Do you have a resource for that? ^^ Well, I only wrote that as I assumed that the mentioned typo was copied from Oddyseus's story.
Strunk & White (PDF) is my go-to for questions on English grammar (with the caveat that individual author preference can trump "the rules."
Thanks for sharing. (Though that rather seems to be a writer's guide than grammar rules.) As I found nothing about ending with a period, I take it as your personal preference/style.
Well, I can't find any occurrence of a period followed by a double quote where the following word isn't the beginning of a new sentence, not in the linked pdf, nor in a longer, probably newer, version of it.
I try to write at least one new chapter a day to keep from getting rusty, but I think the quality could be better. I'm concerned about pacing, and think I may be verbose. I would also love some advice on how to write better sex scenes. Up My Game!
If someone could give me some constructive criticism I'd appreciate it. See, among other things, I am pretty sure I am not using the CYOA medium properly as I should, but I figure I'd at least get to the smut before I started making branches to the "Black" story line, if only to give that Illusion that choice matters. Problem is, there is a story I want to tell here and I am not sure if it my lack of attention to these branches will be noticeable at all. So yeah, Up My Game if you would.
@hambo First off, congrats on dedication! 342 chapters and counting is nothing to sneeze at. Some general thoughts to start off: 1) You have some branching points, which is good; choice is an important aspect of the genre. I think you could do a little more with that - maybe have a chapter or two that branches off and then reconnects with the main path at some point, just to add a little variety to the mix. 2) You don't have any set endings - and to be fair, many stories don't, but some of your unfinished branches have been sitting out there for a while and might benefit from closure. To tie this together with my first point, one option you might consider is to write some choices that lead to endings - good or bad. They don't have to be the ending to that branch, because you can always revisit it and add another option, but turning left instead of right and ending your character's days as a Goblin broodmare or something would be very fitting! 3) From what I've read, you have a relatively decent grasp of the kind of the D&D-esque fantasy setting you want, but there's not a lot of worldbuilding or consistency - the various "main branches" read like individual fantasy. If you could tie them together - same kingdom, the same characters that appear in different scenarios, etc. - it might help give a bit more depth to the individual storylines, and maybe encourage readers to pursue different paths. 4) You've avoided most of the general pitfalls as far as spelling and grammar from what I've read, so kudos on readability. Italics and bold for emphasis are both solid choices. Short passages are also good for overall readability, so good job there. There are a few places where things get a little confusing. For example in Get taken completely by surprise. the troll is referred to as "She" throughout, but you've got two female characters there - the troll and Hilda - so a little more variety would go a long ways. "The She-Troll," "the monster," etc. You've also got a little bit of confusion on tenses and such like, to take that chapter for the example: After taking is a little awkward here - you might rephrase this as something like Taking her sword, the troll let Hilda drop to the ground. I'm not personally keen on your introduction chapters like Hilda, a foolhardy knight due for dishonor or Justine: A chaste paladin with a scandalous secret - the basic idea of introducing your characters, building a detailed visual picture of them in the reader's mind, is very important but the particular execution is a bit more telling than showing. Consider this bit: It's a very out of character voice, rather than the start of the story proper. Consider how this might read if it was the actual start of the narrative: Maybe not something exactly like that, but you get the idea: make it part of the scene as you introduce the character and the setting. Part of this is a stylistic difference: you seem to prefer short, direct sentences (nothing wrong with that!), but you might want to try expanding on your descriptions of people, places, and actions a bit. As to your individual concerns: Your chapters are very short starting off, and even though they lengthen a bit as you go along, I haven't found any particular point of the story that bogs down so much as you get past the initial few branching paths and then into fairly long linear narratives. So I don't think pacing is an issue, and verbosity definitely isn't. If I had a suggestion with regards to pacing, it might be to better guide the reader's expectations - many of your later chapters especially end with the question "What's Next?" instead of implying any possible choice might be coming up - that removes a bit of reader imperative from the narrative. You want to make sure the reader wants to click through to the next chapter, and the question can help frame expectations as much as the next title. Emphasis on touch, taste, smell, sound, thought, and emotion. You want to communicate sensuality, anticipation, enjoyment, position, and action. So for example, in The Girls Debase Themselves: It's not a bad passage, and you're covering touch and emotion fine, but think