Up Your Game: Advice From Your Peers.

I'm horrendously afraid.... but Up My Game, please.

 

@Deadedge

At a glance, all your stories are fairly linear; you have a few divergent paths in "Family Fuck Farm," but most of them feel less like choices to be made as serial fiction. That's not necessarily bad, but given the format of the site you might want to consider experimenting with a few more options. They don't have to diverge wildly - you might just have an aside to another character's perspective and then loop back to the main path, for example, but it would be interesting to see what you could do to play with the format a little.

Individual chapters are generally well done, in terms of writing: not too short, good spelling and grammar, readable back-and-forth dialogue, some nice descriptions, especially in your branches of "Cum Addiction." You have a slight tendency toward redundancy - for example in "Next Morning's Mouthful":

Notice those two sentences that begin with "You" back-to-back, the repeated uses of "She" and "she said" - you can vary it up a little. "Your Aunt," "The bodacious brunette," "Your mother's sister," "Aunt Les," "the sexy slut," etc. Redundancy like this can make long paragraphs difficult to follow (especially if you ever have same-sex pairings, although most of your work seems straight heterosexual), and varying how you describe or address the characters can keep the reader's attention. Likewise, "said" is often a lackluster word - you don't have to make it dynamic ("spat, yelled, gasped, sighed, moaned," etc. etc.) but it's often unnecessary, and you can liven up the scene by describing how something is said - the quality of the voice, their intonation, where their attention is fixated, what they're doing, etc.

You might also want to break up some of the longer paragraphs; with the current formatting on the site, shorter paragraphs are easier to read and follow. For example, in "Bajie Found Some Courage" you have:

Now if this was spread out a little:

Then adding in what I was talking about earlier:

Maybe not your style, exactly, but you might want to play around with it.

 

Do you mean "repetition"?

I would understand "redundancy" that something is described twice in a row.

 

@daciasdesire

Starting off, the opening of "Caddyshag":

"You're" - I know it's a little thing, but it's often the little things that can detract from a story...and it's far from the only one:

Everybody has issues proofreading their own stuff, so it's not unusual for the occasional weird wording to slip through here and there - what you might want to do is try to read it aloud (in private), to see how it sounds like when spoken; that might make it easier for you to note places where you've slipped a little. Alternately, you might give it a little time after you've written it and go back and do a proofing pass. Or, give it a pass through grammarly.com, see what they come up with.

Okay, some good points: I like that you're very good at back-and-forth chapters with other writers, like with lamancha in "Asian Persuasion." You're prolific - and while you don't carry any stories to completion (yet), a number of other writers have picked up on some of the options you've chosen.

Stylistically, you seem to be writing in fairly distinct modes - dialogue sections tend to only have dialogue, exposition occurs in big paragraph dumps. Character actions tend to be very straightforward, as are thoughts and feelings. That's not necessarily bad: the dialogue is quick back-and-forth stuff, the exposition tends to be mostly at the beginning of the stories where you need the background and setup (especially on episodic fiction like CHYOA) - but if you ever want to up your game, you might consider mixing it up a little. Have pauses between the dialogue to consider how the character is standing or what they're doing, what they're thinking or feeling, the reaction of the person they're talking to, how they are interacting with the environment. In an open golf cart, for example, you're going to want to speak louder and more freely while driving on an open course than you would parked waiting for another couple of golfers to finish their hole.

Then there's the sex scenes... let's walk through "Fuck Me Like You Fucked Maddie".

Not a bad start: the participants are clearly identified, as well as their physical orientation to one another. It sets up the action that's about to go down. Personally I might like a bit more description, more inner life of the characters as far as how they feel (physically and emotionally) and what they're anticipating, but this is definitely workable.

Again, a little bit more description. This is literally going straight to "and then they bone." While you do see that in some gonzo porn, usually there's at least a hint of foreplay, or it takes a moment or two to get the right bits aligned, but that's all up to the writer's preference. The very weird part here is "Her arse-cheeks clap as we come together." I think you mean there's a slapping sound as his hips slam into her buttocks, but normally a "booty clap" is when the woman brings the cheeks together to make a clapping sound (as while twerking), which is not easy to do when being fucked from behind. I'm not saying it can't happen - especially if Min has a generous posterior - but that' definitely an image that wants more than a one sentence-description.

