I'm a guy who has dreamed about making stories for a while, and somehow decided to pull the trigger here of all places. My main story I've been working on is the "Yellow Fever" branch of the Sexual Privilege story; the premise is that the MC is a boy who is granted the privilege to request any sexual favours from Asian women under the guise of a medical condition. This branch was actually started by Elist, with a few key characters set up before he stopped and I began. My first chapter starts here: https://chyoa.com/chapter/Emiru,-obviously!.1089087, and I have continued onwards from there. Happily, the chapters I've released seem to have been received well. Whilst I'm glad for that, I've been mostly writing off the top of my head. I have very little understanding about what makes my writing good; what my strengths are, what effects I'm using consciously or unconsciously, etc. So, I'm hoping a review from a literature perspective may help me understand that more. I'm of course open to constructive criticism as well. I will say there are certain...elements that I incorporated (or attempted to) specifically that may have fallen flat, but I'll refrain from mentioning it to see what people do/do not notice. Also, there are a few thoughts I have thought of as a new writer that'd I'd appreciate being able to share/vent with someone else on, and hopefully get some outsider perspective on it. Thanks a bunch to whomever takes a look at my writing!
I think stylistically, you're good at writing. There's nothing really clunky or awkward, and you do a good job of establishing the tragic nature of the MC's disease. The MC is actually considering the emotional and physical health of those around him, making him more relatable than most protagonists in Free Use stories. There actually does seem to be a plot here, and I do think the guilt the protagonist feels is done well. My only real complaint is that the characters are a little stereotypical. Like when the Mom cries and asks the MC to forgive her family's transgressions for dishonoring him. Or how Emiru is an anime fan (although this isn't really that unrealistic, I just mean that I went "oh of course she loves anime" when I read it). This is a minor stylistic choice, but you could also consider make the sex scenes longer. I think the scenes you have are good, but I would really like to see more descriptions. Especially as the MC grows closer and closer to the other characters. I think it could also be interesting for him to meet the other nurses that had sex with them, and ask them about it. Maybe they have flashback scenes, or describe the acts to help get the MC off. You've gotten a lot of attention and positive feedback, and I can understand why. I think this story has a lot of potential. I'm writing a similiar story, where in one arc the protagonist is used as a sexual training dummy by Japanese nurses because he doesn't have medical insurance. Feel free to borrow ideas, or use me as a sounding board as my story is about a guy who will die if he doesn't ejaculate at least five times a day. I feel like a narcissist for self-promoting in someone else's thread, but I'll pretend it's helpful.
Hey, thanks for the review and kind words! Really helps me understand what's going on. A lot of what you've mentioned is stuff that I've been considering at the back of my mind, so I'll try to keep it in mind for the future. The 'stereotypes' thing is a bit difficult, considering is the sort of thing that I enjoy, but hopefully if I focus enough on the characters they'll evolve into something more naturally. One specific thing I was concerned about, and is giving me pause for thought before continuing is ironically concerning the sex scenes. I hope this is not arrogant to say, but I innately don't really want to expand on such things or work to improve them. Partly because my own actual experience is basically nil, but really, I guess it just doesn't excite me. Again, super ironic posting this in an erotica forum, but the best way I can describe is that writing sex requires I be in a certain 'mood'; a mood that doesn't always come up, so when it isn't, writing sex feels awkward and hokey. What's more, my tastes in sex are extremely vanilla; I tend to find the circumstances surrounding the sex more arousing than the actual parts of sex itself. So, yeah, thanks for reading so far. I'm glad to have gotten up to this point, because it's helped me understand a little more as to what I am/am not comfortable with. That said, whether I'm going to continue from here is still a bit up in the air.
Your writing flows well and you acknowledge the emotions, personalities and motivations of the other characters. Most CHYOA writers fail at these, so these strengths stand out. Even simple things like varying sentence structure and length and describing characters' mannerisms can make the difference between bad and good writing. Sometimes the characters act too strongly as though they're in an anime (or, rather, hentai), even more than the average light novel, in my experience. For example, is a bit overkill to express the idea that the speaker is flustered. The stuttering effect is annoyingly overused, and exclamation marks should also be pruned so that they maintain effect. Some of the mechanics of sex are also a little unrealistic, but not to an extent that the average CHYOA reader is going to notice. Especially given the type of story you're contributing to, you are probably not that inexperienced compared with your audience. I would also personally avoid the frequency of author's notes in the chapter text. It's not really common on CHYOA, and usually such statements would be made in the comments instead.
