddle tighter. “Best of three?”

Given we don’t know much about May, her decision to blow him seems like a pretty rapid escalation from “Eh, he’s kinda cute, but I want to distract him so I can win the next game. Oh, blowjob!”

Some repetition in the blowjob description.

It’s weird that once she blows him, she goes from absolute garbage to actually having some talent. Better setup would be her getting at least one point on him so it’s credible that she goes from rusty to warmed up. You kinda have it in that she can go a couple serves, but you’ll want to pair it with something explicitly stating that she was getting back in the hang of things, shaking off the rust.

We have no real sense of motivation for why it goes so sexual. I get that this is a stroker, the premise doesn’t need to be much, but there should be at least some in-universe justification for why she goes with sex, given he doesn’t ask her for it, he implies.

It should be established that she has a sense of honor and her word is her bond up front. That way, when things escalate, it makes more sense that she goes along with it, even if she’s not really about him fucking her ass.

She mentions he’s “too kind” a few times, which definitely doesn’t feel true at all.

Again, strange that she casually accepts taking on another guy while she’s having her ass fucked.

The story has the feeling of author puppeting the characters to make them comply with the demands of the scene. When that happens, the scene comes across as stiff. Sit with the characters a bit, understand their motivations, who they are as people. Even if this is a stroker, the strength of a story is in the characters having depth, in understanding who they are and what drives them. The connection to the character is what turns a stroker from stage directions of faceless dolls to interesting people fucking. What exactly is it about May that the idea of losing and giving up her choice is so exciting to her? She’s clearly turned on by the prospect of the whole thing, so give the reader at least some insight into the reasoning. That extra depth connects the reader to the character, and that connection makes us feel like we’re there with her.

Good example of a place where we could get her motivations better. As it is, it’s pretty vague.
As her opponent racked up his points, 2-0, 5-0, 11-0, May didn't lament what seemed to defy her competitive spirit. Years ago she would've broken down in tears at such relentless humiliation. But she was allowing this to happen, and her opponent didn't even know why.

Inconsistency in handling direct thought. One uses *thought* the other is thought (italics). Make sure to be consistent with your formatting. Generally, I’d avoid using asterisks in fiction, stick with italics.

The biggest issue is the vagueness. The characters are vague, the motivations are vague. You don’t need to go massively into heavy description, but there ought to be some sense of what they look like, who they are, at the least why the main character is willing to do any of this, the MC’s feelings and thoughts, and where they are. The men are nameless, descriptions show up eventually, but sparse. Describing someone well after they show up in a scene can be discombobulating to readers, who will fill in blanks if you leave them, and by then providing description, you may be countering what they have in their head.

There's also not a lot of tension in the story, which is contributing to its flatness. Have her show a bit more emotion, show that competitive edge a little bit better. Like I mentioned at the top, we all know where the story is roughly going, but is it going to be her that wins or him? That kind of tension is where this story ought to lie, especially in the third match. That should be where the height of tension lives, and if you were to flesh it out and draw it out a bit more rather than rush through it, you'll keep the reader on the edge of their seat better.

Overall, what you have is decent, good bones for a story. The premise itself is solid, and I think once you flesh it out and add more depth to the characters, you'll have a much stronger story. Keep a lot of these things in mind as you move forward with other stories. The depth doesn't have to be massive, but it ought to be there. You want to create a story that leaves an impact on the reader, where they remember it down the line. You can absolutely get there, and it's really good that you're open for improvement and willing to take feedback and learn from it. That's one of the most important things for a writer, and a lot of people don't bother to try to better themselves, so good job for being open and seeking improvement

 

[anthrodisiac]

Teenager Gets Detention

I can see why this is rated higher than the other ones. It has a lot more going for it in terms of character development and voice. We get a good sense of who Lissa is right off the bat, her personality, her motivations, her voice, all of that gives her more depth than someone like May.

As with your other story, you do a lot of tell instead of show. You can show people's emotions and states with their actions instead of outright telling the reader what it is. Show is a useful tool for grounding and providing connection and immersion. If you aren't sure how to do that, I'd recommend reading up on Show vs. Tell, there are plenty of tutorials and guides and opinions online that can give you a sense of how to achieve and approach it.