While I really like the idea that Min is playing up moaning like a porn star to show up Maddie, I think the execution just reads very poorly. Remember that punctuation helps control the pacing of the reading, every one of those commas is a pause, and there's nothing happening during those pauses. This is a case where you might have done something stylistically different. Consider how these different versions read:

“Oow, yes, yes, ahh, yes, fuck, uhh, yes, oow God, yes.”

“Oow...yes, yes! ...ahh...yes, fuck...uhh...yes...oow...God, yes.”

“Oow..." she moaned, low and husky as I slammed my meat into her. "Yes, yes!" she began to pant as I picked up the pace of my thrusts. "...ahh...ahh, yes, fuck, fuck me..." her eyes rolled back as I pistoned faster, grabbing her hips for added leverage "...uhh...yes...oow...God, yes.”

“Oow..." she moaned, low and husky as a porn star. "Yes, yes!" her voice encouraging me to pick up the pace. "...ahh...ahh, yes, fuck, fuck me..." she began to pant "...uhh...yes...oow...God, yes, fuck me like her.”

“Oow..." she moaned, high and falsetto like Maddie. "Yes, yes!" she squeaked in excitement as I picked up the pace of my thrusts. "...ahh...ahh, yes, fuck, fuck me..." she aid, over and over, repeating the things Maddie had said "...uhh...yes...oow...God, yes.”

You see the difference in some of those approaches, both in terms of pacing and characterization? Unrelated, but "oow" might be misread as "ow," so you might consider "ooh" which is less associated with pain.

Workmanlike, but nothing wrong with that. It can be hard to invest real poetry in the basic mechanical actions of fucking. The thing about such sections is that they're really the connective tissue of sex scenes - the in-and-out action that appears between changes in position or major events. As such, they should always lead from something and to something, and ideally they should lead off from what just happened and lead into what happens next. So if the previous paragraph is about her moaning and the next paragraph is about her orgasming, this passage should ideally have her trail off the one as the other slowly builds up, until it releases...

The only awkward bit here is "I keep my strokes even..." it's a bit of odd anatomy, since he's still pounding his dick in and out of her doggystyle, so you have to imagine he's got his hands on her hips for leverage, he's fucking her, she's moving her hips to fuck him back and...what? Is he trying to keep his strokes from getting shorter and faster, maintaining pace and depth of penetration? That's a fine technique, but it could be described a little better.

Pornography license aside, most women don't orgasm just from getting drilled; a little reference to her rubbing her clitoris as he fucks her deep probably wouldn't hurt here. Again, not required, it depends on your tastes...but something to consider. The little real-world touches help every now and again.

This is actually pretty good. It's a nice transition, it sets up the next part of the action, the back-and-forth is the kind of thing you'd see in sex, everybody keeps in character. I might like a little more description, but it's perfectly serviceable. It does represent an interruption in the flow of the action, but that's part of the tone of the piece. It would be very different if he just let her ride out the orgasm, then pulled out and pressed his cock against her asshole.

From a realism angle, this is pretty good: assholes aren't self-lubricating and you do well in having the protagonist go slow starting off. Porn stars make it look easy, but there's a lot of prep work they don't show, so getting those little details right adds to the verisimilitude. That being said "as full an anal cum load as I can" is an awkward bit of phrasing. There are plenty of ways to say he ejaculated inside her asshole, or "did my best to fill her ass with hot cum" etc. I get what you mean, there are just more natural ways to say it.

If I were an English teacher, I'd ask "Who is exhausted - you or your cock?"...but I'm not your English teacher. I will say "gapping" should be "gaping." "Back out" is unnecessary here, as it generally doesn't ooze deeper in to a gaping asshole without special assistance.

Fine end to the chapter, setting up the next.

Which I hope is useful, not for revising this chapter in particular, but for writing sex chapters going forward - the kinds of things to keep in mind, what works and what doesn't, etc.

Anyway, hope that helps.

 

Either or in this case. If you have two sentences in a row that start with "You," they could technically be combined into one sentence so one is redundant. But yes, "repetition" would probably get the sense I was going for better.

 

@Zeebop

Thank you so much for such a detailed and thorough analysis! You've given me so many wonderful things to work on that I actually can't wait to write my next intimate scene to put your suggestions into action.