Hey insertnamehere, thanks for the constructive criticism and commendation! Yeah, when you put it in front of me like that, I does read kinda hokey. I'm also super bad when it comes to overuse of exclamation marks, since I 'hear' voice lines in my head when I write, so when a character is shouting or whatever, I thought reducing the ! feels like it drops the emotion from it. Could you expand a bit on the characters' mannerisms part? If I've been doing it, it's probably subconscious, so I don't quite know what I've been doing.
Basically, you write small things that characters do, or descriptions of how they act, that align with their personalities and convey their emotions. Lines like "Emiru flushes red, and her eyes start to dart to avoid your gaze." are simple, but go a long way to give the reader the impression that Emiru is a human being with thoughts and feelings. She's attracted to the protagonist (feeling), but is also generally embarrassed by the situation (personality, and a realistic reaction). She is experiencing internal conflict. Most CHYOA stories wouldn't bother doing this, and are worse off for it.
You've got your grammar and spelling down, the prose is solid, and the plot flows pretty well. My main feedback is a variation on insertnamehere's and JackSnakeCakes' comments above: your characters could do with a bit more fleshing out. I don't mean they need 30 page backstories or (god help us) stat sheets, but none of them stand out very much. They all just super-eagerly want to help poor John, all cast from the same mold. Sure, there are small variations. Emiru has a little crush and Mrs. Fukada is a little motherly, but other than that, none of them seem to have a lot going on. That doesn't mean you have to stray from the "everyone will have sex with John" template the story's got going on, but you could make it a little less straightforwardly wish-fulfilment by varying your personality types a little more. The angry one who still has to help John get off because that's how the universe works. The prudish one who hates that she rather enjoys eating John's cum, and the increasingly convoluted excuses she comes up with to avoid having to admit it. The sheltered one who uses John's condition as a way to escape her parents' overbearing influence. The mature and aggressive seductress next door who would've fucked John regardless, condition or no condition. Her twin daughters who compete for John's attention as they do for everything else, and not necessarily in ways that are pleasant for him. The possibilities are endless.
Hey there, sorry for not responding for a while, but I wasn't expecting anyone else to come along, haha. This is the third time I've heard something similar to that, and I'm beginning to worry that my ideas on writing characters is innately flawed and stereotypical. Nevertheless, though I'm still not sure how far I'm going to go with this branch, I've still planned some scenes surrounding the characters I've introduced so far so there may be some time left for character expansion. I will fully admit that I'm not exactly the sort of person that's always bothered by tropey character archetypes (The shy one, the tsundere, the genki girl, etc.) so long as they don't fall into the common pitfalls that I find annoying associated with them (The shy one who "can't admit her feelings", the tsundere who keeps hitting the protag, the genki girl who is just weird; these are such examples). As such, a lot of my prospective future characters unfortunately will probably fall into these kinds of molds, simply because I want to play around with them and see what I come up with. I will definitely say I would feel accomplished if the characters are able to grow beyond their archetypes to become more fleshed out, but...my work so far hasn't indicated that, unfortunately. All in all, as I stated in another forum post, I'm writing for fun, and what I've written so far has been fun for me. I'm just hoping that others will enjoy what I do in the future as well.
I don't think there's an inherent issue with writing characters that conform to tropes, especially in a context like CHYOA where many readers will be looking for heuristics to understand elements of the story (like a character's personality) quickly. After all, Tropes Are Tools.
As someone who rarely browses the forums I am very surprised to see my username mentioned. Nice work Jin, your chapters are enjoyable. I don't know enough about writing so I won't leave much comments, though I must say I've never been an adherent to idea of story thread ownership, so thought your explanation of being a different author to be unnecessary. I also found that I have left a few additional chapters in draft mode and never published them. Emiru helped the MC in the bathroom much like your thread did, though I wrote her to be an aloof, almost asexual person, even during sex.
Wow! Never expected the author of the branch to comment here! Glad you're enjoying what I've been doing with your work. It's probably not necessary, but I wanted to thank you for the premise you set up; I don't know why exactly, but something about it sparked the inspiration within me and now...I'm like 20 chapters in, lol. I did notice Emiru was written to be more icy and standoffish when I started my first chapters, and I think I even tried to implement that a bit into how the bathroom scene went, before pivoting on her characterisation later. I'll be frank; it's mostly personal appeal turning her into the character I have her as now; hope you'll forgive me on that .