The dialogue is a little stiff at times. Try to inject a bit more personality into how they speak. You do it at times, but other times it comes across stiff and unnatural, which tends to break immersion. Think about how a regular person would speak when writing dialogue.
Ex: "Okay, it's just as we males just need to get consent with these things. So nothing's misconstrued."

This ties into my previous comments are building out characters so their motivations are clear. Characters should have motivations that are internally driven, instead of externally. What I mean by that is that their action should be generated in-universe, by the character, rather than doing or acting the way they are because the author wants them to act that way, regardless of whether their actions fit who the character is. Treat them as real people, build them in a way that makes their actions and reactions fit who they are.

I bring this up because Mr. Richards’s personality seems to fluctuate. He goes strict, but kindly teacher to awkward and uncertain to almost immediately eating her out to sexual disciplinarian who has no problem spanking her. Kind of matches my comment on the previous story, where the characters feel more like puppets doing what the author wants rather than characters who have their own personalities and motivations. Lissa’s are very clear, which is great. You just need to do the same with Mr. Richards. Show him having some preferential treatment of Lissa, or at least checking her out, to show that he’s interested, and the tension for him is that she’s a student and he shouldn’t, but he can’t help himself and takes what he wants.

There are some slight shifts of POV to Mr. Richards. That’s fine if this is a third-person omniscient POV, but it reads up to that point like it’s from Lissa’s POV, as in we’re only seeing the story through her eyes. If you want to expand the scope to include Mr. Richard, that might be a good way to show his urges and fighting them back, as an omniscient narrator can relay the thoughts and motivations of characters to the reader, regardless of who that character is. But if you’re going to stick with Lissa’s POV, make sure to avoid having Mr. Richards thoughts and attributions creep in.
Examples:
He resisted slightly, but overpowered by her aroma, he dove in.
He was going to make Lissa behave, no question

Lissa can’t know this information, so if it were strictly from her POV, it wouldn’t make sense. If the scope of the POV expands to omniscient and includes Mr. Richards, then this makes sense.

Overall, much more full than the other story. I suspect that’s why it’s rated more highly, because the characters (primarily Lissa) have more depth and we see them more fully as people instead of shallow tropes. This is a good baseline for yourself, look at how you handled Lissa and try to do the same with other characters. We don't always need to see their thoughts to get a sense of who they are, just like in real life, where you don't have a telepathic connection to see what people are thinking, you judge them based on their actions and words, and that allows you to understand who they are and what drives them.

Again, good job for seeking out feedback to help you improve. You clearly know how to play to the kink, the next step past that is to build out relatable, full characters to portray the kink with.

You got this

 

[subversivesex]

Wow, thanks so much for the quality reply to my vague query. This is exactly the kind of feedback that I was looking for. The puppet analogy makes a lot of sense to me. I think I'll start there, try to figure out character motivations. Thanks for the words of encouragement as well. All the best to you.

 

[Aussieguy8]

The connection to the character is what turns a stroker from stage directions of faceless dolls to interesting people fucking.

This is generally great advice for all kinds of writing, not just erotic. You want to make us care or have some connection to these people. Sex writing is, well, none of us are coming up with something new when it comes to the old in and out. What makes it interesting is having that connection. I've always found, in more general writing, that giving someone a lose/ lose dilemma and seeing what they pick and why always reveals a truth about a character and makes that connection quicker than pretty much anything else. The story seems ripe for it as well considering its about a bet and pride and loss.

 

[SmilingLez]

Hi,

The only story with a "hot" tag (over 4.5) I feel like isn't even my best, but just scratches a common itch for readers:

Teenager Gets Detention

???
Story not found

 

[subversivesex]

???
Story not found

Someone made an inflammatory comment that wasn't even examined properly, and my story was sent back for revisions after three years of being published. An anonymous comment, btw. Probably generated by the extra traffic from this post. The admins knee-jerk based on anonymous comments without reading the story, but still haven't addressed my help ticket for a story that has been pending for three weeks. So sadly I'll probably delete my account soon and move to another erotica website. Thanks for the interest, but it's tiresome when authors have no control over their own original work and the admins reply swiftly to anonymous users but only provide generic replies to authors, if they even reply at all.