From your comments: Grammer and small spelling errors are one of my well-known faults. I find proofreading hard as I'm a touch dyslexic, the errors just don't appear to my eyes. I see what I think is meant to be there and not what is actually written. I have started using Grammarly or giving my chapters a run through it. I also rush to publish too quickly. If I give it a day and reread I can see far more of my faults which I should force myself to do more often.

I'll definitely take on board about adding some more storytelling to my dialogue. I'm really all talk talk - descriptions - talk talk.
Your suggestions on the dirty talk are so much better than what I came up with! Its night and day. Will improve this in the future for sure.
OMG yes! Booty clap is what I was going for. If only I'd had that expression beforehand. Thank you for that alone.
Overall my descriptions do appear pretty clunky in a lot of places, especially the ones you highlights.
This story, in particular, is quite heavy on the porno license and something I'm ok with.
I get what your saying with the "If I was an English teacher" but that style while incorrect is something I like and would probably stick with.
With "Ooh" and "Oow" the first to me sounds like someones surprised and nothing to do with sex. Like, "Ooh I didn't know it would cost that much" or "Ooh whos that at the door?" "Oow" in my mind is a sex moan and I hope people would be able to get the context. I'd use "Ouch! Stop, stop. My legs is cramping" if I want to show pain.

But once again thank you @Zeebop for taking the time out of your day to do this for me. I appreciate the kind criticism so much.

Oh and I wouldn't even know how to finish a story. I kind of see them all as never-ending. I would love to be able to give them all equal amounts of attention. I'm hampered by too many ideas and not enough time sadly.

 

Could that be related to pronunciation differences between British English and American English?

I would also see "ooh" more as a sexual moan, though I'm not a native speaker at all.

Actually, I find it difficult to use interjection in English as the pronunciation of the same spelling varies wildly depending on the origin of the word.

 

Moans are difficult to do onomatopoeia's. "Oh." (pronounced as in "He owes me.") could be a flat response to a revelation, while "Oh!" would be more excited or surprised, and either can be drawn out to "Ooh." or "Ooh!" Alternately, "oo" or "oo!" (pronounced as in "igloo") can be a vocalization of interest, and is sometimes written "ooh" or "ooh!" as well, sometimes adding o's to draw out the sound.

...and then there's the "mmm" for that close-mouthed humming sound, "ah!" for the interjection and the softer "ah" and...yeah, there's a great variety of ways to try and express different sounds in English and I should really add that there is no one single correct way to do it.

 

@Zeebop

Amazing! Continually impressed by the community's friendliness and helpfulness.

Guilty.

Very valid. Almost everything I've posted so far is linear mainly because I find keeping up with multiple threads difficult to sustain. I have thought about trying the different perspective stuff you have mentioned since also seeing it in other works. It would be fun to flesh out other characters this way, especially with the amount of them in some of the stories I've done. Thank you for the suggestion. I do have some actual fully CHYOA style story ideas drafted and planned as well, to try and mix things up.

I think about this a lot, especially when there are multiple characters of the same sex, and am indecisive on how to handle it usually. I also feel like I run out of different things to call a character, but a couple of your suggestions are good to get me thinking of new ones.

I liked the edits you made. Especially using 'leered' for example, which I've read plenty of times in other work but I never remember it when I write. The vocabulary is something to work on, along with doing more to add the tonal/expressive qualities to dialogue. Thanks.

I very much agree with this critique. I will chalk this up to not doing much editing on things that I post here. My writing process for the site is a lot less refined: I write a draft. Proofread once, mainly for spelling and grammar and flow, then post.

If the chapter gets lucky maybe it will get proofread twice before I post, and I will make further edits. If I decide to go further then I will always try to break down paragraphs and run-on sentences properly to make it more legible. I usually do a lot more editing in other writing I do, but I guess I try a looser style here. I'll endeavour not to pick up too many bad habits from doing so.

But truly, thank you for reading anything I write and taking the time to reply and help me improve. This place is so fucking wholesome.

 

@Zeebop

I tip my hat. This is all amazing advice and the work, effort and investment you put in here is beyond words for me. You deserve more than just a "like".

 

Well...I live for feedback.

 

I know I'm new. But I'm game. Just please ignore my work from 3 years ago. It was admittedly lazy.

 

@targetthyself

Okay, had a few minutes to look up your latest stories. I really like the premise of Curse of the Black Ooze; while Extinction 2075 really doesn't have enough going on to comment on as yet.