of the positioning: where is everybody? We know someone is "fingering" her g-spot - who is it? How long or thick are his fingers? What is he doing, exactly? Where is Hilda sitting/laying/standing while this is going on? Is her heart thumping, breasts heaving, cunt spasming, or toes curling? How much light is there in the room - can she see the action going on, or is it dark and dim, so that her mind is focusing on her sense of touch? She cries out in pleasure, but what does she hear - her heart hammering in her ears, the soft moans of the drow, etc. What does she smell or taste? It can feel a little redundant re-iterating who and where people are in a scene, but keep in mind not everybody is going to be reading your chapters in order - plenty of people skip straight to ones that sound sexy, or whatever is newest - so it never hurts to "set the scene" in brief before getting into the action. You were doing really well at the end with the drow being teased, letting the anticipation build up. The follow-up in the next chapter, however, is another example of telling rather than showing: This is really something that would be better to see "played out" rather than summarized; you never describe the moment when Silvia is finally penetrated, how it feels to her, how the masseuse dominate or demeans her - and those would all be fun things to see! If you ever think about revisiting this kind of story from scratch, you might consider doing it in game-mode. You can set things like breast- and hip- size descriptors ("Extra THICC" "Child-Bearing") and change them as the characters go through whatever encounters (Clothed -> nude if the goblins steal her clothes, G-cup -> J-cup as the Fountain of Plenty works its magic, etc.) I'm not suggesting you try to do that for this story - that's the kind of idea that works best when you implement it from the beginning - but it might be handy approach for you. Anyway, I hope some of that helped.
@Lookingforthis It's an unusual premise, and I not clear where you're going with it - well, except back to where Jason came from (ha ha) - but while the introduction is a little slow the writing isn't bad, although there are elements of it that you could definitely expand on - what the father looks like, what their apartment looks like, etc. The picture of the mother is nice, but you might want to hold that off until Jason sees her like that. I think you're pacing things fine, and your first "smut" scene is off to a good start, minus the occasional little typo and one or two odd descriptions ("large slim lips" "her mouth organs"). I think there is also some opportunity here to really play with the concept of Jason coming into his own with "possessing" his mother. For example, when he says: Think about how it would read as: It's playing with the roles and assertiveness a bit - one of the highlights of incestuous relations is the shared background and weird mixture of roles you're dealing with - she's still his mother, and he's used to thinking of her as his mother, just as she's used to thinking of him as her little boy; she's the one with the power in that relationship. But now he has the power in that relationship, and part of the shift in power is both of them getting accustomed to that change in roles. One of your best moments in this scene: Great characterization; I'd almost like to see it play out longer...after all, she would have seen his penis as a baby and kid, but this would be the first time she'd really seen it in years...and that's the kind of personal history between the two of them you might consider playing up in the future, if it fits your storyline. After all, he's 18 years old, his mother must have known he was masturbating or had a girlfriend - how did she feel about that? Jason might have heard his parents having sex at night - how did he feel about that? Once he begins to see her as a sexual being, he might ask her more about her previous sex experiences...and that could drive them to try some other things ("I let your father fuck my ass" or "Your father would go down on me, every time. He loved it." etc.) To get to your individual concerns: Well, so far you have no need for game-mode, as you're not tracking any variables or points. There's no requirement for lots of different choices - or even for those choices to be significant. You can follow this branch as far as you want to take it, and no one will fault you for it. But you might consider when and where a good branching point might be in your narrative. If you have a story you want to tell - outline it. See where the natural point for "Jason needs to make a choice." would be. Branches don't have to be completely divergent from the main story you want to tell. Some of them might just be "Jason says no," and that's it - story ends, reader has to go back a chapter and take the other branch to keep reading. Or you can diverge for just a couple chapters and then link back to where the first choice branched off. For example, in Does He Have Any Choice? it ends with a Yes/No option - saying "No" doesn't have to be the end of it; Jason could go into the bathroom and lock himself in or something, his mom talks sexy to him through the door until he gets hard, then it links back to You're Not Supposed To Say Yes and pick up where things left off. The choices are just that: ways to veer left instead of right. But all roads might still lead to Jason's mom. I can't throw stones when it comes to proofreading, but this jumped out at me in Black: "Felt" instead of "fell" - just a typo.
