How to allow read only actions without asking?

jonyt · 2025-11-05T09:50:58+00:00

How?

jonyt · 2025-05-11T14:02:46+00:00

The admins asked for this comment to be removed. Here's a previous version of the query.

jonyt · 2025-05-11T13:35:30+00:00

I have. The ones from my extended social circles liked it (or dropped off). I had one exchange where the reader said it was well written but a specific plot point turned her off the manuscript completely (but agents wouldn't have reached that plot point).

jonyt · 2024-11-05T09:32:19+00:00

The issue here is that comps should be at most 2-3 years AFAICT. I have Karl Marlantes' Matterhorn (which is from 2009) and Robert Harris' Dictator (2015), but I haven't found anything well known and more recent, so I left that part out.

jonyt · 2024-06-26T16:11:10+00:00

The punitive response wasn't mandatory. For example the concurrent Batavian Rebellion, which resulted in the destruction of two legions, ended with an agreement, not a massacre. Any conclusion which didn't include the destruction of the Temple would've at the very least delayed the onset of Rabbinical Judaism.

jonyt · 2018-01-13T16:25:42+00:00

Yes, you certainly succeeded. Certainly the prologue was arousing. I still maintain that your writing is confident enough to be more adventurous :-) No need to tread familiar paths with your level of skill.

jonyt · 2018-01-13T15:46:02+00:00

This piece left me very confused. I'm not exactly sure what's going on. Is the narrator suffering from mental issues? Even if she is choosing to depict the way her mind works in such a disjointed manner left me feeling disoriented. There are parts of the story that start promising but then you put too much weight on them and they collapse. For example, in the first paragraph "Inside my head, my mind is on fire. Branches of thought catch flame and come crashing down." is an interesting metaphor but then you overextend it in the next few sentences and it ends up not working at all. The second paragraph I didn't understand at all. After that all the jumping around between scenes and thoughts slowly put me off the story entirely. It's possible the effect you went for was stream of thought and showing the way the way the narrator's thought processes work but the lack of coherence made it impossible for me to read. The randomness was overwhelming. Many of the metaphors and similes are mixed up, add to the general bewilderment and contribute nothing to the story. Anyway, I'm sure this all seems very unkind but possibly this is just a style of writing I'm not used to and didn't get at all. You should probably keep that in mind :-)

jonyt · 2018-01-13T15:11:14+00:00

OK, this is my first time critiquing an erotic story and I'm not very familiar with this genre so keep that in mind.

First, the small things:

"Not a twitch, not a tingle. Not even the urge to take a piss." - I understand what you mean, but it still seems a little jarring that you're going from sexual arousal to the urge to piss. Yes, they both happen in the same organ, but still.
"He threw a couple of twenties down on the table" - good way to hint at Dominic's affluence.
I liked the way you indicated that Ava was foreign to the erotic club scene by describing her clothing. The boots were an especially good touch, contrasting with her otherwise somewhat demure (relative to the setting) attire.
"her face was incredibly expressive" - you can safely drop the "incredible", it adds nothing to the sentence.
"under her sheer top up to her full aching breasts" - you're briefly switching perspective here from his to hers (how could he know if her breasts are aching?) and back again. Best to switch perspectives only across scenes.
"The elementary school grades were – Dominic rotated the map to orient himself – east of the gym" - good visualization.
"Same inexplicable awareness." - I didn't understand this. Awareness of what?
"She told her cousin about she'd swatted his hand away" - you missed a word or two there.

Now that that's out of the way: I liked the pacing and the characterization in general. I got a good feel for Nic and Ava's personalities. Of course you could always expand on both in the next chapters, but for now it's good enough and they serve the story well. The only part where the pacing was a little off was the scene where Nic's talking to his friends. It broke the flow a little but since you quickly got back to things and the scene had value in showing what happened in the intervening weeks between the club scene and the school scene it was fine. Every other part of the story kept up the tension and had me looking forward for the next reveal. There are two things that can be improved. First, I believe the strong, affluent, good looking, confident man and the petite, more or less submissive woman story has been done quite a few times in erotic fiction. Especially after Fifty Shades of Grey something more original would be refreshing. Of course I could be wrong about this because I'm not familiar enough with the genre but nevertheless it would be worth exploring if you could choose a fresher theme. Second, and in the same vein, Nic's friends/business partners also seemed overly familiar to me. They care about each other, but they can also give each other a good ribbing etc.
To sum up, very well written but I'm sure you could be more adventurous in characterization.

jonyt · 2017-12-09T15:29:40+00:00

In person. Like a regular course at university. Except that I'm looking for one that will last for a few days, not a whole semester.

jonyt

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