Both stories are, naturally, in early days; I think they have great potential for branching off, but you haven't really pursued that yet. Nothing wrong with that, you're still establishing a main storyline and all of that. As far as formatting goes, you might want to repeat this on the first page of Ooze:

As a general note, there is nothing wrong with this kind of thing from a stylistic point of view. The bold text draws the reader's attention to certain words, the italics helps distinguish dialogue from description. However, I should point out that if you're going to do all dialogue as italics, it would behoove you not to have long blocks of dialogue - because large blocks of italics text are often harder to read. Instead, you're probably going to want to break them up.

Second person is a good choice for this format - it is Choose Your Own Adventure after all - but that carries with it occasional stylistic issues. Take this paragraph from And Your Eyes Open as an example:

It's all about you - and that gets repetitive. What you might like to try is mix it up a little. You're already doing that to some degree, but a little more wouldn't hurt. Consider this passage when re-written to avoid using "you" or "your" to start a sentence as often:

Not a drastic change, but maybe one that improves readability a tad.

Content-wise, it's a bit hard to say much. A condemned prisoner gets a gender-bender and wakes up a a woman - no problems there - one possible hiccup though:

The site is strict about no underage sex; it's best not to even suggest it. I would recommend cutting the "No fucking way she's full-grown!" - come up with something (anything) else as an excuse. Maybe she's mistaken as a local lord's daughter and they don't want to piss him off, or a novitiate at the local temple that's sworn to chastity, or maybe just some sign or symbol that the superstitious yokels take to mean she's been cursed.

Other than that, I think you've definitely got some potential going with Ooze; there's obviously some worldbuilding you haven't gone into yet, and it's not a quick burn straight-to-sex (yet). I'm curious where you go with it, which is about the best you can say of a lot of stories!

 

I'm very thankful for the look in. I will try to stagger my pronouns in 2nd person better, good tip, and I will try and break up my italics monologue wall-o-text, with more descriptive text. I'm pretty surprised to not see you just rake me over the coals for being absolutely incapable of editing my own work. It's a flaw.

But the passage you selected is just a typo. It's supposed to read, "No fucking way, she's full-grown" amazing what a missed placed comma does for a line of text sometimes. The PC is an older-man who age regresses from low-mid 40s-ish to being a lower end 20-something. The context is,(minor spoiler) they don't bang girls with hymen during the Eve, it's bad juju. Which should be gotten to in the next chapter.

 

Couldn't you omit the other "you"s here as well?

(I think the repetition of "weep" creates some emphasis in this case)

I think that the reference "look" gets slightly lost here.
What about starting with "After removing ..."

Shouldn't there be a comma between "thick" and "protruding"?

 

@targetthyself Gotcha. Commas can be tricky things.

@gene.sis In the sentence, target is obviously going for a poetic effect: two times makes a pattern, third time reinforces it. I think it' fine as-is. And yes, there should be a comma.

 

I would love a critique. I can also trade critique for critique if another writer is interested.

My story: https://chyoa.com/story/A-Novice-Magician.9052 and I recently started a new thread here: https://chyoa.com/chapter/Noticeably-inferior.497484.

Up My Game!

 

@Odysseus Sure, I'm always up for a critique! I've been checking out "A Novice Magician" off and on the last few months, though I haven't read every chapter of every branch yet - I think you've got a solid format going there so far, and I like that you've got branches off your main path, and that you've got some legitimate ends (good and bad) going there. Your writing is overall very solid - chapters not too short or too long, good bit of variety with a couple of grammar issues here and there, mainly to do with tense - it is very easy when doing second person voice to slip up on when the action is happening, so you sometimes use were instead of are - case in point in "Make Her Put Her Lips To Work":

Emphasis mine, so you can see how you slip from present (are) to past (were). It's something I struggle with too - it's easy to slip from present to past tense and back again, especially when describing something that happens over a period of time. Likewise, on rare occasions you misuse a word; in "You Would Look Better Bound Up the demon replies "Nigh" - when you pretty obviously mean "Nay." This is one of those frustrating example that can slip past a spellchecker because night is a real word, just not the word you were looking for! In the same chapter you also use "limps" instead of "limbs." While we're on that chapter, one other little thing:

When you end a bit of dialogue like that, some punctuation - be it a period (if it is a complete statement), or a comma (if you're just taking a breath), or an em-dash (to suggest it was cut off), etc. - is really useful to the reader. Look at the differences in tone:

“I take it you win then.” she says.