First up, thank you for the analysis! Should I be giving the character of the father that much exposure though? Like, he is not going to appear in the story ever again but I suppose there is something to be said about giving the reader a bigger emotional attachment to him. Hmmmmmmm... However, I will see about giving the apartment some flavor text. I'll see if I can find a picture of that actress in a less racy state of dress then <_< >_> Thank you, fixing... Ok, THIS. THIS is a classic ploy in incest stories to show relationship development: By using the names of the parents it puts both parties on "equal" footing, so to say, since it removes a layer of parental respect. But, I have a reason not to. See, I find that a lot of the taboo in these stories go out the window once the "child" in the relationship treats the parent, and vice versa, like any other lover would. If the parent/child relationship isn't emotionally relevant even as they are finishing paying the mortgage and sending the kids to school, then it starts feeling, well, too vanilla for my liking. The power dynamics shouldn't necessarily change simply because they are porking each other. It's a classic trope for a reason and it obviously works but, IMOH, I don't much like it. See, I get this, and the premise of my story admittedly DOES lend itself to an immediate change in the power dynamics but, again, it hits me across as too vanilla. Doesn't get the 'ld mast up if you get what I am saying. Thank you! Hmmmmm, yeah I think I can fit in some more of that as I develop the sex scene or later on in the story. You've given me quite a bit to think about, thank you! Aaaaaand fixed. Once again, thank you!
Thanks for the advice, and taking the time to respond. Regarding Point#1: I've done that in a couple of spots, but not too often so far. I'll try to do it more often to start bringing some of the paths together. Regarding Point#2: When I get stuck on a certain branch, I'll often switch to another one to try to rebuild/keep momentum going. I have a few endings in mind, but just haven't figured out how I'll get to them yet. I don't like writing Bad Ends (I think they're too sad), which is partly why I've been hesitant to write endings, but I don't want to leave dead end branches either. I may start writing some endings though to try to bring things back around. Regarding Point #3: I have started having a few characters overlap (mostly minor bits here and there), but It hasn't been too much yet. I'll try to fit more of it in there. Regarding Point#4: I try to keep everything in current tense, but sometimes I slip up out of habit. I try to correct that whenever I spot it (along with typos). Get Taken By Surprise was an old chapter of mine I repurposed from Monster Girl ENF. That was done in second person, so I tried to convert all those old chapters to 3rd Person when I made Losing It All. Having said that, I've gone back and tried to tweak it. Do you think it flows better now? As for character descriptions, I originally didn't have one in there for Hilda, but someone asked for one, so I obliged and added them in for all subsequent characters. I like what you've done for the Belinda example. Do you think they should all be redone like that? And thank you for the advice on sex scenes. I'll probably end up going back and rewriting some of the more 'tell-heavy' ones, using your advice. Can you tell me more about Game Mode? I've never messed with that.
It is entirely up to you, but insofar as the father is going to be reflecting on the son, certain issues of physical resemblance might come up. Fair enough! It's your story, you have to follow your muse with it. Like I said, these are just suggestions. Do what works for you! I definitely get where you're coming from (I have a huge number of dangling branches in my story so far...but I'm working on it), and I don't mean to push - these are just suggestions. I think it does flow better. Entirely your option; for me personally, it helps to get me into the story faster to go straight into the narrative instead of just reeling off a bunch of stats. Keep in mind the kind of sex-scenes that you yourself like: what is the language like? How do they write it? I'm not suggesting you crib off another author, but take a moment to study what gets you excited about a certain passage...and see if you can reproduce that in your own words. Game Mode lets you track variables, set up conditional branches, etc. Check out the section in the Guide by @gene.sis for more info. With 300+ chapters, I don't think you want to muck with it for your current story, but maybe in the future.