“I take it you win then,” she says.

“I take it you win then—” she says.

“I take it you win then!” she says.

“I take it you win then?” she says.

The right choice of punctuation completely changes how this sentence is read, but any of them is better than no punctuation at all. When in doubt, a period or a comma work fine.

You've probably read a couple of my analyses above and the discussion of repetition - you tend to avoid that, switching it up so that every sentence or paragraph doesn't start with "You", but there are exceptions - "The Magic Source" caught my eye where almost every paragraph starts with "You."

One of the things I really like about "A Novice Magician" is that it is not straight porn without plot - not that those stories don't have merit, but it's nice to get a feel for the world and the setting a bit, to get invested in the characters before the clothes come off and things get stiff and wet. The contrast in characters in "Head Back Home" for example, between the bitchy/frigid wife and the nonchalant/hot-to-trot neighbor wife is solid. That being said, some of your sex scenes could use a little detail and maybe a bit more set-up. I got a bit of narrative whiplash going from "She Would Look Better Bound Up" to "Start With A Classic", because you spent a lot of time in the first chapter setting up a bondage scenario on the saltire, and then immediately the cross disappears so they can do some straight fucking! As for the sex itself, in "She Loves It":

Keeping in mind that this is the payoff to a fairly long chain of chapters (this is chapter 11, and you've spent the last two chapters setting up the penetration), this is really a place where you could afford to expand a little. It's okay to have Cecilia be wet and into it right away, and the protagonist to be rock-hard right away - although getting to that point is often half the fun and build-up to a sex scene like this - but it would be nice to see you expand on the action a bit. What do they feel, what do they do - while a lot of porn just has the vigorous mechanical action of cock in pussy, that's a difficult visual to make enticing by itself in the written word. If you could build up on the scenario - how much he's ached to fuck her to this point, his manhood straining against his pants as the ultimate unattainable fuck-fantasy strips at his command, the excitement when he realizes she wants it too, maybe tease her a little by rubbing his shaft against her dripping cunt, or to smack those lips with his dick - and if she's ashamed to be enjoying it, if she whimpers or bites her lip, if she closes her eyes and tries to be a cold fish but her erect clitoris and nipples give her away...there's a lot of mental and physical description that can and arguably should go into this sequence.

I'm not saying you have to use any of that if you don't want to. But let's go a bit further down:

This is a nice visual, and a great scenario. The theme of BDSM is power dynamics - who has it in a relationship and who does not. Restricting mobility isn't just about the physical sensation of restraint or not being able to get away, but about being able to control how someone moves or doesn't move. It's a way of exerting dominance, and all the better if the subject has some degree of free will or control. Binding Cecelia's hands is a great visual, an excellent use of the theme of the protagonist using magic to be a dominant individual, but it's a bit empty if Cecilia doesn't struggle or react, or if the image doesn't do anything to the protagonist themselves. Having Cecilia like being bound is a great twist, but I'd really like to see you show that to the audience instead of just telling us about it. Consider:

Which is not to say this is better, or even anything you'd like to write - but maybe this demonstrates some of what I've been talking about which you might find application for in your own writing. The BDSM setups are good - let's see more of that! Visuals and characterization are strong - but show your audience what is going on, don't just tell them.

Anyway, just some thoughts. Hope that helps. As usual, don't take any of this as stuff you have to do (it's a porn site, for crying out loud), but as suggestions. Some of them might jive with your style and tastes, some won't. Take what seems useful and leave the rest.

 

Shouldn't it be a comma either way if it isn't at the end of the line? So either comma, question mark, exclamation point or em-dash.
I haven't found any resource yet, neither British nor American which support periods in that case.
For taking a breath/making a short pause, I'd rather use ellipsis "..."

little typo here... "check" should be "cheek"

 

If it is a complete thought, you can end it with a period. That would make the next quote the start of a new complete thought. A comma indicates some connection between the first bit of dialogue and the second. There's also my favorite "..." to indicate a trailing-off.

Yeah, and I wrote "night" instead of "nigh" too - what I get for typing too fast and not proofing. Never claimed to be perfect!