Hi ya'll, Thought I'd throw myself to the wolves here. My issue is that my writing style, while I am very proud of it, is a little too off-putting for other writers to join in on I think. I don't really obey the true 'CHYOA' format of decisions made by the reader because I feel it really causes issues with the character development I like to push. Yet I would be more than happy for others to take a thread off from any of my chapters and spin their own tale, just no-one ever does. My latest story: One Step Away is an attempt to do a different, shorter format, with many small slices of characters lives within a certain setting, but I feel my writing is definitely suffering to squeeze into it? I also worry that with any diverging project, I seem to have a solid fanbase for my previous tales and don't want to let them down, but often find myself uninspired past a certain point in each plotline. Any advice/comments/thrown faecal matter would be appreciated.
@JerkGently Well in general formatting all of your stories are long straight narratives with no branching paths. That by itself need not be a bad thing, but I think the lack of branches may well be discouraging readers - and I think part of the issue is how you are formatting the *ends* of your chapters. Rather than asking a question which could have multiple different answers, you normally leave it with a single statement. For example, in One Step Away your very first chapter ends with "To begin" - and the option branching off of that is "Just another school day." By comparison, your question at the beginning of College Housepet is much more open to alternatives. If you really want to encourage writers to add to your stories, you might consider going back and changing a few of those final statements, opening up the story for more options - and maybe writing a starting branch chapter or two. The key thing is to present possibilities and scenarios that catch the reader's interest and get them to want to contribute; if you're just doing your own thing without giving them any openings, it can be a bit off-putting. By a similar note, your "About" is usually pretty long and just reiterating the opening paragraph of your introduction chapter - something shorter, pithier that gives the idea of the story and sells it might attract more general interest. Stylistically, you seem to prefer fairly large, dense paragraphs. These can be difficult to read on computers, and you might benefit by breaking a few of them up into easier-to-digest bits. For example, in The Only Question Is Who's On Top?: This isn't a bad sex scene! But a little spacing could help make it a lot more readable, and that tends to highlight a few little text changes you might consider. Not entirely sure what you're going after for that last sentence, although I think you mean something along the lines of Now that they had taken the plunge. Another thing that is easier to notice is that you never call the daughter by her given name - always "she" and 'her" - and that goes for the whole story; I understand not wanting to give the father a name because you're writing in 2nd person, but developing the daughter's personality a bit would be a good idea. You might also want to focus on "young woman" instead of "young girl" - while you're focused on an incestuous relationship, you want to steer clear of any possible interpretation of underage characters. In this scene you also tend to focus a great deal on the action and position, what the viewpoint-character is doing but not what they are feeling. How hard is their cock? Are their testicles bouncing against her ass? Is he drawing close? What are her breasts doing, and what reaction does that draw from him? Is it warm or cold? What does he taste or smell? Is he thinking about his wife at all, or just focused on the present, reaming her out? You might not answer any of those questions, but something to consider. I don't think length is an issue for you, and I think you have a good handle on your characters' inner lives, but maybe not expressing them as well as you could. You don't have a lot of dialogue. What you do have isn't bad, although you could possibly organize it a touch better. Taking Caught in the Breeze for an example: Like I said, not bad, all grammatically correct as far as these things go. But consider this reorganized slightly: A little less spread out, but the actual dialogue is worked into the action of the scene a bit. Again, might not be your style, but it is an approach you might consider. Hope that helps.
Thanks, lots of food for thought. Yeah I'm aware the lack of direct questions hurts the feel of an invitation to add something of their own, but I struggle to maintain my own flow if I keep stopping to ask what next? I think possibly writing while I have the flow, then going back and opening things up when I'm less inspired is a sound bit of advice. As for 'One Step Away' my intention is to write several other shorter stories branching from that introduction, hopefully sparking a series of 'day in the life' subplots. Yes, originally my intention with keeping the daughter unnamed was to maintain a certain feeling of being more involved in the story, you could imagine her to be whoever you liked. However as the story went on and other named characters appeared it slowly just became unfeasible... I had to give her a couple of nicknames at least. Perhaps I should look into the option of using one of the name entry tools at the beginning and refit the story to accommodate. Rather a big task I feel, but if I get the time... Dialogue is definitely where I struggle most, hence the natural avoidance. I also often write on a phone or tablet which can make gauging layout a bit tricky, I shall have to look at where your logic splits off from mine and build up some better habits. Anyway, thanks a bunch for your time and opinions!
I'd also like to get some constructive criticism on my writing. Here some links to my contributions: Chyoa Sex Chat The Choice Just Friends So, up my game!
@Kore First things first, I love your enthusiasm, and by extension your characters - it's nice to read some characters that are really sex-positive and just into it. You have a good vocabulary and reasonable grammar; noticed a few typos but nothing glaring. There are some occasional moments of really good set-up and pay-off in your writing. I was especially taken by the bit in All Over Her Face: The build-up of "Ugh" to "UGH-aarrgh!" is a fun example of setting up a bit ("Ugh") then repeating it to establish the pattern ("UGH"), intensifying ("UGH! UGH!") and finally the payoff ("UGH-aarrgh!") - the pacing on that kind of thing really varies quite a bit, and you wouldn't want to overdo it, but that was a cute moment in particular and I think you carried it well. General observations: you have a very distinctive but somewhat repetitive style. Generally very brief paragraphs, no more than a sentence or two, which begin with a thought or bit of dialogue, followed by an action or bit of description. That's fine, and I'm sure it's faster and easier to write, but it can get tiresome when used excessively. For example, this section from Have A Walk: You might rearrange this a little and get something a little more varied in structure while keeping the tone: Italics mine for additions and small changes. This isn't necessarily how you would do it, but it gives an idea of how it might look like, to keep the crux of the interaction but focus more on the action, to break up the dialogue just a little. What I would recommend is experiment with this kind of format up a little - and especially add a little more description. For example when you say "her nice nipples" - how are they nice? Big, puffy, small, hard, soft, fat, inverted, pink, brown, pierced...feel free to indulge a little. The description could also help set or elaborate the scene a little...you're quite good at this, when you do pause to "take a breath" from the dialogue and get into it. For example, in Nightwear Combinations: This is nice; richly descriptive and a bit titillating, the kind of little show you'd expect from a sex show or camwhore. A good pause between the bits of dialogue, letting the audience picture their main subject and what she's doing. I'd like to see more of that in your writing. That goes double for sex scenes, which tend to be...I don't want to say short, but very diffuse. The action is spread out, often interrupted by dialogue, and there is less focus on what people are doing, what it feels like, smells like, tastes like, sounds like. I'm the kind of reader that wants to hear about the stubble from badly shaved thighs scraping cheeks as a girl eats out her girlfriend, and as a writer I like to try and write that level of detail - you're going to want to write to your own tastes as well, but maybe give it a try going into a little more detail, showing what's happening. Even if all you have is a vivid image, rather than all the sights and sounds and smells, sometimes working to bring that across to the audience is worth the extra effort. See how it suits you - if you don't like it, you can always erase it and go back. You depend a great deal on previous chapters by other people to set up the situation, but occasional reiteration, especially at the beginning of a chapter, can really help keep the reader grounded in what's going on and who is who. This isn't always necessary, but it can often be a good idea when you have longer runs between choices, as you seem to...speaking of which... You also have a preference for linear narratives - and hey, that's fine! You're presenting, for the most part, single storyline paths off of existing stories, your branch can be as straight or crooked as you want to tell the story you want to. That said, you might want to give it a go to explore different options, even if they dead-end or loop back around. You might also try a bit more back-and-forth - that isn't entirely up to you, but I'd be curious what your response is to First Tips and Luscious Lips, for example. Anyway, those are just my thoughts. Hope there might be something of use to you in there.
